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Help us spread the ANTIDOTE to corporate propaganda. Please follow SGT Report on Twitter & help share the message. Related 1 comment to Wake Up with Steve Curtis – James Rickards – Road To Ruin wauhoo November 23, 2016 at 9:41 pm · Reply
I know that a lot of people on this site distrust Jim Rickards because of his poohpoohing the airline stock trading around 911, and that makes me wonder too, but he sure makes sense when he does interviews about his books. The SDR scenario is probably what is planned, and he always drives home the point of having 10% of your wealth in PMs and that percentage will keep you afloat on the other side of the collapse. I guess the “listen to all and follow none” idea applies here, and Jim Rickards is at least worth listening to. Leave a Reply You can use these HTML tags
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Pelosi: ”The president. ..is expressing a sign of weakness. He’s saying ’I can’t control our borders. I have to build a wall. ’” #MTP pic. twitter. Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ( ) said President Donald Trump’s proposed wall between the U. S. border was “a sign of weakness. ” Pelosi said, “What is wrong with that scenario is the wall. He talks about how tall it is, who will pay for it, and all of the rest of that. You have to understand this part of the country there is a community with a border going through it. The president, I think, talking about this wall, is expressing a sign of weakness. He is saying I can’t control our borders, I have to build a wall. We would certainly like to — we have a responsibility to control our borders but building a wall is not an answer. Not here or anyplace. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
Hundreds of people gathered Friday night in a town in Oklahoma to remember the life of a newborn baby boy who was found dead in a dumpster. [VIDEO: “That little boy was innocent,” Community gathers to remember baby found in dumpster, More than 400 people gathered on the lawn of the Garfield County Courthouse in Enid for a candlelight vigil to mourn the baby boy’s death and celebrate his life, KOTV reported. The sound of motorcycles filled the air as the crowd gathered in the square. “No baby deserves that. They don’t. That little boy was innocent. Never done anything to anybody in his life. It just didn’t deserve it,” Mike Jarvis of the Chisholm Trail Motorcycle Group told KFOR. Police found the decomposing infant in a dumpster April 9 inside a trash bag placed in a box. “It’s a baby. Like why would you do that to a baby? It’s Enid’s baby and you just don’t do that to a kid,” said Kassydi Reisner, who performed at the memorial. Mourners gathered in song with candles in hand as a way to band together in the face of tragedy. “What happened in the dumpster is a tragedy, hands down, no doubts about it and that’s not how we do this as a community. We come together, and we will make things right,” Bill Stittsworth said. Stittsworth, who is a funeral home director and embalmer with Amy Stittsworth Funeral Service, said he is donating a casket to the baby and providing private funeral services at a later date, KWTV reported. Police are conducting DNA tests to determine the baby boy’s mother. | 0 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg nurtured Facebook from a dorm room idea into the world’s biggest social network. Now the company is taking steps to ensure its founder remains in charge. Facebook on Wednesday proposed a new class of stock, known as C shares, in a move meant to allow Mr. Zuckerberg to maintain control of the Silicon Valley company. The creation of the new class of shares allows the chief executive to preserve his voting power at Facebook, even as he begins an effort to give away the majority of his stock for charitable purposes. Facebook said the move was “not a traditional governance model,” but it added that “Facebook was not built to be a traditional company. ” The proposal speaks to a very Silicon Valley ethos where company founders often reign supreme — and where corporate structures have shifted to accommodate that philosophy. Over the past decade, more tech companies have adopted two classes of stock so that their founders can cement their voting power at the firms. In 2012, Google announced that it was creating a third class of shares to prevent its founders’ voting power from diminishing. Mr. Zuckerberg on Wednesday cited the Silicon Valley mantra of founders in explaining the new class of stock, calling Facebook a “ company. ” In a conference call, he added, “Facebook has been built on a series of bold moves. When I look out on the future, I see more bold moves ahead of us, not behind us. ” The social network on Wednesday also reported robust earnings that show the results of Mr. Zuckerberg’s leadership. Facebook said sales rose 52 percent to $5. 3 billion from a year ago, while profit increased to $1. 5 billion, tripling from $512 million a year earlier. Excluding certain items, profit was 77 cents a share, far surpassing Wall Street expectations of 62 cents a share. Facebook’s shares, which are up more than 33 percent over the past year, soared 9 percent in trading. Facebook said it began considering a third class of stock last August when a committee of three directors — Erskine Bowles, Susan and Marc Andreessen — started evaluating the company’s capital structure. In December, Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, announced the creation of a limited liability company to which they would give 99 percent of their Facebook shares during their lifetimes for charitable purposes. Mr. Zuckerberg’s philanthropic plan posed an issue for his control of Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg, who is chief executive, owns almost 4 million Facebook class A shares and 468 million, or 85 percent, of its class B shares, giving him overall voting power of 60 percent. But if he were to give away 99 percent of his Facebook stock over time, his voting power at the company would decline to less than 50 percent. The new C shares effectively allow Mr. Zuckerberg to maintain 60 percent of voting power while still giving away large amounts of stock. Under the proposal, all holders of Facebook stock will get two C shares for each A or B share that they own. Importantly, the C shares come with no voting power. Holders of A shares are entitled to one vote per share, while holder of B shares have 10 votes a share. That means Mr. Zuckerberg, as the majority owner of Facebook shares, will obtain a large amount C shares that he can then donate without diluting his voting power in the company. “It is a rational, if somewhat way, for founders to distribute wealth without giving up operating control of the company,” said Lise Buyer, founder of the Class V Group, which advises on initial public offerings. “This structure will continue to allow Facebook to make decisions that may not always look great in the short term, but may pay off for investors over time. ” Facebook’s C shares may trade at a slight discount to A shares, which would still have one vote. Most investors currently hold A shares, which only have about a quarter of the overall shareholders’ voting power, so they may not be forgoing much if they choose to sell their A shares versus their C shares. “It’s almost like voting Republican in Massachusetts — you can do it, but it won’t affect the outcome,” said Rick Kline, a partner in the technology and capital markets practice of law firm Goodwin Procter. Investors getting new C shares will not gain economically because the same proportion of new stock will be given to all holders. Mr. Zuckerberg might have a more difficult time convincing shareholders to accept the new class of shares were his company not doing so well. Facebook’s financial results on Wednesday were a far cry from the disappointing numbers posted in the past 10 days by peers like Twitter, whose advertising business showed signs of stumbling on Tuesday, or Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which missed analysts’ estimates for revenue last week. Facebook, in contrast, has figured out how to wring billions of dollars from its members on mobile devices and other platforms, making the company’s machine unstoppable. The company said 82 percent of its advertising revenue came from mobile devices in the first quarter. In addition, Facebook is starting to spin up revenues in Instagram, the application, and is testing advertising on Facebook Messenger, the messaging service for which the company recently introduced automated customer service “bots. ” And while growth in new users on Facebook has slowed in recent years, the total is still getting larger. Facebook said 1. 65 billion people visited the site on a monthly basis in the first quarter, up from 1. 44 billion a year earlier. More than 1. 5 billion people are monthly users, up from 1. 25 billion a year ago. Facebook’s other big bets like WhatsApp, the messaging service, and Oculus, its virtual reality play, have yet to pay off with immense new revenue streams. But Facebook is comfortable gathering a critical mass of users — nearly a billion in WhatsApp’s case — and then introducing advertising later on when it makes more sense. “To me, this is like Google 10 years ago,” said Mark Mahaney, an Internet analyst at RBC Capital. “They really had such momentum, and they’re proving how valuable they are to both advertisers and consumers. ” | 1 |
Two men were found dead in New York City’s Central Park in the span of 24 hours, authorities said. [A park worker found a man’s body estimated to be about 30 years old, “wearing pants and shoes, but no shirt, floating in Swan Lake” pond near East 59th Street and Fifth Avenue Wednesday morning, NBC New York reported. CBS New York reports that the man’s body appeared to be floating in the water for about a week or two, and police have identified the body from an ID in the man’s pocket but are waiting to release the man’s identity until it is confirmed. NYPD Chief of Detectives Bob Boyce said the body was submerged in the water for so long due to “wildlife issues” that kept his body from being found sooner and that it sustained “some eye damage from some turtles or other wildlife. ” Otherwise, the body had not decomposed very much and did not look like it had sustained trauma. The discovery of the body comes less than 24 hours after another body was found in the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir Tuesday afternoon near Central Park West and 90th Street. The man’s naked body was estimated to be in his 20s or 30s and did not appear to have undergone any trauma. The body was believed to have been in the water for at least a month because it was badly decomposed. Police say that they do not suspect the bodies were connected to any crime, and a medical examiner will perform autopsies to determine the causes of death. Boyce said a body had not been found in Central Park’s waters since 2015. | 0 |
As Republican lawmakers prepare to leave Washington for a weeklong congressional recess, liberal groups and Democratic Party organizers are hoping to make their homecoming as noisy and uncomfortable as possible. But national organizers concede they are playing to a “ level” of activism that has bubbled up from street protests and the small groups that have swelled into crowds outside local congressional offices. Protests against the Republican agenda have become routine since President Trump took office, with momentum building through widely shared videos of lawmakers being confronted by constituents angry over efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now, national groups see the recess as the chance to capitalize on that local activism, with a show of might aimed at declaring the arrival of a new, and sustainable, political force — barely three months after their humiliating defeat in November. In email alerts, MoveOn. org is mobilizing members to attend meetings across the country, and it has set up a website, ResistanceRecess. com, to help people find them. The site includes a guide to “health care recess messaging. ” (“The best and most impactful questions are ones where someone shares their story about what the Affordable Care Act has meant to them or their family,” it instructs.) Organizing for Action, the political nonprofit group that grew out of former President Barack Obama’s election campaign, has created a “Recess Toolkit” with suggestions on how to effectively ask questions at the events. Last week, the group held an online seminar with members of Indivisible, the most prominent activist organization to emerge in response to Mr. Trump’s election, to coach supporters on how to challenge lawmakers — in a “civil and respectful way” advised one strategist, according to a recording of the session. Planned Parenthood is hoping to flood the sessions with members in pink urging Congress to keep in place the health care law and the organization’s funding. “It’s going to be intense,” said Emily Tisch Sussman, who leads the political arm of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington. “All every group wants to know is how to find out where the town halls are going to be. ” The recess, traditionally a time for lawmakers to take the temperature of their constituents, comes at a surprisingly vulnerable moment for Republicans. They are struggling to gain traction on a legislative agenda despite controlling both congressional chambers and the White House, as the new administration remains mired in controversy over its targeted travel ban and contact with Russia, among other issues. While complaints about the health care act — high premiums in particular — helped elect Mr. Trump, polls show it has become more popular as voters realize that repealing it would mean that an estimated 30 million people lose health insurance. There are few indications at this point that the conservative base of the Republican Party is mobilizing for action on a large scale during the recess. FreedomWorks, the libertarian group that in 2009 nurtured Tea Party groups to rally against the legislation that became the health care act, said it was planning a Washington rally next month to let lawmakers know that there remained significant opposition to the Affordable Care Act. But just as the energy after Mr. Obama’s inauguration seemed to be on the right, this year it seems to be on the left. demonstrations in some cities this month were met with much larger crowds of abortion rights supporters. At a widely viewed meeting held by Representative Gus Bilirakis in Florida, a local Republican Party chairman who declared that the health care act set up “death panels” was shouted down by supporters of the law. Several Republicans, including Mr. Trump, have dismissed the care act crowds as “paid protesters,” not constituents. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, without offering evidence, called the protests a “very paid, movement,” unlike the Tea Party demonstrations against the drafting of the health care law in 2009, which he characterized as “very organic. ” In fact, some of the most formidable and organizing groups on the left have found themselves scrambling to track all of the local groups sprouting up through social media channels like Facebook and Slack, or in local “huddles” that grew out of the women’s marches across the country the day after the inauguration. “We’re just constantly being flooded with people asking us, ‘What can we do, where can we go? ’” said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn. org, who coined the “ level” description. “For politicians to imagine that it’s something that any group could turn on and off like a light switch is a critical miscalculation. ” Ms. Sussman spent much of one morning this week communicating with 1, 600 activist groups on a Slack channel that one of them organized. “It doesn’t work for organizations to bigfoot strategy it’s not the way organizing happens now,” said Kelley Robinson, the deputy national organizing director for Planned Parenthood, which is fighting the defunding of its health clinics. “There are bigger ideas coming out of the grass roots than the traditional organizations. ” Established groups in Washington are running more traditional campaigns. The Alliance for Healthcare Security, a coalition of health care worker unions and other groups, is running television and online ads during the recess in five states where it believes Republican senators are either inclined to vote against a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, or vulnerable to defeat in bids if they vote for repeal. The ads — in Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Nevada and West Virginia — feature constituents with diseases telling emotional stories about how the health care law saved their lives. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is keeping track of Republican lawmakers who do not hold meetings. Some events have been canceled. Representative Tom MacArthur of New Jersey told voters who pressed for town halls that he was not scheduling them because they had been “hijacked” by groups hostile to Mr. Trump. The committee plans to run internet ads trying to shame lawmakers for not facing their constituents in public since voting last month on a procedural motion aimed at repealing the health law. Some of the most creative activity is coming from people who are new to political activism. In Plymouth, Minn. Kelly Guncheon, a financial planner who described himself as an independent, has organized a “With Him or Without Him” meeting for Representative Erik Paulsen, a Republican who has not scheduled any of his own. A volunteer offered to make 400 cupcakes decorated with a “Where’s Waldo?” picture of Mr. Paulsen’s face, and Mr. Guncheon said he planned to project onto screens legislation that Mr. Paulsen had supported. Participants will be asked to write down questions, which will be delivered, along with a recording of the event, to Mr. Paulsen’s congressional office after the recess. Mr. Guncheon, like other new activists, said he was not looking to traditional political groups for guidance. “In this new culture, this new era, we have to figure out new ways to do things,” he said. “There’s certainly no leadership at the head of the Democratic Party, or the state party. Not that I’m a Democrat anyway, but that seems to be the opposition party. ” Other new groups organizing on Facebook have arranged similar events, calling them “ ” or “ ” meetings, for Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, as well as for Republican lawmakers from California, New Jersey and New York. In response to Mr. Gardner’s complaints that the people showing up at his office to request meetings were paid protesters from other states, one group showed up at his office with a banner on which members had written their Colorado ZIP codes. National groups are looking past the recess, to try to keep up the momentum for the local efforts. Ms. Sussman, at the Center for American Progress, said her group planned a training and planning session in April for new activist leaders. Save My Care, another Washington group, is to begin an online campaign on Monday where people can register to have a hospital wristband sent to their congressional representative. The wristbands, which read “I will lose my health care if you vote to repeal,” will be delivered to Congress after the recess. Planned Parenthood is signing up “defenders” and holding training sessions to help teach new activists how to tell reporters and lawmakers their personal experiences with the group’s health services, and what it would mean to lose them. The group is planning a rally in Milwaukee on Feb. 25, the last weekend of the recess week, with Planned Parenthood patients from Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s district expected to testify how they would be affected if clinics lost funding. Mr. Ryan has said he would defund Planned Parenthood in any repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Still, said Nicole Safar, the group’s director of government relations in Wisconsin, “This is more about than targeting Paul Ryan. ” “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” she said. “We’re going to put as much pressure as we can on Paul Ryan during the recess, for sure, but this isn’t going to end any time soon. ” | 1 |
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has denounced radical Islam as “a monstrous totalitarian ideology that has declared war on our nation, on reason, on civilisation,” after a deadly Kalashnikov attack on police officers in Paris. [“Hate preachers must be expelled, the Islamist mosques closed,” the Front National leader declared, lambasting the Socialist Party government as “notoriously feeble”. “We cannot afford to lose this war … for the past ten years, and governments have done everything they can for us to lose it. We need a presidency which acts and protects us,” she declared, calling on outgoing president François Hollande to expel all foreign nationalists on the extremist watch list and terminate France’s membership of the EU’s borderless Schengen area, which was castigated as “effectively an international zone for terrorists” by former INTERPOL chief Robert Noble after Islamists killed 130 people in Paris in 2015. “I will protect you. My first measure as president will be to reinstate France’s borders,” https: . — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 20, 2017, Ms Le Pen’s main rival for the presidency, former Rothschild banker Emmanuel Macron, was the Socialist economy minister until recently, and struck a very different tone following the attack, telling RTL France he would not invent an programme in response to the police killing. In another interview shortly after the shooting, Macron described radical Islamic terrorism as and “imponderable problem” which would be “part of our daily lives for the years to come”. C’est la vie! Macron tells #France terror will be ‘part of our daily lives for years to come’. Valls advising? https: . — Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) April 21, 2017, Macron’s comments may prove to be a serious misstep. The presidential hopes of former colleague and prime minister Manuel Valls were dashed after he made a similar statement following the Nice lorry attack, saying “Times have changed and we should learn to live with terrorism” and earning a furious public backlash. A majority of France’s paramilitary police force — the Gendarmerie — were already planning to vote for Ms Le Pen before the recent killing, well ahead of Macron. The poll came as a French police officer was gunned down in Paris in a ’terror attack’ https: . — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 21, 2017, | 0 |
LONDON — As heartbroken friends and fans mourned George Michael online and at his homes across Britain on Monday, questions swirled about the health and final weeks of the electrifying pop singer before his death on Christmas Day at the age of 53. Once an indisputable sex symbol of the era, Mr. Michael appeared overweight and nearly unrecognizable in photographs, reportedly from September, that the website TMZ published on Monday. News media attention also fell on a 2015 tabloid interview with a relative claiming that Mr. Michael was abusing drugs and putting his life at risk. And after years of arrests related to drug use, as well as confessional interviews and health scares, the singer had largely retreated from the public eye, while his creative output had all but ceased. [ Why George Michael mattered | Read the obituary ] Paul Gambaccini, a radio and television presenter who had known Mr. Michael since youth and represented him during a 2011 tour, said in an interview that he was not surprised by the singer’s death because Mr. Michael was “not completely well” and had a “close brush with death” five years ago when he nearly succumbed to a bout of pneumonia. Doctors had to perform a tracheotomy. Police officials, who had announced that Mr. Michael died in “unexplained but not suspicious” circumstances at his home in England, could not be reached for further details on Monday because of Boxing Day. The singer’s manager, Michael Lippman, on Monday declined to elaborate on his statement that Mr. Michael had died of heart failure, “in bed, lying peacefully. ” Forensic experts said an autopsy report could be ready in a couple of days. While admirers sought to focus on Mr. Michael’s previously unreported donations and philanthropy, and neighbors remembered his charm as a celebrity in their midst, a more complicated image of Mr. Michael’s life in recent years loomed, as well. Several friends and associates, while declining to discuss details of his health, noted that Mr. Michael had a long history of hard living. In 2007, he was sentenced to community service and barred from driving for two years after he had been found asleep at the wheel and under the influence of drugs. The next year, he was arrested in London on suspicion of possessing crack cocaine. “I’ve done different things at different times that I shouldn’t have done, once or twice, you know,” Mr. Michael said in a 2009 interview with The Guardian, in which he discussed his ups and downs with sex, sleeping pills, marijuana and crack. “People want to see me as tragic,” he said. “I don’t even see them as weaknesses anymore. It’s just who I am. ” In the summer of 2015, Mr. Michael and his publicists denied that he was facing serious drug addiction after a report published in a British tabloid, The Sun, quoted the wife of a family member saying, “I’m petrified he will die. ” Mr. Michael responded on Twitter, “To my lovelies, do not believe this rubbish in the papers today by someone I don’t know anymore and haven’t seen for nearly 18 years. ” He added, “I am perfectly fine. ” Rather than dwell on Mr. Michael’s difficulties, some close friends on Monday highlighted another dimension of the man they knew, describing him as a generous benefactor given to quiet and spontaneous acts of kindness. “He was a closet philanthropist,” Mr. Gambaccini said. Mr. Gambaccini recalled how in 1994 the British government cut aid to the Terrence Higgins Trust, an AIDS charity. To make up for the shortfall, Mr. Gambaccini, a patron of the trust, said he had sought to raise 300, 000 pounds. But in the end, he did not have to try too hard, he said. Mr. Michael donated most of the money. “He never wanted public recognition,” Mr. Gambaccini said. The television presenter Richard Osman wrote on Twitter on Monday that Mr. Michael had secretly contacted a woman who appeared on “Deal or No Deal,” a British game show, to give her £15, 000 needed for an in vitro fertilization treatment. Sali Hughes, an author, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Michael had once tipped a waitress £5, 000 “because she was a student nurse in debt. ” And Emilyne Mondo, a volunteer at a shelter for homeless people, posted that Mr. Michael had worked there anonymously. “I’ve never told anyone,” she said. “He asked we didn’t. That’s who he was. ” For some neighbors of Mr. Michael, his turn away from the spotlight and toward personal privacy made him just another member of the community. Amanda Holland, 56, a neighbor of Mr. Michael in in Oxfordshire, and an amateur actor, once invited him to a play in which she was performing. “He’s an international superstar — I thought, ‘There’s no way he would come to a local thing,’” she recalled. “But he did, and he was fabulous, and he was kind and he was generous. ” Mr. Michael, whose legal name was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, was born in 1963, the youngest of three children of Kyriacos Panayiotou, a Greek Cypriot immigrant, and the former Lesley Angold Harrison. He formed Wham! with a schoolmate, Andrew Ridgeley, who wrote on Twitter on Sunday that he was “cleft with grief. ” Mr. Michael was famous by age 20. “I’m not stupid enough to think that I can deal with another 10 or 15 years of major exposure,” Mr. Michael told The Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview. “I think that is the ultimate tragedy of fame. … People who are simply out of control, who are lost. I’ve seen so many of them, and I don’t want to be another cliché. ” (The interview prompted a retort from Frank Sinatra, who wrote to him in an open letter: “Be grateful to carry the baggage we’ve all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments. ”) Mr. Michael — known for hits like “Wake Me Up Before You ” “Faith” and “Careless Whisper” — famously came out as gay in 1998, after the end of a protracted legal battle with Sony Music, and shortly after he had been arrested on charges of lewd conduct in a men’s room in Beverly Hills, Calif. In a 2004 interview with the British edition of GQ, Mr. Michael spoke frankly about losing his partner, Anselmo Feleppa, a Brazilian, to AIDS in 1993. At the time of Mr. Feleppa’s death, Mr. Michael was still in the closet, and the antiretroviral drugs that helped AIDS become a manageable disease, and not necessarily a fatal one, had yet to become widely available. “I’m still convinced that had he been in the U. S. A. or London, he would have survived, because just six months later everyone was on combination therapy,” Mr. Michael said in the interview. “I think he went to Brazil because he feared what my fame would do to him and his family if he got treatment elsewhere. I was devastated by that. ” Mr. Michael’s mother died a few years later, leading to depression, he said. “Losing your mother and your lover in the space of three years is a tough one. ” His final tour, “Symphonica,” ended in the fall of 2012, and a live album drawn from those performances, released in 2014, represented his most recent commercial output. (“Patience,” his previous album of original songs, was released in 2004.) There was some potential movement in his career of late. This year, Mr. Michael received a bump in relevance when the film “Keanu,” a comedy from Key and Jordan Peele, featured his music prominently in its plot — and not as the butt of a joke, as Mr. Michael had come to be treated by some, especially after his 1998 arrest in Beverly Hills. The filmmakers assured Mr. Michael’s manager, Mr. Lippman, that they would use his music respectfully. “A golden opportunity dropped in our laps,” Mr. Lippman told Billboard, and then went on to tease the rerelease of Mr. Michael’s 1990 solo album, “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1,” which had been expected this fall. “We were trying to find as much exposure as possible. ” (That reissue was subsequently pushed back to March 2017, to coincide with a documentary, “Freedom,” about Mr. Michael’s life.) The producer Naughty Boy, who has worked with Beyoncé and Sam Smith, told the BBC this month that new music from Mr. Michael was also a possibility. “He’s got an album coming out next year, and he’s going to be doing something for my album as well,” Naughty Boy said. “I don’t know what to expect. And, to be honest, he’s more mysterious than anyone else, so I’m actually excited. ” | 1 |
Behind the headlines - conspiracies, cover-ups, ancient mysteries and more. Real news and perspectives that you won't find in the mainstream media. Browse: Home / What A Hillary Presidency Would Bring Essential Reading Untold Truths About the Planned War on Iran By wmw_admin on April 9, 2013
Dynamite documentary: Press TV talks to former White House insider Gwenyth Todd about the push for war with Iran. She has subsequently escaped to Australia to avoid FBI prosecution. Essential viewing Inside 9/11: Hijacking the Air Defense By wmw_admin on August 13, 2011
Why did U.S. air defense fail so spectacularly on 9/11? As this video explains, it was likely due to one man and he wasn’t sitting in a Afghan mountain cave Who Are The Illuminati? By wmw_admin on April 24, 2004
Conspiracy theory is now an accepted turn of phrase but sometimes one hears the expression, sometimes whispered rather than spoken. “The Illuminati”. 9/11 and Zion: What Was Israel’s Role? By Nick Kollerstrom on August 31, 2012
When Netanyahu said the very next day, ‘This is very good for Israel”, he wasn’t just blurting out something indiscreet, he was publicly congratulating the various agents who had worked so hard The Essene Gospel of Peace I By wmw_admin on April 26, 2007
Based on texts found in the Vatican library and the Royal Library of the Hapsburg’s and dated to the first century AD, the following is considered by some to be the real words of Christ The Anglo-Saxon Mission Part II By wmw_admin on March 1, 2010
Former City of London insider reveals that the depopulation program would begin with a planned war between Israel and Iran. More importantly, he goes onto to describe how we can derail their plans for global dominance London Beheading Hoax Confirmed? By wmw_admin on May 24, 2013
Was the London beheading a hoax? After Sandy Hook anything is possible and the authors present a very convincing case that it was. Judge for yourself | 0 |
Before President Trump delivered his Joint Address to Congress, uncertainty loomed over whether he would water down his penchant for speaking the truth about our radical Islamic adversaries. [Any reasonable person can see the common characteristic between the hijackers, the Fort Hood jihadist, the Boston bombers, the Paris attackers, the San Bernardino couple, and the Orlando nightclub shooter, and no, it’s not that they’re all Jehovah Witnesses. First, let’s be frank: if the term “radical Islamic terrorism” magically turns you into a jihadist, consider me unconvinced that you were a “moderate. ” Secondly, it is peaceful, Muslims who suffer the most when political correctness shackles our ability to properly identify this enemy, particularly the young and impressionable. Young, impressionable Muslims both here and around the globe must be cognizant of the fact that there is a particularly evil way in which Islam has been used to oppress and wreak havoc. They need to see the catastrophic horror radical Islam can have on a society and the human spirit. They need to know that this radicalism caused a group of young men to hijack an airliner, and fly it straight into the World Trade Center, killing themselves, and thousands of innocent civilians resultantly. They need to know that it spawned the rise of the Islamic State and the genocide of thousands of Christians and moderate Muslims who stand in its way. They need to know that it justifies the murder of homosexuals, women accused of adultery, and the horrific practice of female genital mutilation under Sharia Law. Are we really supposed to believe that our use of an accurate phrase is going to be received as more egregious than these reprehensible acts by “moderates?” More to it, this type of rhetorical dilution is received not as a noble gesture by true moderates, but as a sign of weakness by our enemies, further emboldening them in their quest for our destruction. Jihadists don’t seek an Islamic caliphate because of our willingness to label them the radicals that they are, they seek a caliphate because the Koran commands them to. If our speech creates more terrorists, why is there so much terrorism in Islamic countries governed not by freedom of speech, but by Sharia law? Does Boko Haram slaughter Nigerians because they use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism?” How about the Islamic State? Do they slaughter moderate Muslims in their path because of this phrase? Islamic radicals did not massacre Christians in my home country of Lebanon because we labeled them radical Islamic terrorists. They did not want me dead as a young girl for offending them with my speech, they wanted me dead because I was an infidel. Furthermore, not only does the notion that our use of the term “Radical Islamic Terrorism” does more damage than good inaccurate, but to refrain from doing so is to surrender our most precious American commodity: freedom of expression. Imagine all the social and political advancements that would never have succeeded had brave men and women who fought to achieve them remained silent, out of fear for how those opposing them would react. Imagine if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had avoided speaking out about injustices plaguing our nation because someone told him that to do so may cause even further injustice. Should we not have spoken out about “White Supremacy” in the Jim Crow south at the risk of alienating all whites? We cannot allow ourselves to becomes prisoners of our enemies, who enjoy nothing more than when we submit to their will. I, for one, didn’t immigrate to America to have some radical Islamist dictate what I can and can’t say. If using the accurate term “radical Islamic terrorism” offends you, sorry, I don’t care. This in mind, President Trump’s willingness to explicitly label our enemy what they are during his Joint Address to Congress, which is radical Islamic terrorists, should be viewed as a victory not merely by those who voted for him, but by all those who embrace the idea of a free and tolerant society. We’ve tried political correctness for the past 15 years as a force for defeating our adversaries, the time has come to change course. We as Americans need to make it clear once and for all, that we will not tolerate radical Jihadists threatening our very existence, nor the politically correct dogma that enables it. Nothing is more preciously American than freedom of speech, and we will not continue to erode it out of fear for how our radical Islamic adversaries will receive it. Brigitte Gabriel is a terrorism analyst and a two times New York Times author of “Because They Hate” and “They Must Be Stopped”. She is the Founder and Chairman of ACT for America, the nation’s largest grassroots organization devoted to promoting national security and defeating terrorism. | 1 |
Madonna celebrated International Women’s Day Wednesday by releasing a short film titled “ : Women Who Fight For Freedom. ”[The video was directed by fashion photography duo Luigi Iango in collaboration with Vogue Germany. The video montage is broken into eight different chapters, each showing scenes of the singer smoking cigarettes in a foggy alley, engaging in choreographed dance sequences, and unfurling a large banner with a message that reads: “We should all be feminist. ” The video, which is “dedicated to all women who fight for freedom,” also features sound bites from Madonna’s controversial speech last month at the Trump Women’s March in Washington, D. C. “Welcome to the revolution of love, to our refusal as women to accept this new age of tyranny, where not just women are in danger, but all marginalized people, where being uniquely different might truly be considered a crime. The revolution starts here,” Madonna is heard saying. The Material Girl promoted the video on Instagram, writing “Every Woman Has A Story! Don’t be Afraid to Use your Voice! To Help others! celebrate Women around the World!” Its a Dog’s life! 🐶🐶. @voguegermany #luigiandiango. ♥️ A post shared by Madonna (@madonna) on Mar 7, 2017 at 5:44pm PST, The pop icon’s release of “ ” coincided with the release of an open letter honoring International Women’s Day, which Madonna signed. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 0 |
Email Print The Democrats have become synonymous with the word scandal in this election. We have yet another scandal and reason to distrust Obama and Hillary Clinton—just for you. President Obama’s Justice Department has been caught red handed stealing money, which should be going to victims of crimes, and putting it into the hands of left-wing advocacy groups, as per Breitbart . This new scandal comes after we saw Hillary Clinton cleared of charges for acid washing her emails. This clearance came from the Justice Department, as run by a person who had private meetings with Bill Clinton prior to the decision. This also happened after Hillary Clinton said that if she was elected, she would reappoint the current attorney general—that same person—Loretta Lynch. The key facts of this news scandal are as follows: the Justice Department has millions of dollars of taxpayer money that is usually reserved for the victims of serious crimes. However, Obama has been funneling money, in the ballpark of $650 million, away from victims of serious crimes and towards organizations that are helping him. This money is supposed to be going to victims of federal crimes like gang violence, wall street corruption, or other white collar crimes. It’s normally used for restitution of the money the victims lost as a result of criminal actions. Is it surprising Obama thinks this money should be lining his pockets instead? Obama and his cronies find ways to make these left wing advocacy groups “victims” of crimes. These are organizations are signing people up to vote, going to rallies, knocking on doors, and helping elect Hillary Clinton—not advocacy groups that need restitution of money lost to criminals. Obama’s Justice Department has failed us once again. Instead of abusing taxpayer money, this Justice Department should be prosecuting Hillary Clinton for lying to Congress, destroying evidence after receiving a congressional subpoena, and obstructing justice. This is, alone, is enough to impeach the president, but we all know there simply isn’t enough time left in his presidency to do so. But, maybe we could get the paperwork rolling just to scare him a little bit! If elected, it is clear Hillary Clinton will continue these corrupt practices, especially with Loretta Lynch as her attorney general. The Justice Department especially will remain a pay-to-getaway operation. Do you think Obama’s scheme of funneling money is ethical? Please share this story on Facebook and tell us what you think because we want to hear YOUR voice! Join us on Facebook to Stop The Takeover. Click on the button to subscribe. Leave a comment... | 0 |
Loading Posted on November 3, 2016 ‘Go Away, You Shouldn’t Be Here. Don’t Come Back’: The Corner of Yorkshire That Has Almost No White Residents Sue Reid, Daily Mail, November 3, 2016
From the window of her flat overlooking the canal path in a suburb of Dewsbury in Yorkshire, a blonde woman watches two female figures walking past as they chatter in a foreign tongue.
Both the passers-by are covered in black Islamic gowns, only a glimpse of their eyes show from in the two gaps in the veils across their faces.
They, like many Muslim women who live here, speak little or no English. Lots of them will have no contact with any person from another religion or culture. Almost all have been brought to the UK to wed the British men of south Asian heritage who have made this area their home.
The wives have restricted lives: bringing up children, cooking for families, or going to women-only events at the huge local mosque run by the Deobandis, a powerful sect of Islam whose most outspoken preachers have urged followers not to mix with Christians, Jews or Hindus.
We are in Savile Town, one of the most racially homogeneous parts of Britain: not because everyone is an indigenous Yorkshire man or woman, but exactly the opposite.
In fact there are almost no white residents to be found in Savile Town. Astonishingly, a detailed breakdown of the last census of 2011 recorded that only 48 of the 4,033 people living here were white British.
This would not surprise the blonde Lorraine Matthews, looking out at the ladies in burkas from her window. She is a 53-year-old dentist’s receptionist, one of the handful of white Britons left in Savile Town’s grid of terrace streets. Almost all the other residents, according to that census, have Pakistani or Indian backgrounds.
Their forebears were enticed to Savile Town as cheap labour for back-breaking jobs in the woollen mills which had made Dewsbury a renowned textile town.
These hard-working newcomers bought their own homes, and opened corner shops that sold burkas, prayer mats and perfumes that contained no alcohol, in line with the strictures of the Koran.
Soon the new arrivals had built the mosque which is designed to accommodate 4,000 worshippers. Today, a Sharia court nearby–criticised in a House of Lords report for discriminating against women in divorce and matrimonial disputes–does brisk business espousing the strict Islamic justice code.
Even the lady selling ice creams from a van during the summer wears a burka, and the mobile butcher going round the streets offers only halal goat, lamb and ostrich.
Stand in Savile Town, as I have, and you will see scores of boys in Islamic robes walking to and from lessons at the mosque’s madrasah school, where for hours at a time they rote-learn the Koran by heart.
And, distressingly, every girl I saw–even those of six and seven playing in the park–was wrapped up in a hijab and shoulder-to-toe-gown lest a man glimpse her flesh.
Eight of the nine pubs in the area have shut because there are hardly any local customers who drink alcohol. The hair salon, once giving stern perms to Yorkshire ladies, closed down long ago, the Western grocery and clothes shops, too.
Needless to say, with nowhere to socialise or shop for what they like, the local white folk departed, first in a trickle, then a torrent.
Savile Town was left to become an ethnic enclave. And it seems that this detachment from mainstream society had disturbing repercussions. For this small area has produced several young jihadists who disappeared to fight–and die as suicide bombers–for Islamic State in the Middle East.
(Mohammed Sidique Khan, the leader of the bombers who attacked London on July 7, 2005, was brought up nearby. He bade farewell to his pregnant wife at their terrace house before leading his fellow attackers to the capital to claim 52 innocent lives in explosions on Tube trains and buses.)
Life in Savile Town was investigated earlier this year by Owen Bennett-Jones, the BBC’s former Pakistan correspondent, who threw light on the influence of the Deobandi movement over the Muslim population here.
Interviewed for the Radio 4 programme was Mufti Mohammed Pandor, a civil servant and spokesman for the Deobandis. He arrived from India’s Gujarat in 1964 as a small child with his family.
He lives near Savile Town, and would call himself a British Muslim. Yet he refused to let interviewer Bennett-Jones see his wife when the reporter visited the couple’s home, although she was permitted to make the tea in the kitchen.
Pandor insists she is completely covered at almost all times, allowing her only to raise her veil for passport checks at airports. His family rarely watches British TV and says all music is un-Islamic.
Despite being a religious adviser to two universities–Bradford and Huddersfield–he told the BBC that Muslim men should only be permitted to enter higher education institutions to study and pray, and ‘not to look at women’.
‘If Mohammed did not do it, we don’t do it,’ Pandor told the BBC, saying the Deobandi are a ‘back to basics’ movement whose followers live in the style of the Prophet’s life, 14 centuries ago.
You might dismiss such desperately backward thinking as being the preserve of a small outlandish sect, but the Deobandis run nearly half the 1,600 registered UK mosques, and train 80 per cent of all domestic Islamic clerics who, in turn, play a huge part in influencing the growing population of British Muslims.
Perhaps it’s little surprise that the few indigenous Yorkshire people remaining in Savile Town feel somewhat beleaguered.
Lorraine Matthews, in the house near the canal, is outspoken in her comments about the community in which she now lives: ‘I wouldn’t go out at night on my own as it is dangerous if you’re not from the Muslim community. It isn’t sensible for a woman to walk there after dark. The Asian lads gather on the corners, they make you feel intimidated because they don’t respect white women.’
When I myself walked down South Street towards the mosque, figures in burkas peered out of their lace-curtained windows in surprise at seeing an uncovered woman’s face.
I asked one tall teenager, wearing an Islamic cap and white robes over his jeans, for directions to the mosque entrance. His response was to spit at me and shout: ‘Go away, you shouldn’t be here. Don’t come back.’
It is depressing to be confronted with such aggression. And I’ve no doubt many Muslims, too, will feel distressed at such behaviour. Not all British followers of Islam wish to live in areas where people of other faiths or cultures might fear to tread.
Yet in places such as Savile Town, the omens are not good.
For however unpalatable it may be to British liberals, the fact is that many Muslims here only want to live with those from their own culture.
Indeed, some of the few remaining non-Muslim residents say they are regularly targeted by members of the local Islamic community who want to buy their houses.
Some have even received a knock on the door from complete strangers in religious robes offering wads of cash in plastic bags to purchase their homes.
Yorkshire-born Jean Wood, 76, a church-goer, is one long-time resident who feels that she is being edged out. Her children beg her to move to an area where she can share her retirement with the kind of people she grew up with.
At her neat home on the edge of Savile Town, she told me the tale of what happened a day after her husband died suddenly while sitting at the kitchen table.
‘He had not gone 24 hours when a Muslim neighbour pushed a note through the door saying she wanted to buy this house,’ she remembers. ‘We had lived here all our married life. I was grieving, although the note did not mention my loss.
‘But I gathered my strength. I phoned the number on the piece of paper and said my home was not for sale and never would be in my lifetime.’
They were brave words, but–inevitably–the Deobandis’ spokesman Mufti Pandor views it differently.
He described, on Radio 4, how ‘white flight’ ensued when his family came to Savile Town. ‘Who was going to buy the house next door to us?’ said Pandor. ‘It certainly wasn’t going to be a white guy . . . so my uncle bought it. Then there were two of us. So then guess what happened? The bloke opposite said: ‘Bugger this, I’m going’–so he left.’
It’s not hard to see why, with suspicions running deep on both sides of the cultural divide, Savile Town is, for good or bad, changing for ever. | 1 |
GENEVA (AP) — An Italian train derailed in the central Swiss city of Lucerne on Wednesday and one carriage tipped over, injuring seven people on board. [advertisement | 0 |
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More than a century after Georgetown University used some of the profits from the sale of 272 enslaved to help ensure its survival, John J. DeGioia, the university’s president, took a first step on Monday toward making amends to their descendants. He walked into the public library in Spokane, Wash. for a private meeting with Patricia a of Nace and Biby Butler, two of the slaves who were sold in 1838 to help keep the college afloat. The meeting, which was followed by a lunch at the nearby Davenport Hotel, may well have been a historic one. More than a dozen universities have recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade. But historians say they believe this is the first time that the president of an elite university has met with the descendants of slaves who had labored on a college campus or were sold to benefit one. “I came to listen and to learn,” Mr. DeGioia said in an interview, describing the discussion as “moving and inspiring. ” Ms. an amateur genealogist and retired teacher, said she believed Mr. DeGioia was willing to take necessary steps “to honor the sacrifice and legacy” of her ancestors. “He asked what could he do and how could he help,” she said in an interview. “It was a very good beginning. ” The meeting comes as officials at Georgetown continue to grapple with how to address the college’s complicity in the slave sale. The slaves, who were owned by the Jesuit priests who founded and ran the college, were sold for about $3. 3 million in today’s dollars. 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, who had lived on Jesuit estates in Maryland that had helped to finance the college’s operations, were uprooted and shipped to plantations in Louisiana. A working group assembled by Mr. DeGioia in September has been considering whether the university should apologize for profiting from slave labor, create a memorial to those enslaved, or provide scholarships for their descendants, among other possibilities. The report is expected to be released this summer, Mr. DeGioia said. Craig Steven Wilder, a historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the roots of elite universities in slavery, said he did not know of another instance in which a university president had reached out to descendants. “Georgetown has made a decision to recognize the humanity of the problem they’re dealing with, to treat it as more than a public relations problem,” Mr. Wilder said. The search for descendants of the men, women and children sold in 1838 intensified in the fall after Georgetown students called on the university to remove the names of the Rev. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. William McSherry from two campus buildings. The priests were two of Georgetown’s early presidents. Both were involved in the slave sale. Mr. DeGioia, who had already called for a campuswide discussion about the college’s roots in slavery, agreed to change the names of the buildings. The student protests inspired a Georgetown alumnus, Richard J. Cellini, to found a nonprofit, the Georgetown Memory Project, to help identify and support the descendants of the people who were sold. Mr. Cellini hired eight genealogists, including Ms. and several researchers who are working with her. University officials are also identifying descendants of the slaves. Ms. said that she made a point of telling Mr. DeGioia what she knew about her ancestors and emphasizing the importance of the university’s archival records. This year, Georgetown created an online archive that includes records that describe the slave sale and the Jesuit and Louisiana plantations. “These were real people,” Ms. said of her enslaved forebears, “and I wanted to put faces on them for him. ” | 0 |
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During the middle of the night, the city of Des Moines in Iowa was rocked with violence as a man opened fire on police officers in “ambush” style, killing two. The suspect is a white male, as per police reports, and has just been taken into custody.
What we do know about this man is that his mind is a whirlwind of hatred and hypocrisy. He was kicked out of a football game in October for waving a Confederate flag at football players kneeling during the National Anthem in protest of police violence against blacks.
“I was offended by the blacks sitting through our anthem. Thousands more whites fought and died for their freedom. However this is not about the Armed forces, they are cop haters.” said Greene in a rant tinged with white nationalist themes, three weeks before he would ambush two policemen in their patrol car and killing them both.
The Trump camp is silent as a man who supports him embarks on an act of anti-government violence that Trump himself has been calling for . The muted response is infuriating, especially for the blacks and Muslims of America who have been demonized by right-wingers for trying to stop racial/ethnic profiling and ask they be given the benefit of the doubt that white Americans get.
Why does the media refuse to call this what it is – terrorism? Where was Greene radicalized? Why won’t Donald Trump say “radical white terrorism?” Is he part of a larger white supremacist terror group? We need to put a stop to white men entering this country until we can figure out what the hell is going on. Sound familiar?
While civic institutions like Black Lives Matter and the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are smeared as terror groups for daring to ask some uncomfortable questions and demanding that the rights bestowed upon the American people are enforced equally for all her citizens, the real terror threat – as confirmed by the FBI, no less – comes from white conservatives.
