text
stringlengths 1
134k
| label
int64 0
1
|
|---|---|
11/13/2016 The Most Important News The Far Left Is Planning The Biggest Political Protest In United States History For Inauguration Day 11/14/2016 Democrats Are Now Calling For A ‘Revolution In The Streets’, And I Believe That They Are Quite Serious 11/14/2016 | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Two Russian intelligence agents directed a criminal conspiracy that broke into 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014, the Justice Department said, in one of the largest known data breaches. The agents were supposed to be helping Americans hunt for hackers — but instead they were working against them. Prosecutors said the Russian government used the information to target foreign officials, business executives and journalists. _____ 2. President Trump lashed out over the leak of part of his 2005 tax return, which showed that he paid $38 million in federal income taxes after huge . The release comes as critics of the Republican health care bill point out that it gives large tax breaks to wealthy Americans like the president. On Capitol Hill, above, the Republican leader of the House Intelligence Committee cast doubt on Mr. Trump’s claim that he was wiretapped. _____ 3. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate, a move intended to curb inflation and stabilize growth. Officials said the domestic economy was expanding at a “moderate pace. ” Mr. Trump has vowed to speed up growth, and to cut regulations to stimulate job growth. He headed to Detroit to announce a rollback of fuel economy standards that he says hurt the U. S. auto industry. The president’s first budget will be released Thursday. A blueprint to be released by the White House calls for deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and popular domestic programs. _____ 4. The Netherlands went to the polls to elect a Parliament, in the first major electoral test for European populism since last year’s “Brexit” referendum. Turnout was the highest in decades. Geert Wilders’s party gained seats, but a big majority of Dutch voters rejected his views. Fears of hacking and outside interference were rife, so all vote tallying was done by hand. _____ 5. In Damascus, a suicide bomber struck inside a historic judicial building, killing at least 30 people. It was the second attack in five days in the heart of the Syrian capital, coinciding with the sixth anniversary of the start of the uprising against President Bashar . The war has now left more than 400, 000 people dead and displaced about half of the country’s population. _____ 6. A federal judge in Hawaii blocked Mr. Trump’s revised travel ban. Hours before the second attempt to ban travel from parts of the Muslim world was to take effect, Judge Derrick K. Watson froze it nationwide. The decision deals a political blow to the White House and signals that proponents of the ban face a long and risky legal battle ahead. Read the judge’s order here. Above, a protest against the ban in Washington. _____ 7. Hundreds of private clinics have sprung up in the U. S. and around the world offering treatments for all manner of ailments, with little or no regulation because they fall into a legal gray zone. A disastrous outcome at one Florida clinic illustrates the dangers. Three women who underwent procedures to treat macular degeneration, which slowly causes blindness, lost much or all of their sight. The cases expose gaps in the ability of government agencies to protect consumers from unproven treatments offered by entrepreneurs. The clinic is still operating, although not on eyes. _____ 8. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s natural wonders. It’s so large that it can be seen from space, and so beautiful it can move visitors to tears. And it is dying. Huge sections of its most pristine parts were killed last year by overheated seawater, and now more southerly sections are bleaching, which is a potential precursor to another . Scientists, who said climate change was warming seawaters, did not expect this level of damage for another 30 years. _____ 9. The remake of Disney’s 1991 animated blockbuster “Beauty and the Beast” arrives in theaters this week. But not in Malaysia, where the government demanded that Disney cut a brief scene that shows two men dancing together in a ballroom, saying it promotes homosexuality. (Bill Condon, who directed the film, has called it “an exclusively gay moment. ”) The studio refused. Our critic gave the film a rave review, saying it “looks good, moves gracefully and leaves a clean and invigorating aftertaste. ” _____ 10. Finally, “This Is Us” is TV’s latest surprise hit. The NBC family drama, which just wrapped up its first season, uses nonlinear storytelling. But it’s not a gimmick, our critic writes. “It represents the way we experience time with the people we love,” he says. “I couldn’t tell you why this family show became a hit where so many others haven’t. Maybe America just needs a good cry this year. ” And on the shows, the comedian Seth Meyers took on Representative Steve King of Iowa for his remark about “somebody else’s babies. ” “You know you’ve really accomplished something when the guy who wrote ‘Cujo’ is no longer the scariest Stephen King,” he quipped. Have a great night. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Sam Siatta was deep in a tequila haze, so staggeringly drunk that he would later say he retained no memory of the crime he was beginning to commit. It was a few minutes after 2 a. m. on April 13, 2014. Siatta had just forced his way into a home in Normal, Ill. a college town on the prairie about 130 miles southwest of Chicago. A Marine Corps veteran of the war in Afghanistan, he was a freshman studying on the G. I. Bill at the university nearby, Illinois State. He had a record of valor in infantry combat and no criminal past. He also had no clear reason to have entered someone else’s home, no motive that prosecutors would be able to point to at trial — no intention to rob, no indication that he knew or had even seen before any of the three young female teaching students who lived inside, or the boyfriends who were with two of them. Two of the women and one of the men had awakened minutes earlier when they thought they heard someone opening and closing the front door. It had been an unnerving sensation, the feeling that an intruder had stepped into the home. They tried to settle themselves and return to bed, only to be jolted by a bang — the sound of Siatta hitting the back door with such force that he splintered the jamb. The door swung open into a dining area. Siatta strode into the unfamiliar space, just around the block from the similarly sized home where he rented a room. A little more than six feet tall and weighing about 175 pounds, he was a thoroughly trained veteran of a ground war and heavily tattooed, with red tally marks on his sternum indicating seven Taliban kills from 2009 and 2010. His former company commander would later tell a trial judge that of the 388 troops he led in Afghanistan, Siatta was the man the militants feared most. The women cowered behind a flimsy bedroom door. One of them dialed 911. Another clutched a stubby kitchen knife. Since leaving the corps in 2012, Siatta had been unable to switch off the habits of war. He was hypervigilant and struggled to relax. He watched people, sizing them up and scanning for threats. In the varying situations of everyday life, he constantly repositioned himself so no one got behind him. Much of this was appropriate for combat patrols. Some of it drew from his training. All of it was mentally and emotionally exhausting, unsuited for a peaceful life. Going to a restaurant, moving through knots of people at a party, visiting the mall, finding a seat in a classroom relative to other people and windows and doors — each was a challenge requiring effort and will. Siatta had been in a deepening funk for months. For more than four years he had been stalked by memories of civilians his platoon had killed, people whose lives had abruptly ended for a reason as unforgiving as it was simple — being in the wrong place when the shooting began. The Department of Veterans Affairs would later say he suffered from depression, alcohol dependency and PTSD. But until this moment, he had adapted with behaviors allowing him to pass as less troubled than he was. He avoided crowds. He drank prodigious amounts of alcohol to dim his heightened alertness and to muffle his sorrows. He socialized rarely, often only with his mother or brother. The dining area Siatta had entered gave way to a little kitchen, which opened into a small living room. In that adjoining room, perhaps 25 feet from Siatta, stood one of the boyfriends, another young former Marine. In any number of situations, the two men might have become friends. But they had served in different places and jobs in the corps, and the man in the living room had no idea he had anything in common with the man in the kitchen. He positioned himself between his girlfriend and the shattered door. He was shorter than Siatta but more