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WASHINGTON — Russia is using the waning days of the Obama administration to strengthen President Bashar ’s hold on power, expand the territory he controls in Syria and constrain the options of the next American president in responding to the civil war, according to a number of American officials and Russian analysts. The strategy of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, they say, is to move aggressively in what he sees as a prime window of opportunity — the four months between now and the 2017 presidential inauguration — when Mr. Putin calculates that the departing President Obama will be unlikely to intervene in the escalating Syrian conflict and a new American president who might consider a tougher policy will not yet be in office. “Putin is in a hurry before the American elections,” said Nikolai V. Petrov, a political scientist in Moscow. “The next American president will face a new reality and will be forced to accept it. ” American intelligence analysts have told the White House that the Russian goal is to help the Syrian military retake the besieged city of Aleppo so that Moscow can resume talks on Syria’s future on vastly stronger terms, according to administration officials who asked not to be identified because they were discussing classified assessments. Lending credence to that assessment, a senior American intelligence official told reporters on Monday that the Russian and Syrian attacks that have been carried out since the Syrian government declared an end to a on Sept. 19 have been some of the deadliest since the conflict began. Divining Mr. Putin’s intentions has always been more art than science, but there is every indication that he sees Syria as a strategic interest. Russia’s intervention in the war represents the Kremlin’s most important military foothold in the Middle East in decades and has enabled Moscow to showcase the military’s ability to project power. The intervention has also enabled Moscow to stand by an ally, Mr. Assad, and to some extent carry out operations against the Islamic State and Nusra Front, the terrorist groups that are the ostensible targets of Russia’s deployment in Syria. The Syrian military has its weaknesses, including a manpower shortage that precludes it from securing the entire country and which has forced the Assad government to rely on fighters from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, Shiite fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan and Iranian advisers, along with Russian airpower. So far the Assad government’s territorial gains have been minimal, even after Russia’s intervention a year ago. But Russia is trying to help Syrian forces take the area of eastern Aleppo in hopes that it will significantly set back the opposition, enlarge the areas that Mr. Assad controls and put the Kremlin in a stronger position to shape the political talks, should they ever resume. Under this scenario, the Syrian government would control five major population centers: Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo and Latakia. “It is possible that the end state is going to be something where there is a military stalemate but the regime is in the command position,” said Robert S. Ford, a former American ambassador in Damascus and a former envoy to the Syrian opposition who is now a fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. Should the Syrian regime be successful, he added, “I don’t think the opposition will surrender — they are not going to stop fighting — but they will be marginalized. ” Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, has previously called for a partial zone in Syria, which would require substantially more American military action in Syria. Aides to Mrs. Clinton say she has not changed her position on such a zone. As secretary of state, she also supported covert assistance to the rebels to try to put pressure on Mr. Assad to hand over power to a transitional government. The Obama administration has used airpower to safeguard areas of northern Syria where American advisers are operating, although the Pentagon has steadfastly refused to call it a zone. After Syrian warplanes dropped bombs in August near American special forces on the ground, the Pentagon warned the Syrians to stay away. American fighter jets drove home the message by patrolling the area. But a successful offensive on Aleppo would redraw the map in important ways and could complicate any plans for further American military action in Syria. “Russian officials and intellectuals have told me directly that they believe Hillary Clinton would be more likely to use force in Syria than President Obama,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The seizure of Aleppo would be a fait accompli for the next American president. The war would go on and the Islamic State would still occupy parts of the country. But the regime would retain the spine of the country. ” This was not the outcome the White House envisioned a year ago when the Russians began to build up their air forces in Syria. At first, the State Department sought to block the deployment by asking Bulgaria and other nations to close their airspace. But the White House soon concluded that it was pointless to try to stop the Russian buildup, and some officials even thought it might even push Moscow toward a search for a political solution. Now that talks for a reduction of violence and access to humanitarian aid have failed, the White House has renewed its considerations of military options, including airstrikes to deter the Assad government from trying to take Aleppo. But Mr. Obama has long been wary of getting drawn deeper into the conflict. Other steps the administration could take involve raising the cost to Russia of its intervention, through such measures as economic sanctions. Some administration officials have argued publicly that Syria could turn into a quagmire for the Kremlin, particularly if the Arab states that support the rebels supply them with antiaircraft weapons and Islamic terrorists decide to retaliate by attacking Russian cities. That, the officials say, may yet lead Russia to rethink its strategy. “They’re going to be bearing the brunt if the civil war escalates as a result of their actions of an onslaught of weaponry coming in from outside patrons,” Antony Blinken, the deputy secretary of state, told Congress last month. But so far Moscow has pursued its strategy at a modest cost in terms of Russian lives and treasure, reflecting the lessons of earlier conflicts. Unlike in the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, Russia has mainly relied on airpower in Syria and has avoided the use of major ground combat units. Nor does Moscow’s strategy appear to call for the Syrian military to engage in costly street fighting against rebels. Rather, it has relied on airstrikes by Russian and Syrian aircraft to block deliveries of humanitarian aid, destroy water treatment plants and damage hospitals. There are also some American actions that may make Syria less of a quagmire for the Kremlin. The coalition plans to continue to target the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, two jihadist groups that pose a threat to the United States and Russia alike. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump, looking for a flicker of hope after his Republican majority fell to pieces last week, predicted that the opposition party would eventually give in: “I honestly believe the Democrats will come to us and say let’s get together and get a great health care bill or plan,” he said. But Democrats will not be lending a hand anytime soon. Invigorated by the Republican dysfunction that led to a stunningly swift collapse of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and relieved that President Barack Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment remains intact, Democrats are in their best position since their embarrassing loss in the November election. While it is far too soon to suggest that the House Republican majority may be imperiled, Democrats are newly optimistic about picking up seats in 2018, hoping to ride a backlash against Mr. Trump. Seeing an opportunity, they say they will not throw Mr. Trump a political life preserver at what they sense could be the first turns of a downward spiral. The president’s approval rating was already mired below 40 percent in some surveys, and is likely to remain low after the health bill’s failure. He has no prospects for legislative victories on the immediate horizon, given how complicated and his next priority, an overhaul of the tax code, would be even for a more unified party. And while his electoral success in states represented by Democrats in Congress had been thought to put such lawmakers in a vise between their party and their president, Mr. Trump demonstrated no ability to pick off centrist Democrats in his first significant legislative push. Democrats — moderates and liberals alike — formed an unbroken front of opposition to the campaign. “We’re not going to sacrifice our values for the sake of compromise,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “You think people from red states are going to be for tax reform with 98 percent of tax breaks going to the top 1 percent?” For Democrats, the task of remaining unified was made easier when Republicans decided to go it alone and hastily draft a bill that turned out to be deeply unpopular. But the health care skirmish was also more broadly instructive for a party still finding its footing now that it has lost both the White House and Congress: Being the “party of no,” it turns out, can pay dividends. “The unity we had internally, combined with the outside mobilization, really made this success possible,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the top House Democrat. Both Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi insist that they are open to working with Mr. Trump if he shifts to the middle and abandons Republican . But while Democrats are loath to hold up Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a fierce and calculating opponent, as a role model, his strategy as the Republican leader in denying Mr. Obama bipartisan support is plainly more alluring now. “You certainly saw the power of united Democratic resistance to the Trump agenda on Friday,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. “There’s no way you can explain the failure of that bill without the story of a united Democratic and progressive resistance. ” Of course, much of the story revolves around the inability of the fractured Republican majority to reach a consensus. But while many Republican lawmakers were under pressure to oppose the health bill, Democratic members of Congress also felt the heat thanks to the new wave of activism in response to Mr. Trump. Though the ability of Democrats to do much more than say no remains limited, their success in helping to thwart Mr. Trump will not only embolden them to confront him again — it will also inspire activists to push them to do whatever it takes to block his path. “Having tasted victory, the resistance forces will feel even more empowered to insist that Democrats continue withholding any cooperation and not granting Trump any victories when he is so wounded,” said Brian Fallon, a Democratic strategist. Still, this rising energy could create internal turbulence for Democrats if activists turn their attention to the next major showdown in Washington: the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch. The court battle has not yet engendered the same intensity among activists as the health care bill or Mr. Trump’s executive orders on immigration. Some Democratic senators are uneasy about rejecting Judge Gorsuch, preferring to save any fight for an opportunity by Mr. Trump to fill a seat now held by a liberal justice. But the party’s senators may now be pressed to take a more aggressive posture against Mr. Gorsuch, opposition that may not halt his confirmation but would force Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster for such nominations. An infrastructure plan may be a safer harbor for Mr. Trump — a measure many in Washington are mystified that he did not try to pursue at the outset of his administration. But Mr. Schumer suggested that the president would find Democratic votes only if he defied his party and embraced a huge spending bill, rather than just offering tax incentives for companies to build roads, bridges and railways. “If he’s only for tax breaks, it will just be a repeat of the health care debate,” Mr. Schumer said. To many Democrats and some Republicans, the resistance on health care was reminiscent of the 2005 clash over Social Security. President George W. Bush sought to overhaul a program covering millions of Americans but suffered a crippling loss when Democrats put up uniform opposition and Republicans backed away in fear of enduring political consequences. There is one major difference, though. “President Bush was at 58 percent,” noted Ms. Pelosi, adding that Mr. Trump starts “in a very different place. ” But while Mr. Trump’s weakness has Democrats hopeful of making electoral gains in the House, next year’s Senate map offers few opportunities and many hazards. In the House, Democrats need 24 seats to take back the chamber. That deficit could fall to 23 — coincidentally, the number of seats in districts that Hillary Clinton carried — if Democrats win a special election in Georgia. The vote to fill the suburban Atlanta seat vacated by the new health secretary, Tom Price, will take place on April 18, and the Republicans running are as splintered over how best to confront the Affordable Care Act as their counterparts are in Washington. With Democrats rallying around a candidate, Jon Ossoff, and the large field of Republicans splitting the vote, some Republican strategists are concerned that Mr. Ossoff may avoid a runoff by winning 50 percent of the vote. House Democrats, hoping to continue their momentum, are planning to pour in more money as part of an effort to drive up Democratic turnout, according to an official with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. If the anger toward Mr. Trump is enough for them to gain a House seat in a Southern suburb, it may be enough to deliver a wave across a broader area of the country next year in the midterm elections, which often yield gains to the more energized of the two parties. “There’s a storm that’s going to hit Republicans in 2018,” said Representative Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat. “The only question is if it is going to be Category 2 or Category 5. ” For now, though, Democrats stand to gain simply by standing back and abiding by the maxim of not getting in the way of an opponent who is damaging himself. “Our best shot at stopping the Republicans has always been to let them cannibalize themselves, and this proved that,” Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist, said of the health care fight. | 1 |
TOKYO — President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Partnership trade deal should have been good news for Hitoshi Kondo, a Japanese rice farmer. The sweeping agreement, negotiated by the Obama administration and formally rejected by Mr. Trump on Monday, would have opened swaths of Japan’s highly protected agricultural sector, and was bitterly opposed by farmers. Now, without American involvement, the deal looks as good as dead. Mr. Kondo isn’t celebrating, though. “It’s actually scarier, because what comes next will be a lot harsher,” he said on Wednesday, as Japanese leaders scrambled to find a coherent response. What comes next, many in Japan believe, could be a bruising showdown between Tokyo and Washington. They fear a return to the trade wars of the 1980s and early ’90s, when many Americans saw Japan as an untrustworthy economic adversary. The is a setback for Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Mr. Abe viewed the Partnership as a way to advance two cherished goals: drawing the United States closer to Japan and other friendly Pacific Rim countries (the trade deal, known as TPP, does not include China, the region’s increasingly bristly superpower) and bolstering Japan’s lackluster economy. Such is Mr. Abe’s enthusiasm for the deal that his government finished ratifying it on Friday, just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, despite Mr. Trump’s promise to withdraw. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he wants to alter the American trade relationship with Japan, in which Japan sells far more goods to the United States than it buys in return. In a meeting with executives from Ford Motor and other American manufacturers this week, the president again said that such an imbalance was “not fair. ” And Mr. Trump says he wants to pursue trade agreements with individual nations, in lieu of group deals like TPP, which would have included countries comprising as much as 40 percent of the world’s economic output. Japan has long preferred multilateral to deals, but pressure to go along with Mr. Trump’s approach will be strong. “Japan may eventually agree to bilaterals with the U. S. to ensure that the U. S. stays engaged in Asia — both economically and to provide a security counter to China,” said Glen S. Fukushima, a former United States trade official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington. Officially, Japan has not given up on the TPP, or on keeping the United States involved. The day after Mr. Trump signed his executive order committing to withdrawal, Mr. Abe said in Parliament he would “resolutely continue to seek understanding” from Washington of the deal’s strategic and economic importance. Mr. Abe’s advisers express hope that members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet with business and national security experience will lend their voices to the effort. Sadayuki Sakakibara, chairman of Keidanren, the lobbying group representing Japan’s largest corporations, encouraged Mr. Abe this week to take a approach. Mr. Abe, he said, should try to keep the deal alive while engaging the United States directly, if necessary, “with the goal of eventually broadening negotiations to a multilateral level. ” Barring a drastic change in Mr. Trump’s views on trade, however, that could mean stringing matters out for years — possibly until the next administration, if not longer. The TPP’s demise doesn’t pose an immediate threat to Mr. Abe, whose poll numbers remain high. About as many Japanese voters favored the trade deal as opposed it. But none of Japan’s other trade options serve Mr. Abe’s goals the way TPP does. Japan and others could move on without Washington, which would require changing a condition that requires the United States to ratify the deal before it can take effect. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia said on Tuesday that he had been promoting that idea to Mr. Abe and several other leaders. Japan, with the economy in the group, after the United States, would be a crucial participant. But it could be politically awkward for Mr. Abe, who sold the deal on the merits of American involvement. Even on narrow commercial grounds, he would have some explaining to do: Accepting more agricultural imports was supposed to be the price Japan paid for cheaper access to the vast United States market for cars and other manufactured goods. With the United States out of the picture, Mr. Abe could be accused of selling out farmers for little gain. Japan is negotiating other deals. One, with the European Union, predates Mr. Abe’s embrace of the TPP, in 2013, but talks had been put on hold. European negotiators want concessions on agriculture, too — another reason Japanese farmers are not breathing sighs of relief. In at least one area, dairy products, European demands go beyond what Japan agreed to in the TPP. Japan is also part of an Asian trade initiative, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. But that effort is being led by China, which has that partnership’s largest economy. China’s rise represents perhaps the biggest change from the United trade battles of a generation ago. For Japan, it is both an added risk and a potential buffer. Many in the Abe administration hope that Mr. Trump will target China first, making Japan a lower priority, said a senior government official involved in trade matters, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. Companies, however, are dusting off their 1980s playbooks. Japanese carmakers built factories in the United States to head off American protectionism then — investments that Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor, and others have made a recent point of highlighting. Only about a quarter of the cars sold in the United States are imported, though Japan remains the source for many components as well as design work. One of Mr. Trump’s complaints about Japan, repeated for decades by American trade negotiators, is that its economy is organized to keep foreign products out even without overt trade barriers like tariffs. By this logic, American carmakers have failed to penetrate the Japanese market because dealers and regulators collude against them. (Japan imposes no border taxes on cars the United States adds a 2. 5 percent levy to most imported Japanese vehicles.) Japan has been addressing barriers — in some cases as a direct response to the TPP talks. It agreed during the negotiations to recognize some American automobile safety standards, for instance, and has narrowed a tax loophole that favors ultralight Japanese cars. In agriculture, Mr. Abe has moved to curb the power of Japan’s monopolistic farm cooperatives. Under TPP, Japan agreed to phase out import duties on about 2, 000 agricultural products, more than in any previous trade deal, but a smaller percentage of the total than other signatories. Sensitive products like rice were exempted. Mr. Kondo, the rice farmer, worries that Mr. Abe will concede more ground to the United States in order to appease Mr. Trump. “We have to sell cars to the U. S.,” he said, “and farmers will be traded away for access. ” | 1 |
Panic Grips Italy Residents : Strong Earthquakes October 27, 2016 An officer of the State Forestry Corp national police stands in front of a collapsed church in Campi di Norcia, central Italy, October 27, 2016.
Three earthquakes paralyzed Italy's Umbria, Marche and Lazio regions throughout the night. Residents express unshakable fear. The series of earthquakes comes just two months after hundreds were killed by another one nearby. Many residents of Campi, a town of about 200, slept in their cars as aftershocks rocked the region. First tremor measured magnitude of 5.4, second at 6.1 and third one 4.9, aftershock came a couple hours after that, and dozens of weaker ones followed. Officials say that the first tremor served as a serious warning and residents fled their homes.
(CAMPI, ITALY) After the night came daylight revealing widespread damage in central Italy on Thursday after strong earthquakes overnight caused panic and fear among residents just two months after a quake nearby killed hundreds. No one was killed this time, but dozens of people sustained minor injuries and about four others more serious ones, Italy's Civil Protection Agency said.
Many residents of Campi, a town of about 200, slept in their cars as aftershocks rocked the Umbria, Marche and Lazio regions throughout the night. The earthquake on Aug. 24 in the same area killed nearly 300 people and destroyed several towns.
"I can't shake off the fear," said Mauro Viola, 64, who said he had not sleep and had spent the night outside.
Police had blocked off the road to his home with a park bench, and Viola said a chapel beyond his house had collapsed.
The three quakes, about two hours apart, damaged several buildings, including Campi's late 14th century church, San Salvatore a Campi di Norcia, whose rose-windowed facade was reduced to rubble. The quakes were probably a result of August's seismic break, Massimiliano Cocco from Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
The first tremor measured magnitude 5.4, causing many people to flee their homes and the second was stronger at 6.1 magnitude. A 4.9 aftershock came a couple hours after that, and dozens of weaker ones followed. Rescue workers set up some 50 beds in a quake-proof building for people who could not sleep in their homes.
"The first tremor damaged buildings, with the second one we had collapses," fire department official, Rosario Meduri, said.
He had come from southern Italy before Wednesday's tremors to help secure structures damaged by the August earthquake that hit some 50 km (30 miles) to the south.
While massive boulders that tumbled down the valley had yet to be cleared from the roads, on the whole there was a sense of relief.
The fact that the first earthquake was weaker than the second probably helped save lives because most people had already left their homes, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said on state radio.
He also said that a decree now being voted on by parliament to pay for the immediate costs of the August tremor could be extended to cover the latest series of quakes.
Contributed by Reuters. | 0 |
FBI officials say their investigation into links between US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Russia has been unable to uncover any so far, according to the New York Times.
The bureau has been trying to find evidence showing that the Russian government is trying to influence the US presidential campaign since the beginning of summer. FBI agents have put advisers close to GOP candidate Donald Trump under close scrutiny, searching for financial connections that some have alleged exist between the nominee and Russian financial figures. They even followed up on a lead hinting that there had been a secret email correspondence between Trump’s Organization and Russia’s Alfa-bank. All the while, the bureau has been searching for the hackers that breached the computers of the Democratic camp and leaked emails that became the source of many scandals damaging to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Nonetheless, the FBI still cannot say that any of its investigations have uncovered direct links between Trump and Russian authorities, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing recent interviews and its own bureau sources.
“No evidence has emerged that would link [Trump] or anyone else in his business or political circle directly to Russia’s election operations,†writes the NYT.
Officials also anonymously told the NYT that whoever the hackers were, the attacks were aimed at disrupting the presidential race on the whole, and not boosting Trump’s chances of getting into the Oval Office, as the Western media and Democrats have been claiming.
In explaining why Russia would want to interfere in the campaign, one senior official was cited as saying, “It isn’t about the election‌ It’s about a threat to democracy.â€
The FBI’s inquiries will continue, however. In interviews over the past several weeks, intelligence officials have signaled that they have opened a larger probe to look into suspicions over connections between Trump aides and Moscow.
In the most recent lead, an anonymous computer scientist going by the name Tea Leaves found some 2,700 “look-up†messages that tied a server being used by one of Donald Trump’s companies to those of Russia’s Alfa Bank.
Still, the FBI found that there was no two-way communication, and these messages could have been marketing emails or spam. Both the Trump campaign and Alfa Bank issued statements denying that they had been in communication.
The FBI is also probing Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, whose foreign business and political dealings have come under scrutiny since reports surfaced claiming he was involved with a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, NBC reported, citing intelligence sources.
‘Russia hacking’ vs Clinton emails
A separate report from CNBC citing a former FBI official claims that the bureau’s director, James Comey, was privately reluctant about naming Russia as the entity responsible for meddling in the US election campaign, reportedly saying it was too close to the November 8 Election Day.
In the beginning of October, Comey allegedly concluded that “a foreign power was trying to undermine the election,†but arguing against putting it out before the election itself.
He also allegedly made sure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not mentioned in the document compiled by the US government on October 7, which officially accused Russia of “authorizing†the hacking of emails accounts of US officials and organizations, out of concern that the FBI would be seen as interfering with the election if it was included.
However, last Friday, with the election mere days away, Comey announced that the bureau was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton because several hundred thousand new emails that may be related to the private server used by the Democratic nominee had allegedly been discovered.
The announcement, which left many in the government puzzled, has already resulted in official complaints and attacks from the entire US political spectrum. On Monday, some 100 former federal prosecutors and senior Department of Justice officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, signed a letter expressing concern over Comey’s decision to reopen the case “on the eve of a major election,†as “the mere disclosure of information may impact the election’s outcome†at this stage.
Clinton’s supporters have accused Comey of deliberately hiding “explosive†information about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, demanding that he discuss them publicly, just as he did with the new batch of Clinton-related emails.
Hillary Clinton and her supporters have repeatedly criticized Trump for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, while Trump has retorted that he has “nothing to do†with Russia and doesn’t know its leader personally.
Putin on accusations of meddling: ‘rubbish’
Russia, in turn, has denied having any links to the Trump camp on numerous occasions, while refuting accusations that it had been behind the hacking attacks on the Democrats, with Russian President Vladimir Putin calling them “rubbish†last week.
“The image [that Russia supports a candidate in the US presidential election] was created by the media,†Putin said at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi last Thursday, stressing that this had been done deliberately.
“This is complete and utter rubbish, and it is just a method of internal political struggle, as well as a way of manipulating the public consciousness ahead of the US presidential elections,†he added, while explaining that Russia does not prefer any particular candidate and is ready to work with either of them. Russia’s president also stressed that friendly words and intentions to normalize relations between the US and Russia are always welcome, “whoever expresses them.â€
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Nobody knows where the mocking animals will emerge next. Then, when they do appear, they are ever elusive. And we are rarely fast enough or strong enough to wallop them all. Given how neatly these facts mirror our flailing efforts to manage our personal affairs, it makes perfect sense that so many people in recent weeks have embraced as the metaphor for our complicated lives. The Federal Reserve is playing while trying to manage interest rates, one Fed watcher told The Wall Street Journal. The stock market itself is like a trader said. So is fighting diseases, per The New York Post. Networking on LinkedIn, too, as MarketWatch noted. So this week, as stock markets in the wake of Britain’s unexpected vote to exit the European Union and families prepared to hit the midway for the long weekend, I put some questions to former carnies turned financial advisers and winners on Coney Island in Brooklyn. What do the strong feelings of unpredictability, elusiveness and urgency inspired by teach us about how — and how not — to run our financial lives? The game is simple. Five moles pop up from a board at random, and your job is to hit them with a mallet before they duck out of reach. If you are playing against other people, as you might at a carnival, the first person to hit a certain number of moles wins. If you are alone, at an arcade, the moles come faster and faster until you miss too many or time expires, depending on the version of the game. Something about the whacking is both primal and universal. So much so that Bob’s Space Racers, the Daytona Beach, Fla. company that owns the license for the carnival and arcade versions of the game, figures that people spend at least $100 million on it each year across about 80 countries. The New York Times’s legendary On Language columnist, William Safire, wrote about . President Obama uses the phrase. And the arcade restaurant chain Dave Buster’s has barred Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. from its locations for destroying a rigged game, or at least that is what The Onion reported. But the game is not rigged. It merely plays upon some of our worst tendencies. Some old Bob’s Space Racers promotional material acknowledged it outright: “For adults who challenge the mole, the game becomes an analogy for the things in life that elude us. ” So what are those things we think we want or can do? PREDICTING THE FUTURE We do not know where the mole will pop up next, that much should be clear. But that unpredictability is itself predictable, so when we liken to our own lives, we ought to embrace that uncertainty. On a basic budgeting level, that means that we should stop being surprised by the failed or the $800 auto repair. “One can view these events like the mole that popped up without your expecting it and did its damage before you could address it,” said Barry Korb, a financial planner in Potomac, Md. “Or, one can set up a ‘Life Happens’ fund. ” When it comes to investing in stocks, we ought to be aggressive in our humility, lest we think that repeated mole hunting somehow makes us better at divining the future. “You can play it a thousand times, and you still have no control whatsoever in controlling where the mole pops up or detecting a pattern,” said Roy Larsen, a financial planner in Cumming, Ga. who worked many game booths at his church’s annual carnival when he was growing up. “Sadly, investors create the analogy because they continue to try to control the uncontrollable. ” In practice, that often means making the mistake of selling when stocks fall, out of certainty that they will fall further still and buying after they have already gone up, once things are certain to be safe. That course of action runs the risk of locking in losses and then buying when markets are at their peak. Many people who sold stocks at midday on Monday probably regret it now that stocks have recovered most of their losses. SHINY, SLIPPERY THINGS Bob’s Space Racers has tweaked the game over the years, especially the solo arcade version. “The idea was to have a game that no one could master,” said Michael Lane, the company’s vice president. “Therefore, there’d be a little bit of frustration with it. ” On the day I spoke to Mark Struthers about the game, his sons had run off to Dave Buster’s with their mother to cash in coupons. He wields a mallet, too, every so often, but he sees disturbing echoes of Mr. Lane’s comments in his financial planning clients who want to chase the latest hot investment. “They’re trying to whack that mole,” he said, describing the master limited partnerships, which are investments often involving energy that have drawn much client interest in recent years. “It’s popped up, it’s trendy, and they pile in. ” Then, the value falls before they even understand how the investment works, and they are on to the next thing: gold, equity indexed annuities, or whatever. “Their friends have it,” he added, “so they’ll whack at that. ” Mr. Struthers, whose business is in Chanhassen, Minn. is a former blackjack dealer, so he knows the type. Those friends of his clients may talk a good game, but they, like the gamblers he met at his tables, only talk about their winners. SPEED In his youth, Mike McCarthy worked a water gun booth at the Maryland State Fair. At 14, he made $2, 200 in commission for just 10 days of work. Now, he is the chief operating officer of a financial planning firm, the Financial Consulate, which has offices in Pennsylvania and Maryland, but his carny roots help him see the connections between midway games and his clients’ financial lives. “ is a game of chasing a fleeting target, often just missing it,” he said. “Sadly, many people feel the same way with their finances, whether chasing debt, investment return or a perceived gap in their quality of life. ” The seeming pace of change, of action, makes it feel as if we need to react at twitch speed, too. On Monday, Catherine Cardiello danced and yelped after winning two straight games on Coney Island. “Just go fast,” said Ms. Cardiello, a former Wall Street trader. “The only thing I liked about trading was the pace. I want fast, and I want a result, and then I either suffer or celebrate. ” It is a fine approach to the trading pits and winning at whacking. But there is not much in our own financial lives that requires such haste. In fact, decision making on investing or spending quite often leads to regret. Newer versions of reward the player who hits the animal at just the right moment — at its apex once it has fully emerged from the hole. That may be a metaphor that all of us can live by, as making a move that is not too fast and not too slow may be the difference between wielding the mallet and being the mole. | 1 |
BEIJING — Mao Zedong famously dismissed the atomic bomb as a “paper tiger,” able to kill and terrify, but not decisive in war. Even so, China built a nuclear arsenal of its own, and now concerns about the effectiveness of that arsenal as a deterrent are driving it into confrontation with the United States over an antimissile system being built in South Korea. Here’s an explanation of why. China conducted its first nuclear test in 1964, and has developed a stable of nuclear missiles. But it is not a big stable, compared with the thousands of warheads held by the United States and Russia. China does not reveal the size of its nuclear forces. It has about 260 nuclear warheads that could be put on missiles, and by the Pentagon’s latest estimate, China has between 75 and 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Some estimates are lower, and one recent assessment said 40 to 50 of China’s ballistic missiles could reach the continental United States. The United States has deployed about 1, 370 nuclear warheads and has stockpiled more than 6, 500, and has submarines and aircraft able to launch nuclear weapons. China has also built several submarines that can launch nuclear missiles. But even its submarine “is noisy and quite vulnerable to warfare,” and therefore is not a very potent addition to its nuclear deterrent, M. Taylor Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Fiona S. Cunningham, a graduate student there, who recently published an assessment of China’s nuclear modernization, said by email. China has also been upgrading some of its missiles so that several nuclear warheads can be placed on a single missile that then unleashes them on different targets. China has had the ability to put multiple warheads on missiles since the 1990s, but seems to have done so only recently, when some missiles were installed with three or four warheads, said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on China’s nuclear forces at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. This showed how China has been cautious in playing to the United States, he said. “I don’t think that the Chinese and U. S. have, historically, experienced the kind of modernization that we saw during the U. S. arms race,” Mr. Lewis said. “The Chinese more or less modernized for their own reasons and according to their own ideas. ” By the time China joined the nuclear club, the United States and Russia were already well ahead in building a stockpile of weapons. Mao decided to stick to a relatively small arsenal big enough to serve as a deterrent, and that decision was made a fait accompli by the political turmoil of Mao’s era, which held back the nuclear weapons program. “China’s leaders thought that the important thing was to master the technology,” Mr. Lewis said. “While the United States did fine calculations of the deterrence balance, Chinese leaders tended to think of deterrence like a checklist of achievements. ” Ever since, Chinese nuclear doctrine has stuck to the idea of a “minimum means of reprisal,” with a force designed to survive and retaliate after an initial nuclear attack. Alongside that, China has a nuclear “no first use” policy: that it will not be the first to launch nuclear weapons against another nuclear foe, and that it will not use its nuclear weapons against a country without nuclear weapons. Even so, China has been expanding and upgrading its nuclear forces, and that modernization may speed up if the government feels that it is falling too far behind the United States. “China is probably confident in its ability to be able to retaliate, but given the size and sophistication of U. S. nuclear forces and the steady development of ballistic missile defenses, coupled with China’s small nuclear arsenal, the margin for error is thin,” Mr. Fravel and Ms. Cunningham said. The Chinese government worries that the American antimissile system, called the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, could erode its nuclear deterrent — its ability to scare off potential foes from ever considering a nuclear attack. Its chief worry is not that Thaad could take down missiles: the system offers a canopy of potential protection over South Korea, but does not have the reach to bring down China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. Instead, China’s complaint is focused on Thaad’s radar system, which Chinese experts have said could be used to track the People’s Liberation Army’s missile forces. Deploying Thaad’s current radar system “would undermine China’s nuclear deterrence by collecting important data on Chinese nuclear warheads,” Li Bin, a nuclear weapons expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing, wrote last week. He and other Chinese experts say the radar could identify which Chinese missiles are carrying decoy warheads intended to outfox foes. That would be like being able to see what cards China holds in a nuclear poker game, and that could weaken China’s deterrent, they say. “For China this is a very important point, because its missiles are limited in number to begin with,” Wu Riqiang, a nuclear expert at Renmin University in Beijing. That meant, he said, “China could lose its nuclear retaliatory capacity. ” For China, it does not matter that the American and South Korean governments have said Thaad is meant only to foil North Korean missiles. Mr. Wu said. “What we worry about is the ability. It doesn’t matter to us whether the United States says this is aimed at North Korea or China,” Mr. Wu said. “If there’s this ability, then China must worry. ” Chinese experts are nearly unanimous in supporting Beijing’s criticisms. But quite a few foreign experts say those fears are overstated or unfounded. The United States already has access to radar systems in Qatar and Taiwan able to peer at China’s missile tests, and Japan has two radar systems just like the one used for Thaad, Mr. Lewis said. “I don’t see the deployment of Thaad in South Korea as a significant improvement in the ability of the U. S. to monitor Chinese missile tests,” he said. The Chinese government appears to have an exaggerated view of the Thaad radar’s abilities, two experts, Jaganath Sankaran and Bryan L. Fearey, wrote in a recent paper. That radar is often said to have a range of about 620 miles. Some Chinese experts say its reach could be much farther. But in practice the range could be much lower and “not possess the ability to track Chinese strategic missile ” Mr. Sankaran and Mr. Fearey wrote. “The Thaad radar simply cannot cover the entire or even a substantial part of the Chinese mainland. ” Even so, China’s real, underlying worry appears to be that Thaad could open the door to a much wider, more advanced fence of antimissile systems arrayed around it by America’s allies, several experts said. That would magnify Chinese worries about the effectiveness of its nuclear deterrent, and entrench Chinese fears of encirclement by a coalition knit together by a shared antimissile system. “I think this is what really worries them, because then what you have is the basis for a common interoperable system,” said Michael J. Green, the former senior director for Asia in the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. “I think it’s more about the creation of a virtual collective security system,” he said of China’s worries about Thaad. Last week, the Global Times, a stridently nationalist Chinese newspaper, warned in an editorial that China could consider abandoning its “no first use” policy if Thaad leads to other antimissile systems deemed threatening to China. But for now at least such threats are bluster, said many experts. China is far from taking a dramatic step like abandoning its bedrock nuclear policy, they said. “I don’t see ‘no first use’ going soon — at least most responsible officers and officials stick to the policy, despite ongoing debate behind the scenes,” said Douglas H. Paal, a China expert who worked on the National Security Council under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Instead, China is likely to respond by spending more on its nuclear, missile and antimissile forces “to ensure survivability of a force, and expanded penetration aids and decoys to defeat U. S. missile defenses in the event of a second strike,” Mr. Paal said. In the shorter term, China may accelerate the introduction of a new generation of missiles, the which can be moved around on roads and will also be able to carry multiple warheads, said Mr. Fravel and Ms. Cunningham. China is also working on a “glide technology to alter the trajectory of a warhead as it nears its target, which could be used to overcome U. S. missile defenses in the long term,” they said. | 1 |
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This is a breaking story, and there will be time to update it later. But it’s important for people to get the word out, not only that Ammon Bundy and his co-defendants have been found not guilty on all charges, but that federal marshals who were present used a Taser on Bundy’s attorney, Marcus Mumford, when Mumford asked the judge to order Bundy freed, unless the feds had a detainer that would give the federal district a reason to keep him in custody.
First, the news about the acquittals (and one hung jury outcome):
A federal jury on Thursday found Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan Bundy and five co-defendants not guilty of conspiring to prevent federal employees from doing their jobs through intimidation, threat or force during the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
The Bundy brothers and occupiers Jeff Banta and David Fry also were found not guilty of having guns in a federal facility. Kenneth Medenbach was found not guilty of stealing government property, and a hung jury was declared on Ryan Bundy’s charge of theft of FBI surveillance cameras.
The jury didn’t have to deliberate for long:
The jury of nine women and three men returned the verdicts after five hours of deliberations on Thursday in the high-profile case that riveted the state and drew national and international attention to the federal bird sanctuary in rural eastern Oregon.
The defendants and their legal teams were naturally thrilled and relieved. But the real drama started when Ammon Bundy lawyer Marcus Mumford asked for documentation on a pending case against Bundy in Nevada, for which a detainer would give the feds a reason to keep him in custody.
The coda to the stunning verdict, undoubtedly a significant blow to federal prosecutors, was when Ammon Bundy’s lawyer Marcus Mumford argued that his client, dressed in a gray suit and white dress shirt, should be allowed to walk out of the court, a free man.
U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown told him that there was a U.S. Marshal’s hold on him from a pending federal indictment in Nevada.
“If there’s a detainer, show me,” Mumford stood, arguing before the judge.
Suddenly, a group of about six U.S. Marshals surrounded Mumford at his defense table. The judge directed them to move back but moments later, the marshals grabbed on to him.
“What are you doing?” Mumford yelled, as he struggled and was taken down to the floor.
As deputy marshals yelled, “Stop resisting,” the judge demanded, “Everybody out of the courtroom now!”
Mumford was taken into custody, a member of his legal team confirmed.
Ammon Bundy’s lawyer J. Morgan Philpot, said afterwards on the courthouse steps that Mumford had been arrested and marshals had used a stun gun, or Taser, on his back. Another member of Ammon Bundy’s legal team Rick Koerber, echoed Philpot, saying he heard Mumford questioning in court why they were using a Taser against him.
Philpot decried the marshals’ treatment of Mumford in the courtroom. “What happened at the end is symbolic of the improper use of force by the federal government,” he said.
By 6:30 p.m., Mumford was released from custody. He confirmed that he was struck with a stun gun once while he was on the floor of the courtroom.
I would say this is unreal, except that things like this are happening far too often now.
Mumford was merely doing what a good lawyer would do, arguing zealously for his client. There is no reason why he should have remained silent. Demanding a detainer document, if Bundy was not to be released, is exactly what any defense attorney should have done in the situation.
The Oregon-standoff situation has been full of such unjustified high-handedness by the federal government from the beginning, and this latest event just raises the red flags again. Americans should be very alarmed at what our federal government feels entitled to do now, including federal officers disobeying a judge in her courtroom in order to manufacture an “incident” out of nothing.
Don’t assume that word of what actually happened will get out through the MSM. Here is how the New York Times reported the marshals’ rugby scrum against Mumford:
In a sign of the tension that ran through the trial, Ammon Bundy’s lawyer, Marcus R. Mumford, frustrated that the Bundys were not being released, was restrained by four United States marshals after an outburst.
This makes it sound as if the marshals were acting under the judge’s order, when in fact — according to the Oregonian account — she told them to back off after they converged on Mumford.
One of these accounts is, essentially, a lie. I know which one my money is on. We no longer live in a world in which MSM outlets can be assumed to be acting in good faith.
But it’s up to us whether we have such a world again. | 1 |
In his 1936 opus “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Dale Carnegie quoted the scientist Hans Selye: “As much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation. ” Not much has changed in this regard, except that now, as much as we thirst for approval, we dread being condemned precisely for being so “thirsty. ” “Thirst,” in recent black and then internet slang, describes a graceless need for approval, affection or attention, one so raw that it creeps people out. It calls to mind the panting tongues, bulging eyeballs, springing hearts and ears of Looney Toons characters. Or those mewling, suggestive, selfies that people post to social media to elicit precisely that reaction — a type of image commonly known as a “thirst trap. ” “Thirst” doesn’t just want something it makes an unsightly spectacle of a clueless, grasping, gaping need. It encroaches on boundaries and intrudes on others’ space, jostling and good taste out of the way. The more commonplace the word has become over the past few years, the more it has come to describe a condition that exists on a very wide spectrum. The guy who eagerly favorites your every social post is thirsty. The who’s always fishing for the boss’s praise is thirsty. The brand that tries very hard to be cool is thirsty. The Twitter’ ’u200b’u200bincontinent politician is thirsty. The acquaintance who’s always suggesting you get together for brunch is thirsty — or maybe you’re just judgmental and mean. There’s always been something slightly derogatory about the way we speak of a thirst for wealth, fame, power or attention. The poet William Cowper wrote about “Low ambition and the thirst of praise. ” Byron wrote about “A thirst for gold. The beggar’s vice. ” Chekhov wrote about “the thirst for powerful sensations,” and Madame de Staël wrote about how “genius inspires this thirst for fame. ” At this point, even the modern version of the word has been absorbed into the lexicon so thoroughly that it hardly stands out as slang anymore. Its usage has become barely distinguishable from its classical applications — but now it has an added layer of contempt, suggesting that the condition it describes has only grown worse or that we’ve grown less tolerant of it. Lately, in fact, the notion of thirst has edged into an inhibiting kind of judgment. It has morphed into a discouraging, meme — a potent means of condemning any kind of overreach. Most of that condemnation is richly deserved. In a recent column, Frank Bruni called out the most parched legislator of the moment, Devin Nunes, who was described by a source as “an overeager goofball” and a bumbling oblivious to “the line between ingratiating and stupid,” who jangled John Boehner’s nerves with his “indiscriminate pep” and “constant bumming of his cigarettes. ” Of course, Nunes pales in comparison to the giant sucking sound that is the person whose approval he most thirsts for — our current president, whose every action seems driven by the need to prove to others how smart, powerful, rich and sexy he is. From every square inch of his life to bragging to a television personality about sexual assault, from tweeting rancorously about “S. N. L. ” at all hours (Paul Krugman: “One look at his Twitter account is enough to show that victory has done nothing to slake his thirst for ego gratification”) to marrying women ever younger than him who choose to live farther and farther from him, Donald Trump is driven by a thirst for approval so powerful and desperate that it has grossed out much of the nation and freaked out much of the world. “Thirst” was first added to the Urban Dictionary in 2003, but its use hit its first great peak sometime around 2014, the year Diet Coke introduced the thirstiest ad campaign in history. One ad’s tagline seemed to suggest any number of strange things: that drinking soda was like snorting cocaine, that the average Diet Coke drinker was prone to using sex to advance her career, maybe even that she was plainly desperate and needed to be reined in. (“Be ambitious, not thirsty. You’re on Diet Coke. ”) That line was the epitome of thirst, flailing haplessly to connect a soda brand to a buzzword. The campaign was roundly mocked and quickly pulled, and it made me wonder if Dos Equis’s “The Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign — “Stay thirsty, my friends” — was sincere or stealthily mocking the least interesting men in the world. In December 2014, Jezebel posted a list of 100 very thirsty people, moments and things under the headline “The Unquenchable Year,” rooting out clueless desperation wherever it dwelt: Aaron Sorkin, bachelor parties, Kris Jenner, Kim journalism as a discipline. Reading it was like having your third eye pried open while cycling through Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, only with all the positive feelings grayed out. Two years later, “thirst” remains with us as the mot juste for these and other people, moments and things — and the evidence of that thirst has only grown more undeniable. It lingers in mirror and car selfies, in Nunes’s midnight White House runs and in Paul Ryan’s Beanie Boo face. (Thirst is not, for the record, partisan: Consider Bernie Sanders’s courting of millennial voters last year.) And yet, whenever I come across the word, it troubles me longer than it should. Something about it rankles. Why thirst, precisely, and not some other basic human condition resulting from need? Maybe it has something to do with the things we thirst for — things like approval, attention, affection, recognition all the interdependent needs. The things we deride as being “thirsty” are the things that lack value in the eyes of the macho, American individualist, so they invite macho, derision. Hunger, for instance, is described as a presence, a motivating fire in the belly, but thirst is derided as a girly lack. Entitlement plays a part, too. We “hunger” for success, because we approve of success. Hunger is associated with desire, whereas thirst is associated with need. But I also tend to think that it’s because “thirst” gets at an epistemological problem: a crisis of being, or how to be, in the world as it is now. It puts you into an unsettling double bind. It reframes a basic, need as a moral, social, aesthetic and personal failure. Our strange attachment to the word is hinted at by the fact that a global water crisis is in full flower, the world is increasingly parched, World Water Day was commemorated just last month — and yet the word “thirsty” is doused in judgment. Is it because “thirst” will kill you first? “Thirsty” is a unisex but that doesn’t mean it’s not gendered. A man is thirsty when he fails to cloak his libido or his instincts in a perfectly calibrated mix of empathy and chill. A woman is thirsty when she fails to cloak her emotional needs or insecurities behind a posture of detachment. “Thirsty” reinforces gender stereotypes while coolly pretending not to. It expresses our ambivalent relationship with desire — our constant negation of it, our vigilant policing of it. It gets at who is allowed to want things, and in what way we are allowed to want them. Trump’s arrant thirstiness stands in particularly glaring contrast to Obama’s impeccable chill. This resembles every other time the tyranny of cool has been rebelled against. These things go in cycles: A Romantic eruption of feeling tends to follow in the wake of Classical reserve. Frank emotiveness and sensitivity become culturally sanctioned again, emo comes back and we enter a supposedly more feminine cycle. Only this time, rather than usher in a more frankly emotional phase, we’ve ushered in something suppressive — the total denial of feeling, of experience. It’s not idealism in the air around our leadership or any kind of desire (greed excepted) it’s a lack, a void, a deficit. I recoil as much as the next person from the narcissistic behaviors “thirst” takes down. But I just as often find myself recoiling from its inhibiting effects. As Anaïs Nin wrote: “Something is always born of excess. Great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. ” Nothing is born out of deficiency. Nin was reviled throughout her life and afterward for writing candidly about her desires — something few women are allowed to do without being branded an open wound — and was only recently divested of her status as one of the thirstiest women of the 20th century. (Wanting, of course, is the impetus for getting, and we’re still very selective about who gets to do that.) But after decades of enshrining power, greed, lust and other desires as the driving forces of American life, our contempt for thirst seems to hint at a thirst for change. | 1 |
By Robert Franek on Sun, Oct 30th, 2016 at 9:01 am Imagine if working to end rape culture were treated with the same attention as Hillary Clinton’s emails. This is one fire that is burning strong and is a true threat to personal and public safety, security, and well-being. Share on Twitter Print This Post
The following post, written by The Rev. Robert A. Franek, is a part of Politicus Policy Discussion, in which writers draw connections between real lives and public policy.
Even after months and months of coverage blown out of proportion and at great expense to the public in dollars, psychic stress, and issue coverage ,it seems all one has to do is put Hillary Clinton and emails together in the same sentence with claims of lying and threatening national security and pandemonium continues to break loose throughout the mass media and social media worlds. And yet despite multiple investigations and repeated explanations the pandemonium persists, so much so that every time Republicans stir up some smoke the media assumes there must be a blazing fire. And sadly this is not going away anytime soon, as Republicans are promising more sham investigations in lieu of actually governing as Sarah Jones reported.
Republicans are already planning how to avoid being grown ups who do their jobs if Hillary Clinton is elected president. Yes, there will be more toy-throwing and tantrums and best of all for the party of fiscal humiliations, more wasteful spending on political witch hunts. – Sarah Jones
Meanwhile, women continue to come forward with painful, heartbreaking stories of Donald Trump’s sexual harassment and assault. Yet, instead of being portrayed as survivors who have finally had enough of the Republican presidential nominee and his lies and as women who have the strength and courage to go public with their stories, they are being made into opportunistic victims and challenged for not coming forward sooner much sooner. Woefully, no mention is made of the many intersecting reasons that lead many women (and men) not to report these crimes, including that this is the only time when the victim is placed on trial.
After walking her readers through one incident of Donald Trump’s public sexual humiliation of a woman for revenge , Sarah Jones makes the following observation:
If there is any good to come out of the total crapfest of the Trump candidacy, perhaps it is a raised awareness that women are people and that this kind of thing is horrific but it’s not all Trump’s fault. It’s the culture’s fault because it takes a willing audience to successfully publicly sexually shame a woman.
She is right. Donald Trump is despicable. Still, there is cultural culpability in the perpetuation of rape culture where women are treated as objects, forced into silence, and placed on trial for their assailant’s crimes.
This must change.
It is unacceptable in a country that places such a high value on freedom that so many are not free from sexual harassment, assault, exploitation, and humiliation. More it is appalling that such behavior is often cheered, unchallenged, and dismissed. It is also inexcusable that survivors face unparalleled levels of scrutiny when they do finally come forward.
It is also beyond tragic that people of faith who read the first chapter of Genesis can’t bear out the implications of men and women being created simultaneously and bearing equally the divine image.
Supposed Christian values champion and Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Mike Pence is more upset over an article he didn’t read regarding voter suppression efforts by the Trump campaign than any of the horrifying things Donald Trump has said including bragging about sexual assault.
These are not Christian values nor are they values any civil society should hold. Failing to call out Donald Trump’s abhorrent behavior and speech is beyond deplorable. Additionally, supporting candidates like Donald Trump and Mike Pence gives validity to their wretched views and is especially shocking when done by people of faith and “family values.”
As a society, we must challenge the pervasive and systemic sexism and misogyny that persists in our culture. As much as we need changes in our laws (and lawmakers!) at every level of government to reflect the equality and humanity of women, we need a moral revival in our collective conscience as a nation that decries every facet of rape culture from how we raise our children to the victim blaming and shaming that happens each time a survivor goes public with their story.
Imagine if working to end rape culture were treated with the same attention as Hillary Clinton’s emails. This is one fire that is burning strong and is a true threat to personal and public safety, security, and well-being.
Email Pandemonium and the Perpetuation of Rape Culture added by Robert Franek on Sun, Oct 30th, 2016 | 1 |
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Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • The U. S. Justice Department urged a federal appeals court to reinstate President Trump’s targeted travel ban, saying immediate action was needed to ensure the nation’s safety. Almost 100 U. S. companies — including Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — filed a legal brief arguing that the order is unconstitutional. President Trump’s confrontation with the courts may foreshadow years of legal battles, and in Congress debates have turned into proxy battles over a combative president. Here’s what to watch for this week. _____ • Mr. Trump, who returned to Washington after military briefings in Florida, has rejected criticism. In a Twitter post, he said polls showing that a majority of Americans oppose his travel order were “fake. ” In another, he bristled at suggestions that Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, holds the real power in the West Wing. But the chaos and shock waves at home and abroad appear to be prompting Mr. Trump and his top staff members to begin rethinking their improvisational approach to governing. _____ • A U. S. task force of influential China specialists, including former government officials and scholars, reports on two years of assessments of one of the world’s most important bilateral relationships. Set up during the Obama administration as relations began turning rocky, the panel will recommend ways to pursue U. S. interests given the current political strains. _____ • Other than a timing error that left the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, briefly hanging outside 10 Downing Street and disagreements over the Iranian nuclear deal and Israel’s advancement of settlements, his meeting with Theresa May was cordial. Mr. Netanyahu was on his way back to Israel when the Knesset passed a provocative law retroactively legalizing Jewish settlements on privately owned Palestinian land — a measure almost certain to be nullified by the high court, but one that makes the ascendance of the country’s right wing inescapable. _____ • Remarkably good public health news: Researchers may have found the tools to stop cholera, the global pandemic that rose from the swamps of Bangladesh two centuries ago. Extremely effective treatments draw on studies and tests by a research center in Dhaka. And a vaccine accepted by the W. H. O. is being stockpiled for epidemics. _____ • In an epic, overtime Super Bowl, the New England Patriots came back from a deficit to defeat the Atlanta Falcons, . We also reviewed Lady Gaga’s halftime performance and the commercials. _____ • Introducing The Daily, your audio news report. Our reporter Michael Barbaro runs down the big stories and the big ideas. Fifteen minutes a day, five days a week. Listen here if you’re on a computer, here if you have an iOS device or here for an Android device. • More than 46 billion digital red packets — online versions of envelopes of cash — were sent on WeChat, the Chinese social media platform, during the Lunar New Year period, China’s media reported. • President Trump’s travel ban has disrupted the business of corporate travel to the U. S. “Many groups will just look to move the meeting elsewhere,” one industry leader said. • The new head of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, has rapidly moved against net neutrality and consumer protections. • Qatar Airways inaugurated the world’s longest scheduled commercial flight, 16 hours and 20 minutes, connecting Doha to Auckland, New Zealand. • U. S. stocks were weaker. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • India’s southern Tamil Nadu state is set to swear in Sasikala Natarajan as chief minister, a confidante of her predecessor: the influential politician Jayalalithaa Jayaram, or Amma, who died two months ago. The opposition has been scathing, the Supreme Court is considering a petition to block the move until it rules on a corruption case against her. [The Financial Express] • An Australian panel investigating child sexual abuse confronted reports of 4, 444 allegations involving Catholic priests between 1980 and 2015. [Al Jazeera] • A South Australian senator, Cory Bernardi, is expected to resign from the Liberals to establish a conservative party, despite a flood of pleas from his colleagues trying to save the government. [ABC] • In France, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, set the tone for her bid for April’s presidential election in a speech with echoes of President Trump that warned against globalization and Islamism. [The New York Times] • The U. N. mission in Afghanistan reported that 2016 was another year of record civilian casualties, expressing particular concern over a 65 percent jump in the number of children killed or injured by explosive remnants. [The New York Times] • The police in Myanmar confiscated more than 4. 6 million methamphetamine pills from a Buddhist monk. [The Irrawaddy] • Xiao Jianhua, the tycoon missing since being escorted from a Hong Kong hotel by mainland officers last week, shared something with many mainland billionaires: a preference for female bodyguards. [South China Morning Post] • We’re all busy in the morning, so don’t waste time: Here’s how to do the shortest workout possible. • Two brothers and a sister credit a surprising source for their lifelong closeness: their parents’ ugly divorce. • Recipe of the day: Everyone needs a spicy noodle dish that comes together in less than half an hour. Here’s a great one. • The golfer Aditi Ashok is ranked No. 100 in the world at the age of 18, but she is just the second Indian member of the L. P. G. A. and among the few female professionals in her nation. • Queen Elizabeth II’s sapphire jubilee, marking 65 years on the British throne, brought new coins, a stamp and gun salutes. The only thing missing? The queen, 90, who spent a private and reflective day. The Berlin International Film Festival opens this week with a tale of survival, that of one of the 20th century’s greatest jazz guitarists: Django Reinhardt. He was born in Belgium in 1910 to a Roma family that earned a living playing music from town to town. Reinhardt started off playing the banjo in Paris dance halls. At 18, he lost the use of two fingers on his left hand in a fire, and adapted with a new technique. He rose to fame in the ’30s. But with World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, Reinhardt tried to flee, fearing that, as a Roma and a jazz musician, he would be detained and killed. Instead, his fame — and the popularity of an officially discredited art form — may have saved him. “The Germans used Paris as the base for soldiers to rest and relax,” said Michael Dregni, a Reinhardt biographer. “Jazz was the hot music of the time, so they all want to go out and see Jazz, and Django was the biggest star in Europe. ” Reinhardt lived through the war, dying of a sudden stroke in 1953. His legacy lives on in the genre he helped create: Gypsy jazz. Patrick Boehler contributed reporting. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
John Oliver: America’s Increasingly Segregated Schools Are ‘Very Rarely Equal in Any Way’ (Video) Posted on Nov 1, 2016
Public schools are more segregated than they have been for over 40 years, but the “Last Week Tonight” host argues this isn’t a case of “re-segregation.” It turns out places like New York “never really bothered integrating in the first place.” | 0 |
Apparently Obama wasn’t as worried about placing women in senior-level positions but Froman decided to offer up some suggestions anyway. “While you did not ask for this, I prepared and attached a similar document on women.”
Froman even went ahead and “scoped out” which people should be appointed to which cabinet positions. “At the risk of being presumptuous, I also scoped out how the Cabinet-level appointments might be put together, probability-weighting the likelihood of appointing a diverse candidate for each position (given one view of the short list) and coming up with a straw man distribution.”
As New Republic points out, the Froman appointments ended up being almost entirely right. The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner. This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month before votes were counted. And according to the Froman/Podesta emails, lists were floating around even before that. Many already suspected that Froman, a longtime Obama consigliere, did the key economic policy hiring while part of the transition team. We didn’t know he had so much influence that he could lock in key staff that early, without fanfare, while everyone was busy trying to get Obama elected. The WikiLeaks emails show even earlier planning; by September the transition was getting pre-clearance to assist nominees with financial disclosure forms.
So if this history is any guide then the real power within a future Clinton administration is being formed right now. In fact, another email from January 2015 reveals that Elizabeth Warren was already “intently focused on personnel issues” almost two full years ago as evidenced by the following recap of a conversation that the Hillary campaign had with her Chief of Staff, Dan Geldon. He was intently focused on personnel issues, laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers, was very critical of the Obama administration’s choices, and explained at length the opposition to Antonio Weiss. We then carefully went through a list of people they do like, which EW sent over to HRC earlier. We spent less time on specific policies, because he seemed less interested in that. He spoke repeatedly about the need to have in place people with ambition and urgency who recognize how much the middle class is hurting and are willing to challenge the financial industry.
To the extent there are any purists left, this should clear up any illusion of who controls the political powers that be. | 0 |
Finian CUNNINGHAM | 14.11.2016 | OPINION US, British ‘Clean House’ to Delete Syria Terror Links US President Barack Obama has just given the Pentagon orders to assassinate commanders of the Al Nusra terror network in Syria. American media reports over the weekend say the new urgency arises from US intelligence fears that al Qaeda-affiliated groups are preparing to mount terror attacks against Western targets from strongholds in Syria. The purported US «kill list» will be acted on through drone strikes and «intelligence assets». The latter refers, presumably, to US special forces that are already operating in northern Syria alongside Turkish military. Last week, a similar announcement was carried in the British press, which reported that elite British SAS troops had received orders to kill up to 200 jihadi volunteers from Britain who are suspected to be active in Syria (and Iraq). Again, the same rationale was invoked as in the latest American plan. That the assassination program was to pre-empt terror attacks rebounding on Western states. A British defense official was quoted as saying that the mission could be the most important ever undertaken by the SAS in its entire 75-year history. «The hunt is on», said the official, «to take out some very bad people». Significantly, too, the British SAS kill operations in Syria are reportedly being carried out as part of a «multinational effort». That suggests that the Pentagon’s initiative reported this weekend in being coordinated with the British. However, there is something decidedly odd about this sudden determination by the Americans and British to eliminate terrorists in Syria. Since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, US, British and other NATO forces have shown meagre success in delivering on official claims of combating al Qaeda-linked terror groups, such as Islamic State (IS, ISIS or Daesh) and Jabhat al Nusra (also known as Jabhat al Fatal al Sham). A straightforward explanation for this apparent anomaly is that the US and its NATO allies are in reality covertly working with these terror networks as proxies for regime change against the Assad government – a longtime ally of Russia and Iran. What Washington refers to as «moderate rebels» whom it supports are in reality serving as conduits for arms and funds to the known terror groups. In this context, the terror groups have been Western assets in the regime-change war. Therefore, there has been no incentive to liquidate these assets – until now that is. Why now is the telling question. The recent ceasefire debacles in the battleground northern city of Aleppo have demonstrated a systematic Western terror link. The failure by Washington to deliver on its commitment to separate so-called moderates from extremists is clear evidence that the alleged dichotomy is a hoax. The plain fact is that the US-backed «rebels» are fully integrated with the terror groups. That is, the US and its allies are sponsors of terrorism in Syria. This has led to the reasonable charge by the Russian government that the US is supporting al Nusra, despite the latter being an internationally proscribed terrorist organization at the heart of the so-called American «war on terror». That charge has been corroborated by claims made by Nusra commanders who say that they have been receiving covert weapons supplies from the Americans. It is also substantiated by recent finds of US weaponry among terrorist dens that have been over-run by the Syrian Arab Army. So, the question is: what is this latest urgency from the Pentagon to wipe out Nusra's leadership in Syria really about? First, let’s note that the implied precision of terrorist «kill lists» that the Americans and British are suddenly working on seems incongruous given that these NATO powers have up to now apparently been unable to furnish Russia with coordinates for extremist bases in Syria. The Russian Ministry of Defense disclosed last week that the Americans have not provided a single scrap of information on the location of terrorist groups in Syria. The US was obliged to share intelligence on extremist positions as part of the ceasefire plans resolved in September by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. That then marks a seeming curious shift. From not being able to provide any intelligence on terror groups, now we are told in a different context that the US and its British counterpart are urgently moving ahead to carry out decapitation strikes on Nusra and ISIS commanders. On the British side, reports said that a kill list of hundreds of British jihadis had been drawn up by the intelligence services of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Why wasn’t this information shared before with Russia, as part of the Kerry-Lavrov accord? Timing is also another telling factor. Obama’s announced order to the Pentagon to ramp up assassination of Nusra leaders comes in the wake of the shock presidential election victory for Donald Trump. Trump’s election last week was an outcome that completely blindsided the White House and the Washington establishment, who thought that Democrat rival Hillary Clinton was a safe bet . The abrupt US impetus to neutralize Nusra cadres also comes as the Russian navy flotilla takes up position in the Mediterranean off Syria. The flotilla is led by the aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov , along with destroyers equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles. The naval formation has been described as the biggest Russian deployment since the end of the Cold War 25 years ago. It will greatly enhance Russia’s air power which already has over the past year transformed the Syrian war into an eminent defeat for the Western-backed insurgents. Now that nearly three weeks of Russia’s unilateral cessation in air strikes on terror targets in Syria has elapsed to no avail for a surrender by the insurgents, it is anticipated that Russian air power and Syrian forces on the ground are readying for a final, decisive offensive to vanquish the Western-backed proxy war. President-elect Trump has stated on several occasions his approval of Russian and Syrian anti-terror efforts, unlike the Obama administration, which has sought to hamper them by accusing Moscow and Damascus of «war crimes» against civilians. Russia has rejected those claims as false. It points to recent initiatives to set up humanitarian corridors in Aleppo as evidence that it is trying to minimize civilian casualties. It is the US-backed militants who have sabotaged the humanitarian efforts. In any case, Trump’s accession to the White House can be expected to give Russia a freer hand to bring the Syrian war to a close. And as noted, increased Russian military forces appear to be poised for this final push. This is perhaps where the real significance of the latest Pentagon and British terrorist kill program is evinced. If we accept the plausible and proven premise that the Americans and their NATO allies have been covertly funding, arming and directing jihadi terror proxies, then one can expect that there is plenty of evidence within the terrorist ranks of such state-sponsoring criminal connections. As Russian and Syrian forces eradicate the terrorist remnants one can anticipate that a trove of highly indicting information will be uncovered that grievously imputes Washington, London, Paris and others in Syria’s dirty war. Among the finds too will be hundreds of Nusra and other terrorist operatives who may be willing to testify as to who their handlers were. A huge can of worms awaits to be prized open. To pre-empt such devastating evidence of Western culpability in waging a covert criminal war in Syria, the Pentagon and its British partner appear to be dispatching their elite troops to perform a little bit of «house cleaning». That cleaning may involve whacking jihadis who know too much. No wonder the British official said it could the most important mission for the SAS in its 75-year history. Washington and London’s neck is on the line. | 1 |
A tornado made landfall in Canada on Friday, but one man decided that a tornado was not going to stop him from mowing the lawn. [Theunis Wessels, of Alberta, was cutting the grass in his backyard with the tornado in the background when his wife, Cecilia, decided to take a picture of the scene to send to her parents in South Africa, the Canadian Press reported. The photo quickly went viral on Twitter, gaining over 1, 000 retweets. Man who mowed lawn with tornado behind him says he ’was keeping an eye on it.’ Alberta, Canada. https: . #Tornado #StormHour pic. twitter. — #StormHour (@StormHour) June 4, 2017, Cecilia said she took a nap while her husband went to mow the lawn when she was awoken by her daughter who was worried that her father would not come inside during the storm. “I literally took the picture to show my mum and dad in South Africa, ‘Look there’s a tornado,’ and now everyone is like, ‘Why is your husband mowing the lawn? ’” Cecilia said. She added that many of her neighbors were also taking pictures of the storm. Theunis said that the storm was further away than it looked in the photo and it was moving in the opposite direction from them. “It looks much closer if you look in the photo, but it was really far away. Well, not really far, far away, but it was far away from us,” he said. Still, Theunis said he was watching the storm closely as it formed a funnel cloud. “I was keeping an eye on it,” Theunis said. Nobody was injured as a result of the tornado, but KWQC reports the area had some property damage. | 0 |
in: NATO , US News , War Propaganda , World News (© Ints Kalnins / Reuters ) (RT) Russia and NATO are to hold separate drills with the Balkan nations of Serbia and Montenegro, both formerly part of Yugoslavia. It comes as the Russian envoy to NATO has warned that the Western alliance’s buildup could be harmful for other countries’ security. On Monday, 680 personnel from 32 NATO states and partner countries, including Georgia, Albania, Israel and Ukraine, started a series of joint exercises known as Crna Gora (Montenegro) 2016. Between October 31 and November 4, multinational teams will participate in a number of scenarios simulating various disasters such as floods and chemical spills. “This is an opportunity to work with them [NATO] during the four-day exercise to determine our capacity and the capabilities of our response to natural disasters, as well as to recognize our weaknesses and eliminate them in time,” said Montenegro’s Deputy Prime Minister and former intelligence chief Dusko Markovic, as quoted by the newspaper Vijesti. In December, NATO formally invited Montenegro to join the alliance, while in May it has been granted an observer status after accession negotiations. “Montenegro has demonstrated the ability as a future member of NATO, not only through organizing this exercise, but also bearing its burden,”Markovic added. “Montenegro has demonstrated the ability to not only willing to accept but also help realize partnership goals.” Meanwhile in Serbia, 150 paratroopers from the reconnaissance battalion of the Ivanovo Airborne Division are to arrive in Belgrade to take part in the military exercise Slavic Brotherhood 2016. The Russian troops will be joined by Serbian and Belarusian forces. The joint Russian-Serbian exercise will last between November 2 and 15, and will also involve over 50 soldiers from the Russian Military Transport Aviation along with combat vehicles including the BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicle, the Tachyon drone and four ATVs for raids and reconnaissance missions. This would mark the second set of Slavic Brotherhood exercises with Serbia, with the first held last year near Novorossiysk. ‘Undermining regional security’ Russia’s Permanent Representative to NATO, Aleksandr Grushko, said on Monday that NATO’s buildup close to Russian territory could have a negative impact on the general security situation in the region. “NATO’s [systematic] efforts have been changing the very essence of the military security in the regions which are adjacent to the Russian border,” Grushko said in an interview to Rossiya-24 channel which aired on Monday. “This seriously worsens the regional security and the security of those countries that participate in these drills and this activity,”he said, adding that NATO’s ongoing military buildup in its eastern flank is “some sort of project that not only does not correspond to the common European security interests, but goes against them.” Reflecting on the earlier statements by NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said on Thursday that NATO did not want to get caught up in a new Cold War with Russia, Grushko pointed out that NATO has been sending mixed signals on purpose in a bid to justify its military buildup. “I think it’s a double signal. First of all, it’s a signal to western public opinion that all NATO actions on its eastern flank are calibrated and do not transcend the framework of reasonable defense. Secondly, it’s also an apparent attempt to send a signal to us, so that Russia will not react in what they believe to be an excessive and aggressive manner,”he said, adding: “In effect,”NATO’s increased military activity close to Russian borders is “justified by nothing.” While Stoltenberg claimed that NATO aims “to strive for a more cooperative and constructive relationship” with Russia, in reality the alliance does not seem to maintain this approach, as evidenced by its recent refusal to discuss flight security in the Baltic Sea region, the Russian diplomat said. “The very fact that NATO’s countries refused to convene for the meeting, proposed by us and to be held at the level of military experts in Moscow and devoted to all aspects of air traffic security in this region, speaks volumes,” Grushko said, adding that NATO may not be that genuine in its attempt to improve air traffic security over the Baltic Sea. In July, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Russia is ready to fly all its missions over the Baltic Sea with the transponders on, but only if NATO member states reciprocate. “As soon as we said about this, the issue of transponders practically disappeared from NATO member states’ political lexicon. It ceased to exist… I’m not sure that NATO is sincerely ready to talk about joining such a regime,”he concluded. | 1 |
Russia , The Episodes by Julien PAOLANTONI (France)
What follows is the continuation of series of essays “Brief History of Russia”, produced by the French political and financial analyst Julien Paolantoni. The first set was published by ORIENTAL REVIEW in January 2015 and covered the period from the IXth to the middle of XVIth century. Introduction
Part 1 of this series was aimed at explaining the foundation of the Russian state, by discussing its early influences in the cultural and political fields. As the subject of the present part is to provide insight on how Russia reached the status of superpower, it is necessary to briefly get back to the reign of Ivan III .
Although the reign of the tsars started officially with Ivan IV , Ivan III (“Ivan the Great”) played a critical role in the centralization of the Russian state, after having defeated the Mongol army in 1480.
Meanwhile, the extension of the Russian land was eased by the death of Casimir IV , the king of Poland, in 1492 and the fact that Casimir’s son, Alexander, was willing to cooperate with the Russians, so he wedded Ivan’s daughter Helena soon after accessing the throne of Lithuania, as an attempt to avoid open conflict with his powerful neighbor. Unfortunately for him, Ivan III’s clear determination to appropriate as much of Lithuania as possible, finally obliged Alexander to wage war against his father-in-law in 1499. It was a complete disaster for Lithuania and in 1503 Alexander eventually purchased peace by ceding to Ivan III Novgorod-Seversky, Chernigov and seventeen other cities.
With the unification of the state’s heartland almost complete, the country was ready to assert itself on the international stage. One figure sums up Russia’s fast expansion: from 1550 to 1700, Russia’s territory grew by 35000 km2 a year (which is approximately the size of Netherlands today). [1]
Therefore, Russia became a superpower way before the early 19 th century, more precisely before the Concert of Europe set up by the Congress of Vienna (1815) … The Reinforcement of Tsardom
Conventionally, the Tsardom of Russia is considered by historians as the period running from Ivan IV’s claim to be the “Ruler of all Rus’ ” in 1547 to the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721.
Ivan IV’s coronation ceremony was modeled after those of the Bizantine emperors, and six years later Moscow became known as the Third Rome due to the takeover of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, leaving Moscow as the only legitimate center of the Orthodox Church. During the late 1550’s, he subordinated the Russian nobility to an unprecedented degree (a simple provocation was generally enough to get forced into exil or even executed). [2]
OR note : the alleged “cruelty” of the reign of Ivan IV was notably exaggerated in Western historiography, basing on two very biased and controversial “sources”– prominent writing by the exiled British diplomat Jerome Horsey “ Observations in seventeen years’ travels and experience in Russia” and “ A Brief Account of the Character and Brutal Rule of Vasil’evich, Tyrant of Muscovy” , written by a vague Pomeranian mercenary Albert Schlichting. The only Russian language source of Ivan IV’s “tyrany” is a dubious chronicle composed in Novgorod the Great when the city was under Swedish rule in 1611-1617. Meanwhile the number of victims of his 37 years long reign were far l ess then of the single St.Bartholonew’s day massacre in France, when up to 30 thousand of Huguenots were assassinated during the night on Aug 24, 1572, but no one in the West dares to call Charles IX of France The Butcher… At the same time the standard title of Ivan IV in English (The Terrible) is fantastically misleading. The Russian title Грозный has absolutely different connotation in the Russian language. Translating it correctly, it should sound as The Awesome. The Terrible in Russian is “Ужасный” and no Tsar could obtain such title even theoretically.
Nevertheless, Ivan IV is regarded as a key Russian statesman because in 1550 he promulgated a new code of laws (the Sudebnik ), introduced the self-management of rural regions, established the Zemsky Sobor , which was the first representative body on a large scale in Russian history (it happened on a local scale in Novgorod though, as mentioned in the first part of this series) and was also able to decrease the influence of the clergy on politics. [3] Ivan IV managed to annex the Khanates of Kazan in 1552, and those of Siberia and Astrakhan later but his long Livonian War for the control of the Baltic coast and access to sea trade turned out to be a costly failure. [4] Indeed, in 1558 he engaged his country in a twenty-five year war against Sweden, Denmark and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, which resulted in the failure to secure a critical position in the Baltic Sea. In the meantime, Devlet I of Crimea hoped to take advantage of the difficulties of the Russian army on the Baltic front to repeatedly sack the Moscow area. This northern threat was combined with insecurity on the southern border, where the Nogai Horde pillaged the land and enslaved local inhabitants. [5] Nevertheless, these conquests enabled Ivan IV to gain access to Central Asia and to control the entire Volga River. It also brought a significant Muslim Tatar population into Russia, which officially emerged as a multiethnic and multiconfessional state, even if Russia has ever been a cosmopolite country since its foundation.
However, Ivan IV’s hostility toward the nobility weakened his country in the short term ( according to other assessments, taking power over the greedy oligarchy by Ivan IV was the first effective act of reinforcement of the central authority in Russia, an endeavour, repeated later by Peter the Great, Stalin and Putin – OR ). In 1565, the Tsar divided Russia into two parts: the oprichnina (his private realm) made up of some of the largest and richest districts and the zemshchina (the public domain). By doing so, Ivan IV got rid of a large number of people who helped in the expansion of Russia. This process reached its climax during the “Massacre of Novgorod”, in 1570, while trade significantly decreased. The weakening of the aristocracy combined with low harvests (a lot of peasants left Russia to escape from excessively high taxes, others were killed as part of the repression), military losses and epidemics enabled the Crimean Tatars to burn down Moscow and raid central Russia in 1571. [6] Besides, the joint coalition made up of Sweden, Denmark and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was successful in halting Russia’s expansion for the first time of its history.
Ivan IV’s domestic policy and foreign policy ultimately led Russia to one of the darkest ages of its history, a time of civil war and social struggle known under the name of the “ Time of Troubles ”. Time of Troubles, 1598 – 1613
This unstable period runs from the death of Feodor Ivanovich, the last tsar of the Rurik Dynasty to the establishment of the Romanov Dynasty , which would lead the country until the Revolution of 1917.
Between 1601 and 1601, extremely cold summers destroyed crop fields which led to famine and social unrest. They were allegedly caused by the eruption of a volcano in Peru in 1600, massively pouring out sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which is supposed to have resulted in the formation of sulfur acid preventing the sunlight to reach properly the Earth’s surface.
The Polish-Lithuanian army added further turmoil in the country by carrying out several invasions during the Polish-Muscovite war (1605-1618). In 1605, they also installed an impostor on the throne of Russia: False Dmitry I , who claimed to be the legitimate son of Ivan IV. The turning point occurred at the Battle of Klushino in 1610, when the Russian-Swedish army was defeated, which enabled a group of Russian aristocrats, the Seven Boyars, to depose the tsar Vasily Shuysky , who gained power by killing False Dmitry I. The Polish prince Władysław IV Vasa became tsar and violently repressed the opposing Muscovite crowd, while another impostor, False Dmitry II , also claimed to be the rightful heir of Ivan IV but failed in his attempt to seize power. An important fact is that all the fake tsars had support from the Catholic Church, because the Polish-Lithuanian leaders wanted to convert the Russian people. Here is certainly the origin of the anti-catholic (and sometimes anti-Polish) feeling in Russia. [7] ( Not exactly – the Rome’s endeavours to bring Constantinople’s Church domains under Latin amice were permanent since the Great Schism in 1054 – OR ). Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky
Finally, an army led by Kuzma Minin (a merchant) and Dmitry Pozharsky (a prince from the Suzdal area) managed to crush the foreign forces and to expel them from Moscow on the 4 th of November, 1612. Pozharsky ran the provisional government of Moscow with the help of his assistant, Dmitry Trubetskoy, until a new tsar was elected by the Zemsky Sobor . [8]
The death toll during the Time of Troubles was heavy: according to Sergey Solovyov, tens of thousands died in riots and battles. [9] This dark period was influential in the emergence of Russian nationalism, and the 4 th of November is now celebrated every year as a Unity Day (the tradition was established in 1613 by the new elected tsar, Mikhail Romanov and brought back by Vladimir Putin in 2005, because the bolshevik revolutionaries had replaced it by a day celebrating the revolution of 1917).
The unification of the Russian society around the Romanov dynasty set the framework for the powerful Russian Empire to come. The Establishment of the Romanov Dynasty
The first task of Mikhail Romanov was to restore peace. It was eased by the weakening of his two main enemies, Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth due to a conflict between the two entities, which provided Russia with the opportunity to make peace with the former in 1617 and with the latter in 1619, at the price of limited territory losses. Those territories were recovered by the Treaty of Pereyaslav , signed with the Zaporozhsky Cossacks in 1654, which basically entailed the russification of Dnipro stepes known as Ukraine today, as a reward for the military support offered by the tsar Alexey I during the Khmelnytsky rebellion, in an area formerly under Polish control. [10]
This treaty immediately sparked the Russo-Polish War, which had far reaching consequences. Indeed, it ended with the Treaty of Andrusovo (1667), whose major feature is the losses of Kiev and Smolensk for Poland, which fell under Russian control. [11] An alliance between the political elite and the nobility then resulted in a dramatic deterioration of peasants’ conditions in all of Russian-controlled territories, as they were charged taxes 100 times higher than a century ago. [12] Obviously, popular rebellions frequently took place, such as the Salt Riot (1648), the Copper Riot (1662) and the Moscow Uprising (1682).
In 1672, Peter I, who would become known as Peter the Great, founder of the Russian Empire was born in this unstable period. In 1682, Feodor III and Peter became tsar with his mother as regent, because he was only 10-year old. He had to wait until the death of his mother in 1694 to actually exercise power (his half-sister, Sophia, managed to seize power in 1682 and ruled the nation until Peter’s mother deposed her seven years later). At this time, Russia was already the largest state in the world (three times the size of continental Europe), which would imply several challenges for the latter statesman. Foundation of the Russian Empire
Peter I initiated the tradition of the “reforming tsar”. From his reign on, all tsars were judged on their ability to modernize the economy and Russian society as a whole, and also on their ability to gain influence abroad. The protection of the homeland was not ambitious enough anymore. [13] Following this new doctrine, Peter I’s initial military campaigns were directed against the Ottoman Empire, because he wanted to gain a foothold on the Black Sea, by taking the town of Azov. [14]
But his attention quickly turned to the north, as Russia was denied access to the Baltic Sea by Sweden. In 1699, it led Peter I to sign a secret alliance with Russia’s main foe during the 16 th and 17 th centuries, that is to say the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, to wage war against Sweden, also with the help of Denmark. The Great Northern War ended in 1721, when Sweden had to cede provinces situated east and south of the Gulf of Finland, thereby securing Peter I’s coveted access to the sea. In 1703, it was in this area that he founded St Petersburg, designed as a “window opened upon Europe” which was to replace Moscow as the nation’s capital from until 1918. Therefore, the conquest of the northern front was a well-prepared plan and Peter decided to assume the title of emperor as a celebration of these conquests, thus replacing the Tsardom with the Russian Empire in 1721.
Under his reign, Russia became an absolutist state molded on the European standards of that time. Indeed, Peter the Great replaced the Boyar Duma (which was a council of nobles, not to be confused with the modern State Duma, which is the lower house of the Russian parliament; the upper house being the Federal Council of Russia) with a nine-member supreme council of state, called the Governing Senate. Its mandate was to oversee administrative, judicial and financial affairs, and its main achievement has been to collect taxes more effectively: tax revenues tripled over the course of Peter the Great’s reign. [15]
However, in 1722 he displayed his Table of Ranks, whose aim was to determine position and status of everybody in the tree branches of the administration (the military, civil and court services) according to skills rather than according to birth or seniority. He also required state service from all the nobles. Thus, it created an educated class of noble bureaucrats who had to demonstrate their ability to carry out administrative tasks. In this regard, Russia was more developed than other absolute European monarchies, such as France. [16] Peter the Great also undertook a government reform, which officially incorporated the Orthodox Church into the administrative structure but in fact it became a tool of the emperor, as he replaced the patriarchate with the Holy Sinod (a collective entity) led by a government official. [17]
In 1725, Peter the Great died, leaving an unsettled succession as he failed to choose the next tsar before dying (he passed a law which abrogated traditional rules of succession, based on the law of primogeniture). Obviously, the following decade was marked by various plots and coups. As a result, the critical factor to take the throne over became the support of the palace guards. The Era of Russian Palace Revolutions
Peter the Great’s wife, Catherine I , was the first woman to ascend the throne of Russia, paving the way for a century almost completely dominated by women, including her daughter Elizabeth and Catherine the Great. Both continued Peter the Great’s policies in modernizing Russia, but Catherine I’s humble origins was considered as a state secret by later generations of tsars. [18]
At the time of Peter’s death, the Russian army was without contest the largest in Europe. The military budget amounted to 65 % of the government yearly income but Catherine I decided to slash military expenditures because the nation was at peace. She was assisted by a Supreme Privy Council, led by Alexander Menshikov , a close friend of Peter the Great who took an active part in the Azov campaign against the Ottoman empire (1695 – 1696) but was accused of corruption (he looted Poland and defrauded the Russian government of around 100 000 rubles, a significant amount of money at that time). Another prominent member of the Council was Peter Tolstoy, an ancestor of the famous novelist, who helped Menshikov in his attempt to raise Catherine I to the throne. Andrei Osterman , was in charge of foreign affairs and was also minister of commerce, while another member of the Council, Dmitry Golitsyn advocated for a constitutional monarchy and would become much more influential later, under the reign of Peter II. Then, Catherine I’s son-in-law, Karl Friedrich, was allowed to enter the Council. [19] Catherine I
Catherine I ordered the construction of the first bridges of St Petersburg, but because of her poor health Menshikov was the real leader of the country and he ultimately took over most of the functions of the Governing Senate.
When she died in 1727, Peter the Great’s grandson, Peter II , was crowned tsar. But he was only 11 year old at that time so he was manipulated by Menshikov until he became severely ill and replaced as Peter II’s senior advisor by Andrei Osterman and Vasily Dolgorukov (the latter joined the Council under the reign of Peter II). Peter II died before he could marry Dolgorukov’s daughter Catherine and he didn’t name a legitimate successor, thereby throwing Russia into another succession struggle. [20]
In 1730, Dmitry Golitsyn came up with the idea of turning Russia into a constitutional monarchy, in which the tsar’s executive power would be limited by the Council, and his constitutional project was known as “The Conditions” was signed by the new elected tsar, Anna Ioannovna . In fact, it was called “The Conditions” because she had to accept them prior to ascend the throne. The new dispositions provided that declaration of wars, international treaties, new taxes and using of public revenues were to be approved by the Council. However, Anna Ioannovna revoked her approval of the Conditions only two days after having signed, and dismantled the Council in the meantime, with a significant support from the nobles who were not close enough to a member of the Council to defend their interests.
To strengthen her power she restored the security police and was assisted by Ernst Johann von Biron , who forced around 30 000 people into exile in Siberia, mainly Old Believers (traditional orthodox believers who didn’t approve the reform of the Orthodox Church). They also repealed Peter I’s legislation about the nobility’s state service requirements and the primogeniture law. Therefore, estates could be subdivided again and nobles were not compelled to complete the state service anymore. Besides, they further deteriorated the conditions of the serfs, who now the landlords’ permission before moving to find work elsewhere.
From 1733 to 1736, Russia allied with Austria and took part in the War of Polish Succession against France and Spain, to prevent the election of a French candidate to the polish throne. Later, Russia and Austria waged war against the Ottoman Empire in order to gain territory in the Azov area, but the death toll was high, mainly due to diseases. This was a major war regarding Russian history because it marked the beginning of the state’s military effort to expand southward, an enterprise that would reveal successful under the reign of Catherine II. Anna Ioannovna named Ivan VI , son of Anna Leopoldovna and the Duke of Brunswick, as her successor and Biron as his regent.
However, Peter the Great’s daughter Elizabeth seized the throne in 1741, assisted by the Preobrazhensky Regiment, an elite regiment of the Russian army formed by her father in the late 17th century, which distinguished itself during the Great Northern War.
She reigned for twenty years and was much more effective than her immediate predecessors (the regency of Biron was marked by high taxes and other economic issues, not to mention the fact that his German origins gave Russians the feeling of losing their independence). Her reign was marked by major cultural and scientific events, such as the foundation of Moscow University (1755) and the Imperial Academy of Arts (1757), along with the emergence of Russia’s first leading scholar, Mikhail Lomonosov . She also ordered the construction of the Smolny Cathedral and the modernization of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg (at a cost of 2,500,000 rubles just for the Winter Palace)
Her administration partly followed Peter I’s legacy, as they restored the Governing Senate’s powers and abolished capital punishment but also followed Elizabeth predecessors’ efforts to increase the nobility’s control over the serfs, who now needed their landlord’s approval to marry. Under a new law, nobles were also allowed to exile their serfs to Siberia.
Regarding foreign policy, Sweden ceded the southern part of Finland located east of the river Kymmene, which became the boundary between the two states Russia ( Treaty of Abo , 1743). This success has been credited to the diplomatic skills of Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin , the new vice chancellor, who represented the anti-Franco-Prussian wing of her council. His aim was to bring about an alliance with England and Austria. That’s certainly why Louis XV and Frederick II of Prussia made several attempts to get rid of him, without success. Then, Russia took part in the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War from 1755 to 1762, the first one under an alliance with Austria and Great Britain against Prussia and France and the second one under an alliance with Austria and France against Prussia and Great Britain. Bestuzhev was the main Russian diplomat at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) which put an end the War of Austrian Succession. He managed to take Russia out of the Swedish imbroglio, enabled Russia to assert herself in Sweden, Turkey and Poland while isolating Frederick II and improving diplomatic relations between Elizabeth and the courts of London and Vienna. Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin
In 1758, he got fired, without reason according to the future Catherine II : “He was relieved of all his decorations and rank, without a soul being able to reveal for what crimes or transgressions the first gentleman of the Empire was so despoiled, and sent back to his house as a prisoner.” [21] Nevertheless, the identity of his foes was well known: the French and Austrian ambassadors, but also Vice-Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov (who also took part in the previous plot against Bestuzhev, known as the Lopukhina Conspiracy, which was designed by Jean de Lestocq, who was earlier part of the coup d’état which brought Elizabeth to the throne).
The Seven Year’s War was rather successful for Russia but ended suddenly as a result of mounting financial difficulties and the empress’ death in 1762. Her successor, Peter III , grandson of Peter the Great, took Russia out of the war.
Still, his reign was short and unpopular, especially within the clergy which was expropriated, while the serfs working on its lands were freed. Peter III also proclaimed religious freedom, which has been seen as a challenge to the authority of the Orthodox Church. Besides, he made huge territorial concessions to Prussia and even signed an alliance with Frederick II. Russian troops were soon deployed against Austria. This dramatic diplomatic shift led to a new balance of powers in Europe.
Furthermore, Peter III’s national policy didn’t match at all the interests of the elite: he abolished the secret police set up by his grandfather, fought corruption within the administration and introduced public interest litigation (i.e. the possibility of conducting a lawsuit to defend the public interest). He also established the first state bank in Russia, thus rejecting the nobility’s monopoly on money creation and trade. Regarding economic policy, he supported mercantilism by forbidding the import of sugar and other products that could be found in Russia. Thereby, he carried out to some extent a westernization of Russian society. But Peter III’s wife, Catherine, took advantage of his unpopularity to set up a coup d’état against him with the help of her lover’s brother, Alexey Orlov, who murdered him in 1762.
The new empress took the name of Catherine II and Peter’s assassination marked the end of the era of palace revolutions. The Reign of Catherine II
The Russian Enlightenment began under the reign of Elizabeth, who the establishment of the Moscow University and the Imperial Academy of Arts. However, the movement received a significant boost under the reign of Catherine the Great . She considered herself as an enlightened despot, claiming to be especially influenced by the ideas of Montesquieu and Voltaire. She even had an extended correspondence with the latter. In this perspective, she continued the westernization of Russian society undertook by Peter III, and supported burgeoning manufactures. [22] Catherine the Great
Catherine II’s political reforms went beyond improving Russia’s bureaucracy developed under Peter the Great, contrary to what has been said by her opponents, who claimed that her adherence to the Enlightenment was just a pretext to expand her power.
Indeed, she established state-run primary schools, which provided basic education, exalted patriotism and innovation but most importantly, in 1767 she wrote a statement of legal principles called Nakaz (which means Instruction), clearly influenced by the ideas of the French Enlightenment, in order to replace the Sobornoye Ulozheniye , which was the legal code established in 1649 by the Zemsky Sobor under the reign of Alexey I. It proclaimed the equality of all men before the law, disapproved torture and death penalty, thus anticipating some of the issues raised by the later United States Constitution. By the way, a less known predecessor of the American Constitution has been the Corsican Constitution drafted by Pasquale Paoli in 1755, mainly inspired by the ideas of Rousseau. [23]
Some of Catherine II’s advisors suggested creating a council to regulate legislation but this proposal was firmly rejected, and when she feared that she was beginning to lose some authority she reverted to the ways of the past: autocratic rule. Officially, she ruled with the Senate but it possessed no legislative powers. She also bolstered the grip of the nobility over the nation’s affairs. Indeed, nobles no longer had to serve the central government, as the law had required since Peter the Great’s time, and many of them received major roles in provincial governments.
Catherine had a paradoxical thought: on the one hand she proved to have been deeply inspired by contemporary French philosophers but on the other hand she consolidated autocratism. A famous illustration of this is the treatment received by Alexander Radishchev, a social critic who was exiled to Siberia due to his pamphlet against the regime, entitled Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow (1790). [24]. In 1773, she also crushed a major peasant uprising led by a Cossack named Pugachev, who managed to take the city of Kazan before being defeated. Operational map of the Russo-Turkish war in 1768-1774
Regarding foreign policy, Catherine II successfully waged war against a weaker Ottoman Empire and advanced Russia’s southern boundary to the Black Sea. In 1774, the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji gave the regions of Yinsdale, Kerch and parts of the Yesidan region to Russia, which also assumed military protectorship of the Crimean Khanate and became the formal protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In 1783, Catherine took control the Crimea, helping to spark another War with the Ottoman Empire four years later. In 1792, Russia expanded southward to the Dniestr river through the Treaty of Jassy , thereby annexing most of the Yesidan region. This treaty almost achieved the empress’ “Greek Project” which consisted in renewing a Byzantine Empire under Russian control, after having thrown the Ottomans out of south-eastern Europe.
Russia also expanded westward thanks to the increasing weakness of Poland. Indeed, Catherine signed an alliance with Prussia and Austria to share the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although the partitioning of Poland greatly added to Russia’s territory and prestige, it also meant a common border with both Austria and Prussia, which were two potential competitors for hegemony over Eastern and Central Europe. Moreover, the empire became more difficult to control because of a more ethnically heterogeneous population. For instance, Catholic Poles staged several uprisings against the Russian occupation, while Jews were deported to the western part of the empire, thus paving the way for anti-Jewish policies later. In 1791, the same three powers abrogated the Polish Constitution of 1791 under the pretext of fearing the emergence of radicalism, an excuse also used to acquire further territories from Poland (Russia was now in control of most of Ukraine and Belarus). This new partition led to the Kościuszko Uprising in Poland, which ended with the third partition of the country in 1795.
By the time of her death in 1796, Catherine’s expansionist policy had definitely turned Russia into a major European power. This new role drove the Russian empire into a series of wars against the other major European force, the Napoleonic empire, which also claimed hegemony over Europe, and this had far-reaching consequences for Russia and the rest of Europe. Russia under Alexander I
In 1812, Napoleon made a huge mistake when he declared war on Russia after an argument with the new emperor, Alexander I , who ascended the throne after the murder of his father in 1801. Unprepared for winter warfare, thousands of French troops were killed by the Russian regular army, which also received a significant help from peasants, despite all the pro-nobility policies implemented ever since the reign of Anna Ioannovna (traditional French assertions that Napoleon was defeated by the General Frost in Russia look naive but… face-saving – OR)
After having defeated Napoleon on the eastern front, Alexander became known as the “savior of Europe” and this status enabled him to join the Congress of Vienna (1815), which was to redraw the map of Europe, on a comfortable diplomatic position. Russia was given most of the Duchy of Warsaw, called “Congress Poland”, and was also allowed to keep Finland, which it had annexed from Sweden six years ago. France and Great Britain refused the original plan advocated by Alexander I and approved by von Hardenberg, who represented Prussia, under which Prussia would trade her polish territories for Saxony. The French and British diplomats refused the deal because Poland would not serve as a buffer state between the two East-European powers anymore. [25]
But the most important consequence of the Congress of Vienna is not even the reshaping of Europe: it opened the tradition of oligarchic diplomacy, as only five powers (Austria, Russia, Prussia, Great-Britain and France) met to discuss the future of world relations. In an important essay, Bertrand Badie showed that the international system didn’t evolve so much since 1815, the G8 and NATO having replaced the Concert in his role of Directory of the World. [26]
Regarding domestic policy, Alexander I’s main achievement has been to bring Russia close to a constitutional monarchy, with the help of his main advisor, Mikhail Speransky . Indeed, the State Council was created in order to improve technique of legislation with the intention of making it the Second Chamber of representative legislature and the Governing Senate was reorganized as the Supreme Court of the Empire. He also introduced political responsibility to the crown for his ministers. A constitution project was stopped in 1810, due to growing resistance from the conservative nobility, especially from Nikolai Karamzin (a famous historian) and also because the Napoleonic wars became the major issue facing the Empire. Conclusion
Part 2 of this series detailed how Russia progressively asserted herself on the international stage. Hopefully, it would have pointed out the complexity of Russian politics during the period studied.
The country expanded dramatically, saw the implementation of various law codes quite advanced regarding the standards of the time, consolidated his nature of multicultural nation but also roughly repressed opponents to the imperial regime.
In a nutshell, Imperial Russia relied on a combination of principles of the Enlightenment and conservative ideas, expressed by the charismatic statesmen of the Romanov Dynasty, who established the Russian identity on the global stage. The long hesitation between autocratism and a constitutional monarchy, as well as the continuous decrease of the influence of the clergy on politics in favor of the nobility are there to remind of the complex, paradoxical situation of Russian society.
Part 3 will be dedicated to the progressive downfall of the dynasty, until its abdication in 1917, opening a new era, the one of Soviet Russia. Russian Empire at the beginning of XIX century
Julien Paolantoni is a Credit Risk Consultant for Natixis in Paris. He graduated from Sciences Po Bordeaux (MA International Affairs) and the University of Bordeaux (BA Public Law & Political Science, BSc Economics & Management). He can be reached at
ENDNOTES:
[1] Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, Penguin Books, revised edition, 1997
[2] Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), “Muscovy” in Russia: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1996
[3] Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1992
[4] Janet Martin, Medieval Russia: 980-1584, Cambridge University Press, 2008
[5] William Urban, “The Origin of the Livonian War”, Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences , vol. 29, 1983
[6] R. G. Skrynnikov, Ivan the Terrible, Academic International Press, 1981
[7] George Vernadsky, A History of Russia, Yale University Press, 1961
[8] Chester S. L. Dunning, Russia’s first civil war: The Time of Troubles and the founding of the Romanov dynasty, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001
[9] Sergey Solovyov, History of Russia from the Earliest Times, Academic International Press, 1997
[10] Chester S. L. Dunning, op. cit.
[11] Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), op. cit.
[12] Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China, Cambridge University Press, 1979
[13] Cynthia H. Whittaker, “The Reforming Tsar: The Redefinition of Autocratic Duty in Eighteenth Century Russia”, Slavic Review , vol. 51, 1992
[14] Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire, Harper Perennial, 1979
[15] Paul Dukes, A History of Russia: Medieval, Modern, Contemporary, Duke University Press, 3rd edition, 1997
[16] Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia, Oxford University Press, 8th edition, 2010
[17] Walter G. Moss, A History of Russia, Vol. 1: To 1917, Anthem Press, 2003
[18] Catherine Evtuhov, David Goldfrank, Lindsey Hughes and Richard Stites, A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces, Wadsworth Publishing, 2003
[19] Alan Wood, The Romanov Empire: 1613-1917, Bloomsbury USA, 2007
[20] Gregory L. Freeze, Russia: A History, Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 2009
[21] Robert K. Massie, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, Random House, 2011 [22] James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe : An Interpretive History of Russian Culture, Vintage, 1970 [23] Dorothy Carrington, “The Corsican Constitution of Pasquale Paoli (1755–1769)”, The English Historical Review , 1973 [24] David M. Lang, The First Russian Radical: Alexander Radischev, 1749-1802, Greenwood-Heinemann Publishing, 1977 [25] Adam Zamoyski, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, Harper Perennial, 2008 [26] Bertrand Badie, La diplomatie de connivence: les derives oligarchiques du système international, La découverte, 2011 RELATED POSTS | 1 |
Several mainstream media outlets have linked sluggish first quarter economic growth to President Donald Trump, who presided over just seventy of the first ninety days of the year. But back when the economy shrank considerably during the first quarter of the Obama administration, there was no attempt to link the contraction to the president. [The Commerce Department reported last week that Gross Domestic Product only grew 0. 7 percent during the first quarter of 2017, following a gain of 2. 1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016. The Associated Press claimed that the slow GDP growth in the beginning of 2017 “marks the first quarterly economic report card for President Donald Trump, who has vowed to rev up the U. S. economy. ” “Americans say they feel more optimistic about the economy since President Trump was elected,” The New York Times wrote on April 28, “but they certainly are not acting that way, and that is shaping up to be a challenge for his administration. ” Bloomberg added to the chorus of outlets that expressed pessimism about the economy under President Trump’s first 100 days. “The U. S. economy is in better shape than Friday’s figures will probably indicate,” Sho Chandra and Patricia Laya wrote, “but getting the growth that President Donald Trump wants is becoming even more difficult. ” But the media was singing a different tune during President Obama’s first 100 days. Despite the slow growth that occurred at the outset of 2009, the outlets that linked President Trump to poor GDP performance failed to hold President Obama to the same standard. “The Commerce Department reported last week that Gross Domestic Product only grew 0. 7 percent during the first quarter of 2017, following a gain of 2. 1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016,” the New York Times reported in 2009. The only mention of President Obama in the article was a reference to Paul Volcker that identified him as an adviser to the president. In early 2009, Associated Press reporter Liz Sidoti, and likely in response to concerns over less than desirable economic performance, heaped lavish but meaningless praise on President Obama. “It didn’t take long for Barack Obama — for all his youth and inexperience — to get acclimated to his new role as the calming leader of a country in crisis,” she wrote. “Rookie jitters? Far from it. ” He spoke in “firm, yet soothing tones. ” He used a “ approach. ” He “displayed wonkish tendencies, too,” and “engaged in witty batter,” and on foreign policy, he “struck a statesmanlike stance. ” On April 29, 2009, The Washington Post, without mention of the slow GDP growth, said Obama had “moved quickly to strengthen the U. S. economy, refine the American strategy in two foreign wars and reverse detention and interrogation policies that have drawn condemnation at home and abroad. ” An extensive blog prepared by The New York Times that covered President Obama’s first 100 days in office failed to mention GDP growth even once. The blog, which was written by five presidential biographers, covers a wide range of topics including foreign policy, the economy, and the president’s interactions with congress. Investor’s Business Daily was unable to “find mainstream media critiques of Obama’s policies early in 2009,” claiming that “there were virtually none. ” Although the economy was contracting in the early months of Obama’s presidency, “no one blamed him for that. Instead, there was lavish praise, even as he stumbled from error to error. They blamed Bush. ” If anything, “lavish praise” may be an understatement. On February 20, 2009, ABC Nightline Terry Moran argued that “in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval office. ” Katie Couric came out in full support of Barack Obama’s early stimulus package proposal, citing a survey that claimed that slightly more than half of Americans supported the proposal. Couric used this survey to ask Leader John Boehner why congressional Republicans wouldn’t support the policy. “A recent CBS News poll shows that 53 percent of the American people fully backs the stimulus package, 63 percent of people we polled thought the Republican opposition to the stimulus package was for political reasons. So, are you out of touch with the American people? … Do you think the Republicans are digging themselves in a hole by not being more supportive of the President’s proposals?” Couric asked. The policies enacted in President Obama’s first 100 days cost a whopping 141 times what President Trump’s first new policies have cost. According to an analysis from the American Action Forum, President Trump’s new regulations have cost a mere $28 million in comparison the $4 billion enacted by President Obama in the same period. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
OAKLAND, Calif. — The charred, roofless shell of the Ghost Ship, the warehouse where 36 people perished on a chilly Friday evening in early December, is clearly visible from the driveway of Oakland firehouse No. 13. Though the warehouse sits less than 200 yards away, the firehouse’s proximity did nothing to help prevent America’s deadliest structural fire in more than a decade. For years before the Dec. 2 fire, the Ghost Ship may just as well have been invisible to the Oakland Fire Department. Raucous parties. Frequent complaints by neighbors. Calls summoning firefighters to put out fires at nearby properties. None of these triggered an inspection of the warehouse by the crew at the firehouse a short block away. A criminal investigation led by the Alameda County district attorney is now underway into the liability of the owner of the property, the master tenant who essentially ran the warehouse, and others. But dozens of interviews and a review of documents show that the fire was a disaster waiting to happen, a deadly mix of a flawed safety inspection system and a shortage of affordable housing that led tenants to live in a building that was never intended to be a residence. Once the fire erupted, people were trapped in a cluttered warehouse with just two exits. The two city agencies responsible for examining the safety of Oakland’s structures, the Building Department and the Fire Department, hadn’t inspected the Ghost Ship in 30 years. The database that fire officials use to track properties in need of inspections is outdated, resulting in a process that is haphazard at best. Beyond a list of buildings mandated by the state, the city of Oakland leaves it up to the Fire Department to determine which commercial buildings should be inspected and how often. But the city’s website, which laid out details of the program, was altered after the fire, deleting a passage that called for mandatory annual inspections of all commercial buildings. The entry was also changed to say that when inspections occur, they should take place “approximately” every two years. Until last spring, the department had had no fire marshal in about three years. The department remains significantly understaffed, with 62 vacancies, despite adequate funding. Though people were living in the warehouse in clear view of neighbors and the authorities, they were living there illegally the structure was registered with the county as a warehouse, not a residence. Oakland’s housing crisis has spurred people across the city to live in unsafe places. Also illegal were the concert and party, which were never registered with the city. All but one of the people who died in the fire was attending the party on the second floor, a part of the building that was particularly difficult to escape from. Oakland’s fire chief, Teresa Deloach Reed, defended her department in an interview at headquarters this week. “We’ve been doing what we always did, and up to this point it worked,” she said. “But now we’ve discovered that maybe what we’ve been doing is not working. ” Chief Deloach Reed, however, rejected blame for the fire. When pressed, she offered, “Possibly we fell short in regards to this incident. ” She also acknowledged that in hindsight, the building should have come under more scrutiny. Chief Deloach Reed said she was aware that the city’s website had been altered to remove mention of mandatory annual inspections and described it as a belated update reflecting a policy change that occurred around two years ago. “The website was not accurate,” she said. “It had to be changed in order to reflect really what was going on. ” The database that alerts the department about what buildings to inspect was initially compiled around 15 years ago by firefighters who drove around and drew up lists of businesses, the chief said. But in a measure of confusion over the issue, employees and owners of businesses near the Ghost Ship, including a grocery store, a dry cleaner and a fire extinguisher vendor, all said firefighters inspected their facilities annually. They questioned why the Ghost Ship was not inspected, too. Alex Aguilar, the manager at Kick City, a nearby shoe store, said that in the three years he has worked at the business, firefighters had come by for an inspection every year. Chief Deloach Reed said the department was not equipped to inspect all commercial facilities every year. “We don’t have enough resources,” she said. But Rebecca Kaplan, a member of the Oakland City Council, said, “There are multiple positions that are in the budget that have been funded but that are vacant. ” Appearing tense but the chief said that the 62 positions that had been budgeted but yet not filled as of November remained vacant because the hiring process can take months. The Fire Department is currently drafting its report on the fire, with input from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Alexandria Corneiro, a spokeswoman for the agency’s San Francisco field division. Once completed, the report will be given to the district attorney’s office. A fixture of the neighborhood of Fruitvale, the building that housed the Ghost Ship was first constructed in 1930, according to county records. It sat amid factories, mills and beer gardens established by the neighborhood’s many immigrants. Al Garcia, a longtime resident, recalled that it was part of a milk bottling plant owned by Dairy Rich in the 1950s and 1960s, then served as a warehouse for copper and pipes. Chor Nar Siu Ng bought the building in 1988, also acquiring a lot to its south and a building to its north. In the years that followed, the city began fining her for what it called “nuisance or substandard or hazardous or injurious” conditions at the lot and the building. From 2005 to 2014, Ms. Ng paid at least $26, 570. 20 in “code enforcement” fees to the city for the empty lot. Five complaints were lodged with the Building Department between 2014 and 2016 about unsafe conditions on both properties. But the department, headed by Darin Ranelletti and charged with following up on public complaints, said that while inspectors had visited the site none had actually entered the building in 30 years. He said the department needs an owner’s permission to enter a building. Mr. Ranelletti said that an inspector visited the warehouse lot on Nov. 17 and 18 in response to two complaints, but was “unable to get visual access” to the property. The inspector had scheduled another visit for next month, on Jan. 16. Property records indicate that Ms. Ng owns roughly 10 properties in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of them in Oakland. In an interview, one woman who rented from her for about 20 years, Griselda Ceja, said she complained repeatedly about a space overrun by rats and a faulty electrical system that caused the circuit box to spark regularly. Ms. Ng has not responded to requests for comment. Ms. Ng began renting the warehouse to an artist named Derick Ion Almena in 2013. As the master tenant, he served as a kind of de facto landlord, illegally subleasing the space for events like the party on Dec. 2. A lawyer, Tony Serra, announced in a statement on Monday that he would be representing Mr. Almena, who did not respond to interview requests. Mr. Almena packed the building with antiques and oddities, moved his wife and three children into an upstairs compound, and began renting downstairs space for roughly $600 a head — a bargain in a city where the median rent for a has risen to almost $2, 500 a month. The Ghost Ship was one of dozens of warehouses across the city. Since the fire, these have come under heavy scrutiny. Tenants report emergency inspections from landlords and city inspectors. Still, with so many people living in these spaces, Oakland is trying to strike a difficult balance: keeping residents safe without making them homeless. Rents have jumped 70 percent in five years, faster than in any big city in the nation. The Ghost Ship housed musicians, jewelry makers and others. It also grew to include complex vines of electrical cords, and power failures became a frequent problem. Oakland’s scattershot fire inspection system stands in contrast with that of neighboring Berkeley, which inspects “almost everything except residences,” said Steve Riggs, deputy fire marshal in Berkeley. Warehouses are inspected regardless of whether they are empty, he said. On the night of the Oakland fire, Griffin Madden arrived at the Ghost Ship with his best friend from college, David Cline. Mr. Madden had graduated a year before from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied philosophy and Slavic literature and languages. He was also an D. J. known for throwing parties with his sister Sky. The Ghost Ship party was held without any permit from the city. It was promoted on Facebook as an event featuring artists from a Los Angeles music label called 100% Silk. And the gathering’s secret location was announced at the last minute. After dark, Mr. Madden and Mr. Cline climbed the rickety staircase that led to the Ghost Ship’s second floor. The dance area was soon filled with familiar faces in Oakland’s underground art scene. The music was . By 11:15 the party was just getting going. The room was cluttered and dark. It smelled of marijuana and cigarettes. The first indication of the fire was a new smell, like a firecracker. A group illuminated the floor with iPhones to look for the source, and saw wisps of smoke coming up through the cracks. About a people made their way to the stairs, and told others to as well. But for most it would be too late. In the space of a few minutes, the faint firecracker smell had become a black cloud. In her studio downstairs, Carmen Brito woke up from a nap choking on smoke. She believes she was the first to notice the fire, which came from the back of the lower part of the building — and by then, she said, flames had already engulfed an entire wall. Ms. Brito ran from the building and dialed 911 at 11:23. Another resident of the warehouse, Nikki Kelber, ran toward Engine No. 13, the fire station a short block away. “I was screaming at the top of my lungs: ‘Fire! Fire! Fire! ’” Ms. Kelber said. Before she arrived at the firehouse, she saw the station’s door rolling open. The Fire Department says the first truck arrived within three minutes of receiving the first 911 call. Upstairs in the dance area, a resident named Aaron Marin saw flames licking up from behind the D. J. booth. Alarmed, he turned to the point of entry — the wooden staircase — which was blocked by confused partygoers. Mr. Marin said he yelled for people to head to a kitchen window. “I’m saying: ‘Kitchen! Kitchen! Kitchen window!’ The whole place goes black,” Mr. Marin said. “ I’m still screaming: ‘Kitchen! Kitchen! Kitchen window!’ as loud as I can. No one can hear. You can’t even hear, that’s how loud the piercing screams were. ” Then, he said, the cries went silent. Mr. Marin, gasping, reached the window, he said, hoisted himself out and dropped — landing on dirt two stories below. Darin White, the deputy chief of the Oakland Fire Department who helped coordinate efforts to put out the fire, said smoke would have overpowered the victims after just a few gulps. “It doesn’t take very long once you’ve inhaled some superheated gas to be overcome,” he said. It was not until 4:36 a. m. about five hours after the fire was detected, that Deputy Chief White declared the fire under control. It would be a week before Mike Madden learned that his son, Griffin, was dead. He called the coroner’s office, which told him that Griffin’s remains had been found. Mr. Madden lays some of the responsibility for the disaster on Mr. Almena and Ms. Ng. But ultimately, he said, he thinks the city should have done more to protect his son and others. “I believe if people had been doing their jobs, this would have never happened,” he said. “It’s not an accident or a mistake. People weren’t doing their jobs. ” City officials have expressed their sorrow at the loss of life, but Mr. Madden said he had yet to hear from them. But what he really wants to know, he said, is this: “What’s being done to stop the next one?” | 1 |