muscular, with a build hinting at years of weight training and competitive wrestling. He was also sober. He looked across the kitchen at the broken door. The deadbolt was still extended. Whoever had forced the door was strong. He heard movement around the corner, a rustling from the back of the house. He held a steak knife with a serrated blade, the weapon he managed to muster in the seconds he had to think. Siatta stepped into his line of sight. He was walking toward the living room, deeper into the house. Only one man knows exactly what happened next. Knife in hand, he identified himself as a former Marine and demanded that Siatta get out. “You don’t belong here,” he said. “You need to leave. ” Siatta kept walking, the man said, and lifted a frying pan off the stove as he passed by. “You have been bad,” he said, raising the pan by its handle. “And this will do. ” Whatever options had existed narrowed to one. The fight began. The first time I saw Sam Siatta was in April 2016 at the Shawnee Correctional Center, a state penitentiary in southern Illinois. He was brought by the guards to a dreary conference room, away for the moment from a cellblock for serious offenders. Before he arrived, a correctional officer asked me and two members of the law firm representing Siatta whether we wanted a guard stationed nearby, in case the inmate acted up. Siatta walked in wearing blue prison garb. He had the light feet and muscular shoulders of a young fighter. His short sleeves offered glimpses of grim tattoos — a skull resting on an hourglass on his right forearm, among others — common to many grunts. He looked tough. He also looked deflated. He came off as nervous, scared and almost painfully polite, a man overwhelmed by his circumstances. Richard R. Winter, the attorney who days before had filed an appeal of Siatta’s conviction, asked how he was doing. Any pretense of Siatta as a threat to visitors fell away. He was not doing well. Shawnee, he said, was run by gangs, which he had to take care not to cross. Two cellmates had been Latin Kings, and another was a sex offender who had almost drawn Siatta into a fight over a petty cellblock theft. The aging penitentiary in Pontiac, where he was held while awaiting a court hearing, was worse. There the inmates shouted and wailed through the night, he said, and the place was thick with rodents. Siatta seemed distraught. He wanted to go home. Did Winter have any news, he wanted to know, about his appeal? Winter gently said it would take time, perhaps a few months before they could expect a hearing. I had heard of Siatta in February, when T. G. Taylor, a recently retired Army officer, contacted me about a Marine infantry vet who had forced his way into a house in his neighborhood and been stabbed repeatedly by another former Marine. After a helicopter flight to a trauma center, the infantry vet — Siatta — was charged with home invasion, found guilty at trial and sentenced to prison. Taylor had taken a job at Holland Knight, the firm handling the appeal, which was brought on the grounds that Siatta did not intend to commit the crime because he was almost catatonically intoxicated at the time. Siatta’s case, Taylor said, was about PTSD, a subject he and I had discussed over the years as we tried to help friends struggling with life after war. I was interested but cautious. I served in the Marine infantry in the 1980s and 1990s and knew what everyone who has moved past the slogans knows: That a small fraction of Marines are trouble — problem children, in the gentlest construction of the corps’ otherwise profane slang. Some of these Marines turn criminal and deserve every bit of punishment they get. I told Taylor that I would have to review the case carefully before considering coverage. By chance, I knew Maj. Scott A. Cuomo, who commanded Siatta’s rifle company in Afghanistan. Cuomo is driven and serious. He had led the school that trains all Marine infantry lieutenants, a post reserved for established stars in the grunt officer corps. I called him with two questions: Was Siatta a problem child? If not, what was going on? Cuomo said Siatta was a solid Marine in combat — a gifted marksman, trusted by his peers, invaluable in firefights and deserving of gratitude, not incarceration. He said he was perplexed by everything he heard out of Illinois. Reading the case file raised more questions. The prosecutors had taken a hard stance against Siatta, first with charges and in plea negotiations and later in a deposition and in court, where a prosecutor belittled the idea that the accused might have been drunk as a coping mechanism for illness. Not everyone in the courtroom seemed to concur. At the end, when Siatta’s life had finally tanked, the trial judge all but apologized for sentencing him to prison. I agreed to meet Siatta in Shawnee. Over a few hours of conversation, he toggled between being marginally expressive and almost poetic. At this late date he had developed a cleareyed view of what ailed him. He described his anxiety and drinking as conditions that grew almost imperceptibly, finally overtaking him in 2014. Until then the symptoms had been easy for him to play down, even if others were concerned. “You don’t notice when you grow half an inch, because you see yourself every day,” he said. “But if you see your loved ones, they say, ‘Oh, you’ve gotten tall. ’’u2009” Once he relaxed, Siatta talked of the killing he had done in Afghanistan — hesitantly at first, then thoroughly — replaying the cool mechanics of precision rifle fire, describing fatal mistakes, tracing where his mind traveled after. His war had been darker than his new lawyer and family knew, more brutal than he expressed in court. It was too late to expect anything to come of it. More than five years remained on his sentence, and Siatta was unlikely to receive help from Illinois’s overburdened correctional system in that time, not even counseling or medication. His fate would depend on a appeal, which focused on a narrow and not firmly established matter of law. In the waste and shame of a respected vet being warehoused in a penitentiary for a crime he could not recall was part of the foot soldiers’ experience of the Afghan war, including the return to a country content to thank them without understanding them, or why they sometimes stand apart. Lance Corporal Samuel J. Siatta arrived in Afghanistan in October 2009, one of thousands of Marines who cycled through the effort to defeat the Taliban in Helmand Province, the corps’ ambitious piece of President Obama’s reboot of the Afghan war. He was a rifleman in Fox Company, Second Battalion, Second Marines, a member of First Squad, Third Platoon. As he stepped off the aircraft at Camp Leatherneck, a base on the steppe that served as a hub for Marine operations, he was an almost timeless character, a young Marine from the prairie who might have fit into the long lines of riflemen volunteering for his service’s previous wartime campaigns. An adopted son in a Roman Catholic family in Illinois, he was handed to the couple who raised him on the Fourth of July in 1989, when he was 3 days old. His mother’s eldest brother fought as a Marine in Vietnam, and his maternal grandfather was a Marine in World War II. By the time he was in the fourth grade, he was telling that he intended to be a Marine. His father fell ill with cancer and died when Siatta was 12. Siatta had always been a quiet child and was more so after. A classmate, Ashley Volk, found him approachable and kind. The two dated that year. “He was my first kiss on the cheek,” she said. Volk made a condolence card for their class to sign and puzzled over how he contained his grief. “Sam never cried in front of us,” she said. “It always made us scared for him, because we didn’t know how he was dealing with it inside. ” By eighth grade, Siatta had started lifting weights and hanging out at the gym. Volk worked out as an excuse to be near him. The war in Iraq was raging. The Pentagon’s early success in Afghanistan was unraveling. Anyone could see there was much more fighting ahead, and against foes whose harassing and often dark tactics, emphasizing ambushes, improvised bombs and suicide attacks, were exacting a bloody toll. Siatta let it be known that he still intended to enlist. Siatta and Volk were an couple in high school, years during which she tried to talk him out of becoming a Marine. He gave her nicknames, including “pretty lady” and “gypsy,” and resisted her efforts to dissuade him. As a senior he was old enough to sign on the line. Volk pleaded with him again. His decision was firm. He had an urge for action and a sense of duty, and seemed not to care how hard or risky it would be. “It wasn’t about enjoying it,” he told me. “It was about the idea that our Constitution isn’t a bunch of toilet paper, like most of our generation thinks it is. ” He enlisted while still in school and requested a place in the infantry, the corps’ toughest job. With four years signed away, Siatta began seeing less of Volk, thinking that it would be unfair to leave her waiting while he was gone to war. He departed