The Italian writer Italo Calvino defined a classic as “a book that’s never finished saying what it has to say. ” This year, The Times’s daily critics reviewed nearly 250 titles. What follows are their lists of the fiction and nonfiction books that most moved, excited and enlightened them in 2016 — books that, in their own ways, are perhaps not finished saying what they have to say. The New York Times has three daily book critics: Michiko Kakutani, Dwight Garner and Jennifer Senior. Because they review different titles, it is impossible for them to compile a single unanimous Top 10 list. They have favorites, however, and are happy to have a chance to list them here. There is also a list from Janet Maslin, who has stepped down from reviewing but remains a frequent contributor of reviews to The Times. The critics have presented their lists in rough order of preference. ‘MOONGLOW’ By Michael Chabon (Harper). Told as a faux memoir, this moving novel recounts the story of the narrator’s grandfather: a Augie hero — a former soldier who’s also a dreamer, roughneck, pool shark and jailbird, by turns naïve and proud, impulsive and romantic. Mr. Chabon is one of the most gifted prose stylists at work today, and he writes here with both easy lyricism and caffeinated ardor, capturing his hero’s love affair with a French refugee (who becomes his wife) and his growing obsession with the moon shot and the space race. Through the lives of these two World War II survivors, he gives us an indelible portrait of one family and America’s lurching progress through the 20th century. (Read the review.) ‘HITLER: ASCENT, ’ By Volker Ullrich (Alfred A. Knopf). How did a man described as a “ rascal” and “pathetic dunderhead” rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? Why did millions of ordinary Germans embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this “most unlikely pretender to high state office” assume complete control of a once democratic country and set it on a monstrous course through history? In this insightful and revealing biography, Mr. Ullrich shows how Hitler used an arsenal of demagogic tools (lies, fake promises, theatrical rallies, mantralike phrases) to exploit a “constellation of crises” in War I Germany, including economic woes, unemployment and political dysfunction. He argues that Hitler’s rise was not inevitable but that his domestic adversaries failed to appreciate his ruthlessness, while foreign statesmen naïvely believed that they could control his aggression. His book shows just how the unthinkable can happen. (Read the review.) ‘NIGHT SKY WITH EXIT WOUNDS’ By Ocean Vuong (Copper Canyon Press). These fierce, startling poems capture the history of prejudice in America (where “trees the weight of history”) and the hopes and fears that bring immigrants to its shores. Mr. Vuong — who was born on a rice farm outside Saigon in 1988 and was the first in his immediate family to learn to read — writes with a musical appreciation for the sound and rhythm of words. He has a talent for capturing stories and memories (like those of his grandmother, who remembers the fall of Saigon) in unexpected and searing images, and uses the magic of language here to turn “bones to sonatas” and by pressing pen to paper, to touch his family “back from extinction. ” (Read the review.) ‘LAB GIRL’ By Hope Jahren (Alfred A. Knopf). The geobiologist Hope Jahren possesses the two attributes Nabokov deemed essential to the writer: “the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist. ” Her memoir communicates the electric excitement of a scientific discovery the discipline and tedium involved in conducting experiments and the arduous, sometimes thrilling experience of fieldwork. The volume is, at once, an enthralling account of her discovery of her vocation, and a gifted teacher’s guidebook to the secret lives of plants — a book that should do for botany what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology, and what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology. (Read the review.) ‘THE NORTH WATER’ By Ian McGuire (Henry Holt). This novel about a whaling expedition is as gory as Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” as darkly melodramatic as a classic Jacobean drama. Its villain, Henry Drax, is a monster, reminiscent of the demonic Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy’s operatic masterpiece “Blood Meridian” and the sadistic bully Wolf Larsen in Jack London’s “The ” and its plot reverberates with echoes of “” “Lord Jim” and “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. ” Thanks to its author’s gifts as a writer, however, the novel never reads like a literary homage, but instead emerges as a gripping and original act of bravura storytelling that immerses us in a Darwinian world that is as unforgiving as it is bloody. (Read the review.) ‘BORN A CRIME: STORIES FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN CHILDHOOD’ By Trevor Noah (Spiegel Grau). Best known as the host of “The Daily Show,” Mr. Noah brings to his comedy an outsider’s gift for observation and an instinctive radar for the absurdities of life. His sense of humor was forged during his childhood in South Africa, where he grew up the son of a Xhosa mother and a father — a relationship whose very existence violated that country’s racial laws during the apartheid era. Mr. Noah gives us a harrowing understanding of what it was like to grow up in a society where questions of race permeated every aspect of daily life, and at the same time has written a deeply affecting love letter to his mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, a remarkable woman who was determined that her son “be free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. ” (Read the review.) ‘THE RETURN: FATHERS, SONS AND THE LAND IN BETWEEN’ By Hisham Matar (Random House). The author’s father, Jaballa Matar, a leading Libyan dissident, was kidnapped in 1990 by agents for that country’s dictator Muammar and sent to the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. In this beautifully chiseled book, the younger Mr. Matar chronicles his search for his missing father, whose absence has haunted him for decades. It’s a detective story of sorts, with Mr. Matar trying to piece together what happened to his father after his arrest. It’s also a story of exile — how the author, his brother and their mother tried to invent new lives for themselves abroad — and a story of what’s happened in Libya and the Middle East, as hopes fostered by the Arab Spring crashed and burned in one country after another. (Read the review.) ‘NUTSHELL’ By Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese). It sounds like a ridiculous premise: a novel narrated by a talking fetus who’s a kind of Hamlet in utero — a (or as the case may be) who eavesdrops on the affair between his mother, Trudy, and his Uncle Claude. It’s a tribute to Mr. McEwan’s inventiveness and sleight of hand that he turns this incongruous setup into a small tour de force that showcases his gifts as a writer — his authority, his imaginative verve, his sly delight in the gymnastics words can perform — while conjuring the uncertainties of a contemporary world, troubled by social upheaval, new and old inequities and unexpected political change. (Read the review.) ‘THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD’ By Colson Whitehead (Doubleday). In this haunting novel, Mr. Whitehead turns the Underground Railroad from a metaphor into an actual train that ferries fugitives north. In doing so, he’s written a potent, hallucinatory novel that leaves us with a devastating understanding of the terrible human costs of slavery. He’s found an elastic voice that accommodates both brute realism and fablelike allegory, the and the poetic — a voice that enables him to convey the emotional fallout of slavery with raw, shocking power, reminding us, in Faulkner’s words: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past. ” (Read the review.) ‘THE REVENGE OF ANALOG: REAL THINGS AND WHY THEY MATTER’ By David Sax (PublicAffairs). In this captivating book, the reporter David Sax provides an entertaining account of how analog technologies are enjoying a spirited revival: vinyl record sales are booming, cameras have caught on among millennials and their younger siblings, and paper notebooks and erasable whiteboards have become a option in many Silicon Valley offices. In an increasingly digital age, Mr. Sax reminds us of the human craving for tactile, physical things, and the persistence of the real. (Read the review.) Follow Michiko Kakutani on Twitter: @michikokakutani ‘THE SPORT OF KINGS’ By C. E. Morgan (Farrar, Straus Giroux). This ravishing and ambitious novel, set in Kentucky, is a epic. The author has a special and almost Darwinian interest in consanguinity, in the barbed things that are passed on in the blood of people and of horses, like curses, from generation to generation. (Read the review.) ‘WHAT BELONGS TO YOU’ By Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus Giroux). This short, incandescent first novel opens as two men meet in a public bathroom beneath the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Thus begins a complicated relationship, so tangled that it allows the talented Mr. Greenwell to parse the largest questions about human loyalty, compassion and desire. (Read the review.) ‘WHITE TRASH: THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF CLASS IN AMERICA’ By Nancy Isenberg (Viking). Ms. Isenberg retells United States history in a manner that not only includes the weak, the powerless and the stigmatized but places them front and center. As such, she has written an eloquent volume that is more discomforting and more necessary than a semitrailer filled with new biographies of the founding fathers and the most beloved presidents. (Read the review.) ‘BORN TO RUN’ By Bruce Springsteen (Simon Schuster). Mr. Springsteen’s memoir is big, loose, rangy and intensely satisfying. It has not been utterly sanitized for anyone’s protection, and it is closely observed from end to end, especially on subjects like sex, art and social class. The Boss could have phoned this book in. He didn’t. (Read the review.) ‘COLLECTED POEMS ’ By Rita Dove (Norton). Ms. Dove, a former poet laureate of the United States, writes poems that have earthiness, originality, power and range. There are so many casual pleasures in her work that the precision and dexterity — the darkness, too — can catch you unawares. This is a major collection. (Read the review.) ‘ALBERT MURRAY: COLLECTED ESSAYS AND MEMOIRS’ By Albert Murray (Library of America). This is a plump and welcome volume from a seminal American critic. Murray’s great subject was the primacy of jazz and the blues in American cultural life. He built complex arguments about how these forms were vastly more than untutored improvisation, and about how music allowed black people to tell their story in ways that literature often could not. This is an enormous book that feels intimate. (Read the review.) ‘HERE I AM’ By Jonathan Safran Foer (Farrar, Straus Giroux). Mr. Foer’s first novel in 11 years is a divorce novel and a novel and running below the narrative, like a headline news ticker, is a plausible dystopian nightmare. I was too hard on this book in my review. It has stuck with me. Its observations are crisp its jokes are funny its intimations of doom resonate. (Read the review.) ‘KENNETH CLARK: LIFE, ART AND ‘CIVILISATION’ By James Stourton (Knopf). Mr. Clark was a figure of cultural life in Britain during the 20th century. An art historian, he was the crusading director of the National Portrait Gallery during World War II and later the erudite host of the pathbreaking BBC series “Civilisation. ” This biography tells his complicated story with sensitivity, grace and wit. (Read the review.) ‘ALL THAT MAN IS’ By David Szalay (Graywolf). Mr. Szalay writes with voluptuous authority. His collection of subtly linked short stories — the title is deeply ironic — is about masculinity under duress. This meticulous and persuasive book is a vehicle for pain and insult. It’s about invidious distinctions, the ways men compare themselves to other men and come up short. (Read the review.) ‘THEY CAN’T KILL US ALL: FERGUSON, BALTIMORE, AND A NEW ERA IN AMERICA’S RACIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT’ By Wesley Lowery (Little, Brown). Mr. Lowery has written an electric book about the shootings of unarmed black men by the police. His account is well reported, plainly told and evidently the work of a man who has not grown a callus on his heart. It contains a great deal of reporting, yet never feels like a data dump. (Read the review.) Follow Dwight Garner on Twitter: @DwightGarner ‘EVICTED: POVERTY AND PROFIT IN THE AMERICAN CITY’ By Matthew Desmond (Crown). I’ve come to think of “Evicted” as a comet book — the sort of thing that swings around only every so often, and is, for those who’ve experienced it, pretty much impossible to forget. It regally combines policy reporting and ethnography, following eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to find that most basic human necessity: shelter. After reading “Evicted,” you’ll realize you cannot have a serious conversation about poverty without talking about housing. You will also have the mad urge to press it into the hands of every elected official you meet. The book is that good, and it’s that unignorable. Nothing else this year came close. (Read the review.) ‘IN THE DARKROOM’ By Susan Faludi (Metropolitan Books). An absolute stunner of a memoir from Ms. Faludi, whose father, a survivor of the Holocaust, decided at 76 to have a operation. Ms. Faludi has spent a lifetime interrogating conventions of gender, which makes her the ideal narrator for such a story, told with equal parts skepticism and sympathy. Who knew she’d find the ultimate subject under her own roof? (Read the review.) ‘HILLBILLY ELEGY: A MEMOIR OF A FAMILY AND CULTURE IN CRISIS’ By J. D. Vance (Harper). A compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that helped power the presidential victory of Donald J. Trump, written by a young man who knows whereof he speaks. You may quarrel with Mr. Vance’s conclusions — he holds his hillbilly kin personally responsible for much of what ails them — but the love he feels for his culture is palpable, and his book is intelligible to Democrats and Republicans alike. Imagine that. (Read the review.) ‘COMMONWEALTH’ By Ann Patchett (Harper). An exquisite novel about escaping the cage of childhood, which for some involves more tools and a stronger crowbar than your average jailbreak. The pain and challenges of marriage, parenthood, blended families — all are subjects Ms. Patchett explores with her customary sensitivity so, too, is the redemptive power of art. Be prepared to cry uncontrollably on Page 297. (Read the review.) ‘THE ARAB OF THE FUTURE 2: A CHILDHOOD IN THE MIDDLE EAST, ’ By Riad Sattouf, translated by Sam Taylor (Metropolitan Books). The second installment of the exuberantly heretical graphic memoir of Mr. Sattouf, a cartoonist who once had a weekly comic strip in Charlie Hebdo. This volume focuses on his first year of school in Ter Maaleh, Syria. The children remain little beasts his father remains a baron of bluster and a deluded idealist, still smitten with the promise of . His mother tolerates it, but you can already see where their family life is headed — south — which will inevitably mean moving north, to France. (Read the review.) ‘DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING’ By Madeleine Thien (Norton). Here are the opening two lines of Ms. Thien’s gorgeous, sorrowful novel about the horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: “In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. ” They reel you in, and you never stop reading. A whole world of embattled classical musicians and brave dissidents pops in three dimensions. (Read the review.) ‘BLOOD AT THE ROOT: A RACIAL CLEANSING IN AMERICA’ By Patrick Phillips (Norton). Stories of savage racism and judicial burlesque were depressingly common in the Jim Crow South, but the tale this book tells is far more astonishing than most: In response to one girl’s murder — almost certainly not committed by the three black suspects who were hanged for it — the residents of Forsyth County, Ga. drove out all in 1912, and white that county stayed, right through the end of the 20th century. Mr. Phillips adds texture and context to this shameful, episode. It’s a powerful reminder that a century isn’t a very long time for hate to dissolve. (Read the review.) ‘HERO OF THE EMPIRE: THE BOER WAR, A DARING ESCAPE AND THE MAKING OF WINSTON CHURCHILL’ By Candice Millard (Doubleday). A thrilling account of the young Winston Churchill’s heroics in the South African Republic in 1899, which culminated in a prison break and nine days on the run. This book is a and character study rolled into one: The man who would be prime minister spilled over with bravado, brains and awesome even as a youth. Could someone be persuaded to make a movie about this episode of his life? I’d watch. (Read the review.) ‘GRACE’ By Natashia Deón (Counterpoint). A dazzling, underappreciated debut novel about a runaway slave, the daughter she never gets to hold, and the saintly man who raises the child instead. Ms. Deón writes with her nerves — she’s got a terrific knack for suspense — and thinks with her heart, showing just how devastating slavery was to families, and just how powerful maternal love can be. I’d watch a movie of this one, too. (Read the review.) ‘HIGH DIVE’ By Jonathan Lee (Knopf). A vibrantly cinematic (again!) novel about the 1984 plot to kill Margaret Thatcher at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. The beauty of this book lies not just in its prose — which, by the way, will shame just about anyone who writes for a living — but also in its vulnerable, highly appealing characters, including the Irish Republican Army man who’s tasked with doing the deed (a accomplice to the Patrick J. Magee). The tension in the book becomes so overpowering that it takes a monk’s restraint not to flip to the end. I am not a monk. (Read the review.) Follow Jennifer Senior on Twitter: @JenSeniorNY ‘WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR’ By Paul Kalanithi (Random House). Dr. Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon, had literary ambitions long before he diagnosed his own terminal cancer. He wrote his first book during his last months, with all the joy and hardships that job entailed. To read it is to engage with it actively, thanks to the incisive questions he asked about his life and the enormous immediacy he brought to every page. and unforgettable, it’s the book I have given as a gift most often in 2016. (Read the review.) ‘HEAT AND LIGHT’ By Jennifer Haigh (Ecco). Ms. Haigh has set many of her lifelike stories Bakerton, a fictitious mining town not unlike the place in Pennsylvania where she grew up. “Heat and Light,” her biggest novel yet, is a sweeping Bakerton tour de force with a contemporary time frame. The book’s subject may sound shockingly unsexy, but you will be amazed by what Ms. Haigh does with the incursion of fracking into this unguarded little world. (Read the review.) ‘VICTORIA: THE QUEEN: AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY OF THE WOMAN WHO RULED AN EMPIRE’ By Julia Baird (Random House). Ms. Baird’s uncommonly frisky biography is outstanding for its liveliness and originality. It whisks away any cobwebs of Victorianism from its portrait of a willful, complicated queen whose own father sized her up as “rather a pocket Hercules, than a pocket Venus. ” Ms. Baird’s access to previously unexplored source material casts very new light on her subject. ‘THE TRESPASSER’ By Tana French (Viking). Ms. French has been a corker among crime writers ever since “In the Woods” won the Edgar for best first novel. But her sixth, “The Trespasser,” has expanded her renown. It features Antoinette Conway, the lone woman on the Dublin Murder Squad, who has to put up with harassment while she tackles the murder of a woman who seems eerily familiar. Be warned: This book is a ticket to its five predecessors. Ms. French is no genre author. She’s a novelist who just happens to see dead people at the centers of her stories. (Read the review.) ‘AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFÉ: FREEDOM, BEING, AND APRICOT COCKTAILS’ By Sarah Bakewell (Other Press). This is a surprisingly personal book for its author. She became a devotee of Sartre and the existentialists as a teenager. Decades later, she revisits their philosophies and personalities, as well as those of the phenomenologists who influenced them. If this sounds chilly and abstract, it is not. Ms. Bakewell is a wonderful explicator and a highly opinionated one. She makes both her ideas and her affections clear. A tough but splendid book on what, she demonstrates, is a newly fresh school of thought. (Read the review.) ‘TRUEVINE: TWO BROTHERS, A KIDNAPPING AND A MOTHER’S QUEST: A TRUE STORY OF THE JIM CROW SOUTH’ By Beth Macy (Little, Brown). Ms. Macy, whose reporting led to “Factory Man,” a stunning account of what globalization had done to an Appalachian furniture factory and its owners and workers, has once again mined the area for nonfiction. This time, her story revolves around George and Willie Muse, albino brothers born into a region where there was simply no place for them they disappeared after a recruiter for the circus came to town. The Muse family always believed that they’d been stolen. But Ms. Macy balances compassion and doggedness in pushing past that easy answer. (Read the review.) ‘NEWS OF THE WORLD’ By Paulette Jiles (William Morrow). Set in the winter of 1870, this vigorous National Book Award nominee tells the story of Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an itinerant news reader in Texas who is asked to make a journey. Would he please go to the San Antonio area to return a white girl “rescued” from the Kiowa Indians to what remains of her family? In Ms. Jiles’s exquisite, unsentimental voice, this novel describes the captain’s journey with the initially surly he calls Johanna. The novel abounds with the joys of freedom, the adventure of traversing untamed Texas and the discovery of unexpected, proprietary love. (Read the review.) ‘WE LOVE YOU, CHARLIE FREEMAN’ By Kaitlyn Greenidge (Algonquin). Ms. Greenidge’s daringly abrasive debut novel begins with an absurd premise: What if the members of a black family agreed to move to a very white part of the Berkshires and, for scientific purposes, raise a chimp named Charlie as one of their children? That family, the Freemans, lands at a large gated pile called the Toneybee Institute and is much too warmly welcomed. This happens in 1990, but the book also has a section (and a brave heroine) at Toneybee in 1929 — and it’s here that Ms. Greenidge’s ferocity breaks through. When the real nature of all the institute’s “science” is exposed, she steers her gutsy book toward a devastating conclusion. (Read the review.) ‘IQ’ By Joe Ide (Mulholland Books). This is the start of a comedic crime franchise with a bright future. Isaiah Quintabe (IQ for short) is an unlikely Sherlock, an incongruously polite cogitator operating out of gangsta turf in East Long Beach, Calif. The commercially savvy Mr. Ide has cast this book well: It features a hugely famous but rapper IQ’s sidekick, a petty crook named Dodson Dodson’s loudmouthed girlfriend and IQ’s dead older brother, who serves as his conscience and really, really loved Motown. Aggressively entertaining plotting is paired with the kind of dialogue for which readers love Don Winslow. This series is a Los Angeles classic right from the start. (Read the review.) ‘BEFORE THE FALL’ By Noah Hawley (Grand Central). Beach book of the summer. Imagine that Agatha Christie had set a mystery on an airplane and included Wall Street and entertainment executive types in her lineup of suspects. Now imagine that airplane crashing into the Atlantic before the story even gets going. Foul play, of course. Anyone on the plane could have been the reason it went down. And the poor survivor — not an oxymoron here — will catch hell just for being alive. Mr. Hawley, the expert TV showrunner, obviously had the skills to pull this off. Good thing he had the free time, too. (Read the review.) | 1 |
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Leading protests and stirring up trouble in the Senate might be all that's left for Bernie Sanders to do in contesting Hillary Clinton's administration if, as many expect, it deviates from her public embrace of some Sanders positions if and when she becomes President.
"I won't stay silent if Clinton nominates the same old, same old Wall Street guys," Sanders said this week. "The leverage that I think I take into the Senate is taking on the entire Democratic Party establishment, and, you know, taking on a very powerful political organization with the Clinton people. We won 22 states and 46 percent of the pledged delegates, 13.4 million votes ... and a majority of the younger people, the future of the country. ... That gives me a lot of leverage, leverage that I intend to use."
Looking forward to Clinton's expected election on Nov. 8, the 75-year-old Vermont senator said he's begun to draft some of his planks that were accepted into the Democratic platform into legislation: on climate change, minimum wage and breaking up big banks. But given what we now know about what the Clinton machine thinks of him, it's debatable how much leverage he'll have.
It's not hard to imagine Sanders contemplating what could have been as he sees the two most unpopular candidates in modern history beset by ever deepening scandals: Clinton from Wikileaks revelations and Trump from exposure of alleged sexual misconduct.
Sanders now knows for certain how the Democratic National Committee undermined his candidacy when it was supposed to remain neutral. And he knows from Wikileaks' disclosure of Clinton's Wall Street speeches, which he repeatedly demanded that she make public, how cozy she is with plutocrats. - Advertisement -
A Third-Party Run
In the context of these revelations, is it not reasonable to assume that if Sanders had taken Jill Stein's offer to head the Green Party ticket that such a team would have gotten 15 percent in the polls and a place at the debates? Wouldn't Sanders's presence at the debates have given an alternative to voters who detest both Trump and Clinton and at least a chance to build a viable third-party movement? Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire on July 12, 2016. License DMCA
Sanders said he supports Clinton because an independent or a third-party run could have handed the election to Trump. "I don't want to end up like Ralph Nader," Sanders told journalist Chris Hedges. Nader is blamed for handing the 2000 election to George W. Bush over Al Gore with his Green Party run, which kept the vote in Florida close enough for Bush, with the help of five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court, to claim its electoral votes and thus the presidency. [For how a full Florida recount would have given Gore the White House, see Consortiumnews.com's " Gore's Victory " and " So Bush Did Steal the White House. "] - Advertisement -
But it is questionable whether Sanders would have divided the Clinton vote to make Trump president. Millions of angry voters from an eroding middle class could have supported Sanders instead of Trump. In other words, Sanders could have taken away just as many and perhaps more votes from Trump, as both were insurgency candidates against the Establishment's choice.
Sanders who hasn't even a whiff of corruption about him might well be soaring above both of them in the polls by now.
It also appears that Sanders made his decision to support Clinton almost wholly based on domestic issues, which he focused nearly exclusively on during his primary campaign. On immigration, climate change, gun control and a number of other issues, Sanders aligns with Clinton rather than Trump.
And, Sanders rightly feared Trump's xenophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, racism and demagoguery. But Sanders overlooked Trump's conciliatory approach toward Russia and Clinton's warmongering on Syria and her open hostility toward Russia. Given Sanders's accurate critique of Clinton's fondness for "regime change" wars, a Sanders's victory would have likely offered a greater hope for peace.
In other words, Sanders had an historic opportunity and, arguably, an obligation in the face of the ruin of the American middle class and the danger of looming global conflict, but he failed to seize it. He either did not take seriously or failed to understand the urgency of the situation. He talked about a "revolution" to upend the status quo but ended up supporting a status quo candidate for President. | 1 |
Federal and state prosecutors said on Thursday that they would not bring criminal charges against Mayor Bill de Blasio or his aides following separate lengthy investigations, even as one concluded that the mayor acted on behalf of donors seeking favors from the city and the other said that some of their practices appeared to violate “the intent and spirit” of the law. The disclosures were unusual prosecutors rarely announce the conclusion of such inquiries when no charges are filed. The federal inquiry found a pattern in which Mr. de Blasio or his associates solicited contributions from donors seeking favors from the city and then contacted city agencies on their behalf, according to a statement from the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. But the decision not to bring charges, the statement said, came after weighing among other things, “the high burden of proof, the clarity of existing law” and challenge of proving corruption without “evidence of personal profit. ” State prosecutors, who examined Mr. de Blasio’s unsuccessful 2014 effort to help Democrats regain control of the State Senate, concluded that the aspects of the undertaking amounted to an “end run” around limits on contributions to candidates, according to a letter outlining their findings. Mr. de Blasio was quick to try to put the issue behind him. “I’ll just say simply it’s been basically a year, I’ve said consistently that we acted appropriately,” he told Brian Lehrer on WNYC in a previously scheduled interview Thursday morning, shortly after the prosecutors released their findings. “This confirms what I’ve been saying and what all my colleagues have been saying. ” He added, “We gotta get back to work. My focus now is getting back to business. ” Later in the day during a news conference at City Hall, Mr. de Blasio refused to discuss any of the donors whose contributions — and the mayor’s efforts on their behalf — had prompted scrutiny, deflecting questions by saying “the issue has been exhaustively investigated. ” He defended the behavior described by the federal prosecutor, saying it was appropriate for him to approach city agencies on behalf of donors and said that he would not rule out doing so again in the future. “I think it is normal for an elected official to receive concerns from people and pass them along for an agency to assess,” he said, ignoring the distinction between donors who give him thousands of dollars and everyday constituents. “That’s how we have done things, that’s how we will continue to do things. ” The disclosure that neither the mayor nor his administration or campaign aides will face charges is a victory for the mayor, though perhaps a tainted one for the Democrat who has been dogged by a steady stream of media reports about the investigations, and who is gearing up to run for in November. The federal inquiry involved a broad examination of whether Mr. de Blasio or his administration or campaign aides exchanged favorable city action for donations to his 2013 campaign or his political nonprofit, the Campaign for One New York. The state inquiry was more narrowly focused on whether the mayor or his aides violated state election law in 2014 by directing campaign donations to county committees to evade limits on contributions to five individual State Senate candidates. The decisions by the two offices that handled the inquiries were disclosed separately on Thursday morning, but the timing was coordinated. The United States attorney’s office, along with the F. B. I. conducted the federal investigation and the Manhattan district attorney’s office oversaw the state one, assisted by the F. B. I. The federal investigation examined at least a dozen different circumstances, mostly in which donors to his 2013 campaign, his nonprofit or both sought action from the mayor, including several in which they had direct conversations with Mr. de Blasio. At least one, Gina Argento, the operator of a Brooklyn soundstage company that depends on City Hall for film permits and a generous contributor to both the mayor’s campaign and his nonprofit, said last year through her lawyer that she felt pressured to donate. Late in their inquiry, federal prosecutors obtained grants of immunity for three of the mayor’s donors who they believed had received some special treatment from the mayor, several people with knowledge of the matter said. The United States attorney’s office, which until Saturday was headed by Preet Bharara, announced its decision in a brief statement (Mr. Bharara was fired over the weekend by the Trump administration and replaced by his deputy, Joon H. Kim) the Manhattan district attorney’s office, headed by Cyrus R. Vance Jr. disclosed its findings in a letter to the state Board of Elections official whose Jan. 4, 2016, referral prompted Mr. Vance’s inquiry. In his statement, Mr. Kim said investigators had examined several instances in which the mayor and “others acting on his behalf” solicited donations from people who were seeking “official favors from the city, after which the mayor made or directed inquiries to relevant city agencies on behalf of those donors. ” “After careful deliberation,” the statement said, “given the totality of the circumstances here and absent additional evidence, we do not intend to bring federal criminal charges against the mayor or those acting on his behalf relating to the efforts in question,” the statement said. Among the reasons he cited were “any changes in the law,” an apparent reference to a recent United States Supreme Court decision overturning the conviction of the former Virginia governor, Bob McDonnell, a ruling that made it harder to prosecute public corruption cases. “Although it is rare that we issue a public statement about the status of an investigation, we believe it appropriate in this case at this time, in order not to unduly influence the upcoming campaign and mayoral election,” the statement said. In his letter, Mr. Vance said the office’s conclusion was “not an endorsement of the conduct at issue. ” The letter said they could not prove each element of the crimes that they considered charging beyond a reasonable doubt, because the mayor and those involved in the effort had relied on the advice of their lawyers, a valid defense in a criminal case, and because of ambiguities in the way the election law statutes were written. “The transactions appear contrary to the intent and spirit of the laws that impose candidate contribution limits, laws which are meant to prevent ‘corruption and the appearance of corruption’ in the campaign financing process,” he wrote. | 1 |
A Texas constable assistant chief deputy died Monday morning from a gunshot wound sustained at a Harris County courthouse near Houston. The assistant chief deputy served in law enforcement for more than 30 years. [Harris County Precinct 3 Assistant Chief Deputy Clint Greenwood cried out for help after being shot behind the courthouse in Baytown, Texas (east of Houston). “I’m bleeding out,” Greenwood exclaimed on a radio call for assistance, KTRK ABC13 reported. An as yet unidentified killer shot Chief Greenwood in the neck. Another deputy rushed to his assistance. The deputy applied pressure to his chief’s wound and held it while awaiting medical assistance. A Life Flight air ambulance took the mortally wounded law enforcement officer to Memorial Herman Hospital. He died shortly after arriving at the hospital. The assailant fled the scene and remains at large, officials reported. Other nearby government buildings and schools locked down their facilities as a safety precaution. Officials stated the veteran was on his way to work when the gunman approached and fired the fatal wound, Click2Houston reported. “It’s very early on in the investigation. What I can tell you is that we have the full force of the Baytown Police Department working the case along with members of the (Harris County Sheriff’s Office) the Texas Rangers, the Precinct 3 Constables Department and the Gulf Coast Violent Defenders Task Force,” Baytown Police Lt. Steve Dorris told reporters. Greenwood previously served as a major in the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. He commanded the Executive Bureau under Ron Hickman. “Clint Greenwood was a great guy and this terrible tragedy is a loss to the greater law enforcement community, but more poignantly, to his wife and family,” Sheriff Hickman told Breitbart Texas Monday morning. “As a friend for over twenty years, I knew Clint to be a good family man, a good lawyer, and a passionate peace officer. His wife and family continue to be in our prayers as they search for answers. He loved all things firearms and was a competitive distance shooter at one time. ” Texas Governor Greg Abbott expressed, “My heart goes out to the family and friends of Assistant Chief Deputy Greenwood and the Harris County law enforcement community in the wake of this heinous murder,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a written statement obtained by Breitbart Texas. “Texas is taking action to strengthen penalties for those brazen enough to commit crimes against law enforcement, and we will send a message that such vile acts will not be tolerated in the Lone Star State. I am confident the perpetrator of this despicable act will be apprehended and that the murderer will be met with swift justice. ” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also released a statement that read, “The thoughts and prayers of all Texans are with the family of Deputy Constable Clint Greenwood, who has died from a gunshot wound in Harris County. My office stands ready to assist in any way possible. This is a reminder to pray for and support all law enforcement officials in our state, especially at this time of grief. ” Other Harris County Officials quickly expressed their condolences for Greenwood’s family, Click2Houston reported: “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we track down whoever was responsible for this. We’re going to stand united in this and we appreciate all of the collaboration that we’ve seen this morning, the show of support from the community and the law enforcement community for having lost a fellow law enforcement officer this morning,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez stated. “I am sickened and profoundly saddened by the brutal killing of Deputy Greenwood this morning. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, of course, and to all the men and women who surround us and protect us from similar acts of lawlessness and brutality,” Harris County Judge Emmett said. Assistant Deputy Chief Greenwood is the 33 law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty this year. He is the 11th officer to die from gunfire, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. UPDATE: Crimestoppers and the Office of the Texas Governor have teamed up to offer a total of $65, 000 for information leading to the arrest of the suspect involved in the murder of Chief Greenwood. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 1 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 by Linh Dinh
Over three days last week, at least 150 blacks attacked whites at random around Temple University. Victims were surrounded, punched and kicked. Wallets and phones were stolen. Rocks were thrown at passing cars. When cops showed up, one was knocked from her bike and a police horse was even punched twice in the muzzle.
Most of the assaults took place on Friday. On Saturday, Joe Lauletta, a father of one victim, reported on FaceBook :
I spent last night in the ER at St. Mary’s HospitaI. I received a call from my daughter Christina after my son’s football game. She was crying, I couldn’t understand her, my heart dropped, I became scared, I said “what is the matter?” “Dad, I was jumped, I’m beat up pretty bad. Where r u? Temple, they stole my phone. We’re heading to the police station.” I do not hear from her until she gets to her apartment. Rage is running through my mind the whole time. She said she is getting a ride home and wants to go to St. Mary’s. I find out that her and her 2 male friends where badly beaten by a group of 30–40 black teenagers on their way home from the Temple football game. This happened after they got off the subway at Broad and Cecil B Moore. These sick animals held her down and kicked and stomped on her repeatedly. Thank god, the people from the pizza place intervened. They arrested 2 people at the scene. I have not let Christina out of my sight, she is resting. Every part of her body is badly bruised, it makes me cry just thinking about it. No broken bones. If you have children at Temple, tell them to be careful. Please keep Christina Lauletta in your thoughts.
CBS Philadelphia describes another victim’s ordeal:
Zaria Estes , was given a 2 ½-6 year sentence.
catch and wreck , knock out game or flash mob, and it can happen at parks, shopping malls, state fairs or even your living room.
beating . Had these girls not posted their exhilarating workout on Facebook, they might never have been caught.
explains :
reading programs in place, tutored high schoolers and even talked to their own students about respecting longtime community residents. But Temple would be wise to reach out into the community with an eye toward creating stronger relationships and greater opportunities for the young people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development.
The community would be wise to reach back.
So these attackers are among “people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development.” Like many urban universities, Temple is surrounded by black ghettos , but these are being gentrified thanks to a steady influx of white suburbanites and immigrants.
If you’re barely treading water, and your rent jacks up because of gentrification, you’ll be pissed too. Who wants to be evicted? Blacks, though, are always the victims, and never agents, of any neighborhood’s improvement. Why is that?
In Detroit, a post-apocalypse ghetto of burnt out houses, gutted factories and urban raccoons, Mexicans revived a section near downtown. Unlike the rest of Detroit, there are plenty of restaurants and shops in Mexicantown, and it’s perfectly safe to walk around.
If there were fewer Mexicans, blacks would have more jobs, obviously, so why are our borders wide open? In “ Race and Crime in America,” Ron Unz suggests that Hispanics are being imported to replace blacks. They can do the same jobs, sans mayhem. In 1992, East Palo Alto had the highest murder rate in all of America. Then a transformation happened as Hispanics flooded in. Ron Unz:
Over the last twenty years, the homicide rate in that small city dropped by 85%, with similar huge declines in other crime categories as well, thereby transforming a miserable ghetto into a pleasant working-class community, now featuring new office complexes, luxury hotels, and large regional shopping centers. Multi-billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife recently purchased a large $9 million home just a few hundred feet from the East Palo Alto border, a decision that would have been unthinkable during the early 1990s.
The more blacks there are in a neighborhood, the more crimes, the lower the housing values and the more dysfunctional the public schools, and everyone knows this, including, say, a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant from Mali or Bangladesh. Black maladaptation is only getting worse.
What you have, then, is a group that will largely be excluded from better jobs, universities and housing. As long as the United States shall last, blacks will be an underclass. Their symbolic successes, as in having a half-black president, can’t gloss over the fact that the majority of them are barely afloat.
The in-state tuition for Temple University is $15,688, and the school accepts 56% of its applicants. It’s reasonably priced and easy to get in. Only 13.1% of Temple students are black, however, in a city with 44.1% blacks. Before you charge racism, do consider what Walter Williams has to say :
Among high-school students who graduated in 2014 and took the ACT college readiness exam, here’s how various racial/ethnic groups fared when it came to meeting the ACT’s college readiness benchmarks in at least three of the four subjects: Asians, 57 percent; whites, 49 percent; Hispanics, 23 percent; and blacks, 11 percent. However, the college rates of enrollment of these groups were: Asians, 80 percent; whites, 69 percent; Hispanics, 60 percent; and blacks, 57 percent.
Though all races are being admitted to college too liberally, blacks benefit the most, for only 1/5th of blacks in universities should even be there. Feeling out of place, blacks across the country are demanding separate dormitories.
Blacks are also given preferred treatment when it comes to government jobs and contracts, so the academy, state and media are all in their favor, yet their failures have only increased.
In Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell observes, “The [black] race as a whole has moved from a position of utter destitution—in money, knowledge, and rights—to a place alongside other groups emerging in the great struggles of life. None have had to come from so far back to join their fellow Americans.”
Having achieved not just civic equality but, at times, even favored treatment, blacks still often find themselves on the losing end of life’s struggles. If you dare to suggest that individual blacks should bear at least some responsibilities for their failures, however, you will be branded a racist.
So I’m a racist for writing this, Walter Williams is a racist for pointing out that most blacks attending college shouldn’t be there, and Joe Lauletta is a racist for calling his daughter’s attackers “sick animals.” Everyone is a racist except those 150+ blacks who attacked whites unprovoked.
To many black apologists, blacks can’t be guilty of anything, be it murder, rape, a brick across your face or even racism, because everything they do is just a response to relentless white racism. I’ll insist, though, that these black apologists are the worst racists of all, because to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal.
As for the media, their steady suppression or excuse of black misbehavior is an encouragement of even worse. This has to be intentional. They’re enabling more riots, more catch and wrecks, more knock out games.
Teaching in Germany, I showed my students the Philadelphia Police Department’s YouTube channel, without comments. One video after another had a black person assaulting or robbing somebody. When a Hispanic criminal suddenly appeared in the 9th video or so, some students couldn’t help but grin, for they were fleetingly spared of the monotony.
Since the students wanted to learn about the US, I gave them an authentic, unedited glimpse. At their local cinema, Straight Out of Compton was playing. It’s very cool to act black in Germany .
Of course, black apologists will claim that American blacks only rob because they’re oppressed and poor, though I don’t see how this explains the 22,000+ black-on-white rapes/sexual assaults reported yearly, as compared to zero white-on-black sexual attacks. (See table 42 of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Victimization in the United States reports for 2003 , 2004 , 2005 , 2006 , 2007 and 2008 , the last year available.) Oh yes, white women are so fetishized, blacks can’t help but rape them. None of them can help doing anything, I get it. What a gross insult this is to decent blacks.
Again, to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal.
Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate . He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, Postcards from the End of America . This entry was posted in Commentary . Bookmark the permalink . | 1 |
Libertarian Candidate Endorses Hillary By Daily Bell Staff - November 02, 2016
‘I fear for the country’ if Trump wins, Bill Weld tells Rachel Maddow … Libertarian vice presidential candidate William Weld said the country will be in “chaos” if Donald Trump wins the presidency and praised Hillary Clinton during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday. – USA Today
Bill Weld is hardly a libertarian. His informal endorsement of Hillary Clinton shows this clearly.
Of course it is hard to say what a “libertarian” is, but it certainly isn’t someone who has supported gun control and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Weld has … and is.
He comes from one of the oldest families in America, is a Harvard graduate like many in his family and former governor of Massachusetts.
Some of his career was spent with the federal justice system where he sent numerous “white collar criminals” to jail.
Why is he the vice presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party?
That’s hard to say. More:
The former Massachusetts governor conceded that a realistic goal for the Libertarian Party in this election would be to win 5% of the popular vote and while he didn’t call for Libertarian voters in swing states to vote for Clinton, he made it clear that he strongly opposes Donald Trump.
“I see a big difference between the R candidate and the D candidate and I’ve been at some pains to say that I fear for the country if Mr. Trump should be elected,” Weld said. “It’s a candidacy without any parallel that I can recall. It’s content-free and very much given to stirring up envy and resentment and even hatred.
Weld also said he believes Trump is “psychologically” unstable, a bully and incapable of “competently managing the office of the presidency.”
The article points out that Weld’s criticism of Trump is in contrast to the “kind words” he had for Hillary. It also informs us that Libertarian presidential candidate. Gary Johnson, has criticized both mainstream candidates.
Weld is not so even-handed. The article quotes him as saying that he knows Hillary well, has worked with her professionally and believes her to be a “person of high moral character.”
He also said she is “reliable” and “an honest person.” He even predicted “chaos” if Trump were elected and said that the continued investigation into Hillary’s emails was just a distraction from more important issues.
Just from the public record alone, Weld’s comments on Hillary don’t seem accurate. It seems fairly obvious that Hillary and Bill Clinton have presided over a “pay-to-play” program that funnels donations to the Clinton Foundation in return for political favors they are able to grant or initiate.
Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations is evidently America’s most prominent globalist think tank. Weld’s membership certainly implies that he supports a borderless world managed by a technocratic elite using monopoly central banking and global corporatism.
Libertarianism certainly implies decentralized power and a lack of a guiding elite, which would seem to be the opposite of what the Council on Foreign Relations obviously endorses.
Weld’s presence on the Libertarian ticket is surely more evidence of the meaninglessness of political parties in an era of increase internationalism and high-level homogeneity.
Interestingly, while political parties have been neutered from the top down, Trump’s candidacy suggests that there is much different approach among voters who actually have to support these parties.
Conclusion: Political leadership in modern Western societies usually also doesn’t change much, and Weld’s presence on the Libertarian ticket is testimony to that. However, the current contentiousness in both Britain and America indicate that a change is occurring, though it certainly won’t come from Weld or Hillary. It is not necessarily political change, as it is taking place on a personal level. But over time that will make it even more powerful. | 0 |
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Students at Tufts University outside Boston are being told that if they wear Halloween costumes that anyone finds “offensive, they could get a visit from the police.
Students in the school’s Greek system were told they could face “serious disciplinary sanctions” including an investigation by university police for wearing costumes that offend people or make people feel “threatened or unsafe,” The College Fix is reporting .
In a letter to the presidents of all the school’s fraternities and sororities signed by council leaders, they seem to be cracking down on pretty much any costume at all that anyone, anywhere would find offensive.
Greek Brothers and Sisters have worn costumes that appropriate cultures and reproduce stereotypes on race, gender, sexuality, immigrant or socioeconomic status. Outfits relating to tragedy, controversy, or acts of violence are also inappropriate. … It is our mission to promote spaces that allow members of the Tufts community to have fun without feeling as though any part of their identity is being misrepresented or targeted.
It then goes a step further and warns of the “consequences for wearing an offensive costume:
Mary Pat McMahon, the Dean of Student Affairs, described the consequences as follows: “The range of response for students whose actions make others in our community feel threatened or unsafe, or who direct conduct towards others that is offensive or discriminatory, includes [Office of Equal Opportunity] and/or [Tufts University Police Department] investigation and then disciplinary sanctions from our office that could run a wide gamut depending on what is brought to our attention and the impact of these actions on others. Any complaints will result in full investigation by University officials and could result in serious disciplinary sanctions through Judicial Affairs.”
Of course, this kind of totalitarian behavior is only possible if fellow students tell on each other . And that’s exactly what they do. They encourage students to report someone wearing an “inappropriate or offensive” costume and provide a link to the school’s “ bias reporting form .”
The letter was signed by the Inter Greek Council, Multicultural Greek Council, InterFraternity Council, and Panhellenic Council. It also reminds students to obtain consent before any sexual encounters during Halloween, citing a traditional increase in assaults during this time.
School officials insist that the students themselves wrote the letter and that the school does not have an official policy about Halloween costumes:
“The letter was written by students, for students, to encourage a thoughtful and considerate celebration of Halloween within our diverse and inclusive community and to stress the importance of alcohol safety and sexual consent,” campus Spokesman Patrick Collins said. “We commend the leaders of our Greek Life councils for proactively raising these important issues with their fellow participants in Greek Life and encouraging responsible behavior. As is the case at any time, students whose actions are discriminatory or threaten others can face a range of disciplinary sanctions. Depending on their seriousness, such actions, when called to our attention, can prompt investigations by the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs, the Office of Equal Opportunity or, in certain circumstances, the Tufts University Police Department.” | 0 |
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It's the twelfth, or even better, thirteenth time you've carved pumpkins for Jack-O'-Lanterns and it's becoming a real drag.
Have no fear, trickshooter Kirsten Joy Weiss is here...with a way to brighten up your Halloween Day—while making it a bit smokier as well.
All you need is a .22 rifle, a few pumpkins, ammunition, and a safe space away from people (especially liberals) to do your worst to our favorite holiday gourd.
Oh, and this handy tip from our guide: You're not looking to carve a hideous grin on your pumpkin using the bullet entries, but rather you're going for the exit points to get that ghoulish appearance.
That's sure to make an impression on your trick-or-treaters. (Yeah, you bet they'll be picking “treat.”)
Our expert guide also recommends making it a game. But just like with Halloween trick-or-treating, always practice safety first. Happy Halloween! | 0 |
Sources within House Republican leadership told Breitbart News on Thursday that they believe former 2016 presidential candidate Evan McMullin may have spied on them last year, while he was policy director of the House Republican Conference. [Suspicions arose after the Washington Post‘s Adam Entous reported Wednesday that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy ( ) “made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin. ” The story was treated by other news outlets as a potential “smoking gun” implicating Trump. A closer look, however, raises serious questions about the story, as well as its sources. The Post based its reporting on an audio recording of a conversation between McCarthy and Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers ( ) Steve Scalise ( ) and Patrick McHenry ( ) on June 15, 2016. It is not clear who recorded the conversation, or what kind of device was used. (Entous did not return a request for comment.) The Post did not post the actual audio recording for readers to listen to and judge for themselves. Instead, it posted a supposed transcript of the recording, riddled with typographical errors that would be atypical for the Post, at least in an important story. (The Post routinely accuses conservative journalists like James O’Keefe — falsely — of editing their videos in a misleading manner. In 2012, the Post‘s media critic, Erik Wemple, mocked O’Keefe: “A great deal of work is required to heavily edit surreptitious encounters with folks throughout the professional world. ” Yet now the Post has published a blockbuster story based on audio that may be edited deceptively — and there is no way to know.) On Wednesday evening, Entous told Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC: “The source, which basically let us listen to the recording, has not provided us with the audio for us to release, otherwise I think we would. So I have listened to it, and some of my colleagues have listened to it several times … There’s about four of us that listened to it. ” He did not say how they had listened to it — whether over the telephone, or in a voice mail, or as an email attachment. The Post does not appear ever to have had the audio in its possession. Entous merely wrote that the audio “was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. ” The term “verified” could mean anything — it could simply mean the audio Entous heard matched the transcript. It does not mean that the Post had confirmed that the audio was unedited, nor does it mean that the Post confirmed the authenticity of the recording with the people present. Curiously, the dateline on Entous’s story was Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. McCarthy and Ryan held talks earlier that day with Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman on Capitol Hill. None of the Post reporters involved in the story — including “Andrew Roth in Moscow, Michael Birnbaum in Brussels and Robert Costa in Washington” — is based in Ukraine. It is not clear why overseas reporters were involved in the story. Breitbart News’ sources, who agreed to speak about the Post story without attribution, raised suspicions about Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent who ran a small presidential campaign in 2016. McMullin was the policy director of the House Republican Conference at the time of the conversation, and reportedly participated in the discussion. In February, McMullin publicly encouraged U. S. intelligence officials to leak information about President Trump, taking to Twitter and appearing on CNN to claim that intelligence agents who were breaking the law were doing so in service of their oath to defend the Constitution against “domestic and foreign enemies. ” He told CNN that “Donald Trump presents a threat to the country,” and referred to “a security threat coming from the White House. ” He also offered Entous a comment for his story in the Post: “It’s true that Majority Leader McCarthy said that he thought candidate Trump was on the Kremlin’s payroll. Speaker Ryan was concerned about that leaking,” he said. The transcript itself suggests McCarthy was joking. The context of the private conversation was a discussion about how Russian propaganda has infiltrated Ukraine and beyond. McCarthy told his colleagues that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee to find opposition research on Trump, and then laughed. According to the transcript at the Post, the conversation then proceeded as follows — punctuated by repeated bouts of laughter: McCarthy: The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp [sic] research that they had on Trump. McCarthy: laughs, [Crosstalk] Ryan: The Russian’s [sic] hacked the DNC … McHenry: … to get oppo … Ryan: … on Trump and like delivered it to … to who? [Unintelligible] McCarthy: There’s … there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump … [laughter] … swear to God. Ryan: This is an off the record … [laughter] … NO LEAKS … [laughter] … alright?! [Laughter] Ryan: This is how we know we’re a real family here. Entous seemed determined to portray that exchange as a serious revelation of evidence against Trump. Several paragraphs into his article, he admitted: “It is difficult to tell from the recording the extent to which the remarks were meant to be taken literally. ” Yet he has since been at pains to paint McCarthy’s statement as a serious one. On MSNBC’s Hardball, Entous told Chris Matthews: “I listened to it very carefully, and he says it very seriously. ” Later, he told O’Donnell, “I want to be really honest … Frankly, it’s kind of hard to tell. Certainly the conversation is very, very serious. ” (O’Donnell chimed in to offer “Catholic boy guidance,” saying that “people with names like Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan,” the phrase “swear to God” means that a statement is to be taken literally.) Entous went on to say that McCarthy had spoken “very ” but admitted “some people in the room laugh[ed]. ” Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
Trump fires up YouTube channel to counter mainstream propaganda
NEW YORK ( INTELLIHUB ) — President-elect Donald Trump’s new transition team plans to
take back America by putting America first with a robust plan to “create jobs” in the “homeland.”
The Trump transition team has lined out some of its policy plans for the first one-hundred days and even plans to withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership, possibly by issuing executive orders.
Reports indicate that the Transition 2017 YouTube channel was formed so the press could not misconstrue the Presidents-elect’s comments and that his speeches would be heard in full. ©2016. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Right’s Reserved. | 0 |
Dr. David Duke storms Into the Senate debate tonight fighting to TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK! November 2, 2016 at 10:12 am
Dr. David Duke storms Into the Senate debate tonight fighting to TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!
Today Dr. Duke talked about how the corrupt media controls the political system and manipulates our elections. He brought up the example of the polls, which can never really be random and are manipulated by selective sampling. These polling results then impact the selection of voters who don’t want to waste their vote on someone they feel has no chance of winning.
He talked about his debate tonight, which will be live on C-SPAN. You can find the livestreaming information here. Dr. Slattery joined the show and spoke of the fact that even if Donald Trump becomes president, European Americans will not have a single voice representing their interests in Washington unless David Duke wins his race for the Senate.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern.
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The Biggest Supermoon Since Israel Became A Nation In 1948 Will Happen 6 Days After The Election By 3rd, 2016
On November 14th, something extraordinary is going to happen. On that date we will witness the closest full moon that we have seen since 1948. Known as a “supermoon”, this full moon will happen just six days after the U.S. presidential election. If you look up into the night sky on November 14th, you will notice that the moon appears to be much bigger and much brighter than usual. there is some special meaning to the biggest supermoon in almost 70 years? The last time we witnessed a supermoon of this size Israel become a nation, and as you will see below, many believe that the last couple months of 2016 could have historic significance for the Jewish people as well.
Do you remember ever seeing the moon so big in the sky that you felt that you could almost reach up and grab it? Well, on the 14th you may feel that way again. According to CNN , supermoons typically “appear to be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons”.
And without a doubt, what we are about to witness is an extremely rare event. The last time that a supermoon was this close to our planet was in 1948, and it won’t happen again until 2034 …
The November full moon is not only the closest full moon of 2016, NASA said , but also the closest full moon since 1948 (which is still the last time the Cleveland Indians won the World Series).
This is one you might want to watch out for: The full moon won’t come this close to Earth again until Nov. 25, 2034, NASA says.
But even though this is a highly unusual event, does that mean that it must have some sort of a special meaning?
Of course not, and the truth is that I don’t know if this giant supermoon holds any special significance.
However, before we dismiss this phenomenon completely, let’s remember what the Bible has to say. In the Scriptures, we are told that God intended the moon to serve as a “sign” from the very beginning. The following is what Genesis 1:14 says in the Modern English Version …
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs to indicate seasons, and days, and years.”
And Jesus told us that there would be “signs” in the sun and the moon just prior to His return. The following is what Luke 21:25-26 says in the Modern English Version …
25 “ There will be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars ; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; 26 men fainting from fear and expectation of what is coming on the inhabited earth. For the powers of heaven will be shaken.
So clearly the Bible tells us that the moon can serve as a sign.
But is that happening in this case?
I don’t know, but just like as in 1948, it appears that something very significant may be about to happen concerning the nation of Israel.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “ Obama’s Israel Surprise? ” which warned that Barack Obama “may try to force a diplomatic resolution for Israel and the Palestinians at the United Nations” before the end of his term.
The options that Obama is reportedly considering include “a resolution formally recognizing a Palestinian state”. The following comes from CNS News …
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that according to administration sources, “the White House has asked the State Department to develop an options menu for the president’s final weeks.”
It said the possibilities could include supporting – or not vetoing – a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements; or a resolution formally recognizing a Palestinian state, or setting “parameters” for a final settlement of the long dispute.
If you follow The Most Important News on a regular basis, then you already know that I have been warning about this over and over and over again in recent months. Barack Obama knows that this is his last chance to “leave a legacy” in the Middle East, and at this point the only chance that he has to get something accomplished is at the United Nations.
Obama’s last day in office is scheduled to be January 20th, and so he is up against a deadline. Prior to the election he was likely extremely hesitant to make a move because he didn’t want to mess up Hillary Clinton’s chances, but after the election there won’t be anything holding him back.