for boot camp in San Diego on the day he graduated, in May 2008. Volk remembers feeling scared. But she had no argument left to make. “He did it for our country,” she said. “That’s an old soul. ” At boot camp Siatta followed the familiar arc of transformation from civilian to Marine, although as weeks passed he displayed a skill that set him apart: He was an exceptional shot. The Marine Corps is built around its rifles. It expects every member to master what it considers the basic tool of modern war, via thorough training and annual requalification on shooting out to 500 yards. Siatta outshot almost everyone around him. This was not readily explicable. Siatta was raised in a household without firearms and was neither a hunter nor a weapons buff. He had never fired a rifle before. Instructors in the corps often say that recruits with no weapons experience can become accomplished shots because they have no bad habits to unlearn. Siatta offers this as the explanation for his own superior skill. But when he talks of how he shot, it is also clear that when he looked down the barrel of a rifle he was capable of extreme patience and calm. Even in firefights he could sweep away distraction and focus on the habits that make precision marksmanship possible. In late 2008, after completing boot camp and an infantry course in which he demonstrated a knack for mixed martial arts and a high pain tolerance to go with his fine motor skills, Siatta checked into his battalion at Camp Lejeune, N. C. In many ways, two of his supervisors said, he was not a model Marine. He wore his uniform sloppily, could be inattentive in garrison and did not show the enthusiasm and initiative of some of his peers. He was pegged as “a field Marine,” a grunt suited for battle but not for the corps’ broader insistence on perfection. “Sometimes we’d say that if Siatta did not shoot as well as he did, we wouldn’t know what to do with him,” said his former squad leader, Sgt. Joseph M. Perez. Siatta accepts this reputation easily and said he chafed at the requirements of Marine Corps base life. “They’d say, ‘Your boots are dirty,’’u2009” he told me. “And I’d be like: ‘Of course they are dirty. I’m a fucking rifleman. I joined to do a dirty job. ’’u2009” All agree that his skill with a rifle assured his place. As his platoon readied for combat, its commander, Second Lt. Tyler P. Kurtz, selected him for a particularly difficult role: designated marksman. The D. M. as troops call this position, was a recent adjustment to the corps’ organization, a role between that of regular riflemen and snipers. It was made necessary, in the corps’ view, by the arid environments of Afghanistan and Iraq, where a dearth of vegetation often meant that gunfights occurred at long ranges, and conventional units needed Marines with skills and equipment to hit targets outside the ready range of standard M4s or M16s. Rare is the Marine who does not wish to shoot better a culture that celebrates riflery bestows credibility and respect on those who shoot best. Siatta’s selection was an honor, the more so because he was otherwise untested. Kurtz, now a captain who commands a Marine infantry company, said he chose Siatta nonetheless because he exuded maturity when behind a rifle. “He was a natural,” he said. Siatta’s selection brought pressures he had not contemplated before. In Afghanistan he would be called on to do the shooting that would make gunfights stop. Through the lens of a telescopic sight, he would also be expected to watch over and protect his platoon, which meant eyeing civilians through cross hairs, one after another, and looking for indicators — a partly hidden weapon, the remote detonator of a bomb — that might give him a military justification to kill. This would require a constant commitment to discernment and a disciplined sense of restraint, balanced with a willingness to take others’ lives, sometimes in the intimate fashion that can come with an scope. Even the nickname for the role, Guardian Angel, was freighted with a presumption of unerring perfection and righteous power. Siatta had shot only paper targets. He wondered whether he was good enough. What would happen to his friends, he asked himself, if he choked? The prewar preparations of Second Battalion, Second Marines left little time for rest. Siatta lived in Fox Company’s barracks, where underage drinking was forbidden and policed by noncommissioned officers. He was too young to purchase alcohol legally or enter bars and did not show much interest in alcohol in any event. His fellow Marines recall him hanging back, unlike some of the louder personalities. “He was very quiet, very internal, one of the guys who didn’t say much,” Perez said. “When he spoke, it was pretty comical, because it was like, ‘Whoa, where did that come from? ’’u2009” In late October 2009, the battalion landed in Afghanistan and quickly moved into the rural badlands. In keeping with the corps’ latest way of waging war, its Marines were to spend a tour characterized by an unrelenting pace of small foot patrols. At Camp Leatherneck, Fox Company was given its first mission: to set up in patrol bases near the village of Lakari, drive off the Taliban and help the Afghan government extend security and services into the area. It was an ambitious order. Helmand Province, Afghanistan’s largest, had had a light Western military presence since 2001. Much of it had taken the form of British units in fortified outposts with limited influence over territory around them. After a bloody campaign in Iraq’s Anbar Province, the Marine Corps shifted attention to Helmand, turning the province into the corps’ own corner of Afghanistan. The villages around Lakari, nestled amid irrigated cropland along the winding Helmand River about 90 miles from Pakistan, formed a Taliban and ’ stronghold. Other Marines raided Lakari in the summer, but they left, and the area remained beyond the Afghan government’s reach. The local bazaar, on dusty land east of the river, was a zone — enemy turf. On Nov. 1, the company’s First and Third Platoons arrived at Patrol Base Lakari, a crude outpost built weeks before. Little more than tents surrounded by a dirt berm, it had the hastily conceived and temporary feel of much of the Marine involvement in Afghanistan. It was reached through a gate and watched over by four raised bunkers where Marines rotated turns on post, one in each bunker by day, two by night. From behind sandbags and bulletproof glass, the Marines looked upon a desolate vista and could feel menace awaiting them. Like the bazaar, about a mile to the south, the patrol base was situated just outside the irrigated cropland, at the edge of the steppe. Vegetation and a maze of dried mud walls lay to the west and southwest. The year’s poppy crop had been harvested. A stubble of corn stalks dotted the landscape. The farmers between the base and the bazaar were presumed to be spotters who watched the Americans’ routine and signaled their movements to the Taliban. No patrol could leave the base without being seen before it reached the fields. Whenever Marines ventured into the neighboring patchwork of farmland, canals and homes, they were entering a network of interconnected traps. Small slits had been cut in the mud walls — Marines called them “murder holes” — from which the Taliban could fire. Bombs had been buried in the dirt. Ambushes were laid by fighters who typically kept a canal between themselves and their targets, preventing the Marines from employing their preferred tactic of rushing attackers. The patrol base was a target for rockets. The Marine unit that had lived in it for the past few weeks was leaving Afghanistan, ending its tour and passing to Fox Company a mission that would require gunfighting on someone else’s home ground. In his journal, Siatta recorded his first impression, in standard : “The coffee here tastes like shit. ” By 2009, the eighth year of its Afghan occupation, the United States had repeatedly reshaped its reasons and practices for fighting its . 11 wars. Under ideas in favor at this moment, nicknamed COIN, the military’s inelegant shorthand for its optimistically conceived counterinsurgency doctrine, troops were expected to follow a process to declaw and displace the Taliban: clear, hold and build. This meant sweeping through an area to weaken opposing fighting groups by force and then holding the ground and trying to secure it over time, all in the service of allowing the central government’s local project to take root and grow. At the same time, Marines were told to coach Afghan forces and befriend villagers (in part by handing out cash) and urge them into roles (informants, contractors, local officials) that would make them partners in the new way. They were also supposed to encourage farmers to abandon the cultivation of opium poppy, the region’s most lucrative cash crop. That was the theory and the hope, often officially expressed. In practice it meant destroying a firmly established local economy and bringing in rule by outsiders. And the first phase — “clearing” — was a euphemism for violence, repeatedly applied via small gunfights and supported by American artillery and air power. A corollary, often unstated but understood by those doing the patrols, was that any group of Afghans willing to face the Marines head to head would gradually be thinned, while every seven months the Americans, bloodied and made jumpy by firefights and bombs, would be replaced with fresh troops. It was attrition warfare, with jive. Siatta’s turn came quickly. On Nov. 2, his second day at the patrol base, Third Platoon was gathering to meet the Marines they were replacing when two rockets roared in and exploded, one inside and another outside the perimeter. Siatta ran for his equipment — flak jacket, helmet, kit and the rest — and stood with his rifle waiting for a ground attack that never came. He was at war now, “heart racin, hands shakin but had a smile on my face,” he wrote in his journal. “I dont know why I was smilin maybe it was because I could have got blown the fuck up and didn’t. ” To stop incoming rockets, the patrols would have to make the Taliban think twice about taking such risks. That night, Siatta was issued a Mark 12 Special Purpose Rifle, the more accurate descendant of the M16, which he would carry throughout his tour, along with ammunition, a departure from the military’s standard jacket rounds that sacrificed armor penetration but caused more damaging wounds. The rifle was equipped with a suppressor to muffle its report. Siatta was a hunter now. Clearing the fields around Lakari was his job. He was 20 years old. On a section of steppe the Marines called “the eastern desert,” Siatta adjusted the rifle’s scope. His practice range, an empty expanse of compacted soil and tiny tufts of dried grass, was safe. The local fighters did not leave the security of their home turf to fight in the open. Like an athlete stretching on a sideline before competition, Siatta made his last preparations. Methodically firing into rations boxes, he determined and wrote down the data for exact distances, then set the scope for 300 yards and taped the chart to his rifle’s stock. He was ready. The squad was green. Its leader, Sergeant Perez, was the only Marine who had been in combat before. The first patrol passed without incident. But Fox Company was aggressive, and within days its Marines were pushing beyond where the departing unit had regularly gone. They were looking for fights. At the lower ranks of the Marine Corps, the Pentagon’s airbrushed language of war can fade away. Tactical slang hews closer to battlefield fact. Marines talk of “bait patrols,” in which one group of grunts heads off to a contested area trying to draw fire, while others wait, hoping that once the Taliban show themselves they can attack their flanks. And they talk of the most straightforward mission of all: movement to contact, which means exactly that. On Nov. 7, Siatta’s squad, accompanied by Lieutenant Kurtz and a team, headed just over a mile south and stopped beside a house to talk with whoever approached. Siatta’s journal entry that day was unequivocal about the purpose. The battalion leaving Afghanistan was opposed to the mission. Kurtz faced contradictory orders. His company commander was telling him to push south, while the operations officer in the command center was ordering him back. The Marines headed back. On the return walk, they were attacked. “Gunfire opens up out of a tree line,” Siatta’s journal reads. “Rounds cracking and snaping through the air and skipin across the ground. ” The squad reacted as infantry units in their first firefight often do. Most of the Marines opened up with everything they had. Siatta found a position along a mud wall, fired a few shots and then stopped. Through his scope he saw nothing to shoot. Around him others cut loose. The squad’s M249 automatic weapons and M240 machine gun tore through belts of ammunition. The leaders lobbed one grenade after another. Lance Cpl. Dustin J. Hagglund, who led the team, described it afterward as “an ammo dump, basically. ” Two cows, he said, were cut in half. The firefight was of a familiar type: a swift and ferocious clash between combatants who scarcely glimpsed one another. Beyond signaling toughness and an eagerness to fight, it accomplished little. “We did the suppression, we closed with them and we pulled back,” Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Ratliff said. The Taliban also withdrew. No one, it seemed, had been struck. The Marines strode back to their patrol base, exuberant, riding the rush of having been under fire and coming out alive. This is one of war’s exhilarating drugs. It fueled backslaps and shouts. “Everyone was like and everything,” Hagglund told me. “We were the first squad in the company to get in a firefight. ” A few minutes later Hagglund was in a bunker when a Toyota pickup rushed toward the gate. It stopped short. Its occupants hopped out and retrieved a wheelbarrow from the bed. A few Afghan soldiers ran to meet them. In the wheelbarrow was a small boy who had been shot through the skull. The bullet had struck above his left eyebrow and blown out the back of his head. But it had hit high enough that the child was still alive — unresponsive, breathing fitfully. The man pushing the wheelbarrow was his father. Siatta watched as the Marines took the child to their aid station and rested his shattered skull over a bowl. A corpsman tried to keep what was left of his head intact by cupping it in his hands. A sandstorm had blown up, grounding the helicopter fleet. It was a few hours before an aircraft took him away. Not long after, the radio brought word. The boy had died. Hagglund thought the child might be 4 years old. Siatta and Perez thought he might be 6. No one was exactly sure how he had been shot. Ratliff figured he was hit while running through the gunfight to save the cows. The corpsman who examined the wound said it was caused by a 5. bullet, which matched weapons that the Marines carried. Perez tried consoling his squad. “This is how it works,” he said. “Rounds go everywhere in firefights, and as hard as we try to prevent civilian casualties, this is going to happen sometimes. ” He reminded them that they had not shot first. They were ambushed. But words, he knew, had limits. “My guys felt guilty,” he said. After the first night, the Marines barely discussed the boy’s death. “We just kind of did the man thing, and we did not talk about it ever again,” Perez said. Hagglund described a collective reticence. “None of us talked about our feelings,” he said. “We were . We were taking care of business. ” They bleached the bowl, ate out of it and went back out on patrols. Siatta was shaken. His training had not prepared him for what it felt like to look down after a gunfight upon a child with part of his head gone. “During all of our shooting targets, throwing grenades, doing all that, you never once saw kids mangled,” he told me. The boy reminded him of his niece. He was one firefight into the only line of work he had ever wanted and was confronted with “one of those sights — it was like maturity overnight, a sobering. ” Fox Company intended to clear the area around Lakari quickly. The next week was a blur. “Nothing,” Siatta wrote in his journal, “but firefight, rockets, ambushes, post resuply missions and just chaos. ” And then he took his first clear shot. On Nov. 17, the platoon commander, Kurtz, accompanied the squad, reinforced with a team and Afghan soldiers, on a mission deep into Taliban turf. He had noticed a pattern. After each gunfight, the Taliban’s fighters seemed to withdraw to the same fields and buildings west of the bazaar. Kurtz was sick of it and planned to walk straight into their area, summon them to a fight and kill as many of them as he could. “It was a pure and simple movement to contact, and nothing else,” he said. The squad set off in midmorning. To Kurtz’s surprise, no Taliban fighters showed up. “Basically we humped all day,” he said. The squad continued a few miles west of the bazaar, into an area where no Marines had been before, when an ambush erupted around part of it. One team of Marines was filing across a field when the Taliban opened fire. The range was short. The ambushers were about 200 yards away. Following their training, the Marines in the kill zone turned toward the gunfire and charged. Those in the strip of vegetation between the fields alternated between shooting and rushing, trying to envelop the attackers. An Afghan soldier fired a grenade near the lieutenant, and the back blast nearly deafened him. The Taliban was firing with a PK machine gun, grenades and rifles. The squad was spread out, with Perez and Siatta moving with a team a few hundred yards off. Perez looked behind his Marines and saw a man on a roof about 300 yards away, partly hidden by a wall. He raised his scope for a closer view. The man did not seem to be holding anything but was watching the fight, perhaps directing the Taliban. Siatta was beside Perez with an scope. Under the rules, Marines were required to have “PID” — positive identification — of a combatant before firing. Even warning shots were