Perhaps that is why the Obama administration recently told the Palestinians to wait until after the election for something to get done at the UN…
On the surface, the latest message to the Palestinian Authority from the Obama administration is no different from the past two decades of American policy: the U.S. will veto any resolution attacking Israel or demanding Palestinian independence without them first making peace with the Jewish state. But, as Haaretz reported , there was one significant caveat to the warning. They were told not to push for any such resolution until after the presidential election next month .
The rest of the UN Security Council has been ready to pass a resolution formally establishing a Palestinian state for a long time. The only thing holding it back has been the U.S. veto power.
So right now the fate of the land of Israel is in Barack Obama’s hands, and he only has until January 20th to make his final decision.
If we do see the land of Israel divided at the United Nations, so many of the things going to start happening in rapid succession. When we divide their land, our land will be divided as well, and so let us hope that nothing happens at the UN Security Council before the end of Obama’s term.
We truly do live in ominous times, and the events of the next several weeks are going to tell us a lot.
I have a feeling that this election is not going to end well, and we also need to keep a close eye on the UN Security Council.
I have previously described the period of time leading up to January 20th as “the danger zone”, and so much could potentially go wrong during this period of time.
And we certainly won’t have long to wait to get an indication of where things are heading. Next Tuesday the American people will face their “final exam”, and let us hope that they do not pick Hillary Clinton, because such a choice would have disastrous consequences for all of us.
Amazon.com. November 3rd, 2016 | Tags: A UN Security Council Resolution Establishing A Palestinian State , Barack Obama And A Palestinian State , Israel , Pain , Painful , Palestinians , Supermoon , UN Resolution Dividing The Land Of Israel , UN Resolution Establishing A Palestinian State , UN Resolution On A Palestinian State , UN Resolution Palestinian State , UN Resolution To Divide The Land Of Israel | Category: Christian , Commentary , World | 1 |
The wire fox terriers had already tracked through her blood when the police arrived at Susan Berman’s bungalow in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve 16 years ago to find her dead, shot in the back of the head, . Her friends would tell investigators that Ms. Berman, a screenwriter and journalist, would never have let her three dogs run free, for fear they would be hit by a car speeding down narrow Benedict Canyon. Nor would she have opened the door to a stranger, but the police found the back door open and the front unlocked. Suspicion passed from her landlady, with whom she had been feuding, to her manager and even to geriatric gangsters from Las Vegas who might have known her mobster father back in the days of Bugsy Siegel. But eventually investigators focused on a wealthy man from a powerful New York real estate family whom she had met in college during the 1960s and for the rest of her life regarded as a brother and a kindred spirit. Robert A. Durst. She spoke adoringly of “Bobby” and set up some girlfriends on blind dates with Mr. Durst, but to a few, she shared dark misgivings. After all these years, Mr. Durst now sits in Los Angeles County Jail awaiting trial for her murder. Prosecutors say Mr. Durst killed Ms. Berman to prevent her from revealing any of his secrets surrounding the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, a case that had been reopened just before Ms. Berman’s death in 2000. Mr. Durst and his lawyers insist that he did not kill Ms. Berman and does not know who did. He has pleaded not guilty. While Mr. Durst’s story has become familiar over time, Ms. Berman, who was 55 when she died, remains a largely unknown figure. Her friends describe her as a smart, funny and skilled storyteller, who neither smoked nor drank. She enjoyed being the center of attention but was racked by depression and severe fears of heights and bridge crossings. “She was an ambitious, very talented, intelligent but extremely damaged person,” said Julie Smith, a mystery writer based in New Orleans and the executor of Ms. Berman’s meager estate. “She had a fascinating background. You never knew what she would say or do. ” All the while, Ms. Berman talked at the pace of an Olympic speedskater. Her trademark look — thick dark hair down to her shoulders and bangs across her forehead that often obscured her eyes — never varied. On good days, she could sit in front of her computer and write for eight or 10 hours at a clip, but on other days, she could not bear getting out of bed. Her writing — whether it was a 1975 article for City magazine titled “In San Francisco, City of Sin, Why Can’t I Get Laid?” or her 1981 memoir, “Easy Street,” of growing up the daughter of a Jewish mobster in Las Vegas — brought her some measure of fame. But she spent her final years in poverty, desperate to revive her screenwriting career and fending off eviction from her Benedict Canyon home. “I see now that Susan’s best stories were always those about Susan,” said Carol Pogash, a reporter who worked with Ms. Berman at The San Francisco Examiner in the 1970s. “Her life was the best drama she ever told. ” When Mr. Durst first came under suspicion, many of her friends could not believe it. They repeated, like a mantra, “Suzie loved Bobby Bobby loved Suzie. ” Whatever secrets Ms. Berman knew about Mr. Durst, she had a fierce, sense of loyalty to her friends and to Mr. Durst in particular. “She felt very close to him,” Ms. Smith said. “There have been times I thought all kinds of things about Bob. But I never thought she would’ve ratted him out for any reason. ” Ms. Berman grew up in the 1950s in Las Vegas, where her father, David Berman, treated her like a princess. Elvis and Liberace sang at her birthday parties. She was blissfully unaware until much later of her father’s ties to the mob at the Flamingo and Riviera hotels. Her father died in 1957 on an operating table when she was 12. Her mother, Gladys, was institutionalized and a year later killed herself. Ms. Berman met Mr. Durst in the 1960s while attending the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was a graduate student. There was an instant and powerful bond, friends say. He was the son of a powerful New York developer, and his mother, he told her, had also died by suicide, although members of the Durst family say it was an accident. Mr. Durst described Ms. Berman as his best friend for much of his life during a 2015 interrogation by John Lewin, a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who is leading the prosecution of Mr. Durst. After attending journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, Ms. Berman worked for The Examiner, mostly for the style section. But she had higher aspirations. In 1977, she moved to New York, where her articles appeared frequently in New York magazine. It was a heady time, with Ms. Berman, Mr. Durst and their friends frequently making the rounds at glamorous nightclubs like Xenon or Studio 54, where Mr. Durst, back in New York and working for his father, knew one of the owners, Steve Rubell. To celebrate the publication of her memoir, Ms. Berman held a spectacular party on Nov. 11, 1981, at Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, a Lower East Side institution known for its frozen vodka and Jewish cooking. She wore a dress and lined the walls with oversize photos of her father and mother. “She was jubilant,” recalled Stephen M. Silverman, a friend and then neighbor of Ms. Berman’s. Less than three months later, in February 1982, Ms. Berman was at Mr. Durst’s side after he reported to the police that his first wife, Kathleen Durst, was missing. Kathie, as she was known, was only months away from graduating from medical school. Ms. Durst had wanted a divorce. The couple’s marriage had descended into a hell of “fighting, slapping, pushing,” as Mr. Durst told the producers of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” a HBO documentary broadcast in 2015. Mr. Durst told the police at the time that he had put Kathie on a train in Westchester County, where the couple owned a cottage, bound for their Manhattan apartment because she had class the next day. With the case generating tabloid headlines, Ms. Berman managed his contacts with reporters and fended off bothersome inquiries. Ms. Berman had told many of her friends that she was distressed about what “poor Bobby” was going through. “She couldn’t believe that her friend from U. C. L. A. was capable of killing anybody,” said Hillary Johnson, a friend of Ms. Berman’s. But there were hints that something else might be going on. “In those days, she’d talk about her friend Bob and how his wife had disappeared and I must never write about it,” said Ms. Smith, the mystery writer. “I always took that as a warning. ” The day after Ms. Durst disappeared, someone identifying herself as Kathie Durst called Albert Kuperman, the dean of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, to say she was not feeling well and would not be able to attend class. Investigators in New York and California have long suspected that the call was made not by Ms. Durst but by Ms. Berman. The circumstances of that call are of keen interest to the prosecutor in the Berman murder case. During his 2015 interrogation of Mr. Durst, Mr. Lewin, the prosecutor, noted the oddity of the call’s going to Mr. Kuperman, who barely knew Ms. Durst, instead of to her supervisor at the pediatric clinic where she was working. “You didn’t have the name of the doctor and the place she was going to be doing it,” Mr. Lewin asked. “Right. ” Mr. Durst did not respond. Miriam Barnes, a friend of Ms. Berman’s who lived next door on Beekman Place in Manhattan, has her own vivid memory of Ms. Berman at the time Ms. Durst vanished. Unlike many of Ms. Berman’s other friends, she has not been interviewed by investigators from New York or Los Angeles. One afternoon — she cannot recall the exact date after nearly 35 years — Ms. Berman returned to her apartment building after work and immediately sought her out, Ms. Barnes said. Ms. Berman was both “very nervous and sad. ” They sat face to face in chairs in the hallway of Ms. Berman’s apartment as Ms. Berman leaned forward. “She said, ‘Bobby asked me to do something, and I did it,’” Ms. Barnes said. “‘If anything happens to me, just remember, Bobby did it. ’” Ms. Berman never explained her cryptic comment, Ms. Barnes said, but it stuck with her nonetheless. In any event, a few years after Ms. Durst vanished, Ms. Berman returned to Los Angeles to focus on screenwriting. In 1984, Ms. Berman married a man named Mister Margulies, whom she had met in line at the Writers Guild while they each registered a screenplay. The wedding was a lavish production at the Hotel an old Hollywood hotel that had once housed Jimmy Stewart, Lauren Bacall and Audrey Hepburn. Mr. Durst walked her down the aisle. The film producer Robert Evans offered a toast: “I don’t know Mister, but I can tell him Susan is the most seductive woman I ever met. ” The marriage did not work out, and Mr. Margulies was soon dead of a drug overdose. Ms. Berman worked relentlessly on a series of book and film projects, but by the late 1990s she was in desperate financial shape, unable to pay rent or even the mechanic who had fixed her Isuzu. She scrambled to reach Mr. Durst to ask for money, as she had in the past. He eventually sent her two checks, for $25, 000 each. In a note to “Dearest Bobby” dated Nov. 5, 2000, Ms. Berman seemed to fear that the gift had ruptured their friendship: “I don’t want my last request to be the last time we communicate — our friendship means so much to me, Bobby. I hope you forgive me for not keeping pace with your more successful life. ” At about the same time, Mr. Durst learned that he was the focus of a new investigation into the disappearance of Ms. Durst by Jeanine Pirro, the district attorney of Westchester County. A panicky Mr. Durst fled New York, renting apartments in Galveston, Tex. and New Orleans while posing as a mute woman. In “The Jinx,” Mr. Durst described how Ms. Berman had told him that the police wanted to talk to her. Mr. Durst repeated that claim during his 2015 interrogation by Mr. Lewin. “Susan told me that she had been contacted by Los Angeles and New York detectives,” Mr. Durst said, according to a transcript. “And, uhm, they want to come talk to me. ” But then Mr. Lewin shocked him. “I’m going to tell you something,” Mr. Lewin said. “That was not true. They had not contacted her. ” Mr. Lewin added: “I think that Susan was trying to subtly squeeze you for money. Uhm, by the way, for, for what’s it’s worth, Bob, ’cause I know you care about her, I don’t think Susan ever would have said anything. ” According to court records in the case, Mr. Durst flew to California on Dec. 19, 2000, from New York. Three days later, Ms. Berman drove to dinner at the Broadway Deli in Santa Monica and a movie with Richard B. Markey, a comedy producer and writer who was the last person known to have seen her alive. Ms. Berman dropped off Mr. Markey at his house at 10:30 p. m. on Dec. 22, 2000, and drove home. Hours later, Ms. Berman was dead. | 1 |
Florida’s Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey is urging Americans to arm up, get familiar with their firearm, and be ready to make terrorists worry about defending their own lives, for a change. [Ivey made these comments in a video he posted to Facebook in reaction to the horrendous attacks on unarmed, Londoners. Looking at terror attacks around the world, Ivey observed: Terrorists and active shooters are using every weapon available to target citizens. Guns, knives, trucks, hammers, and even explosives have all become the weapon of choice for murderers who only have one goal — killing innocent and citizens. It seems that almost everyday we hear of another attack taking place at a concert, tourist destination, church, business, or anywhere else in the world where they can strike fear in the hearts of citizens. He urged Americans to take their safety seriously and to determine to be “the first line of defense” against a terror attack. He stressed, “Let me be perfectly clear, doing nothing or just hoping it won’t happen to you is not going to save your life. ” Ivey mentioned that officials in other parts of the world are teaching citizens that the best thing they can do is “run, hide, tell,” and he rejects that paradigm, citing the fact that “this is war” and you win a war by fighting — not by running. He points out that “terrorists and active shooters know that our citizens have been coached to run and hide, and then patiently await help. ” He said attackers “count on” Americans to respond this way, then added, “What they don’t count on is being attacked themselves. ” Ivey says it is time to be prepared to counterattack to be armed and ready to make the terrorists fight to defend their own lives for a change, should they strike. Ivey said: No matter who you are or what your position is on guns, there is no denying the fact that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun — or a knife — is an armed and citizen or law enforcement officer. There is no doubt that as soon as 911 is called law enforcement is on the way, however, until they arrive it is up to you and those with you to neutralize or eliminate the threat. 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 |
Whether or not you eat what McDonald’s serves, let’s at least agree the giant has a knack for putting together unexpected ingredients in a way that no one had seen before. The same could be said about “The Founder,” the biographical film about Ray A. Kroc (played by Michael Keaton) the onetime salesman who helped transform McDonald’s from a roadside stand in San Bernardino, Calif. to an empire of golden arches. The movie (in wide release Jan. 20) also stars Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch as Richard and Maurice McDonald, the brothers (known as Dick and Mac) who created the namesake restaurants and invented the system, then entered into an uneasy partnership with Kroc, who took over the company. If Kroc is the engine of “The Founder,” then the McDonald brothers are its heart — the loyal siblings whose ingenuity and traditional values are eventually overwhelmed by their new partner’s relentless hustle. The characters also represent a rare pairing for Mr. Offerman (a star of “Parks and Recreation”) and Mr. Lynch (whose films include “Fargo,” “Zodiac” and “Jackie”) two steadily working, sturdily built actors known for quirky, distinctive roles — outdoorsmen, lawyers, presidents, mass murderers — that stick in your memory, yet who had never acted together before. Mr. Offerman and Mr. Lynch spoke recently by phone about family relationships, onscreen and off, and shared their innermost thoughts about the McDonald’s menu. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. You each own a very particular piece of turf in your individual careers. Did you ever cross paths in the industry before? NICK OFFERMAN Thank you for accusing us of offering unique and individual work. JOHN CARROLL LYNCH Or having a place in this industry. I think we met the night before we started working. OFFERMAN There had been a couple of indie movies where I almost got cast in a thing or two that you were working in. And then they found out I had not worked at the Guthrie [Theater] and they moved on. LYNCH You’ll be happy to know that I read for Ron Swanson [on “Parks and Recreation”]. I don’t think we ever talked about that. OFFERMAN Oh no! LYNCH Absolutely. Yes, that’s true. I read for Ron Swanson, and they wisely chose Nick. OFFERMAN It must have been a height issue — that’s the only thing I can think of. Was there any time to develop your familial bond before you started playing the brothers? LYNCH We had one day of rehearsal. There were a couple of things that Nick and I were given for biographical background. There were recordings of Dick [McDonald] — Dictaphone audio memos to the company, to listen to his voice and the way he regarded his brother. I remember hearing such great love and esteem in his voice. Also, the first day of our shoot was the day they tell the story of their long rise to success. It was a lot of fun and set the groundwork for the remainder of the work. OFFERMAN In the scene he’s talking about, John had several minutes of exposition monologue that was the first thing we shot in this restaurant with Michael Keaton. John rattled the entire piece with enthusiasm and absolute vim and vigor. He finished the take, and everybody’s jaw dropped, and Keaton was like, “Well. All right. Moving on. ” Did you ever work in the industry? LYNCH I never worked at McDonald’s, but I worked at Burger King for a couple of minutes. I was at a waiter at a pub near the Catholic University of America, where I went to college. I waited on Ed Herrmann [the actor] once. I screwed up his order. He didn’t want the ribs. I also worked at the Boston Sea Party, in Denver [where he was raised] shucking oysters. I’d never seen an oyster, let alone knew how to shuck one. After a series of shifts, I was like, I’ve got to get a job at just to heal my hands. OFFERMAN When I’d just gotten my driver’s license, a friend of mine was a manager at a Hardee’s in Joliet. And I wanted to buy a used car for about $1, 500. So I started working some shifts for her, flipping burgers. And I had just about amassed the sum that I desired, when I got in a vehicular disagreement with an older lady at an intersection, the long and the short of which is, I was at fault, and it cost me $1, 500. I took that as a lesson that a career in was not for me. What role did McDonald’s play in your lives growing up? OFFERMAN When I was a kid, we’d go to swimming lessons on Saturday, in the other big town, Morris, Ill. and as a reward for not perishing, we would be taken to McDonald’s, where we were allowed to purchase a sandwich. That was the filet mignon of my youth. More important, we were crazy about the packaging, because all of our “Star Wars” action figures fit neatly in the hash browns’ cardboard sleeve, and you could make all kinds of vehicles out of those clamshell boxes. LYNCH I had a McDonald’s at the end of my paper route when I was a kid. I was young enough [that] my mother would say, “What kind of Coke would you like?” And I would say, “Orange. ” Because all sodas were Coke. Over the course of my childhood, it stopped being just hamburgers and cheeseburgers, and they introduced things like the and the Big Mac. I remember when the Big Mac came out. It was a big deal for me. OFFERMAN I forgot about that — in my youth, when they would release a new sandwich like the Big Mac, it was like the new iPhone. LYNCH There were certainly times when there would be as much discussion in my elementary school class as anybody standing at an Apple store today. OFFERMAN “Let me get this straight: There’s a bun in the middle of the other bun? Get out of here. ” Isn’t that a special piece of bread? LYNCH I like the fact that you call it special. I would call it utterly useless, other than for its stated purpose, which is to have enough special sauce on it to literally cause a heart attack. OFFERMAN It’s a propagandist’s master stroke. It literally says, this sandwich is so monumental, we had to add an extra level of bread. LYNCH It becomes a sandwich. Before, they just had sandwiches. Then, there were two. Having now played these characters, can you ever look at McDonald’s or fast food the same way again? LYNCH I see how the McDonald brothers transformed, for good or for ill, how America eats — and frankly how the world eats. It was in some ways more transforming to our bodies than the Model A. I think that’s both a triumph and a bit chilling. That transforms American capitalism from personal success based on hard work and quality of work, to inventive, dominant business models. When the McDonald brothers were developing the way to get you your sandwich in 30 seconds and not 30 minutes, they didn’t foresee that it would take the place of the family dinner every day. It has ramifications around my own midsection that I didn’t see coming. OFFERMAN I’m a big fan of the writing of people like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan. So I was very much on board with the exposing of this worldwide system, in which we’re pretty much all complicit. It’s emblematic of how we’ve grown disconnected [from] where our food comes from, who makes and grows our food. It’s all related. It allows us to elect people to office that perhaps don’t have the healthiest ingredients. Perhaps they have an extra bun that is inexplicable. Is it difficult, after playing such close brothers, to part company and go your separate ways? OFFERMAN Every acting job is sort of like a family reunion. Sometimes you work with an actor and you think, oh, yes, you are one of the drunks in the family. Or you’re passive aggressive. Or you’re just crazy. You make a mental note at future family reunions to steer clear of that one. But then there are family members where you say, oh, we’ve got something similar. We’re terrific on the volleyball court together. So every time there’s a rumor of volleyball happening, I’m going to hope that John Carroll Lynch shows up. And I will do my best to set up his sweet spike move. LYNCH There was an opportunity that Nick and I might work together again. That became not possible, . I know I will look for another opportunity at any time to work with him. OFFERMAN I don’t feel the same. LYNCH That’s why I’m just going to chase you, man. It’s just going to be a stalker situation. I’ve got my goggles. I’m sitting on a tree, right now, just waiting for darkness. | 1 |
PILZONE, Italy — It was a dream, but finally, this week, the conceptual artist Christo walked on water. On Thursday, he tried out his latest project, “The Floating Piers,” a walkway stretching three kilometers, or nearly two miles, that connects two small islands in Lake Iseo, in Italy’s Lombardy region, to each other and to the mainland. Christo stepped out on the floating walkway of puckered nylon fabric, designed to change color according to the time of the day and the weather. On Thursday, it was pockmarked with bright orange blotches left by footsteps treading on the fabric. “It’s actually very painterly, like an abstract painting, but it will change all the time,” Christo, 81, a American, said of his project. “The Floating Piers” is his first outdoor installation since 2005, when he and his collaborator and wife, installed 7, 500 gates in Central Park in New York City. Like his other environmental artworks, which try to reframe familiar landscapes, the 15 million euro project (or $16. 8 million) will be funded through the sale of his original drawings and collages. “I think this is a record in the history of Christo’s special projects because he and the team realized it in 22 months normally it takes decades,” the curator Germano Celant, the project’s director, said. “So I will say that it’s an Italian and American miracle at the same time. ” Walking on the floating pier, as I discovered, is akin to being on a lightly rocking boat, without feeling wary about suddenly toppling over should a strong wave arrive. Shoes are optional, and it’s probably worth taking them off, at least for a moment, to feel the fabric’s texture. (There is a layer of felt beneath the saffron cover.) When wet, the walkway is a little squishy when sunny, it should feel warm to the toes. “Look!” Christo said, pointing to a juncture where two pathways joined to form a bright V, contrasting against the deep blue of the lake. “You see! It falls in that way so you can see the movement,” he said. “It’s actually breathing. ” Getting the walkway to both gently undulate and remain securely affixed to the uneven lake bottom was a feat that has occupied engineers, construction companies, French divers and even a team of Bulgarian athletes drafted over the past two years. The walkway is assembled from 220, 000 polyethylene cubes that form its (53 feet) spine, covered this week with a waterproof and fabric made by a German company for the project. “Each project is like a slice of our lives,” Christo said, “and part of something that I will never forget. ” From Saturday through July 3, the project will be open and free to the public 24 hours a day, with a legion of boat hands, lifeguards, monitors and information officers standing guard to avert unintentional dips in the lake. “It’s really a physical thing, you need to be there, walking it, on the streets, here,” Christo said. “And it’s demanding. ” The route, which laps around the small island of San Paolo, also includes pedestrian areas in the towns of Sulzano, on the mainland, and Peschiera Maraglio, on Monte Isola, an islet rising out of the lake. The project, he said, “is all this” — the piers, the lake, the mountains, “with the sun, the rain, the wind, it’s part of the physicality of the project, you have to live it. ” “I know these projects are totally irrational, totally useless,” he added. “The world can live without them, nobody needs them, only me and . She always made the point that they exist because we like to have them, and if others like them, it’s only a bonus. ” Christo, whose full name is Christo Javacheff, and his wife, who died in 2009, envisaged a floating piers project 46 years ago, when they were approached by an Argentine art historian who suggested the Río de la Plata basin in South America as a site, but the plans fell through. Drawings for that version are on display at the Museo di Santa Giulia, in nearby Brescia. In 1995, they considered reviving it in Tokyo Bay, but that project, too, was never realized. Yet Christo was determined. “Some projects remain in your heart,” he said. Apart from the sporadic protests of labor unions and a national environmental organization that was worried about the impact on the lake, the Italian project went smoothly after local officials and administrators came on board. Christo said it was about positively exploiting “the incredible chemistry of humans” from all walks of life, each member of the team focusing energy on “something that does not exist” — to the point where it does. He was also relieved that there was never a discussion with officials about installing a safety fence along the sides of the walkway, allowing visitors to walk to the edge of the water. “The moment you have a parapet, forget it,” he said, the feeling of walking on water is gone. Other concerns about the ability of a small lake community to deal with the avalanche of visitors that the walkway is expected to draw — an estimated 40, 000 people a day — appear to have been muted for now by enthusiasm for the project. Lake Iseo is perhaps northern Italy’s least famous lake, overshadowed by the neighboring Lake Garda. But hotels and other lodging options here and in nearby towns are nearly booked for the duration of the run. “Lake Iseo won’t be the same after this event,” said Fiorello Turla, the mayor of Monte Isola. “Monte Isola will change skin,” as its exposure to the global spotlight puts it on the map, he added. “It’s a great opportunity that we’ve been given and that we want to seize and bring forward. ” At the close of its run, the walkway will be dismantled and its parts recycled and resold. “The important part of this project is the temporary part, the nomadic quality,” Christo said. “The work needs to be gone, because I do not own the work, no one does. This is why it is free. ” | 1 |
sport , 2018 world cup , RBTH Daily "I must say that Zabivaka the wolf has been my mascot at university and at work for the last 15 years. I'm happy that now he will help Russian sport!" Photo: The official mascot of the FIFA World Cup 2018 Wolf Zabivaka. Source: TASS
Russians have voted for the mascot for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, with the winner being declared
a wolf called Zabivaka, who wears the national tricolor and goggles and swings his paw at the ball. He will soon appear on all soccer and soccer-related paraphernalia and merchandise for the upcoming tournament.
The other finalists were a tiger and a cat, but popular opinion was not in their favor and the wolf ran off with 53 percent of the votes (the tiger cosmonaut received 27 percent and the cat 20 percent).
A total of 50,000 participants and their mascots – from an Amur Tiger to an alien – battled for victory. However, in the end Russians decided that an animal that howls at the moon suits them best. For some the wolf is associated with speed and assertiveness, for others the chimerical chances of the national team winning the cup.
However, the new mascot has opened something of a Pandora's box. Following the popular vote, the Russian internet has been inundated with quibbles and for several days Zabivaka was beset with unflattering comparisons from social network users who mocked the mascot's physical appearance and name. Goalscorer, hooligan or loafer?
"Yesterday they decided to play a joke: They proposed to call the mascot Zabivaka. And the people? The people accepted it," joked a tweet on the official Kontinental Hockey League Twitter account .
Many internet users noticed the ambiguity of the name – the verb zabivat in Russian can mean either to score (a goal) or to strike. This was ironic since former Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said that the name was just supposed to translate well and be original (for patenting purposes). Bear necessity: Designing a mascot for the 1980 Moscow Olympics
"Something tells me that Zabivaka, written with Latin letters, does not make its etymology and meaning any easier for our English-language friends," wrote Twitter user @Bobchensk.
However, social network users remembered that football inspires some to strike not only the ball: The photographs of aggressive football fans in Marseilles, France during the 2016 European Championship, when the Russian national team was almost expelled from the tournament, appeared all over the internet once again, while others showed Zabivaka among thugs attacking their victims.
Another unfortunate association with the infinitive zabivat is the related construction zabit na , which means to be indifferent, or not to care. Social network users took advantage of this opportunity to make fun of the woeful results of the Russian national team in recent years. Here the poor wolf really took a beating. "Football and the Russian lifestyle," wrote @ntnet, while @SashaBo4alova noted that the best Zabivaka in Russian football is not a wolf but “a loafer.”
"I must say that Zabivaka the wolf has been my mascot at university and at work for the last 15 years. I'm happy that now he will help Russian sport!" wrote Facebook user Sergei Fokin on his page. A cheap wolf
The wolf's appearance also raised some issues. The main problem was addressed by @Maxi_Sar: "Why the hell does the wolf need damned winter goggles if it’s a football world cup?!"
RBTH posed this question to the creator of the new World Cup mascot Yekaterina Bocharova, a 21-year-old graphic design student at Tomsk State University.
"These are not winter goggles but just sports goggles, like the ones you use for cycling. It's just that Zabivaka is so fast on the field that he needs eye protection," she replied, adding that the goggles were also high-tech, for precise passes and strikes. Cheburashka: Fun facts about Russia's iconic furry character
Bocharova said that she was always fascinated by Disney cartoons, that she dreams of working for this company and loves the animated film Ratatouille . Incredibly, FIFA paid her just $500 for the rights to the drawing.
Journalists remarked (in Russian) that this was a tiny amount, noting that previous mascots cost much more. For example, the symbol of the Brazilian World Cup was Fuleko the armadillo and FIFA paid $100 million for his rights. The 1998 World Cup mascot Footix the rooster cost FIFA $30 million.
FIFA then earns revenues from using the mascots on souvenir products. Footix brought the organization $27 million, while Zakumi the leopard, the mascot for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, earned FIFA $71 million.
But Bocharova has no issues with her compensation. She says that FIFA gave her "a lot more," and it has nothing to do with money.
"All these positive feelings and meetings with amazing people. I think money can't buy all that," she said, implying her meetings with the Tomsk governor and the popular TV host Ivan Urgant, who invited Bocharova onto his talk show in Moscow. "I would have not achieved all this without them. I am very happy and grateful for all this," she said. Subscribe to get the hand picked best stories every week Subscribe to our mailing list Facebook | 1 |
PHILADELPHIA — From the time Donald J. Trump became their candidate until he took the oath of office, congressional Republicans treated his policy pronouncements — largely out of step with Republican dogma — as essentially a distraction. He would talk. They would drive the policies. But now, the question of whether congressional Republicans would change President Trump or Mr. Trump would change them has an early answer. Mr. Trump cheerfully addressed the group here at their policy retreat on Thursday, and they responded with applause to many proposals they have long opposed. Republican lawmakers appear more than ready to open up the coffers for a $12 billion to $15 billion border wall, perhaps without the commensurate spending cuts that they demanded when it came to disaster aid, money to fight the Zika virus or funds for the tainted water system in Flint, Mich. They also seem to back a swelling of the federal payroll that Mr. Trump has called for in the form of a larger military and 5, 000 more border patrol agents. They have stayed oddly silent as Mr. Trump and Senate Democrats push a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, larger than one they rejected from President Barack Obama. Once fierce promoters of the separation of powers, Republicans are now embracing Mr. Trump’s early governing by executive order, something they loudly decried during Mr. Obama’s second term. Speaker Paul D. Ryan, whose own website this week still praised the Partnership trade deal, now applauds Mr. Trump for putting the final shovel of dirt over the accord, with the president saying he is interested in bilateral agreements instead. Many Republicans, who have been longstanding opponents of Russia and written laws that prohibit torture, have chosen to overlook, or even concur with, Mr. Trump’s embrace of both. Even on the subject of Mr. Trump’s call for an investigation into voter fraud, a widely debunked claim, Republicans have often demurred. “The notion that election fraud is a fiction is not true,” said the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Mr. Trump said he could not wait for lawmakers to get to work on their newfound common ground. “This Congress is going to be the busiest Congress we’ve had in decades, maybe ever,” Mr. Trump said. In an apparent reference to forthcoming bills, he added, “We’re actually going to sign the stuff that you’re writing. You’re not wasting your time. ” Many Republicans in Congress say his presidency is off to a substantive start, delivering on campaign promises to quell illegal immigration, reduce regulations, start the rollback of the health care law and reverse the Obama administration’s decisions to halt the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects. “I think he’s completely winning the expectation game,” said Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois. “I think he’s a genius at lowering expectations and overperforming,” he said, adding, “It’s really remarkable. ” In one significant way, congressional Republicans potentially seemed to pull Mr. Trump to their end of the policy pool. On Thursday, the administration initially appeared to endorse taxing imports as a way to pay for the Mexican border wall, reversing its earlier preference for imposing a heavy tax on companies that move jobs overseas. But the White House later said it was just one option under consideration. “We are in a very good place on tax reform,” Mr. Ryan said. “It can get complicated when you get into the details of tax reform, but once we go through how tax reform works and what it’s going to take to get the kind of competitive tax system, the kind of competitive tax rates, I think most people agree that this is the right approach. ” Congressional Republicans are also struggling to keep up with Mr. Trump’s announcements, let alone push their agenda. “It’s stuff,” said Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota. Investigating voter fraud, for instance, is not something he would like to see Congress take on. “Our priorities are the ones we laid out,” he said. They are also eager to get on with the rest of that agenda — specifically a repeal and, ostensibly, a replacement of the Affordable Care Act. “We are on the same page with the White House,” Mr. Ryan insisted Thursday. “The president agrees with this agenda. ” But it is the sudden embrace of federal spending that represents perhaps the most striking departure, with Republicans backing the concept of starting the financing for the border wall with a new appropriation. And the list is much longer. By contrast, last year, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, called Democrats’ request for $600 million in aid to Flint added to an energy bill “a huge earmark,” adding, “I think it’s not something I could support,” in keeping with most of his colleagues. Republicans also pushed for and partly succeeded in offsetting a bill to fight Zika last year. The talk of a spending surge has left some Republicans worried about an exploding deficit. “There are going to have to be some cuts,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah. “I am not interested in raising our spending levels. ” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, seemed tense when asked about the open checkbook. “We’re a fiscally conservative group,” he said of the committee. “We’re going to want to see things paid for. ” Republicans are also at times confused about what Mr. Trump is actually seeking when he makes policy declarations on Twitter. “‘Appears’ I think is the big word,” said Representative Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania. “I don’t think anyone in the House of Representatives on the Republican side of the aisle wants to go through the legislative process,” only to have the Trump administration send a bill back, he said. Republicans had expected to reveal great progress on their plans to replace the health care act here, but instead seemed stuck in a perpetual debate over the timeline of coming up with a replacement. Senators in large part made a strong argument for making sure that a replacement plan had been fashioned before repealing the law, while many in the House continue to push for a repeal with replacement coming much later. Also notable is the Republicans’ acceptance of something they have despised: the use of the executive pen to make policy. Several House Republicans dismissed the notion that Mr. Trump would abuse his power to issue executive orders in the way they complained that Mr. Obama did during his second term. “What you do by the pen can be dismantled by the pen,” said Representative Tom Reed of New York. Mr. Trump is also trying to work his will on how the Senate operates. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Mr. Trump said he thought Mr. McConnell should get rid of the Senate filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominees, calling those who would oppose his coming pick “obstructionists. ” About three blocks from where Mr. Trump spoke, hundreds of protesters packed a plaza just across from City Hall to rally against the president. While the demonstration was organized around preserving the health care law, protesters showed up for a variety of causes. “I don’t trust anything he says,” said Ken Snyder, 62. | 1 |
By wmw_admin on October 31, 2016 Ed Klein — DailyMail.com Oct 30, 2016
New York Times bestselling author Ed Klein has just published his fourth book about the Clintons since 2005, Guilty as Sin.
Klein had told how Bill Clinton enjoyed foot rubs, massages and romps in his presidential library with female interns and has described new details about Hillary’s medical crises. Guilty as Sin is available in bookstores and for order from Amazon.
James Comey’s decision to revive the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server and her handling of classified material came after he could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents in the FBI, including some of his top deputies, according to a source close to the embattled FBI director.
‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.
‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’
According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom
‘He’s been ignoring the resignation letters in the hope that he could find a way of remedying the situation,’ said the source.
‘When new emails that appeared to be related to Hillary’s personal email server turned up in a computer used [her close aide] Huma Abedin and [Abedin’s disgraced husband,] Anthony Weiner, Comey jumped at the excuse to reopen the investigation.
‘The people he trusts the most have been the angriest at him,’ the source continued. ‘And that includes his wife, Pat. She kept urging him to admit that he had been wrong when he refused to press charges against the former secretary of state.
‘He talks about the damage that he’s done to himself and the institution [of the FBI], and how he’s been shunned by the men and women who he admires and work for him. It’s taken a tremendous toll on him.
‘It shattered his ego. He looks like he’s aged 10 years in the past four months.’
But Comey’s decision to reopen the case was more than an effort to heal the wound he inflicted on the FBI.
He was also worried that after the presidential election, Republicans in Congress would mount a probe of how he had granted Hillary political favoritism.
His announcement about the revived investigation, which came just 11 days before the presidential election, was greeted with shock and dismay by Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the prosecutors at the Justice Department.
‘Jim told me that Lynch and Obama are furious with him,’ the source said.
As I revealed in my latest New York Times bestseller Guilty As Sin Obama said that appointing Comey as FBI direct was ‘my worst mistake as president.’
‘Lynch and Obama haven’t contacted Jim directly,’ said the source, ‘but they’ve made it crystal clear through third parties that they disapprove of his effort to save face.’ | 0 |
Explorers accidentally find a graveyard of more than 40 perfectly preserved ancient shipwrecks at the bottom of the Black Sea By Shivali Best Daily Mail October 27, 2016 In the depths of the Black Sea lies a landscape of complete darkness, where there is no light and no oxygen. Archaeologists have long believed this ‘dead zone’ holds of a perfectly preserved graveyard of shipwrecks. Now, a mapping expedition has proved them right, after accidentally uncovering more than 40 ancient shipwrecks from the Ottoman and Byzantine periods. More than 40 shipwrecks have been discovered from the Ottoman and Byzantine periods, many of which provide the first views of ship types known from historical sources. Pictured is a shipwreck from the Ottoman period The expedition has been scouring the waters 5,900ft (1,800 metres) below the surface of the Black Sea using an off-shore vessel equipped with some of the most advanced underwater equipment in the world. The vessel is on an expedition mapping submerged ancient landscapes which were inundated with water following the last Ice Age. The project, known Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (Black Sea MAP), involves an international team led by the University of Southampton’s Centre for Maritime Archaeology. Professor Jon Adams, the principle investigator on the project, said: ‘We’re endeavouring to answer some hotly-debated questions about when the water level rose, how rapidly it did so and what effects it had on human populations living along this stretch of the Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea. ‘The primary focus of this project is to carry out geophysical surveys to detect former land surfaces buried below the current seabed, take core samples and characterise and date them, and create a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of Black Sea prehistory.’ The vessel is based on board the Stril Explorer and carries some of the most advanced underwater survey systems in the world. The researchers are using two Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to survey the seabed. One is optimised for high-resolution 3D photography, while the other, called Surveyor Interceptor, ‘flies’ at four times the speed of conventional ROVs and carries an entire suite of geophysical instrumentation, as well as lights, high-definition cameras and a laser scanner. | 0 |
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A drawing of the Democratic donkey (or is that an ass?) should appear alongside the dictionary definition of the word hypocrisy . It is a rare day indeed that members of the party aren’t acting in a nakedly political, self-interested manner, but the announcement last Friday that the FBI is reopening the probe into the Clinton email scandal has them in overdrive.
Take DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile … please! She has been tweeting out a steady stream of condemnations of FBI Director James Comey ever since his letter of intent to relaunch their investigation into potential wrongdoing arrived in the hands of Congress.
Here as an example is what she wrote yesterday: Justice officials warned FBI that Comey’s decision to update Congress was not consistent with department policy https://t.co/N2yMIDnErR
— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) October 29, 2016
But back in July, Brazile had only praise for Comey’s wisdom and fairness. If she was lambasting anyone it was the GOP for its petulent refusal to accept the director’s learned judgment: Pathetic. Simply pathetic to watch members of Congress grill Director Comey because he's not playing their game of gotcha. #Overreach
— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) July 7, 2016
But when it comes to two-facedness, Brazile can’t hold a candle to Team Clinton itself. In his statement on Friday, Clinton campaign honcho John Podesta wrote, “It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election. The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining.”
But it was not that long ago that Clinton and her enablers were singing Comey’s praises. Here’s Clinton campaign mouthpiece Brian Fallon: So now @realDonaldTrump is calling the former head of the FBI cyber division a liar? Pathetic. https://t.co/sXp5CCS5oL )
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) June 15, 2016 Comey was not just Deputy AG under Bush 43. He was also deputy counsel on Senate Whitewater Committee that investigated the Clintons in 90s
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) July 7, 2016 Grassley now resorting to trying to bully the FBI into serving his partisan interests. Shameless. http://t.co/993cFQyDYA
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) September 22, 2015
It still remains to be seen what is in the emails that have prompted Comey’s actions in the last 72 hours, but liberals aren’t content to hold off on idle speculation . 7 shares | 0 |
Posted on October 26, 2016 by GrinNBarrett
International Liberty – by Dan Mitchell
This arrived in my inbox today. A quick search on the Internet reveals it is not a real article from a Canadian paper. But it is somewhat amusing, so enjoy.
“Build a Damn Fence!” From The Manitoba Herald , Canada ; by Clive Runnels, December 1st 2010
The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The recent actions of the Tea Party are prompting an exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, and to agree with Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.
Canadian border farmers say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night. “I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,” said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield , whose acreage borders North Dakota . The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left before I even got a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”
In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. He then installed loudspeakers that blared Rush Limbaugh across the fields. “Not real effective,” he said. “The liberals still got through and Rush annoyed the cows so much that they wouldn’t give any milk.”
Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons and drive them across the border where they are simply left to fend for themselves.” A lot of these people are not prepared for our rugged conditions,” an Ontario border patrolman said. “I found one carload without a single bottle of imported drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley Cabernet, though.”
When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about plans being made to build re-education camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR races.
In recent days, liberals have turned to ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have been disguised as senior citizens taking a bus trip to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans in powdered wig disguises, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior citizens about Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney to prove that they were alive in the ’50s. “If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we become very suspicious about their age.” an official said.
Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and are renting all the Michael Moore movies “I really feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can’t support them.” an Ottawa resident said. “How many art-history majors does one country need?” | 0 |
LONDON — On July 28, 2002, roughly eight months before the invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain sent President George W. Bush a personal note that alarmed some of Mr. Blair’s top national security aides — and was greeted with relief in Washington. “I will be with you, whatever,” Mr. Blair wrote, in what appeared to be a blanket promise of British support if the United States went to war to topple Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader. Getting rid of Mr. Hussein was “the right thing to do,” Mr. Blair wrote, predicting that “his departure would free up the region. ” Fourteen years later, Mr. Blair’s pledge was revealed publicly on Wednesday as part of a voluminous, official investigation into how and why Britain went to war in Iraq. The main conclusions in the report, by the independent Iraq Inquiry Committee, were familiar: that Britain, like the United States, used flawed intelligence to justify the invasion, that Iraq posed no immediate national security threat, that the allies acted militarily before all diplomatic options had been exhausted and that there was a lack of planning for what would happen once Mr. Hussein was removed. Yet the report still had enormous resonance in Britain, in part because it came at a moment when Britons are engaged in a debate over their country’s place in the world after their vote last month to leave the European Union. The report also amounted to a moment of searing public accountability for Mr. Blair, whose legacy has been defined in Britain almost entirely, and almost entirely negatively, for his decision to go into Iraq alongside the United States. Mr. Blair’s note to Mr. Bush was part of what the report showed to be a campaign to back the United States before the war and to steer the White House toward building diplomatic support for efforts to address the perceived threat from Iraq. The report’s 2. 6 million words describe a prime minister who wanted stronger evidence of the need for military action and a more solid plan for occupying Iraq and reconstituting a government there. Beyond its pledge of fealty to Mr. Bush, the July 28, 2002, note warned broadly of the risks of “unintended consequences’’ from an invasion and presciently forecast that other European nations would be reluctant to back the war. But by the time the invasion was launched, most of Mr. Blair’s warnings and conditions had been swept aside, the report concluded. The chairman of the committee, John Chilcot, said on Wednesday morning that Mr. Blair had been advised by his diplomats and ministers of “the inadequacy of U. S. plans” and their concern “about the inability to exert significant influence on U. S. planning. ” Mr. Blair chose to override their objections. Within hours of the report’s release, Mr. Blair appeared at a nearly news conference in which he acknowledged missteps and intelligence failures, but defended his decision to go to war. Now rejected by his own Labour Party, his place in British history defined by those crucial days in 2002 and 2003, he looked humbled, even haunted, saying that not a day went by when he did not think about decisions he made more than a decade ago. “There will not be a day of my life where I do not relive and rethink what happened,” Mr. Blair said. “People ask me why I spend so much time in the Middle East today. This is why. This is why I work on Middle East peace. ” A decisive moment seemed to come when Mr. Blair’s draft of the 2002 note to Mr. Bush, classified “” circulated to two senior aides, David Manning and Jonathan Powell. The report disclosed that they urged Mr. Blair to soften or delete the “I will be with you, whatever” declaration, and not to tie his political fate too tightly to Mr. Bush’s judgments. Mr. Manning, a former ambassador to Washington and Mr. Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser, testified that he had told Mr. Blair the sentence was “too sweeping,” that it seemed to “close off options” and that there was “a risk it would be taken at face value. ” Mr. Blair later said he thought he had amended the sentence, but he had not. Mr. Blair insisted that he had provided no “blank check” to Washington, and the note quickly moved to an assessment of the many difficulties of such a war, including building a political coalition to back it and the “need to commit to Iraq for the long term. ” He warned of “unintended consequences,” like large numbers of Iraqi civilian casualties or an eruption “of the Arab street. ” The report concluded that Mr. Blair and the British government both underestimated the difficulties and consequences of the war and significantly overestimated the influence he would have over Mr. Bush. The results have haunted Iraq, the United States and Britain ever since: more than 200 British dead, including 179 soldiers, at least 4, 500 American dead and more than 150, 000 Iraqi dead, most of them civilians, as sectarian warfare, terrorist groups and actors like Iran have filled the vacuum left by Mr. Hussein. Just this week, at least 250 Iraqi civilians died from a car bomb in Baghdad as they celebrated the final days of the holy month of Ramadan. As Mr. Chilcot’s committee delved back into what seems to many young Britons like ancient history — students entering college this year were 4 years old when the critical decisions were being made — they found something of an echo chamber between London and Washington. An intelligence official, Tim Dowse, told the committee that British officials were nervous enough about United States suspicions that aluminum tubes acquired by Mr. Hussein could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium that they had initially kept the subject out of a British summary of Iraq’s weapons projects published in 2002. After Vice President Dick Cheney had talked about the tubes on American television, “we felt that it would look odd if we said nothing on the subject,” Mr. Towse said. “It would open us up to questions. ” So the report mentioned the tubes but noted “we couldn’t confirm that they were intended for a nuclear program. ” Such questions about the prewar intelligence were left unresolved, despite Mr. Blair’s desire for a “smoking gun. ” Mr. Blair stressed on Wednesday that the report concluded that he had not invented or distorted intelligence. But he won little sympathy: The current leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, apologized for the party’s having led Britain into the war, and the governing Conservatives were happy to let the Labour Party eat itself up over Mr. Blair and Iraq. The sense that Britain was led into carnage by a foolish devotion to the United States has had lasting consequences and made members of Parliament reluctant to authorize further military action alongside Washington. The legacy of Iraq kept Britain from joining the United States in bombing Syria over its use of chemical weapons. It was also a factor in President Obama’s decision to back away from a military strike on Syria’s chemical weapons facilities, and to delay military activity there against the Islamic State. But having been a forceful ally of President Bill Clinton in the Kosovo war and having intervened successfully in Sierra Leone in 2000, Mr. Blair was a believer in using force to impose a more rational world order, and after the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, he was quick to align himself with Mr. Bush. The inquiry’s verdict on the planning and conduct of British military involvement in Iraq was withering, rejecting Mr. Blair’s contention that the difficulties encountered after the invasion could not have been foreseen. “We do not agree that hindsight is required,” Mr. Chilcot said. “The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability and Al Qaeda activity in Iraq were each explicitly identified before the invasion. ” Mr. Blair’s concern before the invasion of Iraq, the report makes clear, was less about the need to overthrow Mr. Hussein than about how to justify doing so. The intelligence that Mr. Blair presented in public had a great deal more certainty than his officials presented in private, the report said. The report says: “At no stage was the hypothesis that Iraq might not have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or programs identified and examined” by Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee. “The U. K. chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted,” the report said. “Military action at that time was not a last resort. ” | 1 |
Kevin Green’s lawyers were pleading with the governor for mercy. It was spring 2008, and Mr. Green, a who had shot and killed a grocery owner, was on Virginia’s death row. His woes, his lawyers said, dated to childhood he was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, repeated three years of elementary school and never learned to tie his shoes. His was precisely the kind of execution a young Tim Kaine, a lawyer with a deeply felt revulsion for capital punishment, would have worked himself to the bone to stop. “Murder is wrong in the gulag, in Afghanistan, in Soweto, in the mountains of Guatemala, in Fairfax County,” he once declared, as one of his clients was about to be put to death. “And even the Spring Street Penitentiary. ” But on the night of May 27, Mr. Green was led into the execution chamber at the Greensville Correctional Center, strapped to a gurney and hooked up to intravenous lines. Shortly after 10 p. m. he became the fifth person put to death while Mr. Kaine was the governor of Virginia. For Mr. Kaine, now a senator and Hillary Clinton’s newly named running mate, no issue has been as fraught politically or personally as the death penalty. His handling of capital punishment reveals a central truth about Mr. Kaine: He is both a man of conviction and very much a politician, a man of unshakable faith who nonetheless recognizes — and expediently bends to, his critics suggest — the reality of the Democratic Party and the state he represents. He opposes both abortion and the death penalty, he has said, because “my faith teaches life is sacred. ” Yet he strongly supports a woman’s right to choose and has a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood. And Mr. Kaine presided over 11 executions as governor, delaying some but granting clemency only once. He cast his decisions in simple terms: As Virginia’s governor, he was sworn to uphold the law — a message that helped him get elected governor. Calm, never letting his passion overtake reason and open to compromise, Mr. Kaine, 58, is well liked even by many Republicans he has worked with. His centrist appeal is one reason Mrs. Clinton added him to her ticket. But some death penalty opponents cast his decisions as political survival and ambition. “Tim is a politician,” said Jack who served as the executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty when Mr. Kaine was the governor. “Even though they say they’re not running for the next office, there’s always something coming up. ” Deep inside, Mr. Kaine’s allies say, his role in seeing prisoners put to death tore at him. On days when an execution was scheduled, said Wayne Turnage, his former chief of staff, the normally outgoing governor would be “less communicative, and quietly pensive,” and when the moment was near, he would retreat to his corner office and remain there alone. When it was over, an aide would enter quietly, to report the dead man’s last words. “I can’t say that I saw him praying,” Mr. Kaine’s former chief legal counsel, Larry Roberts, recalled. “I’m sure that he was. ” Wherever Mr. Kaine could hold to his ideals, his supporters say, he did. Though he commuted only one sentence, to life in prison, Mr. Roberts said the governor’s team concluded the inmate was mentally unfit for execution, using an expansive interpretation of Supreme Court case law that Mr. Kaine’s predecessors might not have employed. When the Supreme Court took up the constitutionality of lethal injection in 2008, Mr. Kaine suspended executions until the court ruled to allow the procedure. And when Republicans in the General Assembly tried to expand use of the death penalty to cover more crimes, the governor blocked them. “If there was any death penalty bill that came up, it would go into the incinerator, I will tell you that,” Mr. Turnage said. “There was no sentiment for expanding the death penalty. That wasn’t going to happen. ” Mr. Kaine declined to be interviewed. But in a 2009 interview with The toward the end of his term, he said each clemency decision had been “very painful,” though his experience as a lawyer had prepared him. “I’ve eaten the last meal, and I’ve held the guy’s hand, and I’ve been to the Supreme Court, and I’ve been to the protests, and I know this very, very well,” he said. “And because of that, it was kind of demystified. ” Mr. Kaine was a new associate at a Richmond law firm, specializing in civil litigation but eager to carve out a portfolio in civil rights, in the when he took the first of two pro bono capital punishment cases he would handle. His client was Richard Lee Whitley, convicted of murder for strangling and slitting the throat of an elderly female neighbor, and then sexually assaulting her corpse, after an alcohol and drug binge. It was “not a sympathetic case,” but Mr. Kaine, driven by his faith, “was extremely passionate about it,” said his Tom Wolf, later Mr. Kaine’s law partner and close friend. “He said there were a lot of people on death row who hadn’t had a fair trial, and there were not nearly enough lawyers willing to take those cases. ” Virginia’s Supreme Court declined to block the execution, so Mr. Kaine turned to the federal courts. He argued that Mr. Whitley had not received a fair trial, because his lawyer had failed to investigate or introduce evidence of the psychological damage Mr. Whitley had suffered as a child. The judges, Mr. Wolf said, “didn’t buy it. ” Neither did the Supreme Court, which rejected Mr. Kaine’s request for a stay after Virginia’s governor, Gerald L. Baliles, refused a petition for clemency. On July 6, 1987, Mr. Whitley was executed in the electric chair. Mr. Kaine did not witness it — Mr. Whitley did not want him to, a Kaine aide said — but was intent on being with him in the hours before his death. Along with a priest, they shared Mass and the condemned man’s last meal. “I’m certain that Tim felt very close to him,” Mr. Wolf said. “It was important to him to let Richard know that he was there for him, no matter what, and that he wasn’t just filing papers for him, but that he regarded Richard as a valuable human being. ” In 2005, when he was the lieutenant governor and running for governor against Jerry Kilgore, a former state attorney general, he was fighting the perception that he was too liberal to lead the state. Issue No. 1 was the death penalty Virginia was second only to Texas in executions since 1976. “People thought it was almost disqualifying to be against the death penalty in Virginia,” said Bob Holsworth, a longtime political analyst in the state. Candidates who held the stance were routinely dismissed, he said, as being “soft on crime. ” So Mr. Kaine’s team prepared, developing a message that cast the issue in terms of his faith, pointing out his work as a Jesuit missionary in Honduras. Then, in October, Mr. Kilgore ran an advertisement featuring the father of a murder victim whose killer had been represented by Mr. Kaine. “Tim Kaine says that Adolf Hitler doesn’t qualify for the death penalty,” the grieving father said. The Hitler reference drew condemnation, and the Kaine team responded with its own ad, featuring a serious Mr. Kaine staring straight into the camera and telling voters that he wanted to “set the record straight,” and explaining that despite his religious objections, “as governor I’ll carry out death sentences handed down by Virginia juries because that’s the law. ” The ads and messaging proved a turning point, said David Eichenbaum, Mr. Kaine’s media strategist. “Once many of these voters learned he was a man of deep faith and actually was a missionary,” Mr. Eichenbaum said, “all of a sudden he wasn’t so liberal anymore. ” The first big test of Mr. Kaine’s promise came in April 2006, three months after he took office. Dexter Lee Vinson, 43, was set to be executed for abducting and killing his former girlfriend, whose mutilated body was found in a vacant house. A Vatican representative and Roman Catholic bishops in Arlington, Va. and Richmond asked Mr. Kaine to spare him. One of Mr. Vinson’s sisters, Jewel Bailey, expressed hope that Mr. Kaine’s religious convictions would win out. “My thing is, ‘Why did you take the position that you have when you don’t believe yourself in the death penalty? ’” she said at the time. “The Bible says, ‘Thou shall not kill,’ and that’s what I’m going to stand by. Thou shall not kill. ” Inside the governor’s office, Mr. Kaine and his lawyers were following a careful protocol devised by an aide to a previous Democratic governor of Virginia, L. Douglas Wilder. The governor would have no direct contact with family members or inmates’ lawyers. Instead, the governor’s staff lawyers would prepare for him a detailed memo with competing arguments — the most aggressive case for clemency and the most aggressive case for execution. Mr. Kaine would pepper the lawyers with questions, including whether an inmate might be innocent, or mentally incompetent to face execution, or whether there had been gross procedural irregularities. But he almost always deferred to the findings of courts in the one case in which he granted clemency, he concluded that the inmate’s mental status had changed since he had been convicted, said Mr. Roberts, his former chief counsel. Mr. Kaine took comfort, Mr. Roberts said, in the fact that as the governor, he did not have to actually sign death warrants. It was simply up to him to decide whether to intervene. “I think he viewed himself as the final decision maker, with a caveat,” Mr. Roberts said, “that it was death unless we stepped in, so he was never deciding whether to impose the penalty. ” Mr. Vinson’s was the first execution of Mr. Kaine’s term as governor. Ten more would be put to death, including one of the “D. C. snipers,” John Allen Muhammad, and Mr. Green, whose clemency petition to Mr. Kaine said he was a “mentally retarded man by every reliable scientific measure. ” “This was a case that he could have intervened on, and it wouldn’t have taken much to say, ‘I’m concerned enough to not let the execution go forward,’” said Robert Lee, who worked on Mr. Green’s clemency petition, which asked Mr. Kaine to “err on the side of mercy and life. ” In a statement on his decision, Mr. Kaine said Mr. Green’s sentence had been upheld by several courts, and that the Supreme Court had declined to hear it. “Having carefully reviewed the Petition for Clemency and judicial opinions regarding this case, I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury, and then imposed and affirmed by the courts,” he wrote. “Accordingly, I decline to intervene. ” | 1 |
Share This The United Nations estimates that over 10,500 people have been displaced by operations in the Mosul region, so far, and expects that number to rise rapidly as troops close in on the city itself. Security forces have assisted in the evacuation of hundreds of people, while others have escaped on their own. Special forces are closing in on Kokjili , while Qalat and Jenin were captured . Peshmerga forces are approaching Tel Keif , where they have seized a gas plant, and dozens of militants have been killed . They also fought with militants in Fadiliyah . Dirk village was liberated . Shi’ite militiamen and military forces are clearing out Shura . Dozens of militants were killed in airstrikes there. At least 256 people were killed and seven were wounded : M.P. Abdulrahim Shamari , chair of Parliament’s human rights committee, reported that 232 civilians were executed in Hammam al-Alil , just south of Mosul. Most of the victims were former security personnel who had been kidnapped along with their families. In Mosul , an airstrike killed five civilians and wounded seven more ; eight militants were also killed . Two teenagers killed a militant , but then were pursued by other Daesh members. Their fate is unknown. A man was shot dead while trying to escape Daesh relocating hostages/human shields in Nana . Read more by Margaret Griffis | 0 |
Global Research – by Al-Jazeera
Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Enas Taha, a resident of the Palestinian village of Kafr al-Deek in the occupied West Bank, has become desperate.