forbidden without an officer’s approval. Another platoon had recently shot an Afghan with a radio, only to discover that the radio was a harmless transistor for listening to the news and that the man had a mental disability. The Marines had been warned about avoiding more mistakes. Siatta kept his sight on the man. He did not see a weapon, a radio or a cellphone. But he was suspicious. Perez told him to fire a warning shot and chase the man off. “I told Siatta to shoot under the guy,” he told me. Siatta fired. The man collapsed. Perez lowered his M4 and looked down at Siatta. “Did you just shoot that man?” he asked. Siatta nodded. Perez was astonished. But they were midway through a gunfight, with Marines pinned down in a field, and he understood that Siatta could have hit the man unintentionally. He decided to wait to confront him. The squad fought south for about 600 yards, clearing several buildings. At one point they were taking fire from a compound, and as Kurtz was organizing an airstrike, he saw, through a gap in the wall, a woman inside. She was holding a baby. Kurtz thought the Taliban might have pushed her into view as a human shield. He called off the airstrike. Some of the Marines watched several unarmed men sprinting away from a building they were closing on and asked for permission to shoot them. Kurtz thought the fleeing men were combatants who had ditched their weapons. But again, he said, he followed the rules. He ordered the squad not to fire. It was a maddening fight, under an ornate system of restrictions that the Taliban knew how to exploit, a style of war that could enrage those who followed it. “A lot of the guys in the squad were pissed at me that day,” Kurtz said. Back at their base, Perez asked Siatta to explain his shot. “Were you sighted on that guy?” he said. Siatta, he said, answered, “Yes. ” “He told me he wanted to feel what it was like to kill someone,” Perez later recalled. Perez was angry and concerned. He reported the incident to Kurtz, and the company began investigating Siatta. Kurtz, too, was disturbed. He sensed trouble. Villagers had been gathering at the gate, complaining about every mistake Fox Company made. Kurtz expected they would soon arrive with a body. He warned Siatta that he stood to face charges. “We’ll see how this plays out for you, bud,” he told him. Kurtz took away his rifle and suspended him from patrols. Siatta was near tears. Perez supported the lieutenant’s position and said he wondered about Siatta’s suitability for war. “There is a difference between wanting to kill a person and killing the right person,” he said. “Our concern was that Siatta would fall into the trap of killing for pleasure, which he had the ability to do. ” Years later, the shot remains a point of contention. Siatta said he understood the reprimand but steadfastly defends his actions. “This is one of the stressors of being a designated marksman,” he told me. “You have to make that call. That guy was bad news. That was a shady guy. ” In the same circumstance, he said, he would take the shot again. “You could save your buddies’ lives,” he said, “at the expense of your own ass. ” Perez said these answers are unacceptable. “He can say the guy looked shady, but that doesn’t give you the right to shoot him,” he said. “If I let my squad shoot everyone who was shady, we could have killed an entire village. ” For a few days, Third Platoon patrolled without Siatta. Everyone waited. The villagers did not appear. A patrol to the building found no sign of anyone wounded. No blood, no bandages, no one making accusations. A body never turned up. Perez returned Siatta’s rifle and reinstated him. The fighting intensified, along with the frustration. On one mission, the platoon tried to capture a Taliban commander about six miles away. The man escaped. Siatta was so annoyed after listening to a “bullshit speech about even though we found nothing we still came out on top” from Cuomo, the company commander, that he wrote in his journal that he “wanted to punch him in the face. ” Not yet two months into his tour, Siatta was no longer a naïve kid from the prairie. He had hardened, and was both angry and more alert. He was harboring doubts about the war. Marines were doing the most dangerous work and were told that Afghan forces were going to build on their success. After watching the Afghan soldiers his platoon worked with, Siatta was certain that was not going to happen. When he visited them in their tents, he said, “they’d be in there on their rugs, making chai, smoking dope. I’d be like: ‘You guys are fucking turds. We’re here to do shit, and you’re high as fuck. ’’u2009” When Marines patrolled, many of the Afghans stayed back. Always there was another patrol. On Nov. 22, the Marines in another platoon were attacked, and when Third Platoon went to help they were ambushed, too — trapped by gunfire from multiple directions. Attack helicopters came to their aid, forcing back the Taliban. Once the ambush was broken, First Squad was ordered to sweep a compound from which the Taliban had been firing. A building inside had been hit with two Hellfire missiles. The squad crossed a cold, canal and stacked at the entrance. Siatta was on point. They threw a fragmentation grenade over the compound wall, then followed it inside. As Siatta pushed through the gate, he saw the remains of an Afghan. His guts were exposed through disheveled clothes. He was maybe 14. Siatta watched the family file out — bereaved, terrified and covered in fine, powdery dust. They were powerless, unable to communicate with the Americans who stood in their home. The Marines were grieving, too. Lance Cpl. Nicholas Hand, from First Platoon, had been shot through the head and killed, perhaps by gunfire from that house. Another Marine had been hit in the leg. Kurtz said the platoon already sensed that the plans for Helmand were destined to fail. “It was obvious even then that this wasn’t going to work,” he said. “I think everyone understood that this was just going back to the Taliban again as soon as we leave. ” He could see that some of his Marines were having difficulty processing it all. The misdirected carnage, the feeling that their sacrifices and risks were connected to a campaign that could not succeed — all of it, Kurtz said, preyed on their minds. Siatta kept his feelings inside but described the episode bluntly in his journal: “Boy did we fuck that up. ” Soon after, on Thanksgiving, his writing captured the funk into which he was descending. Siatta’s breakout moment happened on Nov. 29, as First Squad was attacked while crossing a field. This was by then a familiar event. The squad was spread out, and Siatta and three Marines were separated from most of the others, who took cover by a building and returned fire. Siatta and the exposed team, including Perez, were alone and unprotected. They scrambled for a ditch that was perhaps a foot deep. Bullets thudded all around as they huddled there. The only concealment was short grass. They tried to return fire, but each time they invited more bullets. They decided to dash across about 50 to 75 yards of open ground, to the ruins of an abandoned building. On a quick countdown — 3, 2, 1, go — they stood and bolted, sprinting for the better place, gambling that the Taliban would miss. They reached the broken building. Siatta pressed himself chest down behind a mound of dirt, extended the bipods on his rifle, looked over the top and fired about 10 shots, roughly toward where the gunfire was coming from. Then he did what he had been trained to do. He slowed his breathing. He focused. As the bullets cracked by, he put his eye to the glass and considered his options. He wondered: Where would he be if he were them? There was a building across the field. Siatta had a good feeling about it. He had settled in now, as if he were part of the earth. He pointed the scope toward the building’s left side and placed the cross hairs at the corner. He breathed slowly. He waited. A man stepped into the cross hairs. He was young, maybe in his 20s, wearing a white top and a dark vest. He held a Kalashnikov rifle. Siatta wasn’t sure of the range, but thought it might be 250 yards. His scope was set for 300. Expecting his bullet to strike slightly high, he rested the cross hairs below the man’s chest, slowly exhaled and eased the trigger back until he felt the rifle’s light kick. The bullet struck the man near his genitals. Siatta watched him drop. It happened as Perez called a . “I just shot someone,” Siatta said. “Is he dead?” the sergeant asked. Siatta looked through the scope. The man writhed in the confused agony Marines call “the kicking chicken. ” Siatta figured the bullet had torn out his buttocks. He fired a few more times. The man went still. “He is now,” Siatta said. A second young man stepped out. Now Siatta knew the distance. The puzzle was solved. His first shot looked as if it hit squarely in his chest. The man collapsed. Siatta felt relaxed. He kept his scope trained on the corner. A third man stepped out, reaching for one of the downed men. Siatta fired. The man spun and