“Since the [water] crisis started in June, the municipality has been able to supply water for only one hour twice a week,” Taha told Al Jazeera. “I am checking the weather forecast every day; they announced rain three weeks ago, but it has not come yet. The only thing I can do is to pray to God.”
Many West Bank communities are facing similar problems, amid an acute water shortage that has lasted for months. In the Salfit, Jenin and Hebron governorates, some villages have gone as long as 40 days in a row without running water.
In mid-July, residents in the Bethlehem area staged a sit-in for days to protest against the shortages, sparking clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli forces.
“It is a very stressful situation. I have to consider and prioritise every single drop of water I use,” Taha said. “We have barely enough to drink, cook, shower and use the bathroom. Sometimes I don’t do the laundry or clean the house for weeks. It is hot and dusty. This is exhausting.” Enas Taha shows her garden, which has turned brown due to the severe water shortages since June [Eloise Bollack/Al Jazeera]
Some Palestinians have joked that the water bill collector comes to their homes more often than water. As demand rises, the cost of drinking water has skyrocketed, with some families spending up to 30 percent of their meagre incomes to purchase it.
Israel implements a policy of water cuts each summer, but this year, it reached an unprecedented peak. In early June, Israeli water company Mekorot informed the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) of summertime supply cuts totalling more than 50 percent – and the cuts, while not as dramatic, remain in effect today, more than a month after the official end of summer.
“We are in regular contact with [Mekorot] to find a solution, but they constantly give us different excuses, such as the increase in demand, rising temperature, etc,” Deeb Abdelghafour, the PWA’s director of the water resources department, told Al Jazeera.
The notion that the region is suffering from water scarcity is a myth, he added:
“We have been facing shortages for decades, and the reason is not natural, but man-made – meaning the Israeli occupation and Israeli control over water resources in the Palestinian territories.”
Israeli officials have stated that water resources are shared equally in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a unit in the Israeli army, noted that Israel provides 64 million cubic metres of water to the Palestinians annually, even though it is only obliged to provide 30 million under the Oslo accords.
However, disparity is evident in the lush gardens, parks and swimming pools in illegal Israeli settlements. The key difference is that Palestinian villages in the West Bank are not connected to the national water grid, relying instead on local underground supplies.
Palestinians living in remote areas have been hit the hardest by the ongoing water crisis, as access roads are often poor and the additional costs of delivery result in higher prices.
“We need special 4×4 trucks to drive on the unpaved roads, and it can take up to two hours to reach the communities,” said Hafez Hureini, a resident of at-Tuwani village and leader of the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee. Taha shows her empty beehives: ‘Last year, we had bees so we could produce our own honey, but all the bees died due to lack of water; there are not enough flowers’ [Eloise Bollack/Al Jazeera]
Over the summer, Israeli media reported that illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank were also suffering from daily disruptions to water supplies, prompting the Israeli government to establish a new drilling site, Ariel 1, which would provide 250 cubic metres of water per hour.
Abdelrahman Tamimi, director of the Palestinian Hydrology Group for Water and Environmental Resources Development, said that this was not where water was needed the most.
“The wells should be drilled where there is important demand, such as north and south of Jenin, south of Hebron, or northwest of the Jordan valley. Why in Ariel, I wonder, as a hydrologist? There is already a well there; they can simply improve its capacity … [This measure] was definitely not designed to supply Palestinian communities,” Tamimi told Al Jazeera.
In the meantime, Israel has accused Palestinians of tapping into pipes, with the Israeli Water Authority asserting that 5,000 cubic metres of water is stolen every day by Palestinians.
“We are aware there is water theft … However, we should ask ourselves why are the people stealing water? Simply because they are thirsty,” Abdelghafour said.
At the same time, increased water demands owing to growing Israeli and Palestinian populations is stretching the limits of existing water infrastructure. Most of the water network was installed in 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank. Today, the diameters of the pipes are inadequate, and the system is reaching the end of its life cycle.
“Even to upgrade infrastructure in Area A and B is a headache,” Abdelghafour said. “They [Israel] impose long and complicated procedures in order to issue permits to import the smallest pieces or equipment.”
Data released by the Israeli Water Authority shows that a large expansion in agriculture in the settlements has led to an estimated rise of 20 to 40 percent in water consumption this year.
“The [Palestinian Authority] has no solution for the water crisis. In my opinion, Israel has used this summer to put more pressure on us to purchase desalinated water, so they can allocate groundwater for the settlements and their future expansion,” Tamimi said.
Since 2005, five desalination plants have been built in Israel, now producing approximately 50 percent of the country’s water supply.
“We don’t want to substitute water from desalination plants for our historical rights to all shared water resources,” Abdelghafour said. “Once we have our basic rights, based on equitable allocation of resources and international law, then we can think of other development options, such as desalination or treatment of waste water.” The original source of this article is Al Jazeera | 1 |
The comedian Dave Chappelle used to hate when fans would pull out smartphones during his act, record the performance and then post it on YouTube and social media before the show had even ended. To him, the fans seemed more interested in getting the perfect shot than in appreciating his routine. But in late 2015, Mr. Chappelle discovered a technology called Yondr. Fans are required to place their cellphones into Yondr’s lockable pouch when entering the show, and a disk mechanism unlocks it on the way out. Fans keep the pouch with them, but it is impossible for them to snap pictures, shoot videos or send text messages during the performance while the pouch is locked. “I know my show is protected, and it empowers me to be more honest and open with the audience,” Mr. Chappelle said by email. After his first performance, Mr. Chappelle was sold, and now he insists on deploying Yondr at all of his shows. Other entertainers have since used Yondr, including Alicia Keys, Guns N’ Roses, Maxwell, and the actor, musician and comedian Donald Glover, who goes by the stage name Childish Gambino. Some have employed it for special listening parties, festivals, or shows others, like Mr. Chappelle, have used it for entire tours. Of course, an artist or venue can always state that cellphone use is not permitted and trust fans to comply. But often people rebel. A event “is a very different experience,” said Graham Dugoni, who founded Yondr. Chad Taylor, who manages Mr. Glover, among others, said, “It’s hard to meet people in the room when you’re busy texting friends who aren’t there. ” He added, “It’s hard to enjoy a concert experience when you’re looking at it through an iPhone camera and trying to get the best shot. ” When the rocker Axl Rose reunited with his former Guns N’ Roses bandmates, Duff McKagan and Slash, for the first time in 23 years, the concert was . “God, it was wonderful,” Mr. McKagan said of the first reunion show in April, at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. “It was the feeling, where people were dancing and getting down. It was really cool. ” It was far different from a concert he did with his other band, Loaded, a few years ago in Córdoba, Argentina. “I started playing, and I was staring into a sea of iPads and bright lights,” he said. He abruptly stopped the show and asked people to put their devices down, at which point the show improved vastly, he said. bands might be more hesitant to try Yondr, as many rely on fans posting photos and videos to promote their shows. And some fans object to not being able to disseminate and see live shows via videotape. “If there were no cellphones, and you couldn’t capture any video, it would be disappointing,” said Steve Dintino, a Philadelphia music fan, who videotapes every concert he attends. He started filming shows in 1994 after attending a Frank Sinatra concert in Atlantic City, where he yelled “I love you Frank” from the front row, and Mr. Sinatra responded “I love you too, pal. ” A friend recorded the show, and “so I have the audio of that concert. ” Ever since then, “I try to capture every concert that I go to in some capacity,” he said. “The ability to see it happening live” from the comfort of your living room “is incredible,” said Chris Kooluris of Manhattan, a music fan who has been to dozens of live shows and watched others online through Periscope, Twitter’s video feature. “I stayed up all night long looking for periscope feeds from the Guns N’ Roses show in L. A.,” Mr. Kooluris said. But when attending live shows, Mr. Kooluris said he prefers to see fewer cellphones. To resolve this issue, he suggests that bands allow one person to videotape the show and then give ticketholders access to the feed afterward. But Yondr is not just for concerts. The company has been renting its devices to schools, restaurants and wedding venues, and to movie studios for prescreening events, in the United States and abroad. In the future, it could also be used during live theater performances, at sporting events such as golf tournaments, and in spas and movie theaters, Mr Dugoni said. Mr. Dugoni, 29, was born in Portland, Ore. where his father is a physician and his mother is a homemaker. After graduating from Duke University with a B. A. in political science in 2009, he took a series of jobs — teaching English in Vietnam, playing soccer in Norway in 2010, working at investment advisory firms in Portland and Atlanta, and joining a virtual currency which failed, in San Francisco in 2013. Throughout his 20s, Mr. Dugoni became increasingly aware of — and annoyed with — the way people were glued to their cellphones as social interaction took a back seat. He also saw issues with smartphones and privacy. “At a festival at Treasure Island in San Francisco in 2013, I saw some guy dancing pretty drunk and saw two strangers recording the guy, and they posted it to YouTube without the guy’s knowledge,” he said. With $15, 000 in his pocket, Mr. Dugoni set out to build Yondr. He spent about six months sketching designs, experimenting with 40 fabrics and locking devices, visiting hardware stores, and consulting with manufacturers in China before developing a prototype in 2014. But getting seed money to manufacture Yondr was a challenge. Silicon Valley investors thought the idea of events was preposterous and almost laughed him out of the room. “They just didn’t get it,” he said. Undaunted, he turned to his hometown, where he raised $100, 000 from angel investors. “I thought the idea had legs and great market potential,” said Tony Arnerich, one of Yondr’s investors and a longtime family friend. The company raised an additional $75, 000 in 2015. Yondr makes money by renting the devices for $2 a case each day, although it offers discounts for large quantities or for schools that use them for extended periods. The company’s first paying job was in and within six months it had turned a profit, Mr. Dugoni said. The technology has been used in 57 venues and 300 schools in 2016, up from five venues in 2015. Comedy Works, which has showcased such comedians as George Lopez and Wanda Sykes, has been using Yondr devices at its two clubs in Denver since May. “All of the big artists have said: ‘Wow. Thank you. This is amazing,’” said Wende Curtis, the owner. Patrons have asked if they could buy the device for their homes, she said. (The company only rents the devices now, but is considering selling them in the future.) Some fans have been disgruntled. A few demanded refunds rather than give up their phones, Ms. Curtis said. And one drunken party of eight “got nasty” and posted complaints on social media,” she said. At a Dave Chappelle show, one inebriated fan chewed through the bottom of the pouch, recalled Corey Smyth, chief executive of Blacksmith Records, who works with Mr. Chappelle among others. The pouch allows phone signals to get through, so someone can feel a phone vibrate when a message arrives. Anyone who needs access during a show may leave the room, have the device unlocked and use the phone in the lobby or outside — similar to the way smokers light up outside a nonsmoking theater. “Some venue staff have access to their phones at all times inside the space,” Mr. Dugoni said, in case of an emergency. Yondr is not a fad it is the wave of the future, Mr. Dugoni said. “I view it as a social movement, and this is one piece of the puzzle,” he said. “It’s about helping people live in the digital age in a way that doesn’t hollow out all of the meaning in your life. ” | 1 |
Share on Facebook Scholars have estimated that, prior to the ‘discovery’ of the Americas by Europeans, the pre-contact era population could have been as high as 100 million people. American anthropologist and ethnohistorian Henry F. Dobyns, most known for his published research on American Indians and Hispanic peoples in Latin and North America, estimated that more than one hundred and twelve million people inhabited the Americas prior to European arrival. He approximated that ten million alone inhabited an area north of the Rio Grande before European contact. In 1983, he revised that number to upwards of eighteen million. ( source )( source )( source ) It's also important to note that other scholars have estimated the number to be as low as ten million, and everything in between. For example, William M. Denovan, Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes there were approximately fifty four million inhabitants. ( source ) The important point to take from this is that there were already a lot of people inhabiting the Americas prior to European contact. People that were advanced, with extensive knowledge of medicine, the cosmos, and much more. What happened when “first contact” transpired? A massive decline of the indigenous population, that's what. It's one of, if not the, most dramatic declines of population in the known history of our planet. The number of Native Americans quickly shrank by roughly half right after European contact. This alarming transformation is attributed to disease, warfare, enslavement (Indian slave trade), and a disruption of the social systems of the indigenous, all of which had devastating effects on the populations that inhabited the Americas. ( source ) Think about this for a moment. A population which was somewhere in the range of ten million to a possible one hundred million people shrank to a few hundred thousand by 1900… This was, as many scholars believe, nothing short of an extermination, which we can attribute to various causes. David Stannard, American historian and Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii, reveals in his work that the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, which resulted in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. In his book American Holocaust, he asks what kind of people would do such horrendous things to others. He and many others emphasize that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideologies as would later the architects of the Nazi Holocaust. ( source ) It doesn't seem like things have changed much at all. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Catholic Church had completely taken over Europe, wielding their power to control both people and ideas. There was no separation of church and state, as all citizens were required to abide by the rules and beliefs of the church. If not, they were deemed outlaws and heretics, and were even hunted and killed. This type of activity and “brainwashing,” so to speak, can be traced back all the way to ancient Rome, and all the way forward into our very recent history. Its influence can be seen in the mass brainwashing and manipulation of our minds today. This point is also made clear by Stannard. In Canada, for example, “ residential schools ” were set up all over the country. These were government-sponsored religious schools established to assimilate aboriginal children into Euro-Canadian culture, a culture that was made by the ruling elite for everyone else to “fit” into. This system originated in France not long after the arrival of the Europeans into the Americas, and was originally conceived by Christian churches and the Canadian government to educate (brainwash) and convert aboriginal youth and to integrate them into Canadian society. But was that the real purpose? When I say Canadian government, I mean the Department of Mining and Natural Resources. In the 1930s, the headmasters of the residential schools were made the legal guardians of all native children, ripping them away from their parents under the oversight of the Department of Mines and Resources. All parents were forced to surrender legal custody of their children to a principal or a church employee, or face imprisonment. A few years later, “Indian Affairs” was taken over by the Federal Government's Citizenship and Immigration Office. ( source )( source )( source ) Children were killed, abused, and raped at these schools. They were also subjected to nutritional experiments by the federal government in the 1940s and the 1950s, and were used as medical test subjects as well. Many of these victims and their bodies have vanished without a trace. Apart from the massive genocide that killed millions, the residential school program itself is considered to be a genocide. Below are three statements that shed light on the harsh reality of what went on: “I was just eight, and they'd shipped us down from the Anglican residential school in Alert Bay to the Nanaimo Indian Hospital, the one run by the United Church. They kept me isolated in a tiny room there for more than three years, like I was a lab rat, feeding me these pills, giving me shots that made me sick. Two of my cousins made a big fuss, screaming and fighting back all the time, so the nurses gave them shots, and they both died right away. It was done to silence them.” – Jasper Jospeh, a sixty four year old native man from British Columbia, speaking while his eyes filled with tears. ( source ) “We do know that there were research initiatives that were conducted with regard to medicines that were used ultimately to treat the Canadian population. Some of those medicines were tested in aboriginal communities and residential schools before they were utilized publicly.” – Chief Wilton Littlechild of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. ( source ) “We believe that what's already been exposed represents only a fraction of the full, true and tragic history of the residential schools. There are no doubt more revelations buried in the archives.” – Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Bill Erasmus ( source ) Aboriginal people in Canada, in our very recent history, were deliberately killed, and this has been confirmed by eyewitness testimony, documents, government records, and statements of Indian agents and tribal elders. Some estimate the mortality rate in residential schools to be upwards of fifty percent. We are talking about more than 50,000 native children across Canada, possibly more. ( source ) The massive genocidal campaign that started hundreds of years ago has continued until this very day. And the fact that this system operated under legal and structural conditions which encouraged, aided, and abetted murder is disturbing to say the least. Keep in mind, these horrors were perpetrated in Canada; one can only imagine what went on in the United States and South America. So much of our history is hidden from us. The United States alone classifies more than 500 million pages of documents each year. For a historian looking to examine and preserve the history of their nation, how are they supposed to do this when most of their history is being kept hidden or even deliberately altered? Concluding Comments & Why This Information Is So Relevant Our recent history has shown us that there was a major genocide in Canada – a deliberate mass murder of the indigenous populations by the ruling elite in order to take over their land and its resources and establish their dominance, just as the same group of elite was doing all over the world. This is very recent history, and the brainwashing/assimilation campaign of all people (not just indigenous) continues today. The world has become extremely “Americanized.” Through mass marketing and assimilation tactics, we have been manipulated into leading the same lives and following the same path. This “plan” of “world dominance” and global takeover seems to have started hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago and has extended itself all the way to the present day. So what can we do now? We can listen to the message of the core of indigenous cultures that occupied this land before we did. It's time for us to return to our roots, and stop destroying the planet as we have been for so many years. If we don't choose to change now, it does not look like we will be moving forward. It is this type of message which we should take from our recent, ugly history. Messages about love, respect, oneness, our connection to mother Earth and our spiritual heritage... among other things. We are part of Creation, thus, if we break the laws of Creation we destroy ourselves. We, the Original Caretakers of Mother Earth, have no choice but to follow and uphold the Original Instructions, which sustains the continuity of Life. We recognize our umbilical connection to Mother Earth and understand that she is the source of life, not a resource to be exploited. We speak on behalf of all Creation today, to communicate an urgent message that man has gone too far, placing us in the state of survival. We warned that one day you would not be able to control what you have created. That day is here. Not heeding warnings from both Nature and the People of the Earth keeps us on the path of self destruction. This self destructive path has led to the Fukushima nuclear crisis, Gulf oil spill, tar sands devastation, pipeline failures, impacts of carbon dioxide emissions and the destruction of ground water through hydraulic fracking, just to name a few. In addition, these activities and developments continue to cause the deterioration and destruction of sacred places and sacred waters that are vital for Life. – Chief Looking Horse (you can view a video of him making this statement here ) Related: | 1 |
WINNIPEG, Manitoba — The Canadian Museum for Human Rights offers many opportunities for contemplation. A glass display case holds the bloodstained salwar kameez worn by Malala Yousafzai, the activist for girls’ education in Pakistan, during an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Video testimonials from survivors of the genocides in Rwanda, Ukraine and Bosnia aim to teach tolerance. Or one can think about the fact — unmentioned by the museum — that the water flowing through its reflection pools comes from a lake on an aboriginal reserve where residents have not had safe drinking water for almost two decades. “It’s the Great Canadian Myth on display,” Leah Gazan, an indigenous rights activist, said during a recent visit to the museum. The $266 million museum (351 million Canadian dollars) has become a symbol of the contradictions between the nation’s modern multicultural identity and what critics say is an unreconciled legacy of human rights violations against indigenous peoples that continue to this day. Its backers have praised the museum, which attracts nearly 350, 000 visitors a year, for starting important conversations about injustice. But to others, despite a raft of powerful exhibits on the oppression of indigenous peoples in Canada, the museum could do more to address the nation’s uncomfortable truths about its past and present dealings with the descendants of the land’s original inhabitants. Even before opening two years ago, the museum had become the focus of protests over its content, particularly by indigenous groups who said it plays down their plight. A large number of the 1. 4 million aboriginal people in Canada lack access to clean water, basic health care and education, the result of discriminatory government policies that have led to disproportionately high rates of violence, addiction and poverty, the United Nations, Canadian courts and international rights organizations have charged. “What we’re seeing in the museum reflects a fundamental problem in Canada,” said Craig Benjamin, an indigenous rights campaigner for Amnesty International. “Canada has long turned a blind eye to extreme violations of indigenous people’s rights. The national conversation about the depths of the crime — and the urgency of redress — is only just beginning to happen. ” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised a “total renewal” of Canada’s relationship with its aboriginal peoples. Hopes have risen over his government’s inquiry into the murders and disappearances of indigenous women, and his commitment to further incorporate indigenous rights into Canadian law. Yet many in Canada are concerned that the government is reneging on that promise. The first national museum built outside Ottawa, the Canadian capital, the structure is an architectural tour de force, a hulking edifice of limestone and glass, designed to resemble a cloud wrapped around a mountain and topped by a gleaming spire said to symbolize hope. It occupies a prominent parcel in downtown Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, a province where more than 75 percent of aboriginal children live in poverty, the highest rate in Canada, according to a recent study. Winnipeg, home to the nation’s largest urban indigenous population, has long struggled to overcome a racial divide, which both its aboriginal mayor and the museum are trying to heal through educational and government programs. The museum, the brainchild of a Winnipeg media magnate who was inspired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. was largely financed by private donors. Rather than commemorate a specific event or regional history, the museum aims to educate visitors about the meaning of human rights through an array of themes, such as the struggle for legal rights in Canada and freedom of expression. “It can never be all people want it to be,” said Maureen Fitzhenry, a museum spokeswoman. Unlike in the United States, where the struggles of Native Americans, who make up less than 2 percent of the population, only occasionally enter the national debate, the issues facing aboriginal Canadians are a prominent and highly politicized aspect of society. Indigenous people make up more than 4 percent of Canada’s population, but a series of legal battles has the potential to shift the national and political landscape in their favor. In recent years, indigenous people in Canada have won more than 230 legal cases against the government relating to natural resource development, while the Supreme Court and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal have issued landmark rulings granting many groups greater authority and rights to territory, funding and services. For hundreds of years, indigenous people in Canada were victims of state policies that were explicitly written to eradicate their cultures, appropriate their lands and deny them political autonomy under treaties and laws like the Indian Act of 1876. The law gave the Canadian government the power to dictate who was considered an “Indian,” move indigenous people to and isolated reserves and control their finances. It remains the core of many policies and regulations in effect today. Around 150, 000 aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and sent into a residential school system for more than a century before the program was shut down in the 1990s. According to some estimates, as many as 6, 000 children died and many more suffered physical and sexual abuse. Other government programs forcibly sterilized indigenous women and put more than 16, 000 aboriginal children up for adoption by white families. Indigenous communities have long criticized the museum for not officially recognizing their historical oppression as genocide. Museum officials say the exhibits try to educate the public about these issues by prominently featuring the testimony of residential school survivors and information on the effects of colonization. Rather than having a single exhibit highlight the subjugation of indigenous peoples and detail its contemporary impact, the museum weaves such issues into broader narratives about the fight for justice. Its largest gallery, Canadian Journeys, examines the “steps and missteps on the road to greater rights for everyone in Canada,” according to the museum’s marketing materials. Booths include stories on gay rights, the nation’s Japanese internment camps during World War II, the reclamation of land by the aboriginal Inuit, the Underground Railroad and a devastating film on residential schools that shows former Prime Minister Stephen Harper making an official apology in 2008. But such curation has done little to quell the frustration of activists like Ms. Gazan, 44, whose father was a Dutch Holocaust survivor and whose mother is a member of the Wood Mountain Lakota Nation, based in the neighboring province of Saskatchewan. “As a Jew, I see my history acknowledged, but as an indigenous person, I see my history left up to debate,” she said last month as she walked through a gallery devoted to the Holocaust. Critics say little in the museum addresses the continuing discrimination. “You get a sense that in the past there were some mistakes and everything’s fine now,” said Karen Busby, director of the Center for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba. Some former museum employees say that portrayal was the result of political interference, partly by a board appointed by the Conservative government of Mr. Harper. Rita Johnson, a planner who helped design the exhibits before the museum opened, said museum officials, fearing for their jobs, demanded that employees tone down or remove unfavorable content. “It’s amazing what’s in here given the amount of censorship,” she said while strolling through the museum recently. Museum officials deny allegations of political interference. They say that the content went through a yearslong development process devised to ensure a nonpartisan narrative, and that what is on display reflects the need to incorporate a broad range of global topics. Ms. Fitzhenry, the museum spokeswoman, cited the dozens of exhibits that showcase past and current aboriginal issues. “We talk about government apologies as acknowledgments of historic wrongs,” she said, “but do not imply that these constitute sufficient redress. ” | 1 |
Friday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh warned President Donald Trump of “playing the swamp’s game” in governing. According to Limbaugh, Trump was elected to “drain the swamp,” but has been bogged down in taking on the Justice Department’s investigation of his alleged ties to Russia and how that investigation had taken on other aspects. Limbaugh argued although he was playing “the swamp’s game,” he had other tools at his disposal that he has yet to use. Partial transcript as follows (courtesy of RushLimbaugh. com): He could fire Rosenstein, and he could fire Mueller. There’s nothing stopping him from doing it, nothing legally. He could go to Rosenstein right now. He would be perfectly within his bounds to go to Rosenstein and say, “Look, this investigation can’t be wide open for anything. You’ve gotta limit what these people can look for. You’ve gotta limit it to actual felonious crimes. You can’t have them subpoenaing anybody they want financial records, text records, tax records. There has to be a limit. ” He would be perfectly within his bounds to do that because he is the executive branch. And if he wanted to fire these people, he could. When you see in the media, “There’s no way he can do it,” they’re talking politically. But since the independent counsel, special counsel’s been named, and now since they made sure to leak that Trump is under investigation, that is supposed to tie his hands, but it cannot tie his hands legally. If he wants to fire these people, he can. And if he wants to endure the excrement show that happens, he can. If he wants to drain the swamp, he could keep doing it. Now, the point is that once Trump’s inaugurated, already under a cloud of suspicion that it limits his ability to drain the swamp because when he begins it taints what he’s doing as rather than draining the swamp he’s getting rid of people who could put him in trouble. That’s what Josh here is saying. And all that is true. But it need not stop him. What is being relied on, therefore, is conventional thinking. Look, the Constitution has devised, for every branch of the government — the Founding Fathers were smart people, folks. They anticipated that there would be a quest to consolidate power. They understood human beings. They understood that the executive branch was gonna try to become dictator. They understood legislative branch was gonna be trying to overthrow the executive. They understood that the judges are gonna try to trample over everybody. And so they gave every branch defense mechanisms against various forms of attack in order maintain the separation of powers. And these are still in place today. These various mechanisms that the branches can constitutionally use to rein in, say, an overzealous executive. Or that a president can use to rein in overzealous members of the executive branch. The executive branch cannot run anything legislatively and . Now, Obama was able to take over the legislative branch ’cause they ceded it to him. The Democrats ran it, and they said, “We’re more than happy because we believe in centralized and since we love Obama, since he’s God, since he’s Mr. Perfection, we are happy to cede our power to him. ” And they did. Republicans have no desire to cede their power to Trump. They’re holding onto it so Trump’s in a battle with his own party for power, and of course the DOJ is not equally powerful as the executive branch. It is part of the executive branch. It does not have independent powers. The defense mechanisms are what are being employed now. Okay, we’ve announced the special counsel and he’s announced that the president’s under investigation, and so the political reality, the political consequences of using his executive power to broom all these people out of there is designed as a deterrent. But he could still do it. It’s not constitutional or legal prohibitions stopping him. It’s pure politics. And it’s the politics of the swamp, folks. The swamp has got Trump playing the swamp’s game right now. And that’s not what Trump was elected to do, and that’s not what Trump wants. Trump does not want to play the swamp’s game. I think the effort to get health care passed in the House was Trump playing the swamp game. And by swamp game, I mean the traditional way to get legislation passed. Somebody in the House comes up with a bill working with the White House and you got people that are for it and against it. You bring the detractors up to the White House, you wine and dine ’em, you cajole ’em, you beat ’em on the head. You do whatever, you try to get the bill passed, exactly the way it’s always been done in the swamp. That first health care bill that ended up not being voted on because it never had a chance, I never thought it was gonna have a chance because it was “all swamp all the time. ” Now, you might say, “Well, I mean, Rush, the swamp’s the swamp. There’s no other way to get a bill passed. The president’s not a dictator. ” I understand that. But Trump has many more tools at his disposal than he is aware of. I shouldn’t say that. He’s got more tools at his disposal than he is using. The power vested in the president by the Constitution in the executive branch is awesome. Now, there are limits to it. Separation of powers. But he hasn’t gotten close to utilizing it. It’s just politics that is the obstacle to getting rid of Mueller since Mueller has now leaked that Trump is under investigation. You’ve heard the media say if he gets rid of him now that takes us right back to Nixon. It takes us back to Nixon only because the media loved getting rid of Nixon. Nobody has any evidence Trump did anything yet. There isn’t a shred of evidence even now, folks. If you read the Washington Post story on the latest examples of the independent counsel looking into financial — there’s no evidence of anything. It’s a wild good chase. Trump would not be throwing out any evidence if he fired these people and shut down this investigation. If Trump thought the investigation was needlessly harming the country and derailing us at a time we needed to be focused on real dangers and enemies, he could do it. There would be hell to pay in the media, don’t misunderstand. I mean, it would dwarf what’s happening. But he could do it, is the point. Now, he won’t probably choose to do it because of the political ramifications of it. But the idea that he’s been hamstrung since the beginning because he was inaugurated under investigation, and at that time we didn’t even know what it was. It was just the FBI looking into Russia and collusion. Some of us have known that that was bogus from the . Some of us have known that it was purely manufactured, invented by the Hillary campaign 24 hours after she lost. Some of us have never believed a single word of it and would have been happy if Trump acted that way as well. But he didn’t. Why? He’s new. He wants to calm their fears. He wants to show them that the things they thought about him were not true, that the reasons they hated him were not grounded in any reality. He wanted to show them that he could work with them, be a good guy, we could all come together. I’m sure that’s what he wanted to do. And of course they want no part of that ’cause they don’t want any part of Donald Trump succeeding in anything, anytime, anywhere. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
The U. S. Army Corps will spend more than $1 million to clean up the mess left behind by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. The protesters — who succeeded in temporarily shutting down pipeline construction under orders from President Barack Obama — were evicted after President Donald Trump put the pipeline project back online. [“The corps’ contract with a company to provide trash removal and environmental cleanup includes the main Oceti Sakowin camp on the north side of the Cannonball River and the smaller Rosebud camp on the south side,” the Bismarck Tribune reported on Friday. “Both are on corps’ property. ” Despite efforts by the tribe to clean up the protest sites, the land was littered with garbage, and even cars and motor homes had to be removed. “About 240 rollout dumpsters have been hauled out, each brimming with debris of old food stores, structures, tents, building materials and personal belongings, much of it buried under winter blizzards or simply left behind,” the Tribune reported. “Officials are estimating it will require another equal number of loads to get the job done. ” The article said special consideration would be given to some items, such as teepees, that could have cultural significance and toxic materials. Logan Thompson, owner of Prairie View equipment contractor, said his company got instructions on handling human waste and waste compost from health officials. In January, Stand Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II spoke out about the clean up after the protest, which was staged because the tribe and others believed a pipeline spill could contaminate the Missouri River and a reservoir, the Tribune reported. “Because of this risk of flood, we’re worried about what’s going to be left at the camp,” Archambault said. “What we want to do is make sure none of that waste gets into the Missouri River . … We’re water protectors, but we’re the ones that are going to start contaminating the water. ” “The Dakota Access Pipeline is a underground state of the art 30” pipeline extending from the Forks production area in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois,” according to Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for the project. “The pipeline will transport light, sweet crude oil from North Dakota to major refining markets. ” Other facts about the pipeline include: | 0 |
When Parisians learned last week that President François Hollande paid his hairdresser more than $10, 000 a month to cut his hair, a howl was heard from Montmartre to the Marais. Not since President Bill Clinton shut down two runways in 1993 for a $200 trim aboard Air Force One have the tresses of a head of state been so widely discussed. But as men’s upkeep has gone the way of female grooming — Botox, facials and waxing, you know, down there — so, too, has the high price of a haircut. Ask Tim Rogers, a stylist at Sally Hershberger’s downtown New York studio, who charges a minimum of $400, and as much as $800, for a men’s haircut these days. He regularly flies to the Hamptons by helicopter to attend to a coterie of hedge fund managers and investment bankers. He has visited a celebrity’s home at 10 p. m. He, too, has an array of clients who go to the salon, among them the tennis champion Roger Federer and John Kennedy Schlossberg, the grandson of the president. “I maintain that men’s prices should be the same as women’s,” Mr. Rogers said last week in an interview from his home in Connecticut. Men, he said, are often more demanding than women. “The requirement is consistency,” he said. “You have to be available anytime, anywhere. ” Even if that means being on call 24 hours a day. “There is never a bad time for them,” he said of his clients. “And everything has a price. ” The star stylist Frédéric Fekkai raised eyebrows in the late 1990s when he started charging women $300 for a cut. By the he was supplanted by Ms. Hershberger, famous for the $600 shaggy mop that defined Meg Ryan’s carefree style at the time. But it is only in recent years that the cost for a man’s haircut has rivaled its feminine counterpart. Now, in New York, it’s not uncommon for a haircut at a top salon to cost $300. And that doesn’t include highlights, straightening or silken glosses. Martial Vivot, a former Parisian who founded Salon Pour Hommes in 2008, charges $320 for one of his signature cuts. Recently, he said, he saw a client bagging groceries at the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle. “I felt like, ‘Oh, wow,’” he said. “I wondered if he could afford it. ” Lakshman Achuthan, the chief operations officer of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, has his short hair groomed by April Barton, famous for the choppy locks of downtown rock ’n’ rollers. He pays slightly less than her regular $300 rate, he said, because he visits every four weeks or so. “I’m as far away from Hollande as can be,” he said. “I don’t consider myself a flashy spender. ” He has been a client since the 1990s and said he seeks Ms. Barton’s advice as much as the snip of her scissors. “Ten years ago she said, ‘You are losing your hair,’” he explained one recent afternoon, noting that there is much less now to cut. “She said, ‘As long as you keep it clean and don’t gain any weight, you’ll be fine. ’” Mr. Achuthan is a frequent guest on television, which means he must always be . “I think it would be easy for someone who has short hair to do a buzz cut,” he said. “But like every New Yorker, we are jammed up and don’t want to have something go wrong. ” Ms. Barton said that, while there is a boom in barbershops, men with longer or unruly hair often fare better with more instruction. “Most barbers don’t seem to be artful stylists,” she said. She has schooled investment bankers in how to use root concealer to cover gray. Last week, she had a client who paid $670 for a cut, straightening and toning to replenish color. And that didn’t include products and a hefty tip. “The type of guys who pay this are technology entrepreneurs,” she said. Mr. Rogers, of Sally Hershberger, said that Mr. Federer, who sees a number of stylists worldwide, has a relaxed attitude compared with other clients. “It’s much more about what Mirka wants,” he said, referring to Mr. Federer’s wife. “He doesn’t want his hair to fall in his eyes. ” Mr. Federer, he said, “loves his hair. And I love him. ” But isn’t $10, 000 a month for a hairdresser, to put it bluntly, a little ridiculous? For decades, scores of Goldman Sachs bankers have had their hair cut by Salvatore Anzalone, an Italian barber with a salon in the lobby of the nearby Conrad Hotel. He charges $30 for a dry cut. (A shampoo is $7 extra.) Not so, Mr. Vivot said. “France is the capital of fashion, and he is the president of the country,” he said of Mr. Hollande. The hairdresser is on call, like a doctor. “Maybe if he was in Korea, he’d get a flattop,” he said. Robin Capili, a stylist at Sally Hershberger who trained at a barbershop (and who charges a relatively more affordable $200) said he’d never spend $10, 000 a month. “I’d invest in property,” he said. “A condo maybe. ” One of his clients, Drew O’Connell, who lives in Dallas, said that $800 would be a reach, too. But after he tallied up the flight to New York every six weeks (about $400) and other costs, he laughed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t want to think about it. ” At one point, Ms. Barton said that she would have liked to style the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump. But now, she said, “I don’t want to see him. ” Mr. Trump devoted a section of his book “Trump: How to Get Rich” to “The Art of the Hair,” where he laid out his philosophy. If he goes bald, he wrote, he would get a toupee. “I’ve never said my hair is my strongest point,” he said. It is unlikely he’ll be visiting Ms. Barton anytime soon. | 1 |
After an explosive fight with her boyfriend, Melissa Monserrate, 18 at the time and five months pregnant, shut herself in the bathroom and put a razor blade to her wrist. Her boyfriend found her before she could hurt herself. On that night, in December 2009, he stood guard by the door until the morning, making sure she did not leave to try to harm herself again. She had just moved out of her mother’s apartment in Ridgewood, Queens, and begun living with her boyfriend and his family. The pregnancy was unplanned and difficult for Ms. Monserrate, who said she came from an unsupportive home environment. She discovered she was pregnant the summer before her senior year of high school and kept the news from her parents until she could no longer hide it. She missed 60 days of school because of complications from the pregnancy and had to have a minor operation, but worked hard to catch up on missed class. She managed to graduate on time. Much has changed since her son, Xavier Hormaza, 6, was born. “My son is everything to me,” Ms. Monserrate said. “But at the time, I wasn’t thinking about my son. ” Ms. Monserrate, now 25, and her boyfriend are not together anymore. At his house, she recognized the same adversarial environment that she had grown up in, and she wanted to give her son a different childhood from her own. Describing her home life as “very chaotic,” she recalled arguments between her mother and stepfather that became physical. Once, when a fight escalated, a knife pierced Ms. Monserrate’s bedroom door. Ms. Monserrate covered the hole with a mirror. When fights starting breaking out between Ms. Monserrate and her boyfriend, she decided something had to change. “I didn’t even know I was leaving until I’d left,” she recalled of leaving his apartment on Halloween in 2014, adding that she had not even packed an overnight bag. “That night I thought, ‘I can’t do it anymore. ’” In an interview at the Jamaica, Queens, offices of Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow, a work force development nonprofit and partner of Community Service Society, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, Ms. Monserrate said that after she left, she realized she could not become the mother she wanted to be without first rebuilding her own life. She left her son with her boyfriend and his family, went to stay with a friend in a apartment in Queens, and continued working as a cashier at a CVS. At a ’s urging, she also began therapy last June, finally confronting the troubles from her past that she had long ignored. At first, her financial situation had been secure. When she was 3 and living in an old apartment building, doctors found elevated levels of lead in her bloodstream. She was awarded $100, 000 in a lawsuit against the landlord — accessible as a lump sum when she turned 18. But unaccustomed to such wealth and with a newborn to care for, along with the expense of living on her own and helping family members, Ms. Monserrate had run through the funds by 2015. Struggling to get by on a cashier’s wage of $8. 25 an hour, she applied for public assistance and once received $191 in food stamps each month. But now, because she is a student and is unable to work part time, she no longer qualifies for food stamps and her financial situation has been tenuous. “But I’m still happy I helped my family,” she said. The CVS who encouraged her to seek therapy also urged her to go back to school and find a job. At a Human Resources Association office in September 2015, while enrolling for workfare, a public assistance program requiring recipients to look for work, she met a representative from Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow. She enrolled in several certification and credentialing programs to bolster her résumé. She received a certification in retail customer service, learned Microsoft Windows programs and took a public speaking class. After completing her courses at the nonprofit in February 2016 and with the help of her friend at CVS, she enrolled at LaGuardia Community College, where she received financial aid to cover her tuition, and prepared to start classes the next month. But days before classes began, she learned that her textbooks would not be covered by her scholarship. If she could not purchase the books, she would not be able to start until the following semester. Community Service Society expedited a grant request and provided her with $187 in Neediest Funds to buy her college textbooks. In September she qualified for the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, which is providing academic resources as well as covering her tuition. Now in her third semester, and on the dean’s list with a 3. 9 grade point average, Ms. Monserrate is a psychology major and hopes to become a clinical therapist. “I want to give to people what I didn’t receive for so long,” she said, adding that her time in therapy has helped her move forward from the nightmares of a decade ago. She currently shares an apartment with three roommates in Maspeth, Queens, and pays $370 monthly toward the rent. She worked briefly at her college bookstore and is now looking for a job to help pay off nearly $650 in credit card debt. But while her finances remain shaky, she said her life was finally coming together. She is again taking an active role in raising her son, helping him with school work and playing together in the park. Her dream for her son: “I want my son to have a father figure. I don’t want him to go through life without him. I want him to grow up with two parents that love him and protect him. ” | 1 |
With continued uncertainty in global markets, the public is dumping stocks as we just witnessed the 5th largest outflow from domestic stocks funds in the last 10 years!
Public Dumping Stocks From Jason Goepfert at SentimenTrader: “ U.S. equity funds got punched again. There was a huge outflow from domestic funds that focus on stocks, the 5th-largest since 2007. Total fund assets have grown over that time, but even if we express the outflow as a % of total assets, it was large. There is a temptation to automatically consider such an outflow to be a contrary indicator (and bullish for stocks) but the history of other large weekly outflows has been mixed… IMPORTANT: To find out which company the richest man in China has invested in, one that Rick Rule and Sprott Asset Management are pounding the table on that is quickly being recognized as one of the greatest investment opportunities in the world – CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
Huge outflow from mutual funds…again Weekly outflow the largest in years, but not as extreme as % of assets, and not necessarily a good contrary indicator
A popular topic on Wednesday was a shockingly large outflow from equity funds in the latest reporting period by the Investment Company Institute. The association estimated that U.S.-based mutual funds lost $16.3 billion in the week ended October 19. That’s the fifth-largest weekly outflow in nearly 10 years (see stunning chart below).
… There is a strong tendency to be a knee-jerk contrarian, see that headline number of a $16 billion outflow, and automatically conclude that investors have panicked and it’s time to buy stocks.
An immediate concern for the knee-jerk conclusion is that the last time we saw such a large outflow as in November 2015, immediately leading to a large correction in the market. Since 2011, the six occurrences led to a positive return a month later only two times, despite the persistent uptrend in stocks. Large outflows during the 2008 bear market proved to be terrible contrary indicators as well.”
Jeff Gundlach’s Warning And Danger For Key Global Markets | 0 |
Go to Article Austin, Texas was the scene of protest against President-elect Donald Trump and police officers. The same weekend three police officers were ambushed: | 0 |
Why You Should Stop Apologizing for Doing All That You Can Illustration by Kim Ryu By Kelly Hayes / transformativespaces.org
I’ve noticed lately that lot of allies and accomplices I talk to about NoDAPL and other struggles will name what they are trying to contribute to the cause, and then promptly apologize that they can’t do more. Often, the apologies seem perfunctory, or even insincere, but sometimes, they seem quite heartfelt. Personally, I deal with enough ideological tourists and movement loitering to feel a little sad when good people are doing good things, and feeling shitty about themselves anyway.
Maybe they don’t realize how many people applaud themselves for “standing on the right side of history,” as though reading an article or a book, and figuring out where to “stand,” is how one affects the course of history.
Or perhaps they just don’t know how to appreciate themselves — or have even been taught not to.
So I just want to say to everyone — whether you see yourself as an ally, accomplice or frontline struggler:
If you are really doing all that you can, you have nothing to apologize for.
Because if you are really and truly doing all that you can, you’re actually setting a pretty high standard for the rest of us.
And if you are really and truly doing all that you can, you should appreciate that about yourself, and allow yourself to be appreciated by others. Because as simple as it may sound, it’s often hard for us to internalize the fact that, on the scale of what we can all contribute, all you can is actually everything.
If you’re accustomed to selling yourself short, that may seem a little grandiose, so let’s vision this through for a moment:
Can you imagine how much closer to free we could get if everyone really did all that they could — within their own capacity, without martyring themselves in a heap of burnout?
What would it look like?
What could we build?
I think some of us have seen snapshots of what that could look like, in moments of consuming, fast-paced community collaboration, where we had to take care of each other to sustain community, and the work. But those breakneck sprints of action and inspiration, and the community-care triage that they necessitate, are not a model for day-to-day living. Because that intensity burns out. A broad, sustainable vision — and a simple one really — of community where everyone who claims to care passionately about a thing simply does all they can, and does their best… that’s obviously a dream that’s still under construction.
When we think about what obstacles impede that dream, we might first think of the internal failings of individuals: apathy, selfishness, etc. But what informs these tendencies? Is it possible that we are taught that some contributions are too small to matter, and that some are so great that they’ll make all the difference? Are we caught in a mythology where we are deemed either heroic or insignificant?
The idea that heroic individuals somehow marshal their talents, and resources (hello, Batman), to liberate the masses has, to put it mildly, an oppressive functionality. If internalized, it has the potential to shorten our social and political reach, due to our own self obsession. In movement building, we learn that heroic communities, rather than heroic individuals, propel our freedom dreams. Such communities are made up of people of all capacities, who bravely and lovingly do all they can.
Respecting our differing capacities is part of taking care of each other, and personally, I want to live in world where we honor each other’s contributions, celebrate one another, and love and care for each other.
So the bottom line here is: Be glad to acknowledge that you do all you can.
Let’s not teach others, who might take an interest in movement work, that feelings of insufficiency and guilt are the inevitable consequences of those efforts. We can be humble without erasing or diminishing ourselves. We can tell people what it means to us to do what we can, and we can discuss the different shapes that can take — and how fulfilling it can be.
If you’re reading this and thing to yourself, “Well, I really could do a lot more,” you could be right. I don’t know your story, or who depends on you, what your health is like or what resources you have to give. But if you think you have more to offer, don’t approach those efforts from a place of guilt — because as you may have noticed, the guilt of the privileged has never gotten anyone free.
So take joy in sharing your efforts and ideas with others. Celebrate what it means to be a resistor acting in defense of your community, or acting in solidarity with others. And if you’re a white accomplice, appreciate what it means to be a full-fledged traitor to white supremacy. Because that’s a beautiful thing and worth smiling about.
I’m not saying we should gloss over the messes we make and wade through in our organizing spaces. As communities, we need to be real about the rough places movement work can go — especially when discussing the structural oppressions we replicate in our own spaces. But we also need to feel right about the things we deserve to feel right about, and to remind each other of that.
If your goal is to be enough to put right everything that’s wrong, you will never be enough. But if your goal is to build a culture and a community that upends its oppressions, then the best you’ve got — the best that a whole lot of us have got — is exactly what it’s going to take.
It’s easy to tell people not to burn out, but I think it sometimes helps to think of movements as larger forces of nature — as constellations of actions, movements, stories and freedom fighters. There are all kinds of action-takers who show us what the pursuit of freedom looks like.
So just do your best today, and do it again tomorrow, and feel right about that. Because together, we will get there. 0.0 · | 1 |
Next Prev Swipe left/right So apparently “Sausage FM” where they play the sound of sizzling sausages all day is now a thing
@Hwallop over on Twitter writes, “News in brief in @thetimes. I feel this is worthy of a 1500-word feature. Or a Pinter play.”
There’s a clip of “Sausage FM – Less Talk, More Pork” over on Soundcloud . | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have been calling their senators to urge them to vote on Friday against the confirmation of Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s contentious nominee to run the agency, a remarkable display of activism and defiance that presages turbulent times ahead for the E. P. A. Many of the scientists, environmental lawyers and policy experts who work in E. P. A. offices around the country say the calls are a last resort for workers who fear a nominee selected to run an agency he has made a career out of fighting — by a president who has vowed to “get rid of” it. “Mr. Pruitt’s background speaks for itself, and it comes on top of what the president wants to do to E. P. A. ,” said John O’Grady, a biochemist at the agency since the first Bush administration and president of the union representing the E. P. A. ’s 15, 000 employees nationwide. Nicole Cantello, an E. P. A. lawyer who heads the union in the Chicago area, said: “It seems like Trump and Pruitt want a complete reversal of what E. P. A. has done. I don’t know if there’s any other agency that’s been so reviled. So it’s in our interests to do this. ” The union has sent emails and posted Facebook and Twitter messages urging members to make the calls. “It is rare,” said James A. Thurber, the director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “I can’t think of any other time when people in the bureaucracy have done this. ” The campaign is not likely to succeed. Before Friday’s vote, two Democratic senators, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, announced that they would vote for Mr. Pruitt’s confirmation, and only one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, has said she will oppose him. But because Civil Service rules make it difficult to fire federal workers, the show of defiance indicates that Mr. Pruitt will face strong internal opposition to many of his promised efforts to curtail E. P. A. activities and influence. “What it means is that it’s going to be a blood bath when Pruitt gets in there,” said Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican former governor of New Jersey and the E. P. A. administrator during the first term of President George W. Bush. Ms. Whitman predicted a standoff between career employees and their politically appointed bosses, noting that Mr. Pruitt would be blocked by legal Civil Service protections from immediately firing longtime employees, but would probably be able to retaliate in other ways, such as shifting them to different jobs. The showdown could embolden the White House and Congress to change federal Civil Service laws. “The Civil Service is supposed to be a class of experts implementing policy, regardless of politics,” said Myron Ebell, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who led Mr. Trump’s environmental transition team. “If they have now become a special interest group pleading their own agenda, then it is probably time to look at reforming the Civil Service laws. ” The revolt has also angered supporters of Mr. Pruitt. “There clearly has been an organized effort to demonize Pruitt, and I think that’s unfair and unfortunate,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, a senior E. P. A. official in the George W. Bush administration who has been mentioned as a possible deputy to Mr. Pruitt. “I don’t remember, in my time, anything like this. But I think that anyone Trump nominated would be targeted. ” “We know that he’ll dismantle Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the U. S. rule, but he’s not going to go in there and start firing people,” said Mr. Holmstead, referring to Obama regulations on climate change and water pollution. Mr. Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, has sued the E. P. A. at least 14 times, often in concert with the nation’s largest fossil fuel companies, to block major environmental regulations. He has questioned global warming and is a key architect of the national legal effort to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s climate change policies. He has harshly criticized the role of the federal agency, saying much of its authority should be dissolved and left to the states. Mr. Pruitt’s legal views on environmental protection broadly, and the role of the E. P. A. specifically, appear to line up with Mr. Trump’s campaign claim that “Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace. ” Within days of Mr. Pruitt’s Mr. Trump is expected to sign one or more executive orders aimed at undoing Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations, and possibly to begin dismantling some E. P. A. offices and programs, people familiar with the White House’s plans said. While it will be impossible to undo most major rules or programs that quickly, the presidential signatures would authorize Mr. Pruitt to cut existing environmental regulations — and, eventually, the jobs of many of the people who enforce them. Ms. Cantello said most of her career at the E. P. A. had been focused on water protection, particularly on cleaning pollution in the Great Lakes. “I’m afraid all the work I’ve done will be abandoned,” she said. Ms. Cantello and other longtime agency employees said that while they sometimes chafed under the administration of George W. Bush, who sought to loosen some environmental rules, they did not openly rebel against it — nor, they said, did they fear that Mr. Bush and his appointees wanted to eliminate the agency. “I’ve been here for 30 years, and I’ve never called my senator about a nominee before,” said an E. P. A. employee in North Carolina who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing her job. The calls to senators come on top of an protest last week by Chicago E. P. A. employees, and agency workers say that if Mr. Pruitt is confirmed, they intend to amplify their resistance to him, taking their case to the American public. “At this point, it’s just, ‘call your senator,’” Mr. O’Grady, the union president, said. “We plan on more demonstrations, more rallies. I think you will see the employees’ union reaching out to N. G. O.s and having alliances with them,” he added, referring to nongovernmental organizations. “We’re looking at working with P. R. firms. ” The White House and E. P. A. did not respond to emailed questions about the employees’ campaign. The E. P. A. emerged as a Republican political target during the Obama administration, after Mr. Obama turned to the agency to muscle through an environmental agenda that could not get through Congress. While Mr. Trump campaigned on slashing rules on climate change and waterways, his efforts might also be thwarted by Congress. But the E. P. A. is likely to be at the center of his antiregulatory agenda. Experts say it is not surprising that liberal and environmental groups like the Sierra Club have campaigned against Mr. Pruitt. Over 700 former E. P. A. employees have signed a letter to senators opposing his confirmation. The Center for Media and Democracy, a group, successfully sued the Oklahoma attorney general’s office to release about 3, 000 of Mr. Pruitt’s emails, which they say could reveal more about his ties to fossil fuel companies. An Oklahoma judge ruled Thursday that the emails must be released but gave the attorney general’s office until Tuesday to comply, long enough to avoid roiling the confirmation vote unless Democrats can persuade Senate Republicans to hold off. But former E. P. A. officials said the open rebellion by current employees was extraordinary, especially considering that their resistance could backfire once Mr. Pruitt arrives on the job. “E. P. A. staff are pretty careful. They’re ” said Judith Enck, who left the agency last month. “If people are saying and doing things like this, it’s because they’re really concerned. ” Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said on Wednesday that his office had received dozens of calls from people both opposing and supporting Mr. Pruitt’s nomination, including E. P. A. employees, and that he had not yet decided whether to vote for him. “I do have concerns about the Great Lakes,” he said. Mr. O’Grady said that he expected the calls to continue through Friday’s vote. “I pray they don’t dismantle the E. P. A. ,” he said. “It’s going to be like Humpty Dumpty — very difficult to put back together again. ” | 1 |
Police are investigating a racial epithet that was spray painted on the front gate of the Los Angeles home owned by Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James, reports say. [The mansion in Brentwood is not James’ main home and Captain Patricia Sandoval of the L. A. Police Department reported that James was not home during the incident. Police noted that a property manager had alerted authorities to the graffiti, ESPN reported. An unknown person defaced the gate with the . Police said they are investigating the vandalism as a possible hate crime. Police added that there may be video evidence of the incident from surveillance cameras. “It’s ignorance, that’s what it is,” a person friendly with the player told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “Unfortunately in 2017 people still think the way they do. I can’t say it’s surprising given what’s happened in this country the last eight months. ” The friend went on to pin the incident of racism. “You can be a titan of industry, you can be a community leader, you can be the best at what you do and they can cut you down to just, ‘You’re black. ’” The NBA star player has owned the home since 2015 and reportedly paid $20. 9 million for the home. James also owns a mansion overlooking Biscayne Bay in an affluent suburb of Miami that he reportedly paid $9 million for during his stint with the Miami Heat. The small forward will be in Oakland, California, on Thursday as the Cavaliers take on the Golden State Warriors. It will be James’ seventh trip in a row to the finals. James has now won three championships and four MVP awards. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0 |
Kids being made to vote for President in School page: 1 link I live in West Virginia. My kids came home today from school and was talking about voting at school for the next President. They explained something similar to a ballot. Where they had to put a check mark beside who they wanted as President along with their home address and signature. I have never heard of this , as my kids have never had to do this before or was I notified that my kids would be voting. My kids are age 11 and 9, 1 in grade school and another in middle / jr high school. I asked them if they were given any documentation from school about the nominees. They showed me 1 paper that spoke about all of Hillary's achievements and on the back it shows Trumps. However the paper seemed biased speaking of Hillary's accomplishments and barely spoke of Trump other than he built a few buildings and was on a tv show. I do not own a actual camera other than my phone. So the pic is bit blurry. Picture of Document Again sorry for the blurry picture. My kids have been going to school here all their lives. I have never seen this before, might be something new. Has anyone else seen this before? edit on pmp20162016-10-26T18:08:54-05:0036 by apoc36 because: (no reason given) link originally posted by: apoc36 I live in West Virginia. My kids came home today from school and was talking about voting at school for the next President. They explained something similar to a ballot. Where they had to put a check mark beside who they wanted as President along with their home address and signature. I have never heard of this , as my kids have never had to do this before or was I notified that my kids would be voting. My kids are age 11 and 9, 1 in grade school and another in middle / jr high school. I asked them if they were given any documentation from school about the nominees. They showed me 1 paper that spoke about all of Hillary's achievements and on the back it shows Trumps. However the paper seemed biased speaking of Hillary's accomplishments and barely spoke of Trump other than he built a few buildings and was on a tv show. I do not own a actual camera other than my phone. So the pic is bit blurry. [url=http://postimg.org/image/v35tvwykv/]Blurry Picture of _/url] Again sorry for the blurry picture. My kids have been going to school here all their lives. I have never seen this before, might be something new. Has anyone else seen this before? This has been done for years. I remember it happening when I was in 2nd grade more than 40 years ago. I have heard that polling grade school children on Presidential elections is actually more accurate than 'scientific polls'. Children tend to hear what their parents opinions are on the subject without all the filters. They subconsciously 'vote' the way their parents will vote (supposedly). | 0 |
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Sunday on Fox News Channel’s’“Media Buzz,” White House aide Kellyanne Conway criticized Democratic politicians that “have time to go and cry and weep at the airports” to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order, but not the time to vote on Trump’s cabinet nominees. Conway said, “The Democrats want to go on the record, they have time to go and cry and weep at the airport protesting something that they’ve completely bastardized as to what it is and what its intent and what its effect is, this immigration order and yet they don’t have time to give a fair hearing, an vote on these nominees?” Conway asked. “You want to vote against, vote against. But at least give people a hearing and the decency of a vote. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
is thriving near Texas as one of the Mexican cartels controlling the U. S. Border is resorting to beheading videos to intimidate rivals and to scare the civilian population into complete compliance. The cartel, Los Zetas, is fighting for control of lucrative border drug and illegal immigration corridors into Texas. Breitbart Texas obtained exclusive video of Los Zetas’ which can be viewed in full on LiveLeak. [A video that was leaked to Breitbart Texas by our sources in Mexico this week shows the moment when two gunmen wearing masks stand behind a shirtless man and begin to interrogate him. The gunmen claim to be members of the Los Zetas and fire off a series of threats against other Los Zetas factions including Cartel Del Noreste (CDN) Vieja Escuela Z, and others. You can see the entire video in the LiveLeak Channel warning — the content is extremely graphic in nature. Roughly an hour after publication, LiveLeak removed the video despite having served as a reliable platform for those wishing to share graphic content strictly for purposes. Should any law enforcement or other officials wish to review the footage, feel free to contact Breitbart Texas. In the video, the shirtless male kneels as he is interrogated. The victim says he is David Mandujano Montoya and had been sent to Ciudad Victoria to carry out crimes in order to spark fear. Mandujano said he worked for Pancho Carreon, one of the leaders of the Vieja Escuela Z in the southern part of Tamaulipas. His group would receive help from the Gulf Cartel, Carteles Unidos, and others. “This is a message from all of the Zetas in Ciudad Victoria,” one of the gunmen yells out. “To enter Tamaulipas and especially Ciudad Victoria, you need permission. ” The gunman further taunts Pancho Carreon, telling him to stop sending more people or they would meet a similar fate. The gunman claims that they do not tolerate extortion or kidnapping and those who do that are not Zetas. “Victoria is Zeta territory, without CDG, CDN and other cartels,” the gunman says in the video as he asks the citizens to report on anyone who is carrying out kidnappings and extortions. Immediately after, the second gunman pulls out a large silver meat cleaver and begins to cut the victim’s throat. Soon after, the victim falls forward and the gunman uses the cleaver to hack away at his head. Once the gunmen sever the head, they place it on top of the victim’s back to begin removing the hands. Brief, graphic footage of a second decapitation acquired at the same time by Breitbart Texas has been appended to the end of the video. As Breitbart Texas has been reporting, Ciudad Victoria is one of the main battlefronts for a fierce turf war between various Los Zetas factions. Initially, the groups known as Vieja Escuela Z and Grupo Bravo had been fighting with the faction going by the name “Cartel Del Noreste” or CDN. Since then, Grupo Bravo and Vieja Escuela Z have severed ties — waging a war. The constant fighting has resulted in almost daily kidnappings, executions, shootings, and . Authorities have not commented on the contents of the videos, nor if they have located the bodies of the victims. Mexican law enforcement officials consulted by Breitbart Texas claim the gunmen in the video are likely members of the Grupo Bravo who are trying to their organization amid the shifting alliances and betrayals. The members of Grupo Bravo appear to have laid claim to Ciudad Victoria. Time will tell if the violence relent. Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. Brandon Darby is managing director and of Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Cartel Chronicles sources contributed to this report. This article has been updated to reflect new information. | 0 |
. Inner Earth (Agartha) Glows Like in the Movie Avatar Can there be light below the surface of the Earth, without any exposure to the Sun? Surprisingly, th... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/10/inner-earth-agartha-glows-like-in-movie.html Can there be light below the surface of the Earth, without any exposure to the Sun? Surprisingly, the answer is YES. Bioluminescent organisms have the ability to glow almost like magic. Many organisms use their natural ability to produce light to trick predators, to attract mates and even to communicate. The word for this seemingly magical ability is called “bioluminescence,” which comes from “bio,” meaning life, and “lumin,” meaning light. Most of these organisms, such as plankton, glow blue, but a few glow red, green, or orange. Some tiny animal plankton (zooplankton) are big enough to see with the unaided eye.Most bioluminescent zooplankton don’t glow in the dark themselves, but instead squirt globs of glowing chemicals into the water. Some zooplankton use bioluminescence to attract a mate, or to form reproductive swarms. Not only is nature’s biochemistry fascinating, it can also be extremely beautiful, especially given the backdrop of a dark, misty cave. Glow worm is the common name for various groups of insect larvae and adult larviform females that glow through bioluminescence. They may sometimes resemble worms, but are actually insects. The glow they produce, through by a chemical reaction, is incredibly efficient; nearly 100% of the energy input is turned into light (Compare this to the best light-emitting diodes at just 24%). Australia and New Zealand have some of the most spectacular caves, where one can go on guided tours to witness this natural phenomenon up close. (see video below) Why do some mushrooms emit light? Making light isn’t common in fungi; scientists have described about 100,000 fungal species, and only 75 glow. Lab work has shown that the glow did not happen randomly or by accident. Scientists found that these mushrooms made light mostly at night, so experiments were conducted to determine why. According to studies ( referenced in the book ), in dark environments, bioluminescent fruit bodies may be at an advantage by attracting insects and other arthropods that could help disperse their spores. Conditions that affect the growth of fungi, such as pH, light and temperature, have been found to influence bioluminescence, suggesting a link between metabolic activity and fungal bioluminescence. The diversity of creatures with this ability is equally astonishing, from algae and the common firefly to deep-sea dwellers that are rarely seen by humans. What's also fascinating is that many of these creatures are not closely related, and bioluminescent traits have seemingly evolved separately at least 30 times. With countless well lit subterranean caves and glowing caverns, it makes one wonder what could be dwelling in vast unexplored areas under the crust. The idea that our planet consists of a hollow, or honeycombed, interior is not new. Some of the oldest cultures speak of civilizations inside of vast cavern-cities, within the bowels of the earth. According to certain Buddhist and Hindu traditions, secret tunnels connect Tibet with a subterranean paradise, and they call this legendary underworld Agartha. In India, this underground oasis is best known by its Sanskrit name, Shambhala, thought to mean 'place of tranquility.' Mythologies throughout the world, from North and South America to Europe and the Arctic, describe numerous entrances to these fabled inner kingdoms. Many occult organizations, esoteric authors, and secret societies concur with these myths and legends of subterranean inhabitants, who are the remnants of antediluvian civilizations, which sought refuge in hollow caverns inside the earth. Assuming that the myths are true, and the Earth is partially hollow, how could life survive underground? How would organisms receive the ventilation required to breathe miles below the surface? Surface trees and rainforests are responsible for less than one-third of the Earth’s oxygen, while marine plants, such as phytoplankton, are responsible for between 70 to 80 percent of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. The vast majority of our oxygen comes from aquatic organisms. Phytoplankton, kelp, and algae produce oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis, a process which converts carbon dioxide and light into sugars which are then used for energy. Phytoplankton is responsible for HALF of Earth's oxygen While the process of photosynthesis usually implies the presence of sunlight, the Sun is not the only available light or energy source able to power photosynthesis. Before the discovery of hydrothermal vents, and their ecosystems, scientists believed that only small animals lived at the ocean bottom, in seafloor sediments. They theorized that these animals received their food from above, because the established model of the marine food chain depended on sunlight and photosynthesis, just as the food chain on land does. Mainstream academia taught that this was the only way life could survive in the darkness of the deep seafloor. The discovery of hydrothermal vents changed all that. It became clear that vast communities of animals grew quickly and to larger than expected sizes in the depths without the aid of the Sun. Instead of using light to create organic material (photosynthesis), microorganisms at the bottom of the food chain at hydrothermal vents used chemicals such as hydrogen sulfide (chemosynthesis). At the seafloor, there are thriving ecosystems that receive energy not from the sun, but from the heat and chemicals provided by the planet itself. For many thousands of species dwelling in the deep, the energy to sustain life does not flow down from above, but comes up from the interior of the earth. Even in the unlikely scenario where every single tree were chopped down, we would still be able to breathe thanks to aquatic plant-life (ex. algae). The Earth has a tremendous amount of water, and these oceans, rivers, and lakes are teeming with numerous species of biologically active, oxygen-producing organisms. Are there any known sources of sustenance available that could provide for a large human population? What evidence is there that a sustainable biosphere could exist miles below the surface, totally isolated from the nourishment and the established life cycle provided by the sun? Where are the entrances to inner earth, and which races live inside? Author and anthropologist, Robert Sepehr , explores these questions and attempts to unlock their riddles, which have eluded any consideration in mainstream academia. Numerous endeavors have been undertaken to access the interior of the earth. Polar expeditions and battles, such as Operation Highjump, still remain largely classified, and have been shrouded in secrecy for decades, but scientific revelations validating the rumors surrounding these covert events, and their implications, are finally being exposed to daylight. What are the mysteries of inner Earth? Reference: Atlantean Gardens | 1 |
GUADALAJARA, Jalisco — A U. S. diplomat was shot in this city when he was leaving a shopping center in a failed murder attempt. The suspected gunman was able to ran away after the attack. Police later apprehended the shooter. [UPDATE, Jan. 8, 12:00 CST: Mexican Investigators with Jalisco’s Attorney General’s Office, have confirmed to Breitbart Texas that the suspected shooter has been identified as a man from India who then became a naturalized U. S. citizen. The suspected shooter, Zafar Zia, was arrested by Mexican authorities as part of the investigation into the attack. At the time of the arrest, authorities seized a . 38 caliber handgun, an automobile with California license plates and a wig that is believed to have been used at the time of the attempted murder. According to authorities, Zia had moved to Guadalajara in November 2016 from Phoenix and had been residing in the city since. The apparent motive for the attempted murder appears to have been a disagreement over an undisclosed visa process. Authorities in this state have identified the shooting victim as Christopher Ashcraft, a consular agent with the U. S. Consulate in Guadalajara, Jalisco. A security video obtained by Breitbart Texas shows the moment when Ashcraft walks to a booth to pay for parking in the shopping center. The consular agent carryied a gym bag and was dressed in a manner that led authorities to believe that he was leaving a local gym inside the shopping center. The video shows a man wearing dark blue shirt and pants similar to a nurse’s Authorities following Ashcraft. A second video shows the man in blue walking in circles as he awaits for Ashcraft’s vehicle. When the consular agent arrives at the exit of the parking lot, the gunman pulls a handgun from his pants pocket and fires a single shot at the consular agents vehicle before running away. Authorities revealed to Breitbart Texas that the gunman had been using a hat or a wig, mustache, glasses and gloves during various stages of the crime — such as when he followed Ashcroft, during the shooting, and when he fled the scene. The diplomat was left bleeding inside his compact vehicle until medical personnel arrived. An ambulance transported him to a local hospital. Ashcraft’s vehicle had consular license plates BCC0911 from Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretariat. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigations arrived at the shopping center to go over the crime scene and take copies of the surveillance videos. A second team of agents rushed to the San Javier Hospital where Ashcraft was undergoing emergency surgery. Medical personnel confirmed that the consular agent was shot in his right midsection. For security reasons, Ashcraft will be sent back to the U. S. while authorities continue to look into the failed assassination attempt. The consular agent served in the Guadalajara Consulate since March 2016. Authorities announced a $20, 000 reward for information leading to the capture of the gunman and any accomplices. On Friday morning, officials with the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office confirmed to Breitbart Texas that the suspected gunman had been arrested. Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Tony Aranda from Monterrey, Nuevo León and Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz. | 0 |
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A federal judge in Nevada just dragged the Trump campaign into court to answer for accusations of using minority voter intimidation tactics alongside the RNC. This case is on similar grounds as the national suit, and accuses the Nevada state GOP of violating the surviving provisions of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, seeking to deprive American citizens of their civil rights, in this case, the right to vote.
A federal judge Tuesday ordered representatives from the Donald Trump campaign and the Nevada Republican Party to appear at a hearing in his courtroom Wednesday afternoon in a lawsuit filed by Nevada Democrats accusing them of the engaging in voter intimidation tactics. U.S. District Judge Richard Franklin Boulware also ordered the Trump campaign and state party to turn over any training materials they provided to “poll watchers, poll observers, exit pollsters or any other similarly tasked individuals.”
At the hearing, the Trump campaign and the Nevada GOP should be prepared to respond to the motion for a temporary restraining order that the Democrats requested in the lawsuit, the judge’s order said.
In other new, there was an order issued in the national voter intimidation case against the RNC that we’ve been following. A federal judge just ordered the Republican National Committee to turn over their entire geographic targeting plan for poll watching after Democrats filed a lawsuit last week under a 35-year old binding legal agreement to prevent minority voter suppression by the GOP.
At a court hearing this morning, top RNC officials were ordered to testify under oath and reveal all knowledge about poll watching or observation programs to be enacted by RNC volunteers.
Trump’s campaign manager, Republican VP candidate Mike Pence, two GOP state party chairs, and longtime wingnut Trump operative Roger Stone all stand accused of violating the agreement by instituting or speaking about illegal “ballot security programs” in recordings and to the media.
Republicans “ballot security” ideas need to be pre-cleared 10 days in advance by Democrats and the federal court according to the 1982 agreement, and nowhere have GOP lawyers asserted that they asked for such clearance to date. Judge John Michael Vazquez ordered :
ORDERED that Defendant [Republican National Committee] shall also produce to Plaintiff [Democratic National Committee] no later than 5:00 p.m. EST, November 3, 2016, and file on the docket the following: An affidavit or affidavits by a person or persons with personal knowledge setting forth in detail Defendant’s efforts regarding poll watching or poll observation’ in connection with the 2016 Presidential Election.
Defendant’s efforts shall apply to those efforts by any employee, agent, or servant of Defendant, including volunteers and independent contractors/vendors. The affiant(s) shall be an agent, servant, or employee of Defendant. The affidavit(s) shall set forth all material terms of any such efforts, including any geographic areas which are being targeted for poll watching or poll observation and the reason(s) those areas are being targeted . Any training materials or advice, whether written, electronic, or verbal, provided to poll watchers or poll observers shall also be provided.
Democrats have requested injunctive relief from the court to stop Republicans from flooding polls in minority areas with “poll watchers” seeking to prevent, challenge or intimidate voters from casting their votes, rather than ensuring the rights of voters to make their choices.
Just yesterday, another long list of court ordered disclosures was made public, and it included the Republican party’s response to the Democrats stiff demands for sanctions and contempt of court against the Republican party’s violators.
In the GOP’s response they notably failed to defend the Pennsylvania state GOP chair (who is also a member of the RNC and therefore fully bound by the agreement), who disclosed that he was trying to change state law to allow voters from suburban counties around Philadelphia to flood into polling places in the urban areas where there’s a majority of minority voters.
Oral arguments in the case are happening tomorrow, and it’s expected that the court will issue a decision in the case.
Oddly, Republicans are facing these numerous lawsuits because they “won” a court battle over the 1982 consent decree which prevents them from intimidating minority voters, that forced Democrats to sue for state party activities separately from the national party, even though many of those activities are the same and all of the top state party officials are part of the RNC themselves.
Now, there are three other states where the Republican state parties are facing legal action by Democrats for ballot security programs, which might violate both the aforementioned Ku Klux Klan Act or the Voting Rights Act or both. | 1 |
Trending Articles: Trending Articles: The Smoking Gun: Cheryl Mills Tells Podesta "We Need To Clean This Up - Obama Has Emails From Her" Published: October 26, 2016 Source: Zero Hedge
Recall that in a March 2015 interview with CBS, just after the NYT reported of Hillary's use of a private email server, president Obama told the American public he had only learned about Hillary's "unusual" arrangement from the press.
As we further reminded readers one month ago, CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante asked Mr. Obama when he learned about her private email system after his Saturday appearance in Selma, Alabama. " The same time everybody else learned it through news reports ," the president told Plante. " The policy of my administration is to encourage transparency, which is why my emails, the BlackBerry I carry around, all those records are available and archived ," Mr. Obama said. "I'm glad that Hillary's instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed."
Unfortunately, the "transparency" of the Obama administration was severely tarnished in late September , when in the FBI's interview notes with Huma Abedin released by the FBI it was first revealed that Obama had used a pseudonymous email account: "Once informed that the sender's name is believed to be pseudonym used by the president, Abedin exclaimed: 'How is this not classified?'" the report says. "Abedin then expressed her amazement at the president's use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email."
To be sure, this was not definitive evidence that Obama was aware of Hillary's email server, nor that there may have been collusion between the president and the Clinton campaign.
That changed today, however, when in the latest Podesta dump we learn that in an email from Cheryl Mills to John Podesta , the Clinton aide upon learning what Obama had just said... I have some questions here pic.twitter.com/ufkeoZCx2m
— Katherine Miller (@katherinemiller) March 7, 2015
... countered with something quite stunning:
we need to clean this up - he has emails from her - they do not say state.gov
That, ladies and gentlemen, is proof that the president not only lied, but did so with the clear intention of protecting the Clinton campaign.
As a further reminder, Politico previously reported that the State Department had refused to make public that and other emails Clinton exchanged with Obama. Lawyers cited the "presidential communications privilege," a variation of executive privilege, in order to withhold the messages under the Freedom of Information Act. It is therefore unknown what the president's "alternative" email account was, or who hosted it.
This also explains why in a prior Wikileak, Podesta told Mills in an email titled "Special Category" that she thinks " we should hold emails to and from potus? That's the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I(t) seems like they will. " Mills did not respond by email.
The Clinton-Obama emails were turned over to the State Department, which later announced it would not release them.
* * *
So just how did Mills and Podesta "clean up" the fact that Obama lied to the American people, a tactic some could allege is evidence of an attempt to cover up a presidential lie to protect Hillary Clinton.
What we do know, and we assume this is completely unrelated, between March 25-31, just a couple of weeks after Mills said "we need to clean this up," Bleachbit was used to wipe Hillary's private server clean. But of course, that is purely a coincidence.
Since we are confident others will also demand an answer, in light of the latest revelation hinting at a collusive cover up extending to the very top of US government, or as Cheryl Mills dubbed it a "clean up", perhaps it is time for the State Depratment to unveil just what was said between the president and the Clinton campaign? Share This Article... | 1 |
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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has approved a motion that endorses the right of the Palestinians to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and slams Israeli provocations around the holy site.
UNESCO’s 21-member World Heritage Committee adopted the resolution in Wednesday’s secret ballot at the agency’s headquarters in Paris.
Ten countries voted for, two against, eight abstained and one was absent in the voting.
The resolution expresses UNESCO’s deep concerns over Israeli construction works and archaeological excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem al-Quds.
Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, welcomed the passage of the motion and accused the Tel Aviv regime of resorting to a campaign of distorting facts in a bid to legitimize its occupation of East Jerusalem al-Quds.
“Through an orchestrated campaign, Israel has been using archaeological claims and distortion of facts as a way to legitimize the annexation of occupied East Jerusalem,” Erekat said.
He further noted that the UNESCO resolution urges “respecting the status quo of its religious sites, including the al-Aqsa Mosque compound that continues to be threatened by the systematic incitement and provocative actions of the Israeli government and extremist Jewish groups.”
Earlier this month, UNESCO’s 58-member Executive Board approved a similar resolution, prompting a furious reaction from Israel as the regime suspended its ties with the agency.
Wednesday’s vote further infuriated Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing that the regime’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, had been recalled for consultations.
“We will decide what the next steps will be,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
Elias Sanbar, Palestine’s UNESCO envoy, fired back at those upset with the resolution and warned that Israelis were “politicizing religion and this is very dangerous.”
Makram Mustafa Queisi, Jordan’s ambassador to UNESCO, also stressed that UNESCO tried to tackle the issue from a “technical point of view” while many parties were politicizing it. Palestinian Ambassador to UNESCO Elias Sanbar (L) and Jordanian envoy Makram Mustafa Queisi address the media after an anti-Israel resolution was passed by secret ballot at the agency’s headquarters in Paris, France, October 26, 2016. (Photo by AP)
Palestine became the 195th full member of UNESCO in October 2011, triggering a cut in Tel Aviv’s funding to the agency.
The occupied territories have already been the scene of increased tensions ever since the Israeli regime imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in August 2015.
More than 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of last October. | 0 |
SEATTLE — Howard Schultz, the visionary leader of Starbucks, said on Thursday he would step down as chief executive next year, handing over to his personally selected successor the management of the company he built into the world’s largest coffee business, with over 25, 000 stores in 75 countries. Mr. Schultz, one of the most visible chief executives in the country, has made Starbucks a vocal part of the national conversation on issues like gun violence, gay rights, race relations, veterans rights and student debt. The succession will take place on April 3, and he will remain at the company as executive chairman, focusing on the company’s involvement in social causes and on growing Starbucks Reserve, the company’s new superpremium brand and chain of stores. Mr. Schultz, 63, will be succeeded by his close friend Kevin Johnson, the company’s current president and a longtime Starbucks board member. “This is a big day for me,” Mr. Schultz said in an interview. “I love the company as much as I love my family. ” But he said it was the right time to hand the keys to Mr. Johnson, whom he described as being “better equipped” to “run the company than I am,” ticking off a list of Mr. Johnson’s operational talents, and saying that he wanted to “relinquish the role and responsibility to the right person. ” Mr. Schultz, who could be considered the Steve Jobs of coffee, grew up poor in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. He had a coffee epiphany while paying a client call on a coffee bean store in Seattle in 1981, and then went to work at the company the next year. In 1983, he visited Italy and was impressed not only by the ubiquity of coffee bars, but also their central role as community gathering spots — a role he refers to as “the third place” in society. Today, Starbucks is adding about 2, 000 new stores a year worldwide. And its legacy under Mr. Schultz’s leadership includes many pioneering social and philanthropic programs: In 1988, the company introduced full health benefits for and employees and their domestic partners in 1991 it was the first privately owned American company to include workers in its program and so on, with efforts that have included the “ethical sourcing” of ingredients, a college degree program for baristas, and cups that use recycled materials. “I wanted to build the company my father never got to work for,” he said. At an employee meeting at the company’s headquarters on Thursday, Mr. Schultz was greeted with tears and a standing ovation. “For me, perhaps there are other things that are part of my destiny,” he told them. The move is likely to ignite renewed speculation about whether Mr. Schultz is paving the way to leave the company entirely to enter politics. An outspoken Democrat, Mr. Schultz has spent an increasing amount of time traveling around the country speaking publicly about the need to fix the “dysfunction in Washington. ” He has a close relationship with President Obama and had been a supporter of Hillary Clinton. The company’s political positions have sometimes created a backlash. During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump and his supporters waged war against Starbucks: In 2015, after the company redesigned its holiday cups to remove Christmas imagery, Mr. Trump suggested a boycott. This year, his supporters staged a protest called #TrumpCup in which they went to Starbucks and ordered drinks under the name Trump to get the baristas to call the name out loud. Still, Mr. Schultz said he intends for Starbucks to “maintain our moral courage. ” And he defended efforts like the company’s “Race Together” campaign to spur a conversation about race relations, saying that it “was not a failure. I’d do it again. ” He said such campaigns are deeply embedded in the company’s brand of “challenging the status quo about the role of a public company. ” He is excited by the question, “Since we have stores in every community in America, how can we use our scale for good?” Although the change may come as a surprise to the public and to some Starbucks employees, the company has been sending signals to Wall Street for the last year about its intentions to carry out a succession plan, announcing a reorganization in the summer that gave Mr. Johnson oversight of the operations. Mr. Johnson, 56, spent his career in technology as a lieutenant of Steven A. Ballmer, former chief of Microsoft, and later as chief executive of Juniper Networks, before being recruited out of retirement by Mr. Schultz in 2015 to become president and chief operating officer of Starbucks. Mr. Johnson, a operator known for his focus on building Starbucks’ mobile payments systems and executing the company’s global strategy, has been on a listening tour with employees over the last year. Conversations with store managers who told intimate stories about their passion and relationship with the company have been known to bring Mr. Johnson to tears. The succession plan is the second time Mr. Schultz has sought to step back from overseeing the company. He became the company’s chairman in 2000 but returned as chief executive in 2008 after firing the installed chief, James Donald, as sales faltered. Upon returning to Starbucks as chief executive, Mr. Schultz increased the company’s market value to $84 billion from $15 billion. In an interview on Thursday in a tasting room at Starbucks flagship Reserve Roastery in downtown Seattle, a Willy premium coffee emporium that the company hopes to open in large cities around the world, Mr. Schultz was animated and emotional about his decision. Referring to his previous effort to step back, Mr. Schultz said: “I was not as emotionally prepared for the moment as I am now. I don’t think I had the conviction — I was still meddling. ” “I got succession wrong the first time,” he added. Of Mr. Johnson, he said, “I’m not going to be hovering and shadowing him. ” Still, Mr. Schultz says he intends to remain a visible and active presence at the company — his office is connected to Mr. Johnson’s — as he works to introduce the company’s premium coffee brand with a small team that he described as the equivalent of a . The project calls for the opening of several large emporium stores — one is being built in Manhattan and another in Shanghai — each year for the next several years, as well more than 1, 000 smaller premium stores and premium “bars” in thousands of current Starbucks stores. “Building a new brand is not unlike what Ralph Lauren did with Purple label,” Mr. Schultz said. Asked about speculation that he might be laying the groundwork to run for president, Mr. Schultz said, “I’m all in on all things Starbucks and have no plans to run for public office. ” Might he change his mind in the future? “That’s the way I feel today,” he said. Mr. Johnson said that his decision to work at Starbucks came after he had rethought his career, disclosing for the first time that he had a brush with skin cancer that had led him to retire from Juniper. “It made me think,” he said. “I only want to spend time on things on which I am able to give something to people I love. ” He called his job at Starbucks a “gift” and acknowledged that he was somewhat nervous about his new role. “Can I do this?” he said he asked himself. “I’m not going to try to be Howard. We are two different people. ” | 1 |
ReadyNutrition Guys and Gals, “Old Man Winter” is starting to rear his ugly head. Yeah, so what? So there is a difference this year on three fronts. The first has to do with the weather itself, and the second is the situation in the U.S. and the world. Throughout history winter has been (at times) so severe as to cause large numbers of deaths and great hardships. Throughout history warfare has been conducted during the winter months after the harvest has been taken in. Between you and I, the harvest is being taken in, and the whole world has been on the brink of war for quite some time. The third front: in the U.S., with the election.
Weather, War and Domestic Issues Could be a Recipe for Disaster Let’s address the weather portion first. Think Progress posted an article on the polar vortex shift that will affect our winter considerably. The polar vortex is usually “confined” to an area around the North Pole. It is a gigantic, constantly-moving system of air that is circulating and swirling. As the site mentioned, the last polar vortex shift affected more than 200 million people in 2014. I can attest to the fact that I was one of them: in January of 2014, it was -26 Fahrenheit outside of my cabin, and never rose above -10 Fahrenheit for almost the entire month.
From the perspective of a global war, the Ukrainian-Russian situation is intensifying with the Ukrainian Army moving troops and equipment into Eastern Ukraine for operations against the separatists. As we speak, a Russian fleet is sailing toward Syria. The fighting in Syria between Assad’s forces and the Russian army and the Islamic terrorists is burning fiercely. The U.S. and Russia are facing off toward a nuclear war. North Korea continues to test missiles and threatens an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) and/or nuclear attack on the U.S. about once a week.
That “third front” of the domestic situation in the U.S…. believe it or not, here is the highest potential for something bad to occur. Such is because Obama will think nothing of enacting Martial Law with either the advent of civil unrest and rioting, and/or a nuclear war. The volatility and unpredictability of the situation can be the undoing of the entire country.
How to Prepare for Winter-Related Emergencies So what does this have to do with winter? Everything . Everything you can imagine. All the supplies in the world won’t do you any good if you have no way to heat your home , cook your food, and stay warm at night. Hope all of your home-canning supplies and provisions are in wide-mouth Mason jars. Hope you have a plan in effect, ready to go. And if not? Here’s a few suggestions.
You can pick up a small, portable woodstove that will burn between 50-100,000 BTU’s that will fit right inside of your fireplace. It might be a good idea to get one of them. A good wood supply (in past articles I’ve been telling everyone how important it is to build up their wood supply in the summer and early fall) that is kept dry and is well-seasoned. As well, having some fatwood or quick ways to start a fire will help you expedite the process to warm the home. Plastic, weather stripping , aerosol foam insulation , and aerosol rubber weatherizing spray : these should be in your arsenal to patch holes and close up any gaps in your house to completely weatherize it. Tools : hammers, chainsaws, bowsaws, axes, hatchets, and mauls: to split and cut wood if necessary. The primitive saws are good, especially if you want to save the gas. Generators : I recommend the Honda 2000 EU i that is as quiet as a mouse. If you buy two of them, you can couple them and double the power output. They also run on eco drive to conserve fuel, and can be fitted. On bottled water : I have a well, and I use old Gatorade and Powerade bottles to store my water, and rotate it frequently. If you have bottled water in the manner that I do, then make sure you are about ¾ full on the bottles, to leave room for expansion if the bottle freezes. Then you’re still sure about the water, and it won’t burst through the bottle. If your refrigerator goes out (lack of power): have coolers so that you can store your food outside. Better frozen than rotten, and except for eggs, most everything can be frozen and then thawed out and used again. Warm clothing and blankets : especially sleeping bags. I prefer extreme cold weather Army issue (the newer stuff with Thinsulate) and Gore-Tex cover . Small stoves : I recommend the ones running on dual fuel (such as the Coleman Peak series for single burner stoves), as well as the two and three burner Colemans with the green exterior. Port-a-potty with plenty of extra bag-liners : subjected to a polar vortex and then getting hit with an EMP is the combination for problems with the toilet , whether on a municipal system or a septic system. Use the port-a-potty that is in the shape of a chair with a bucket, lid, and seat incorporated. You can always burn the waste later, and you’ll conserve on water as well as prevent any plumbing problems from looming up. It would also behoove you to stock up on matches, lighters, and fire-starting equipment. The more you prepare now, the better it will be for you when you face all of these and similar challenges. It is part of your daily planning that you have, so that you’re planning ahead instead of playing catch-up from working behind. Keep fighting that good fight, and stay warm! JJ out!
Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson was a Special Forces Medic, EMT and ACLS-certified, with comprehensive training in wilderness survival, rescue, and patient-extraction. He is a Certified Master Herbalist and a graduate of the Global College of Natural Medicine of Santa Ana, CA. A graduate of the U.S. Army’s survival course of SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape), Mr. Johnson also successfully completed the Montana Master Food Preserver Course for home-canning, smoking, and dehydrating foods.
Mr. Johnson dries and tinctures a wide variety of medicinal herbs taken by wild crafting and cultivation, in addition to preserving and canning his own food. An expert in land navigation, survival, mountaineering, and parachuting as trained by the United States Army, Mr. Johnson is an ardent advocate for preparedness, self-sufficiency, and long-term disaster sustainability for families. He and his wife survived Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Cross-trained as a Special Forces Engineer, he is an expert in supply, logistics, transport, and long-term storage of perishable materials, having incorporated many of these techniques plus some unique innovations in his own homestead.
Mr. Johnson brings practical, tested experience firmly rooted in formal education to his writings and to our team. He and his wife live in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with their three cats.
This information has been made available by Ready Nutrition
Originally published November 2nd, 2016 Keeping Warm in Winter When You Lose Power this Winter, Here’s What… How to Build a Winter Home Emergency Kit How to Get a Year Supply of Firewood for $20! Seven Places Where WW3 Could Start at Any Time | 1 |
United States By Marcus GODWYN (UK)
“Well! Whoever would ever have thought it?” These were apparently John Major’s first words to his new Cabinet as he sat down for the first time as British Prime Minister having , together with most of that Cabinet ousted democratically elected, three time Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher in an undemocratic, Conservative Party, palace coup. This was not only a cowardly and underhand stab in the back for Mrs Thatcher but for British democracy itself as under normal circumstances, and the circumstances were normal, only the British electorate at the ballot box should have the right to oust a siting Prime Minister or government. Indeed it had begun to look as if this was a fatal blow to the structure, not welded together by anything other than precedent and tradition, of the British democratic process itself.
That act can be seen as ushering in a new level in the drive towards global domination by what some call The New World Order and others, who don’t like that title’s conspiracy theory connotations, call globalism. For the rest of this article I will use New World Order – NWO to refer to this phenomenon.
George Bush senior was already US president, The Berlin Wall had fallen and The USSR was on the verge of collapse. In Britain things reverted to business as usual controlled by a small elite comprised of the old elite and the “ new globalists” This push for global economic control would go into overdrive with the arrival of Tony Blair in 10 Downing Street and Bill Clinton in The White House. On both sides of the Atlantic voters rejoiced as they thought they were getting a fresh, new alternative but, not for the last time over the coming years, it would take a little while for us all to realise just how wrong we all were. The Glass Steagal Act was repealed. Prices that the public couldn’t escape such as utility bills began skyrocketing all over the western world and the western world began moving inexorably eastward as the EU and NATO began swallowing the newly liberated countries of central and eastern Europe. Yugoslavia was attacked from within and without and dismembered, accompanied by, for the first time, a coordinated uniform media propaganda campaign in order to inform us as to who the “bad guy” was and why such an act was necessary! The next massive ramp up in this campaign came in the wake of 9-11! Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded, then came the so called “Arab Spring” Libya was invaded and its government overthrown, Then Syria became the West’s next target. When the West was finally prevented from attacking Syria outright in 2013 by Russia and China they turned in revenge on Ukraine overthrowing its government and installing a rabidly anti-Russian, racist replacement but failing in their ultimate goal; the control of Crimea and the Russian naval base in Sevastopol. So the West proceeded to start up a civil war in that country. All this time, the western public seemed unaware or unable or unwilling to counter this steam roller at home and abroad. Seemingly acquiescent due to the same media campaigns that always vilified the target country’s rulers or leader and told us all that we had to intervene on the grounds of human rights and democracy promotion. There were some antiwar protests over Iraq in 2003 but after that nothing. The people of Greece voted against the austerity measures forced on them by The International Monetary Fund but the new, so called “extreme left” government turned out to be NWO stooges who betrayed their people and the ship sailed on.
Sailed on that is until 23 rd June 2016. The Brexit vote in the UK brought about by an absurd political mistake on the part of David Cameron was the first real sign that people were beginning to show that they had had enough of being led by the nose by a semi anonymous ruling elite. True, the majority to leave was not huge but it was big enough to be decisive and threw a historic spanner in the works of the NWO’s drive for ever further integration bound up with secret economic treaties and aims.
The news today however, 9 th November in the year of grace 2016 from the United States is truly earth shattering. I knew Donald Trump would win for at least a month but the size of this historic victory is astounding and too big to allow for falsifications. At the risk of sounding banal; this election result by itself HAS made America great again! It shows, as did Brexit, that just maybe, democracy is not dead, well not completely anyway and that people are not as easy to manipulate as many elites and pessimistic anti-elites, anti-NWO minded souls seemed to think!
The entire American mainstream media and that of the entire western world was against him. Most of the senior members of his own party were against him. The CIA, The Pentagon, Hollywood, all the country’s leading banks and financial institutions were against him. A whole host of media “celebrities” of all kinds were trotted out to cheer for Clinton. Even the sitting President, against constitutional rules, came out and propagandized for the “designated candidate and against Trump. Such a situation is utterly unprecedented in the history of the US. However, the American people turned round and said NO by a decisive majority. Trump’s election is truly historic.
Analysts say that in the Brexit vote and the US election the voter group that really made the difference were working class voters. There were several moments in my life starting at secondary school and on into my late twenties when I had prolonged contact with the English working class. Mainly in and around London but also in the north east and north west of England. These people in general live for today instinctively and have a pretty good dose of common sense (so prized by the ancient Greeks) unlike the “chattering classes” and it is no surprise to me at all that they, on mass, have seen through the propaganda manipulations that have managed to ensnare those who we are led to believe have more “education”. I should add that I had some contact with the French working class when I first started living there and my impression was that they were deeply corrupted by the ego based ideology of communism where common sense cannot be found. This was in 1990 though and the world has changed greatly since then. Communism, for different reasons was never attractive to the American and British working class even in bygone days when they were huge statistically speaking and when communism seemed, unstoppably, to be on the road to world hegemony.
What will this massive, popular, intuitive rebellion against the NWO bring to the world?
Some commentators have issued similar warnings as this by Marcus Papadopoulos: “ The people who regard Donald Trump as some sort of saviour are, undoubtedly, the same people who thought the same of Boris Johnson .” Sure, it could be that the whole thing is an act to fool us yet again and that Trump will continue exactly the same policies as his predecessor (or as Clinton’s) once in the White House just as his predecessor continued exactly the same policies as his predecessor when he entered The White House eight years before. We were fooled into thinking that Obama represented a real alternative to the Bush years. Such warnings basically say that Trump could well be yet another NWO stooge. Personally, while acknowledging that this is a possibility, I think it is the least likely of all the reasons why the change all sane people are praying for may not come about. My certainty he would become president increased when I saw a video compilation of interview excerpts dating back to 1980 concerning the subject of him possibly standing for president. I could feel the destiny in it and if I read it right he will be one of the most important presidents in history. It also confirmed something I always noticed. Like him or not, he remains consistent. This is the 100% opposite of NWO politicians such as Boris Johnson or Angela Merkel who can make total “U turns” in declared policy without so much as batting an eyelid when it is demanded of them and carry on talking to their electorate as if nothing has happened.
Far, far more likely is that he is genuinely anti-NWO and really intends to “drain the swamp” but will meet with such resistance and sabotage in every form imaginable from simple refusal to obey orders and procrastination to assassination attempts, terrorist acts or even on up to starting World War Three before he gets to set up in the Oval Office. It should not be forgotten that the NWO has been relentlessly tightening its grip on every aspect of the US power structure, including the mass media and Hollywood, since George Bush Senior became president and over the last ten or so years have got “their people” in the corridors of power and in all the MSN in Europe too and now, if they suddenly face the possibility of losing it all, they are not going to let that happen quietly. As I write, demonstrations, apparently organized and funded by Georges Soros , one of the most sinister and powerful NWO rulers, are taking place in many American towns and cities. If Trump is genuine, people such as Soros, The Rockefellers, the entire Neo-con clan to name but a few, are now absolutely seething, maybe panicking but certainly plotting how to get their world domination plans back on track and they will stop at nothing. It could be a very unusual and maybe long two months to the 20 th of January 2017.
In his victory speech Trump talked about dreaming big so let’s dream big now about just exactly how far this could go.
It wasn’t until the end of a day absorbing the fact that he had actually won that I realised, with some horror, just how deeply I had become used to the idea of a looming third world war which would probably be nuclear. I had just slowly but surely, day after day, over the last three years become accustomed to that nightmare. As I went to bed I saw that this nightmare had considerably receded due to Trump’s victory. Had Clinton won, I was down the visa center the very next day and on the first plane back to Russia because if I’m going to die or contribute to the struggle in any way then it must be, before God, on the side of righteousness and that is not, unfortunately, the side the rulers of my home country have chosen to take. It is the west that is entirely responsible for the current tensions with Russia. If Russia is guilty of anything it is not having resisted the creeping but relentlessly approaching attack, earlier and more forcefully. Yes; it really is that black and white! It really is that simple! It seems that the ruling elites behind Clinton were-are actually preparing for a nuclear war with Russia. If Trump is true to his word and he finds the way to pass to action (massive purging of the CIA and much of the Pentagon will be needed) he will simply stop the drive to WW3 just as Putin and his ministers have found the way to avoid or postpone it over the last three years without giving in on vital issues such as Crimea or Syria falling to ISIS. What greater dream could any conscious person have than the possibility to avoid what would be by far the most destructive war in history.
We should not forget that the default setting of human beings, as with all other gregarious organisms on this planet is to build basic common good, to cooperate with each other and make their lives easier, more comfortable and more prosperous than the day before or the year before. Left to their own devices this is what people always do. There are quarrels for sure and bickering but massively destructive wars are very rare or non existent in nature of which we are a part. It therefore becomes clear that if recent human history has been constantly blighted by ever more destructive, massive conflicts, this is being manipulated by something or someone. Everyone can see that Russia and the western world have every interest in cooperating with each other and no rational reason to fight each other. The NWO order plans to dismember Russia into smaller compliant states having her natural resources controlled by their small pool of multinational corporations. Then it plans to move on to China and do the same. For that it needs to have western public behind that drive hence the press is enlisted to tell the NWO subjects what to think! Once they get control of Russia and China, then they turn on their own citizens and proceed to the micro-chipped enslavement of humanity. Many commentators believe that if they are thwarted in these endevours, they would prefer to destroy the planet rather than face defeat. Ridiculous? Wild scare mongering? I hope so but the rapid developments in international affairs over the last five years don’t allow me to dismiss out of hand such extreme interpretations, unfortunately.
Let us remember that whenever quizzed by the hostile MSM Trump repeatedly asked; why can’t we have a world where Russia, China and the USA all get along and cooperate. Many, so many, have posed the same question on social media, alternative media and at home, in pubs, restaurants, parks, sports clubs and wherever. Donald Trump could make this come about and only him because IT IS THE WEST and ABOVE ALL The USA, not Russia, China, Iran or Easter Island or anywhere else which is seeking world domination and maybe leading us to Armageddon. Russia and China have been asking for and waiting for nothing other than mutually advantageous cooperation for the last twenty five years or so. Whether Donald Trump actually manages to bring such peace and cooperation to fruition or whether he fails or is checkmated by the foe, whether he turns out to be a fraud, (like so many before him) who will betray those who voted for him and the rest of us outside the US who have to put our trust in him or whether some other event will prevent him from fulfilling his plans and dreams or indeed propel him towards fulfilling them, we cannot yet know but only a short amount of time will tell.