stumbled away. Siatta thought he had hit his arm. Perez watched through his scope. “It was almost like a video game — I know that sounds ridiculous,” he said. “But one guy stepped into the open, and Siatta shot him, and he dropped violently, and then another guy stepped into the open, and Siatta shot, and that guy went down violently, and then a third guy came out, and Siatta hit him too. ” Siatta, he said, “was basically the main effort of the entire squad. ” As the squad waited for Siatta to take another shot, the corner exploded in fire and dust. Other Marines had seen the Taliban fighters, too, through the sight on a TOW missile system. Kurtz had cleared them to shoot, ending the fight. Siatta now had undisputed combat kills. At first it felt good. His doubts had been erased. “I’d wondered: Can I deliver? Am I just a target shooter? Will I let my guys down?” The cloud over the previous shot, for which he had risked a criminal charge, was evaporating. His satisfaction was temporary. War plays on the mind. Marksmanship can seem simple one moment and complicated the next. Siatta’s doubts nagged him anew. He wondered if the kills were luck. “Was it a fluke?” he asked himself. “Was I a shot?” Other thoughts plumbed darker depths. Siatta had been curious about what it felt like to kill. His journal shows his unease upon finding out. In the next two weeks, Siatta shot at least six and perhaps as many as 10 more people, according to his diary and Marines present. On a Dec. 10 patrol that would become the most significant mission of Fox Company’s tour, the platoon departed on a raid to capture a Taliban commander whom Special Operations forces were trying to arrest. The weather had turned bad, no aircraft were flying and the commander was reported to be in a compound west of the bazaar. The Marines seized the compound but did not find him. They settled inside, listening with an interpreter to intercepted Taliban radio chatter. Their foes were saying they had found the Americans’ boot prints in the fields but were not sure where they had gone. Soon the Taliban figured it out. The platoon came under attack from three sides. Kurtz was organizing the fight when he received an unexpected order. The Taliban boss was now said to be in a building in the bazaar. Third Platoon was to go there and catch him. Until then, the bazaar was considered so dangerous that the Marines were told not to approach it. The platoon had assumed that when the time came to clear it, the entire company would be involved in a large planned operation. Now the platoon — about 40 Marines, already under fire — was to rush there immediately. Kurtz dryly calls the mission “Operation Santa Claus — because you had to be 8 years old to believe it. ” It was during this confusion, he said, that Siatta solidified the respect of his peers. He had climbed onto a shed roof with another Marine and was watching over the platoon’s movements when the Taliban started shooting again. The roof was flimsy, made of thin branches. The two Marines were exposed, with only a sack of grain and an empty drum to hide behind. Kurtz, overwhelmed and unsure about how best to organize the platoon’s movement with the Taliban seeming to swarm around them, watched from below as Siatta scanned the farmland. He heard the distinct sound of a suppressed Mark 12, something between a metallic click and the snap of a whip. Siatta had seen two men, he said, and with a few shots killed them both. “It’s done,” he said, and slipped to the ground. The platoon crossed the field. The fighting grew into a rolling battle, with lulls followed by fresh clashes. Another platoon joined in. During one skirmish, Siatta said, he hit a Taliban fighter carrying a machine gun as he hustled across a bridge. It was a long, difficult shot. He judged the distance before killing the man by watching the arc of tracers as another Marine fired bursts that missed. Later, Siatta was with another squad as it hurried across yet another dangerous area. The Marines took fire from behind. Most of them ran for a canal and slid down its bank, but Siatta remained in the open. Kurtz watched as he took a knee, assuming a position Marines practice on rifle ranges. Alone, under fire, with neither cover nor concealment, Siatta was visibly relaxed. Through his scope he spotted a fighter with a rifle about 250 yards away, lurking in a shadow by a wall. Siatta fired twice. The first round missed, striking the wall to the man’s left. Siatta moved the cross hairs right. The second shot hit. “He’s down, sir,” Siatta said to an incredulous Kurtz as he rejoined the squad. Kurtz describes the moment with something like awe. “The fire we were taking just ended,” he said, “and never started up again. ” After the operation the Marines held the bazaar. The pace of fighting subsided. Kurtz finished Operation Santa Claus with an indelible sense of debt to Siatta, who he said kept the platoon safe during the worst of its tour. “I’d do anything for Sammy,” he told me. “All of us owe him a lot. He killed people who would have killed other people, including some of us. ” He also said that Siatta’s controversial shot early in the fighting, at the man on the roof, may have been the right call. “He probably had a good gut instinct, in retrospect. ” No matter these feelings, Kurtz speaks of his former D. M. with sadness. Siatta’s transformation, he said, was welcomed on the battlefield but is painful to think about now. “Watching Sam evolve from that sweet, innocent kid to that killer he became, the killer we needed him to be,” he said, “it breaks my heart. ” Siatta, as he fought, had narrowed his thoughts to basic impulses and simple goals. “You are not fighting for America,” he said. “You are not fighting for the Marine Corps. You are just a bunch of trying to make it to chow. ” His journal entry after the fight for the bazaar described the of a warrior disgusted by his own success. A few days later he wrote of guilt. On Christmas, as Fox Company waited for a visit from a general, Siatta was smoking as much as an entire pack of cigarettes on a post, and contemplating suicide. In late December, while pinned down beside a canal, Siatta was almost killed by a burst from a Taliban machine gun. A bullet struck the ground near his head. His face was cut by fragments and bits of stone. His ballistic goggles were gouged. Perez ran to him and found him with blood streaming down his face. Siatta appeared stunned and then panicked. Perez assured him the wounds were not serious and tried to get Siatta to shoot a pair of fleeing Taliban fighters. The distance was long. It was the only time Perez saw Siatta have difficulty making shots. He fired, and fired again. He kept missing. The squad captured a wounded Taliban fighter, shot through the knee. When a medevac helicopter came, Perez opted to evacuate the prisoner and not Siatta. He regrets the choice, because it denied Siatta the medical documentation necessary for a Purple Heart. A corpsman cleaned and bandaged Siatta’s face, and they hiked back to their outpost. Perez said he tried to submit Siatta for a Purple Heart, but the company blocked it, saying the wounds were not serious enough. “I was upset about that, because if he didn’t have his goggles, he would have lost an eye,” Perez told me. “I felt personally responsible for it. I didn’t medevac him. I felt personally responsible for denying him what he deserved. ” After that fight, the pace of combat further slowed. Just shy of 100 days in Afghanistan, Siatta had time to reflect. In spring 2010, before the battalion completed its tour, Kurtz recommended Siatta for a medal recognizing his valor. Lakari was calm, and Siatta would be going home. He seemed to have been spared. His diary hinted at looming troubles. When Second Battalion, Second Marines returned to Camp Lejeune, Siatta’s mother, Maureen, and his brother, Tony, flew from northern Illinois to meet him. Maureen had been almost entirely out of touch with him throughout his tour. Siatta had written home rarely. His calls were infrequent and short. Maureen booked a room near the base and spent a weekend trying to reconnect with her son. Siatta did not sleep at night and did not leave his bed most of the day. He spoke very little. Maureen watched him, saddened and concerned. She settled on an accommodating explanation, telling herself he was exhausted and still living on the Afghan time zone. Several days later, in May, the Marine Corps granted Siatta leave, which he spent at his mother’s home. President Obama was visiting Illinois for Memorial Day, and Siatta was invited to a presidential ceremony at a cemetery in Elwood. It was a short drive, and he would have been the perfect prop: the infantry Marine freshly returned from Obama’s surge. He refused to attend. At his trial, when asked why he declined, he dismissed any interest in public ritual. “Maybe because my experiences in Afghanistan didn’t feel so great for me,” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t think a parade was the most fitting thing. ” Maureen noticed that he still kept night hours. She lived in a