For now, as I stated above, I choose trust my intuition, to take Donald Trump at face value and wish him every possible success as the forty fifth President of The United States of America. May God be with him and all who work with him because he and they will certainly need divine inspiration and guidance! The stakes for mankind have never been higher! In the meantime; however this plays out, The New World Order globalist agenda, as well as its control of the media and the falsehood of its current totalitarian control false dogmas; “political correctness” in the west and “Islamic fundamentalism” in the Muslim world are more exposed and understood by “we the people” for what they really are than at any time in history and that can only before the common good!
Marcus Godwyn is the British musician and amateur essayist. RELATED POSTS | 1 |
PARIS — France’s embattled presidential candidate, François Fillon, defiantly vowed on Wednesday to stay in the race, even as he announced that he would be formally charged in a widening embezzlement investigation. Mr. Fillon’s announcement, made at a news conference, added another element of uncertainty to an already unsettled campaign and increased the likelihood that France’s presidential race would be fought by two candidates from neither of the traditional mainstream parties. With formal charges looming that Mr. Fillon paid his wife and children hundreds of thousands of euros from the public payroll for little or no work, most analysts consider his chances of making it past the first round on April 23 in France’s election to be diminished. That would leave the field open to the candidate of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, whose rise in polls has sent jitters through financial markets and immigrant suburbs. Her likely contender is Emmanuel Macron, the former economy minister, who is running as the candidate of his own political movement. Mr. Macron, 39, is currently the favorite to defeat Ms. Le Pen, 48, in the second round on May 7. But Mr. Macron, a former Rothschild banker, is untested and inexperienced politically. His centrist program, some of it in line with the Socialist government he served, is viewed as unappealing to parts of the electorate. The momentum, in most of the polls, is with her. A top National Front official, Florian Philippot, used a television interview after Mr. Fillon’s appearance largely to attack Mr. Macron — a clear indication that Ms. Le Pen already considers him her principal opponent. Even as Mr. Fillon, 62, is increasingly being written off, he has doubled down on his defense, yielding no ground to his critics. “It’s Fillon’s final bet,” said Laurent Bouvet, a political scientist at the University of Versailles St. . “He’s playing all or nothing. The right, the heart of the right, the one that elected him and doesn’t want Le Pen to sweep the stakes, his bet is they won’t abandon him, in spite of all his legal problems. ” In another country, the shadow hanging over Mr. Fillon would most likely end a campaign for the highest office. But in France, legal problems, even serious ones, rarely end political careers, even though the electorate appears to be showing — in polls, at least — less tolerance than previously for accommodating financial misdeeds in high places. Even if he were to step aside, his Republican Party has few good options. Mr. Fillon’s two main challengers in the party primary both campaigned under the shadow of past and current investigations. The in the primary, Alain Juppé, was convicted in a phony jobs scheme undertaken while he worked at City Hall several decades ago. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, who finished third, is the subject of multiple investigations, and in February, he was ordered to stand trial on charges of illegally financing his failed 2012 presidential campaign. But Mr. Fillon’s problems, immediate and future, are different. He campaigned as the candidate of probity. That image has been shattered. And the sums reported to have been pocketed by his wife have shocked the French. Ms. Le Pen is not untainted by corruption accusations. But her legal difficulties, for now, have hardly dented her standing in the polls — partly because she has never cultivated an image of virtue, and partly because her principal adversary is the European Parliament in Strasbourg, in which she sits and which is widely unpopular, especially among her supporters. Her legal troubles are also more complex than Mr. Fillon’s, and she is not suspected of having personally benefited from any of the alleged financial wrongdoing. Last week, a top Le Pen aide was charged in an alleged phony jobs scheme. The aide was paid out of Parliament money but was thought to have spent her time working for the National Front. Another close associate of Ms. Le Pen’s, Frédéric Chatillon, has been charged with violating campaign finance laws. Mr. Chatillon’s ties to extremist groups on the far right have been closely documented in the French news media as well. Ms. Le Pen, invoking her parliamentary immunity, has refused a summons from the police who want to question her in the alleged phony jobs scheme, eliciting harsh criticism from government officials who accuse her of holding herself above the law. Like Mr. Fillon, she could still be formally charged. She and Mr. Fillon have struck remarkably similar defenses as the accusations have piled up around them. Both blamed the news media as well as the judicial system and civil servants for their problems. On Sunday, in a fiery speech in the western city of Nantes, Ms. Le Pen lashed out at judges, the legal system, civil servants and the news media, in a manner very similar to Mr. Fillon’s on Wednesday — and for that matter, President Trump’s in the United States. Ms. Le Pen said all of them were working in concert to undermine her. “The rule of law is the opposite of government by judges,” Ms. Le Pen told her cheering supporters. “Judges exist to apply the law,” she said, “not to subvert the will of the people. ” On Wednesday, Mr. Fillon struck a defiant tone in front of the reporters at his campaign headquarters in Paris, proclaiming his innocence and denouncing what he said was an unfair judicial and news media campaign intended to destroy his candidacy. “I didn’t embezzle any money,” Mr. Fillon told reporters. “I employed — like almost a third of the members of Parliament — family members because I knew I could count on their loyalty and competence. They helped me, and I will prove it. ” “From the beginning,” he continued, “I haven’t been treated as an ordinary suspect. ” And he insisted: “The rule of law has been systematically violated. The press has been an echo chamber for the prejudices of the prosecutors. ” Mr. Fillon said angrily that the presidential election was being “assassinated,” and he announced his determination to stay in it, because “only the voters can decide who will be president. ” The judicial screws have been steadily tightening on Mr. Fillon since newspaper reports in January — especially those in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné — said that for years he and his deputy had paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros in state funds for a possible job, and that his children had also benefited from the largess of Mr. Fillon, a former prime minister. In addition, Mr. Fillon is being scrutinized on suspicion of trafficking a high civilian honor, while prime minister, in exchange for money to his wife from a wealthy publisher friend. On Wednesday, in front of dozens of aides and members of his party, Mr. Fillon told reporters he would answer a March 15 summons by the magistrates in the case, after which he is expected to be charged formally. The investigation will continue and Mr. Fillon could then stand trial, or the magistrates could drop the charges. Circumstances look increasingly unfavorable for him. In an article published on Wednesday before Mr. Fillon’s news conference, the French newspaper Le Monde described him as a “candidate in a bunker” who was hunched up and in his shell. It noted that he no longer took the train for campaign trips out of fear of being called out by protesters. He is often met by protesters banging pots, or “casseroles” in French — a slang term for corruption affairs. Sometimes the placards read, “Fake jobs for everybody. ” | 1 |
Posted on November 3, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog
Clinton and her supporters have tried to blame Russia for hacking her emails and making them a focus in this election.
In reality, it’s likely that American intelligence and defense workers are the source for at least some of the leaks.
The Guardian reports today:
Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.
***
The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “ the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
***
The leaks have not exclusively cast aspersions on Clinton. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, is the subject of what is said to be a preliminary FBI inquiry into his business dealings in Russia. Manafort has denied any wrongdoing.
Moreover, Clinton supporters have claimed that the emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop are only duplicates of emails the FBI has previously seen.
However, CBS News reports :
The FBI has found emails related to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state on the laptop belonging to the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner, according to a U.S. official.
These emails, CBS News’ Andres Triay reports, are not duplicates of emails found on Secretary Clinton’s private server.
*** “These emails have never been seen before” | 0 |
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/11/19/bond-carnage-hits-mortgage-rates-but-this-time-its-real/
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Walking away from a long-standing tradition of covering issues and presidential policies during campaign season, the network evening newscasts have all but abandoned that type of reporting this year, according to recent tabulations from Tyndall Report, which for decades has tracked the flagship nightly news programs.
Since the beginning of 2016, ABC's World News Tonight , CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News have devoted just 32 minutes to issues coverage, according to Andrew Tyndall.
Differentiating issues coverage from daily campaign coverage where policy topics might be addressed, Tyndall defines issues coverage by a newscast this way: "It takes a public policy, outlines the societal problem that needs to be addressed, describes the candidates' platform positions and proposed solutions, and evaluates their efficacy."
And here's how that kind of in-depth coverage breaks down, year to date, by network:
ABC: 8 minutes, all of which covered terrorism. - Advertisement -
NBC: 8 minutes for terrorism, LBGT issues, and foreign policy.
CBS: 16 minutes for foreign policy, terrorism, immigration, policing, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
And this remarkable finding from Tyndall [emphasis added]:
"No trade, no healthcare, no climate change, no drugs, no poverty, no guns, no infrastructure, no deficits. To the extent that these issues have been mentioned, it has been on the candidates' terms, not on the networks' initiative."
These numbers are staggering in terms of the complete retreat they represent from issues-orientated campaign coverage. Just eight years ago, the last time both parties nominated new candidates for the White House, the network newscasts devoted 220 minutes to issues coverage, compared to only 32 minutes so far this year. ( CBS Evening News went from 119 minutes of issues coverage in 2008 to 16 this year.) - Advertisement -
Note that during the Republican primary season alone, the networks spent 333 minutes focusing on Donald Trump. Yet for all of 2016, they have set aside just one-tenth of that for issue reporting.
And look at this: Combined, the three network newscasts have slotted 100 minutes so far this year for reporting on Hillary Clinton's emails while she served as secretary of state, but just 32 minutes for all issues coverage . (NBC's Nightly News has spent 31 minutes on the emails this year; just eight minutes on issues.)
Indeed, this approach used to be a hallmark of presidential campaign reporting; outline what candidates stand for, describe what their presidency might look like, and compare and contrast that platform with his or her opponents. i.e., What would the new president's top priorities be on the first day of his or her new administration?
It seems clear that the media's abandonment of issues coverage benefits Trump since his campaign has done very little to outline the candidate's core beliefs. Clinton, by contrast, has done the opposite. | 0 |
Good morning. Welcome to California Today, a morning update on the stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state). Tell us about the issues that matter to you — and what you’d like to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. Want to receive California Today by email? Sign up. Let’s turn it over to Brooks Barnes, our Hollywood reporter based in Los Angeles, for today’s introduction: You could hear a collective gasp in Hollywood on Tuesday morning, as the show business capital awakened to word from its town crier, TMZ, that Angelina Jolie had filed for divorce from Brad Pitt. There was an feeling to it: As a couple, Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt were perhaps most important to Hollywood as a marketing tool, “proof that movie star glamour and storybook romance had not yet faded away entirely,” said Janice Min, chief creative officer of The Hollywood Media Group. And then most of moviedom went normally about its day. Contrary to the East Coast stereotype, Hollywood is not a place where people lounge around under palm trees. There are meetings to attend, numbers to crunch, emails to answer. Just like in the rest of America. Divorce fallout speculation was largely confined to the machinery that pumped out that imagery of Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt as epitomized: “Extra,” “Entertainment Tonight,” People magazine and other celebrity news outlets. Lisa Gregorisch, the senior executive producer for “Extra,” said that her team in Burbank was finishing a regularly scheduled 6:30 a. m. meeting when the news started to break. “We turned on a dime, with literally every single person here, 140 people, working an angle,” she said. “What went wrong. Their past loves. The kids. The custody. Angelina’s health. The social media response. ” There are also the questions of their precise worth — hundreds of millions, at least — and whether a prenuptial agreement governs the dividing of assets. Ms. Gregorisch had been planning an Emmy Awards for her Tuesday night show. Not anymore. “Extra” devoted coverage to the divorce. The main challenge, she said, was “walking a fine line in terms of respect for them in a painful time and the interests of our viewers. ” On the print side, Jess Cagle, editor in chief of People magazine, was scrambling on Tuesday to figure out how to race out a new cover. (The publication typically closes its weekly issue on Monday nights.) For People, which has landed numerous “Brangelina” scoops over the years, the divorce story “is absolutely one of the biggest” of the past couple of years, Mr. Cagle said in an email. “On a scale,” he said, “this is approximately 17. ” • Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts assailed the chief executive of San Wells Fargo over a fraud scandal: “You should resign. ” [The New York Times] • Sacramento lawmakers are collecting thousands of dollars in per diems even when absent. [The Associated Press] • Homelessness is a big issue in San Diego. Why isn’t it on the county’s November ballot? [Voice of San Diego] • San Diego has become a destination for “stem cell tourism” as companies send patients across the border for treatments. [KPBS] • Curtis Hanson, the director of “L. A. Confidential,” died in Los Angeles. He was 71. [The New York Times] • Los Angeles police officers violated department rules in two fatal shootings last year, an oversight board said. [Los Angeles Times] • Oakland’s housing crisis is displacing the city’s arts and music counterculture. [East Bay Express] • Colin Kaepernick said he has received death threats, but he’s “not too concerned about it. ” [The Mercury News] • The plight of a tiny California pension fund illuminates a debate sweeping the country’s public pension system. [The New York Times] • California accounts for a fifth of all public companies on the major American markets, data show. [The New York Times] • Sacramento’s “Library of Things” loans out items like sewing machines and guitars. It also has a lab. [99% Invisible] • Check out this image of three California wildfires captured by a NASA satellite on Sunday. [NASA] • When a New Yorker comes to Los Angeles: Culture shock in small talk and ripe avocados. [New Yorker] San Francisco hit fall overflow this week with the unofficial start of the tech company conference season. The companies that sell ideas about virtual life, cloud computing and telecommuting bring in thousands of customers each year for valuable meetings. Over the weekend, Oracle Corporation shut off several blocks of downtown as part of its OpenWorld conference. While traffic backs up and reroutes, the area called Oracle Cloud Plaza served organic food (and, throughout the event, an estimated three million cups of coffee). It’s a huge boon to the hotel business: On Monday, a Hampton Inn in the Soma neighborhood had a couple of rooms left for Tuesday night at $479 a night. Those prices will come back down to $179 when conference season ends in late October. That is after the Salesforce conference, which the company says now has 170, 000 people registered. The Opal, a 2. hotel on Orbitz, has two rooms left at $570 a night. — Quentin Hardy, deputy technology editor for The New York Times, based in San Francisco California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
NARVA, Estonia — Barely a few hundred yards inside NATO’s jittery eastern border with Russia, a high school teacher asked students in his social studies class this week to address a topic of paramount importance for their future: the election of Donald J. Trump as the next president of the United States. Mr. Trump’s surprising victory has sent shock waves around the world, but the possible consequences are particularly acute here in the Baltics, a region long seen as a potential flash point because of its physical, linguistic and cultural proximity to Russia. “If World War III starts, we will be the first to know about it,” said one of the students in the class who, in keeping with school policy, gave only his first name, Nikita. Odd though it may seem, in view of the threat that a newly aggressive Russia may pose, he and many other students in this town welcomed Mr. Trump’s victory because, they said, the billionaire wanted to cut a deal with Moscow and calm tensions. Jurgen, another student in the class, described Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, as a menace because she “wants war with Russia,” adding: “Trump wants friendship. In a war, we would be just in the way. ” Such views, widespread in communities in the Baltics and beyond, contrast starkly with the alarm, even panic, at Mr. Trump’s triumph among an political and foreign policy elite in the country’s capital, Tallinn, where Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, is viewed as a threat who must be resisted, not appeased. During the campaign, Mr. Trump raised alarms in Baltic capitals by calling NATO “obsolete” and questioning why the United States should defend alliance members that fail to shoulder their share of the costs. But President Obama has said that Mr. Trump assured him during their Oval Office meeting last week that he remained committed to the security guarantees that have underpinned NATO’s system of collective defense and peace in Europe since 1949. But the Baltic states remain on edge: Mr. Trump demonstrated a mercurial streak during the campaign, and they are the most at risk if he should change his mind again and decide to back away from NATO. Adding to their worries, politicians just scored gains in elections in Bulgaria and Moldova. Yet the reaction to Mr. Trump’s victory in Estonia and neighboring Latvia, which also has a large Russian population, is complex, a reflection of their tangled ethnic, cultural and political situation. Even as political leaders in Tallinn and the Latvian capital, Riga, are in shock, many ethnic Russians see a silver lining, hoping that a Trump presidency can improve relations with Russia. Tanel Mazur, the teacher of the class in Narva, said that around a third of his students were of Russian descent, a third Estonian and a third from mixed families, but that they defied easy labels. All speak Estonian, which is used in classEnglish and Russian, the dominant language in Narva. Not all of his students cheered Mr. Trump, and several, including one with a Russian background, said they worried that he might encourage trouble by trying to appease Mr. Putin. Asked what they wanted from Mr. Trump now that he had been elected leader of the free world, one student said he must “keep his emotions back. ” Another said he “should make America great again,” while the class joker advised that Mr. Trump “change his hair” to be taken seriously. Mr. Mazur, who teaches in Estonian and stayed up late on election night to follow the results, said he never liked Mrs. Clinton much but added that she at least “had a much clearer message” and you “knew what to expect, more or less. ” Mr. Trump, by contrast, “has said so many different things, nobody knows what he really wants to do. ” Adding to the uncertainty and alarm are statements by some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, like Newt Gingrich, who described Estonia as “the suburbs of St. Petersburg” and not worth a confrontation with Russia that could risk nuclear war. Mr. Gingrich is now a candidate for secretary of state. “The idea that our country is just a suburb of St. Petersburg is a nightmare for every Estonian,” said Kross, a member of Estonia’s Parliament and the country’s former intelligence coordinator. Mr. Trump’s election, he added, “has sent a shiver through the whole region” because it reopened security questions that “were thought to have been closed with the expansion of NATO more than 10 years ago. ” Ojars Kalnins, the chairman of the foreign relations committee in the Parliament of neighboring Latvia, said Mr. Gingrich’s comments about Estonia “were unfortunate, to put it mildly. ” “It is one thing to talk about having a dialogue with Russia, but to question the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country is outrageous,” Mr. Kalnins said. Yet he added that profound worry over Mr. Trump’s intentions has calmed somewhat because the has pulled back from statements he made on the campaign trail. In an effort to head off any weakening of American support for the Baltic states, Mr. Kalnins and a group of fellow legislators from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania will travel to Washington early next month to press their case to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and others who might help influence Mr. Trump. “We abhor unpredictability and confusion,” said Juri Luik, a former Estonian defense minister and foreign minister. “We are a small country and like a lot of predictability. ” Adding conditions to NATO support, as Mr. Trump has proposed doing, “would mean a total and profound change in the alliance. ” He added that he doubted that this would happen, as “it is quite likely that a number of foreign policy proposals will significantly change once he takes office. ” The Baltic states, which are among the most outspoken critics of Mr. Putin and are dogged advocates within the European Union of sanctions against Russia, also worry that Mr. Trump’s admiring remarks about the Russian president, and a web of personal connections between members of his camp and Russia, may lead him to cut the Kremlin slack. This risks muddling a previously united front between Europe and the United States in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Yet Mr. Trump’s desire to make a deal with Mr. Putin, who has long demanded that NATO get out of Russia’s neighborhood, will be crimped not only by strong bipartisan support for the military alliance in Washington but also by the fact that his negotiating hand has been weakened by a string of political developments in Eastern Europe that work to the Kremlin’s advantage. Even in Estonia, a country that has always counted itself as a particularly robust friend of the United States, domestic political quarrels recently led to the collapse — just a few hours after Mr. Trump’s election — of a solidly government. This opened the way for negotiations over a new government with the Center Party, a group popular with voters. The Center Party had been kept at arm’s length because of its alleged links to Moscow, but has recently sought to recast itself as a mainstream force that supports NATO and recent decisions by the alliance to establish battalions of 800 to 1, 200 troops in each of the three Baltic states and in Poland. The stationing of these NATO troops in their country had been strongly opposed by many Estonians, who, echoing a view promoted by Russian news media, see it as a needless provocation of Russia. Vladimir Petrov, the chairman of the Union of Russian Citizens, a group in Narva that lobbies on behalf of Russians living in Estonia, said it was “laughable” to think that Moscow had any interest in attacking Estonia, so there was “absolutely no need” for NATO troops. Moreover, he added, a few hundred British and other NATO soldiers will hardly stop Russia’s military. “It would all be over in a couple of hours,” he said. Mr. Petrov said he welcomed Mr. Trump’s victory because he wanted to cooperate with, rather than confront, Moscow. But he worries that Mr. Trump may “end up like Kennedy” because, he said, the complex in the United States does not want a president interested in lowering tensions. Assassination, he added, “may seem unlikely, but we have seen so many times recently that the unlikely keeps on happening. ” While residents of Narva are mostly ethnic Russians or at least Russian speaking, nobody here wants to see a repeat of the events in eastern Ukraine, where residents, backed by Moscow, seized power and broke away from the rest of Ukraine. Students in Mr. Mazur’s class laughed uproariously when asked whether they would ever want to live in a place like Ivangorod, the decrepit Russian town on the other side of the Narva River. “I am Russian, but I don’t feel safe in Russia,” said Jevgeni Timostsuk, an events manager who frequently travels across the border. He said that, unlike many of his fellow Russians in Estonia, he was “alarmed” by Mr. Trump’s victory because he “did not expect such an unserious person ruling a serious country. ” Artyom Troitsky, a Russian critic of the Kremlin who lives in exile in Estonia, said Russian speakers in Narva, while heavily influenced by Russian propaganda, have “a much more objective view of Russia” than Russians in Tallinn “for the simple reason that they live on the border and go to Russia often, so they know what life is really like over there. ” All the same, many have strong emotional ties to Russia and have absorbed a message spread by Russian television that the political establishment in Washington, including Mrs. Clinton, wants to provoke armed conflict. Before Mr. Trump’s victory, said Aleksandr Moissejenko, an ethnic Russian office manager in Narva, “it seemed we were just a step away from World War III” because of all the Russian and American warplanes flying over Syria in support of rival sides. Mr. Trump, he said, “never said Russia is good, just that it is not an enemy. This is a big improvement. ” If war did break out, he added, “I would fight for Estonia, not Russia. ” | 1 |
Donate Whose Fake News Gets a Pass? NYT Advocates Internet Censorship The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block what it calls “fake news,” but the Times ignores its own record of publishing “fake news” By Robert Parry / consortiumnews.com
In its lead editorial on Sunday, The New York Times decried what it deemed “The Digital Virus Called Fake News” and called for Internet censorship to counter this alleged problem, taking particular aim at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for letting “liars and con artists hijack his platform.”
As this mainstream campaign against “fake news” quickly has gained momentum in the past week, two false items get cited repeatedly, a claim that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump and an assertion that Trump was prevailing in the popular vote over Hillary Clinton. I could add another election-related falsehood, a hoax spread by Trump supporters that liberal documentarian Michael Moore was endorsing Trump when he actually was backing Clinton.
But I also know that Clinton supporters were privately pushing some salacious and unsubstantiated charges about Trump’s sex life, and Clinton personally charged that Trump was under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin although there was no evidence presented to support that McCarthyistic accusation.
"The problem is that while some falsehoods may be obvious and clear-cut, much information exists in a gray area in which two or more sides may disagree on what the facts are. And the U.S. government doesn’t always tell the truth although you would be hard-pressed to find recent examples of the Times recognizing that reality."
The simple reality is that lots of dubious accusations get flung around during the heat of a campaign – nothing new there – and it is always a challenge for professional journalists to swat them down the best we can. What’s different now is that the Times envisions some structure (or algorithm) for eliminating what it calls “fake news.”
But, with a stunning lack of self-awareness, the Times fails to acknowledge the many times that it has published “fake news,” such as reporting in 2002 that Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes meant that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ; its bogus analysis tracing the firing location of a Syrian sarin-laden rocket in 2013 back to a Syrian military base that turned out to be four times outside the rocket’s range; or its publication of photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers inside Russia and then inside Ukraine in 2014 when it turned out that the “inside-Russia” photo was also taken inside Ukraine, destroying the premise of the story.
These are just three examples among many of the Times publishing “fake news”– and all three appeared on Page One before being grudgingly or partially retracted, usually far inside the newspaper under opaque headlines so most readers wouldn’t notice. Much of the Times’“fake news” continued to reverberate in support of U.S. government propaganda even after the partial retractions.
Who Is the Judge?
So, should Zuckerberg prevent Facebook users from circulating New York Times stories? Obviously, the Times would not favor that solution to the problem of “fake news.” Instead, the Times expects to be one of the arbiters deciding which Internet outlets get banned and which ones get gold seals of approval.
The Times lead editorial, following a front-page article on the same topic on Friday, leaves little doubt what the newspaper would like to see. It wants major Internet platforms and search engines, such as Facebook and Google, to close off access to sites accused of disseminating “fake news.”
The editorial said, “a big part of the responsibility for this scourge rests with internet companies like Facebook and Google, which have made it possible for fake news to be shared nearly instantly with millions of users and have been slow to block it from their sites. …
“Facebook says it is working on weeding out such fabrications. It said last Monday that it would no longer place Facebook-powered ads on fake news websites, a move that could cost Facebook and those fake news sites a lucrative source of revenue. Earlier on the same day, Google said it would stop letting those sites use its ad placement network. These steps would help, but Facebook, in particular, owes its users, and democracy itself, far more.
“Facebook has demonstrated that it can effectively block content like click-bait articles and spam from its platform by tweaking its algorithms, which determine what links, photos and ads users see in their news feeds. … Facebook managers are constantly changing and refining the algorithms, which means the system is malleable and subject to human judgment.”
The Times editorial continued: “This summer, Facebook decided to show more posts from friends and family members in users’ news feeds and reduce stories from news organizations, because that’s what it said users wanted. If it can do that, surely its programmers can train the software to spot bogus stories and outwit the people producing this garbage. …
“Mr. Zuckerberg himself has spoken at length about how social media can help improve society. … None of that will happen if he continues to let liars and con artists hijack his platform.”
Gray Areas
But the problem is that while some falsehoods may be obvious and clear-cut, much information exists in a gray area in which two or more sides may disagree on what the facts are. And the U.S. government doesn’t always tell the truth although you would be hard-pressed to find recent examples of the Times recognizing that reality. Especially over the past several decades, the Times has usually embraced the Official Version of a disputed event and has deemed serious skepticism out of bounds.
That was the way the Times treated denials from the Iraqi government and some outside experts who disputed the “aluminum tube” story in 2002 – and how the Times has brushed off disagreements regarding the U.S. government’s portrayal of events in Syria, Ukraine and Russia. Increasingly, the Times has come across as a propaganda conduit for Official Washington rather than a professional journalistic entity.
But the Times and other mainstream news outlets – along with some favored Internet sites – now sit on a Google-financed entity called the First Draft Coalition , which presents itself as a kind of Ministry of Truth that will decide which stories are true and which are “fake.”
If the Times’ editorial recommendations are followed, the disfavored stories and the sites publishing them would no longer be accessible through popular search engines and platforms, essentially blocking the public’s access to them. [See Consortiumnews.com’s“ What to Do About ‘Fake News.’ ”]
The Times asserts that such censorship would be good for democracy – and it surely is true that hoaxes and baseless conspiracy theories are no help to democracy – but regulation of information in the manner that the Times suggests has more than a whiff of Orwellian totalitarianism to it.
And the proposal is especially troubling coming from the Times, with its checkered recent record of disseminating dangerous disinformation. © 2016 Consortium News
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press &'Project Truth' . 0.0 · | 1 |
Donald Trump’s plan to build a border wall along with U. S. Border will be challenged through environmental lawsuits, according to California’s official. [California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview with ‘The Golden State Podcast’ that he would use specific environmental laws in the state to stop the border wall from being built, at least in southern California. “There’s something called CEQA in California — NEPA at the federal level,” Newsom told the podcast host. “There’s indigenous lands and autonomies relating to governance on those lands. There are all kinds of obstructions as it relates to just getting zoning approval and getting building permits. All those things could be made very, very challenging for the administration. ” Newsom hinted that if he could not actually stop the construction of the border wall in California, he would at least try to tie it up in bureaucratic battles. Trump’s border wall is reportedly in the works, as he explained at a press conference at Trump Tower today that he would not be waiting on payment from Mexico and begin construction immediately. “I could wait about a year and a half until we finish our negotiations with Mexico, which will start immediately after we get into office,” Trump said as Breitbart News reported earlier. “But I don’t want to wait. Mike Pence is leading an effort to get final approvals through various agencies and through Congress for the wall to begin. ” “I don’t feel like waiting a year or year and a half. We’re going to start building,” Trump continued. “Mexico, in some form, and there are many different forms, will reimburse us. And they will reimburse us for the cost of the wall,” Trump said. “That will happen, whether it’s a tax or whether it’s a payment. Probably less likely that it’s a payment. But it will happen. ” John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0 |
The White House has issued a list of 78 terrorist attacks, saying most were underreported. The Trump administration, under fire for immigration restrictions and other policies it says are designed to curb terrorism, has portrayed the news media and other institutions as playing down the threat. But the list, which was released on Monday night and details episodes from September 2014 to December 2016, includes dozens of attacks that were covered heavily in the news media, including by The New York Times. (Examples are included in the list below.) Just as striking was what the list excluded: attacks targeting Muslims, who make up the overwhelming majority of victims of Islamist terrorism. The list does not mention, for instance, two suicide bombings in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed dozens in November 2015, or the wave of Boko Haram attacks across northern Nigeria, which have been among the world’s deadliest terrorist assaults. Though there have been many attacks in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, the list mentions only one: a June 2016 bombing that killed Nepali and Indian security contractors. The list describes the target as “a bus carrying Canadian Embassy guards,” which is correct but in keeping with the document’s emphasis on Western targets — a focus that is sometimes misleadingly narrow. Prominent attacks carried out by are also conspicuously omitted. In June 2015, Dylann S. Roof opened fire in a predominantly black church in Charleston, S. C. killing nine. That November, three people were shot to death at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs. Robert L. Dear Jr. describing himself as a “warrior for the babies,” acknowledged that he had carried out the attack, but he was later declared mentally unfit to stand trial. And in at least one of the attacks on the list, terrorism has been ruled out. A knife attack that killed two British backpackers at a hostel in Queensland, Australia, was found to be a common crime, not one related to terrorism, the Queensland police have said. violence has been rising in the United States, according to a recent report by the New America Foundation, and has in some years claimed more lives than Islamist attacks in the country. The White House’s list, by focusing on a significant but narrow slice of terrorism, feeds into perceptions that the administration is seeking to target Muslims with other policies, particularly its immigration restrictions against predominantly Muslim countries. Here is the list from the White House, along with our references to news coverage. Some names from the list have been edited to correct spelling. MELBOURNE, Australia When: September 2014 Target: Two police officers wounded in knife attack Coverage — — TIZI OUZOU, Algeria When: September 2014 Target: One French citizen beheaded Coverage — — QUEBEC October 2014 Target: One soldier killed and one wounded in vehicle attack Coverage — — OTTAWA When: October 2014 Target: One soldier killed at war memorial two wounded in shootings at Parliament building Coverage — — NEW YORK When: October 2014 Target: Two police officers wounded in knife attack Coverage: Two articles. Here and here — — RIYADH, Saudi Arabia When: November 2014 Target: One Danish citizen wounded in shooting Attacker: Three Saudi ISIS membersCoverage — — ABU DHABI When: December 2014 Target: One American killed in knife attackCoverage — — SYDNEY, Australia When: December 2014 Target: Two Australians killed in hostage taking and shooting Coverage: Multiple articles, including this one — — TOURS, France When: December 2014 Target: Three police officers wounded in knife attack Attacker: Bertrand Nzohabonayo Coverage: Mentioned in this article. — — PARIS When: January 2015 Target: One police officer and four hostages killed in shooting at a kosher supermarket Coverage: Multiple articles, including this one — — TRIPOLI, Libya When: January 2015 Target: Ten killed, including one U. S. citizen, and five wounded in bombing and shooting at a hotel frequented by WesternersAttackers: As many as five members Coverage — — RIYADH, Saudi Arabia When: January 2015 Target: Two U. S. citizens wounded in shooting Attacker: Saudi ISIS supporter Coverage: No Times coverage found — — NICE, France When: February 2015 Target: Two French soldiers wounded in knife attack outside a Jewish community center Coverage: At least four articles. — — COPENHAGEN, Denmark When: February 2015 Target: One civilian killed in shooting at a rally and one security guard killed outside the city’s main synagogue Coverage: Three articles, including this one. — — TUNIS, Tunisia When: March 2015 Target: Tourists. 21 people were killed, including 16 Westerners, and 55 were wounded in a shooting at the Bardo Museum. Attackers: Two extremists Coverage: Extensive, including this article. — — KARACHI, Pakistan When: April 2015 Target: One U. S. citizen wounded in knife attack* Attackers: ISIS supporters Coverage: *The White House cites a knife attack. The Times has no coverage of a knife attack, but it did report on a shooting of an American woman who worked as the vice principal of student affairs at a private medical school. — — PARIS When: April 2015 Target: Catholic churches targeted one civilian killed in a shooting, possibly during an attempted carjacking Coverage: At least two articles: here and here — — ZVORNIK, Bosnia When: April 2015 Target: One police officer killed and two wounded in shootingCoverage: BBC article — — GARLAND, Texas When: May 2015 Target: One security guard wounded in shooting at a Prophet Muhammad cartoon event Coverage: Extensive, including this article. Here are seven more examples of coverage. — — BOSTON When: June 2015 Target: No casualties one police officer attacked with knife Attacker: Usaama Rahim, a U. S. citizen Coverage: At least two articles covered this episode, in which Mr. Rahim was shot and killed by an F. B. I. agent and a Boston police officer after he waved a long knife at them and refused to back down. First article. . — — AL JURAH, Egypt When: June 2015 Target: No casualties camp used by Multinational Force and Observers troops attacked in shooting and bombing attack Attackers: Unknown number of members Coverage — — LUXOR, Egypt When: June 2015 Target: One police officer killed by suicide bomber near the Temple of Karnak Attacker: Unidentified Coverage — — SOUSSE, Tunisia When: June 2015 Target: 38 killed and 39 wounded in shooting at a beach frequented by Westerners Attackers: Seifeddine Rezgui and another unidentified attacker Coverage: More than a dozen articles, beginning here — — LYON, France When: June 2015 Target: One civilian killed in beheading and explosion at a chemical plant Attacker: Yassin Salhi Coverage: At least four articles — — CAIRO When: July 2015 Target: One killed and nine wounded in a attack at Italian Consulate Attacker: Unidentified ISIS operativesCoverage — — CAIRO When: July 2015 Target: One Croatian national was kidnapped and beheaded on Aug. 12 at an unknown location Attacker: Unidentified operative Coverage: Here and here — — PARIS When: August 2015 Target: Two civilians and one U. S. soldier were wounded with firearms and knife on a passenger train Coverage: We published at least six articles. — — EL GORA, Egypt When: September 2015 Target: Four U. S. and two international peacekeepers were wounded in an I. E. D. attack Attacker: Unidentified Coverage — — DHAKA, Bangladesh When: September 2015 Target: One Italian civilian killed in shooting Attacker: Unidentified Coverage: Here and here — — COPENHAGEN When: September 2015 Target: One police officer wounded in knife attack Coverage: The Times had no coverage of this attack, but it was covered by The Telegraph. — — EL GORA, Egypt When: October 2015 Target: No casualties airfield used by MFO attacked with rockets Attacker: Unidentified Islamic State in Sinai operatives Coverage — — PARRAMATTA, Australia When: October 2015 Target: One police officer killed in shooting Attacker: Farhad Jabar Coverage: At least two articles — — RANGPUR, Bangladesh When: October 2015 Target: One Japanese civilian killed in shooting Attacker: Unidentified Coverage — — HASANAH, Egypt When: October 2015 Target: 224 killed in downing of a Russian airliner Attacker: Unidentified operatives Coverage: Extensive, beginning here and here — — MERCED, Calif. When: November 2015 Target: Four wounded in knife attack on a college campus Coverage — — PARIS When: November 2015 Target: At least 129 killed and approximately 400 wounded in series of shootings and IED attacks Attackers: Brahim Abdeslam, Salah Abdeslam, Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, Bilal Hadfi, Samy Amimour, Chakib Akrouh, Foued and Abdelhamid Abaaoud Event coverage — — DINAJPUR, Bangladesh When: November 2015 Target: One Italian citizen wounded in shooting Attacker: Unidentified Coverage — — RAJLOVAC, Bosnia When: December 2015 Target: Two Bosnian soldiers killed in shooting Coverage: No Times coverage found — — SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. When: December 2015 Target: Fourteen killed and 21 wounded in coordinated firearms attack Coverage: Over 100 articles, beginning here and here — — LONDON When: December 2015 Target: Three wounded in knife attack at an underground rail station Attacker: Muhyadin Mire Coverage, plus these two articles — — DERBENT, Russia When: December 2015 Target: One killed and 11 wounded in shooting at United Nations World Heritage site Attacker: Unidentified Islamic State in the Caucasus operativeCoverage — — CAIROWhen: January 2016 Target: Two wounded in shooting outside a hotel frequented by tourists Attackers: Unidentified Islamic State operatives Coverage: Reference to the attack in this article — — PARIS When: January 2016 Target: No casualties attacker killed after attempted knife attack at Paris police station Attacker: Tarek Belgacem Coverage: At least two articles — — PHILADELPHIA When: January 2016 Target: One police officer wounded in shooting Coverage — — HURGHADA, Egypt When: January 2016 Target: One German and one Danish citizen wounded in knife attack at a tourist resort Attacker: Unidentified Coverage — — MARSEILLES, France When: January 2016 Target: One Jewish teacher wounded in machete attack Coverage: Here and here ISTANBUL When: January 2016 Target: Twelve German tourists killed and 15 wounded in suicide bombing Coverage: Here and here — — JAKARTA, Indonesia When: January 2016 Target: Four civilians killed and more than 20 wounded in coordinated bombing and firearms attacks near a police station and a Starbucks Coverage: Here and here — — COLUMBUS, Ohio When: February 2016 Target: Four civilians wounded in machete attack at a restaurant — — HANOVER, GERMANY When: February 2016 Target: One police officer wounded in knife attack Attacker: Safia Schmitter — — ISTANBUL When: March 2016 Target: Four killed and 36 wounded in suicide bombing in the tourist district Attacker: Mehmet Ozturk Coverage: Here and here — — BRUSSELS When: March 2016 Target: At least 31 killed and 270 wounded in coordinated bombings at Zaventem Airport and on a subway train Attackers: Khalid Ibrahim Najim Laachraoui, Mohamed Abrini, and Osama KrayemEvent page — — ESSEN, Germany: When: April 2016 Target: Three wounded in bombing at Sikh temple Attackers: Three minors The New York Times ran an Associated Press article, which has since been removed from the website. — — ORLANDO, Fla. When: June 2016 Target: 49 killed and 53 wounded in shooting at a nightclubEvent page — — MAGNANVILLE, France When: June 2016 Target: One police officer and one civilian killed in knife attack Attacker: Larossi Abballa Coverage: These two articles, as well as one with a Magnanville dateline — — KABUL, Afghanistan When: June 2016 Target: 14 killed in suicide attack on a bus carrying Canadian Embassy guards Attacker: operative Coverage: At least two articles — — ISTANBUL When: June 2016 Target: 45 killed and approximately 240 wounded at Ataturk International Airport Coverage: Extensive, starting with this article. — — DHAKA, Bangladesh When: July 2016 Target: 22 killed, including one American and 50 wounded after siege using machetes and firearms at Holy Artisan Bakery Coverage: Extensively covered at the time, and still being covered — — NICE, France When: July 2016 Target: 84 civilians killed and 308 wounded by an individual who drove a truck into a crowd Coverage: Extensive, beginning here and here — — WÜRZBURG, Germany When: July 2016 Target: Four civilians wounded in ax attack on a train Attacker: Riaz Khan Ahmadzai Coverage: At least two articles — — ANSBACH, Germany When: July 2016 Target: At least 15 wounded in suicide bombing at a music festival Attacker: Mohammad Daleel Coverage, as well as these two articles — — NORMANDY, France When: July 2016 Target: One priest killed in knife attack Attackers: Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Nabil Petitjean Coverage: At least three articles — — CHARLEROI, Belgium When: August 2016 Target: Two police officers wounded in machete attack Coverage: Here and here — — QUEENSLAND, Australia When: August 2016 Target: Two killed and one wounded in knife attack at a hostel frequented by Westerners. The Queensland police say this attack was not related to terrorism. The New York Times ran Associated Press and Reuters articles, which have since been removed from the website. — — COPENHAGEN, Denmark When: September 2016 Target: Two police officers and a civilian wounded in shooting Attacker: Mesa Hodzic Coverage — — PARIS When: September 2016 Target: One police officer wounded in raid after vehicle bomb failed to detonate at Notre Dame Cathedral Attackers: Sarah Hervouet, Ines Madani, and Amel Sakaou Coverage: At least two articles — — SYDNEY When: September 2016 Target: One civilian wounded in knife attack Coverage — — ST. CLOUD, Minn. When: September 2016 Target: 10 wounded in knife attack in a mall Coverage: There were multiple articles. — — NEW YORK SEASIDE PARK, N. J. AND ELIZABETH, N. J. When: September 2016 Target: 31 wounded in bombing in New York City several explosive devices found in New York and New Jersey one exploded without casualty at race in New Jersey one police officer wounded in shootout Coverage: Extensive, beginning here, here and here. — — BRUSSELS When: October 2016 Target: Two police officers wounded in stabbing Attacker: Belgian national Coverage KUWAIT CITY Target: No casualties vehicle carrying three U. S. soldiers hit by a truck Attacker: Ibrahim Sulayman The New York Times ran several Associated Press articles MALMO, Sweden When: October 2016 Target: No casualties mosque and community center attacked with a Molotov cocktail Attacker: Syrian national Coverage: No Times coverage found. — — HAMBURG, Germany When: October 2016 Target: One killed in knife attack Attacker: Unknown Coverage: No Times coverage found. — — MANILA When: November 2016 Target: No casualties failed I. E. D. attempt near U. S. Embassy Attackers: Philippine nationals aligned with the Maute group Coverage: Mentioned in this Times article — — COLUMBUS, Ohio When: November 2016 Target: 14 wounded by individuals who drove a vehicle into a group of pedestrians and attacked them with a knife Coverage: At least four articles — — NDJAMENA, Chad When: November 2016 Target: No casualties attacker arrested after opening fire at entrance of U. S. Embassy Attacker: Chadian national — — KARAK, Jordan When: December 2016 Target: 10 killed and 28 wounded in shooting at a tourist site Coverage: These three articles — — BERLIN When: December 2016 Target: 12 killed and 48 wounded by individual who drove truck into a crowded market Coverage: Extensive, starting with this article | 1 |
On that particular evening back in 2003, my parents were in the car together returning home from work — my mother was a babysitter, my father an electrician — when they noticed three men in suits reading the labels on the mailboxes in front of our building. This was on the urban streets of New Jersey, against a backdrop of dilapidated buildings, and they immediately assumed who it was. “Go in your bedroom and hide,” my mother hissed over the phone. “Immigration is here. Do not open the door. ” My younger sister, Kim, was only 12, and I was 16, a junior in high school. When I relayed the message to her, we both grinned. Our family had a dark sense of humor, and even though we were residing in the United States illegally, this sounded like just the kind of prank she would play on us. “Krys,” she said, “this is not a joke! I am sitting outside with your father. They are going upstairs right now. Hide!” Her voice was too serious, too worried. Not a tremor of a laugh vibrated in her words. So I shut my sister in our bedroom, turned off all the lights and locked the windows. We lived in a third floor in Bayonne. It would take them a couple of minutes to get up there, so I stood behind the door of our apartment and peered through the peephole. I could hear footsteps on the wooden stairs — not the weary ascension of the old Egyptian lady and her husband who lived across the hallway or the skip of the little Puerto Rican boy below us or the cheerful whistle of the woman on the first floor. It was when the tops of their heads floated above the railing that I really believed my mother’s words. Having gone through the motions of locking the apartment down, I was still hoping it was all an elaborate gag. I felt the unlawfulness of our status in this country acutely. As far as I knew, they could, and had every right to, remove us from our apartment and send us back to our country, Trinidad and Tobago. The three came one behind the other down the narrow corridor. I trapped a breath in my chest and stepped away from the door just as the one in front raised a fist to rap his knuckles where my face had been. I had heard stories of immigration officers not even bothering to knock but kicking down the door and sweeping every family member into an unmarked white van. I was terrified that would happen now. My back was against the wall of the kitchen, and I wanted so desperately to close the short distance between me and the locked door of my bedroom, but I knew a creaking board could signal our presence. I yearned to be next to my sister, our shoulders touching and heads inclining toward each other in our dark closet. Instead I stood next to the door, letting air out of my chest one miniature puff at a time. Although the apartment’s imperfections were many, from the lack of space to the falling plaster, we called it home. My mother sewed curtains, glued wallpaper and repaired the ceiling my father rebuilt cupboards, ran new lights and retiled the bathroom. Under normal circumstances, these updates would fall on the landlord’s shoulders, but we flew under the radar, so it was done on our own. Each knock on the door sent a cold stab through my body. I clutched my belly, feeling the sharpness of my nails, something to ground me. Having finally succeeded somewhat in assimilating into American culture, we weren’t sure what would happen if we were sent back. My parents brought us to the United States knowing this could happen once our visas expired. We had abandoned the tangerine skies of the islands for New Jersey at a violent time in our country. My father, a police officer there, believed it was worth the risk to live in the safety of the States. At one point, I heard the men step away, and I braced myself for the crashing of the door. But all I heard was the familiar creaking of stairs as they descended. I listened till the door of the building slammed closed behind them before I checked the peephole and released a trembled breath. An empty corridor. I dug my sister out of our room, held onto her and cried until our parents came and gathered us up. We left the apartment, but there was really nowhere else for us to go, so we returned that evening. For a long time we waited in fear for them to come back. We were always cognizant of our surroundings, always vigilant in a way that was just below the surface. Eventually we would gain legal status, and over time the fear was layered over by everyday life — worrying about grades, fencing practice, the attention of boys — until a knock at the door was finally transformed into a joke. “Be careful,” my mother said, “it might be Immigration. ” The fear was still there, but we had to move on. | 1 |
Keywords: digestive enzymes , heal hemorrhoids fast , hemorrhoid recipe , liver and hemorrhoids , natural remedies for hemorrhoids Heal Hemorrhoids Fast
You are not alone. There are more than 3 million reported cases per year in the USA alone! Hemorrhoids are often caused from straining during bowel movements, obesity and are especially prevalent in pregnancy. Mild to excruciating discomfort is the number one symptom, especially during bowel movements or when sitting. Other very unpleasant symptoms include itching and bleeding. The older you get the more likely you are to experience them. They are very rare in the under 13 year age bracket, common between 14-18 and become very common for the over 18 crowd. Hemorrhoids Related to Digestive Problems
Hemorrhoids are often a sign of inefficient digestion, decreased liver function and/or not having enough digestive enzymes to properly digest your food. It can also indicate inflammation in the small intestines. Hemorrhoids occur when the bowel and liver are stagnate. Symptoms become apparent due to swollen and inflamed veins around the anus and rectum (sorry!). This can be caused by chronic constipation, straining and putting pressure on the lower bowel
During digestion we produce enzymes in our mouth and stomach which break down the foods and help to absorb nutrients. When enzymes are not sufficient to break foods down, it sits in the stomach and ferments. This leads to gas, bloating and fermentation. Liver Health is Crucial to Prevention
The liver is most active between 1-3 am when it is processing wastes, cleansing, eliminating lymphatic drainage and regenerating. If the liver is not working optimally due to health issues, allergies, drug side effects or poor eating habits then it may be overtaxed.
Often people will wake up during the time the liver is most active (1-3am) and feel thirsty and hot because the liver is working over time. So this can be why you get up nightly to get a drink of water. How to Heal Hemorrhoids Fast
Step 1: Optimize liver and kidney function Consider taking an all natural electrolyte powder supplement which can be added to water. These powders are available in health food stores and contain the basic electrolytes Sodium, Potassium, Magnesium and Calcium. Make sure they don’t contain artificial colors or other unhealthy additives.
Increase your fluid intake throughout the day especially if you exercise and lose hydration through sweat. Eating Right for Prevention Eat 5 smaller meals a day rather than 3 large ones. Limit sugar, salt, tea, coffee, alcohol and soda In the morning drink a 60z glass of warm water with 1 teaspoon Apple Cider Vinegar, 1/2 tsp honey and either fresh lemon juice or 2 drops of high quality lemon essential oil. (Lemon increases digestive juices, cleanses the bowels and helps the liver to detoxify. Lemon also has the ability to clean out the diverticuli pockets in the bowels and reduce stagnation.) Hydrate well to preventing drying out the bowels which can cause constipation. Eat greens such as radicchio and endive to promote digestion. Drink Peppermint, Dandelion, Burdock or Chamomile herbal teas. Add healthy oils into your diet including avocados, fish oil , virgin olive oil, flaxseed oil, nuts and seeds. These are all good lubricants allowing stools to pass more easily. Add vegetables, fruits and other healthy fibrous foods. Avoid drinking liquids 20 minutes before or after eating to avoid diluting digestive enzymes. Cut down on wheat, dairy, processed and refined foods as well as excessively spicy foods. Additional Preventative Measures
Consider doing a gentle liver detoxification and overall cleanse every 6 months to promote better digestion and keep your bowels moving properly. Probiotics can help the digestive tract balance of good flora as bloating is often contributed to fermentation, constipation and inflammation which lead to hemorrhoids and bowel issues. Taking Slippery elm supplements before meals can be helpful. As well as taking Vitamin C, bioflavinoids (Rutin) and Magnesium supplements may reduce hemorrhoids and cleanse the bowel. Heal Hemorrhoids Fast Recipe Add 5 drops each of Lavender and Tea Tree (Melaleuca) Essential oil 3 Tbs of fractionated (or melted) virgin coconut oil Place these in a small glass container like a 4 oz mason jar.
For each application to the affected area take a cotton makeup remover pad and dampen with water before use. Squeeze excess water and then dip into your remedy jar. Wipe with this soothing mixture after each time you use the restroom and you will get instant relief and often clear up the issue in less than 24 hours. You can heal hemorrhoids fast!
Sammy Clove is a freelance writer, aromatherapist and writes for Morocco All Natural Hair Method . You can visit her blog at AllNaturalHealthReviews.org . Please share Heal Hemorrhoids Fast so your friends can thank you! You might also like… | 1 |
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Saturday that a diplomat in its London embassy who recently defected to South Korea had fled rather than face punishment for various crimes, calling him “human scum. ” The statement, from the official Korean Central News Agency, was North Korea’s first reaction to the defection of Thae its most senior official to defect in almost two decades. The defection of Mr. Thae, who was the No. 2 diplomat in the embassy, was announced by South Korea on Wednesday. The North Korean statement said Mr. Thae, whom it did not identify by name, had been ordered in June to return from Britain to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, because he had embezzled state funds, sold official secrets and sexually assaulted a minor. The statement offered no evidence for those accusations. Rather than return home, the statement said, Mr. Thae “proved himself to be human scum who betrayed the fatherland” by fleeing. It said that North Korea had informed the British government of the accusations against Mr. Thae and asked that he be handed over to North Korean officials, but that London had instead created an “indelible stain” in relations between the countries by letting him go to South Korea, to be used in a “smear campaign” against the North. South Korea has not explained how or when Mr. Thae made his way to the country with his wife and children, and the North Korean statement suggested that he had been in British custody beforehand. There was no immediate response from the British or South Korean government. North Korea has typically referred to its defectors as “scum” or “traitors,” often accusing South Korea’s intelligence agency of kidnapping them. On Friday, Jeong a South Korean government spokesman, said he expected the North to react similarly to Mr. Thae’s defection. Doing otherwise “would be tantamount to admitting to the inferiority of its own regime,” he said. The South has said that Mr. Thae defected out of disillusionment with the North Korean government, and that his decision to flee was a sign that such sentiments were spreading among the North Korean elite. | 0 |
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