apartment and worked days at a pharmacy. At night she watched him brood. Siatta had never been a drinker and was allergic to beer. Now he was drinking heavily and for hours on end. Many nights he left for bars. She asked him how, at 20, he was able to buy alcohol. He told her that when he showed military identification, he had no trouble. When he came home, he was awake almost until morning, pacing, getting drunker on liquor he poured himself. She sat in the living room, asking him to relax. “No,” he’d say. “Want something to eat?” “No. ” “Want to go to the store?” “No. ” Several times that week he blacked out. Maureen was unsure what to think or do. He told her nothing of Afghanistan, of the killing he had seen and done. She did not intervene. “I just thought maybe he had to clear his head,” she said. “I figured: ‘Let him go. He’s got to clear his head. ’’u2009” Returning to Camp Lejeune after his leave, Siatta fell into a similar pattern. The corps considered him tested now. He received his medal. The battalion’s Scout Sniper Platoon recruited him, and he left Fox Company to join them. He loaded up on tattoos, including a Lady Justice on his chest and abdomen, topped with seven hash marks for men he claimed as kills. The Marines he deployed with were coming of age. There had been little opportunity to spend money in Afghanistan, and many returned with savings. Some bought cars. They were turning 21 and could legally visit bars. On weekends, groups of them would take trips, sometimes to the beach. Siatta rarely went along. “He kind of went into a shell,” Ratliff said. “I’d invite him out, and he was like, ‘No, I just want to stay in my room. ’’u2009” Siatta wrote to Ashley Volk. She was a college student and aerial dancer now, with an apartment in Chicago’s West Humboldt Park neighborhood. He flew to meet her. Their first night together was surreal. Siatta was quieter than usual and emanated discipline and . Volk had always been outgoing and talkative they had joked for years that she was his opposite. Looking at him after their long separation, she sensed that something troubled him. She tried drawing him out. “What’s wrong?” she asked him. “Tell me. What are you thinking?” “It’s nothing, pretty gypsy,” he said. That night they made love. “I felt our old connection,” she said. Immediately after, Siatta withdrew. As she lay beside him, he reached for a blanket and wrapped it tightly around his body, with all his limbs tucked inside. He was like a Marine sleeping on hard ground, plank straight, cocooned, alone. She passed the night uneasily. “No contact, no cuddling, no pillows,” Volk said. “He was there. But he was gone. ” The next night he did the same thing. The battalion joined the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, and in spring 2011, as Libya sank into civil war, the Marines were ordered aboard amphibious ships headed for the Libyan coast. On his last visit to Chicago, Siatta gave Volk his Afghan diary. He had thought of destroying it but decided to entrust it to her. She read the first page and stopped. They had a day and a half together before he shipped out, and she was emotionally stretched as it was. “I was hugging him, telling him I was going to kidnap him,” she said. After he was gone, she started reading again. When she came to his account of the child shot through the head in Siatta’s first firefight, she felt panicked and stopped. For weeks she read his chronicle, section by section, again and again. No matter the mentality Siatta had been reduced to, she could see him there, the grieving boy she had known since sixth grade. Volk wrote letters to him and mailed them to his ship, the U. S. S. Bataan. At first Siatta replied. But life as a Marine on the ship, with its claustrophobic berthing areas and dull routine, was . As sea time dragged on, he closed himself off. He stopped answering her letters. The war in Libya did not require him to go ashore. The ships made port visits in Europe, where Siatta and his friends were given time off, much of which was spent . “Whenever we had free time, we all got lit up,” he told me. In February 2012, the battalion returned to Camp Lejeune. His time in the corps was soon up. He left the service unceremoniously and drove home to Illinois in a used Chevy he bought with his combat pay. He did not tell Volk he was back. She began dating another man. Siatta sought an even quieter life than before. His family noticed his anger, his social withdrawal and what they now acknowledge as his alcoholism. He seethed at his mother for putting a message on a sign at a local McDonald’s. “I don’t want anybody looking at me,” he told her. He seemed intent on near anonymity and on avoiding discussion of the war. “He wanted no one to know that he had been there,” she testified at his trial. “He didn’t want anyone saying, ‘Thank you for your service.’ He wanted nothing. He wanted to be left alone. ” Siatta spent more than a year living in his mother’s home. He did not contact Volk and assumed she had moved on. For months, he was listless. “How did you spend your time?” one of his lawyers asked at trial. “I didn’t,” Siatta replied. “I would say I probably sat in my room, nothing. ” Inside his bedroom, his mother said, he drank and played video games. She would rest on a couch near his door, listening through the night. “I used to hear him hitting the wall,” she said. As a teenager Siatta had cut the lawn of Larry Stonitsch, a former Marine who owned Rovanco Piping Systems, a manufacturer of insulated pipe in Joliet. Now Stonitsch offered him a job at the factory. Siatta was reliable and quiet and did not talk about his combat service. Stonitsch understood. “I had a stepdad who was in the Battle of the Bulge and never was right after that, after the things he saw and did,” he told me. “He drank too much. So I have some empathy for that. ” Outside Rovanco, Siatta was barely functioning. He shrank his social world ever smaller, to the point of skipping family gatherings. In 2013, convinced her son had stagnated, Maureen suggested he consider college. He was eligible for G. I. Bill benefits, she told him, and should take them. “Here is where my guilt comes in, because I am the one who talked him into going to school,” Maureen said. “I kind of wonder, if he had stayed here, if we would have figured out that he needed services, and he would have gotten treatment. ” Siatta enrolled in Joliet Junior College that summer and transferred to Illinois State in the fall. He had no academic focus, no plan beyond enrolling in the minimum number of credits to receive the G. I. Bill’s monthly housing allowance. School brought him neither sanctuary nor inspiration. Classroom environments made him anxious the bustle of students kept him vigilant. He could not relate to most classmates, who had little sense of where he had been. Often he spent weekends at his mother’s house. By spring he was on a trajectory to fail. He stopped doing homework, then stopped attending most classes. Many days he stayed in the room rented with his housing allowance, in bed. He slept until afternoon and did not eat until almost evening. When he did socialize, he would drink first, heavily, to dull his anxiety. Two years out of the Marine Corps, Siatta was doing little more than staying alive. On Saturday, April 12, 2014, Siatta was invited by a young woman he had met the week before to a house party a block from where he lived. Around 10 p. m. alone in his basement bedroom, he opened a bottle of Don Julio tequila and started pouring shots. By the time he left for the party with Mark Kramer, a friend who dropped by, the bottle was almost empty. Siatta had been at the party a few minutes, hanging out on the front porch, when he thought he heard another guest say something rude to his host. Without warning, or even speaking, Siatta him in the face and knocked him to the floor. The man, a coach at a CrossFit, was not seriously hurt. But the hosts and guests were startled, and Siatta was asked to leave. Kramer walked him home, where he encouraged him to apologize and asked if he was suffering from PTSD. The two men returned to the party, only to be told again to leave. This time the woman who invited Siatta escorted him back to his house, leaving him outside his door. Siatta tried to call or text the woman. From there, he said, his memories stop. What he did next, step by step, is not clear. But at some point he set out into the neighborhood. Shortly after 2 a. m. he smashed through the back door of 706 Samantha Street, where the female teaching students lived. It was perhaps 100 feet away from the party. At first the former Marine inside did not see Siatta. He grabbed two knives from the kitchen, dashed back to the bedroom, handed the smaller blade to his girlfriend and told her to lock her door and call the police. He returned to the living room and stood, back to the wall, knife in hand, facing the rear of the house. For a minute or so, nothing happened. The man later told the police that Siatta might have descended to the basement, which was accessible through a door in the dining area. If that is what happened, it might have meant that Siatta thought he had entered his own home and was looking for his bed. If he did go downstairs, he did not stay long. He stepped into the other man’s line of sight. The fight was swift — “it went by like a flash,” the other man said. Siatta struck him on the head with the pan, and he countered with the knife, stabbing Siatta in the shoulder or chest and then grabbing him in a bear hug. The two men grappled to the floor. Siatta lost his hold on the pan, the man said, and grabbed him by the throat. The man rolled onto Siatta, trying to force him to release his grip. He stabbed downward several times. Siatta let go. “I quit, I quit,” he said. Another man in the home, who was dating another woman who lived there, emerged from the back bedroom and helped hold Siatta down. The first police officer to arrive, Sgt. Robert Cherry, pulled up in a patrol car. He saw two women waving frantically at a window. They were mouthing words through the glass: “He’s inside! There is somebody inside the house!” Cherry called for backup, drew his pistol and stepped through the back door. He saw two men atop a third. He asked them to back away and looked down at Siatta, who was gasping, bleeding from a stab wound to his neck. His plaid flannel shirt was soaked in blood. The sergeant put on latex gloves, knelt and asked his name. “Sam,” Siatta answered. Cherry smelled alcohol. “I am going to die,” Siatta said. “You are not going to die,” Cherry said. Siatta’s eyes rolled in his head. “If I die, you are going to be my heroes,” he said. He had nine wounds — four in the neck, two in the left biceps and one each to the left cheek, right shoulder blade and back of his head. Blood pooled on the floor and splattered the walls. At the hospital, his disorientation was total. “How did this happen?” he asked. A Life Flight helicopter rushed him to Peoria. The knife that had plunged into his neck missed his carotid artery and jugular vein. A surgical team repaired damage to smaller blood vessels and left behind thin platinum coils from a catheter procedure under his chin. Siatta woke the next day. His first thought was that he had been mugged or struck by a car. Two detectives entered his room, turned on a digital audio recorder and read him his rights. Siatta was on pain medication. He asked them to leave. Whether Siatta remembered it or not, he had committed a serious crime. The case gained momentum swiftly. In late April, a grand jury indicted Siatta on charges of home invasion causing harm — a Class X felony, the serious category of crime in the Illinois penal code. The charge carried a mandatory sentence of six to 30 years, putting Siatta’s offense in the same league as aggravated kidnapping or the predatory sexual assault of a child. Barring a plea deal or an acquittal, he was on a path to prison. The news took time to reach Siatta. That same month, he had entered a residential rehabilitation program at a V. A. hospital west of Chicago, where PTSD, depressive disorder and disorder were diagnosed. The V. A. prescribed him Xanax and hydroxyzine for anxiety and approved roughly $1, 300 a month in disability benefits for depression and PTSD. Six weeks later, Siatta transferred to a federal health care center in North Chicago for more inpatient counseling. When Siatta checked out of the hospital in July, he turned himself in for booking. The evidence against him was strong. His mother retained a private criminal defense lawyer, Hal Jennings, who approached prosecutors about a plea to a lesser felony and a sentence of probation. Siatta had no previous criminal record. The man he had fought had not been seriously hurt. Given Siatta’s combat service and apparent illness, Jennings considered it a reasonable request. But Kristin Alferink, the assistant state’s attorney handling Siatta’s prosecution, was firm. In September, she offered a plea to the original charge and a prison term. Jennings rejected it. “I was not under any circumstances going to plead that kid into prison,” he said. The state’s inflexibility in part reflected the wishes of the man who had fought Siatta. Since the struggle in the kitchen, he had suffered from insomnia and was having difficulties in crowds or when people approached him from behind. “I’m completely paranoid of everything,” he told me. He tried to make his house feel safer, he said, by having it “wired to the gills with security cameras. ” He slept with a loaded Walther P38 pistol by his bed. He still found it difficult to relax. “The heater goes off,” he said, “and I jump back five feet. ” It was as if some of Siatta’s PTSD symptoms had been transferred to him. He entered therapy and started taking medication. But he remained angry. He knew little of Siatta’s service in the Marine Corps. It might not have changed his feelings if he did. “He could have been Jesus incarnate,” he said, “and I still would have wanted blood. ” Jennings and a partner, Carey J. Luckman, prepared for trial. They gathered military records and character recommendations from Siatta’s supervisors in the Marines. They also arranged for him to undergo a second psychological evaluation. In May 2015, he was reviewed by Don R. Catherall, a psychologist specializing in trauma disorders and a Marine veteran of Vietnam. Catherall’s report echoed the V. A.’s diagnoses of PTSD and severe disorder, and noted that Siatta had not had a drink in more than a year. This, he wrote, “officially constitutes remission of the disorder. ” He added, “As long as he remains sober, he is unlikely to repeat the behaviors that led to this unfortunate situation. ” That summer, not long after Siatta’s evaluation, Ashley Volk called him. She was angry about how he had cut her off, wounded by his silence. He said he had been hurt and was getting it taken care of. She was worried, but he assured her it was not serious. In July, she asked him to meet for burgers at the Lockdown Bar Grill, a bar in Chicago. Upon seeing him, she said, she immediately fell back in love. After three hours of talking, they kissed. They spent the night together in her apartment. She saw the new scars on his neck, shoulder and arm and assumed something else had happened to him in the Marines. They became a couple again. Siatta was still closed off to most people, but he began to tell her about Afghanistan. Maybe, she thought, he was finally opening up. He did not tell her anything of the home invasion, or that he was awaiting trial. Siatta’s prospects for avoiding prison were likely to rise or fall depending on whether a judge and a jury would be willing to view his combat experience, and his with alcohol, as factors in the home invasion and fight. In September 2015, Jennings and Alferink, the prosecutor, traveled to North Chicago to depose Sheilah C. Perrin, a psychologist supervising Siatta’s treatment for the V. A. Under questioning by Jennings, Perrin laid out her views, noting that Siatta, who was also present, had entered 30 to 40 compounds containing insurgents. She described common behaviors for veterans with such histories: reclusion, avoiding crowds, unceasing vigilance and using alcohol as a coping technique “to escape from their pain and from their memories. ” She listed Siatta’s diagnoses and said that once Siatta entered a strange home and was confronted inside, the knife would have been a “huge, huge, huge trigger. ” Her assessment was unambiguous. “He needs treatment,” she said. By the end of the questioning, she had teared up. Alferink pushed hard, inquiring why Perrin had been “emotional” and asking whether she had the “same empathy and thankfulness” for the man Siatta had fought, who was also a veteran. During a of exchanges, Alferink proposed that Siatta’s PTSD was not related to his combat service and suggested that his use of alcohol was “similar to somebody who just broke up with their boyfriend” or “who couldn’t cope with losing a job. ” Jennings still thought he had a strong defense. The character references from Marines were glowing, and he was ready to argue that the fight in the kitchen was a conditioned reflex for a troubled man with Siatta’s combat record. A few weeks before the trial, Jennings was discussing the case with Siatta’s mother, Maureen, when she mentioned that her son had kept a journal in Afghanistan. Siatta had recently retrieved it from Volk. Jennings asked to see it. It was a small tan notebook on which Siatta had drawn a human skull with a cracked forehead. When Jennings started reading, he could not stop. On Oct. 22, 2015, less than three weeks before the trial, he entered a copy of the journal into the court record. “This is the key,” he told Maureen. “This is what could win your case. ” By then Siatta had graduated from a program and been sober for a year and half. He was in counseling. He suffered from anxiety, but less acutely, allowing him to stop taking Xanax and hydroxyzine. He was exercising, taking up martial arts and weight lifting again. It helped his moods. His relationship with Volk softened his antisocial side. Jennings asked Alferink to read the diary and consider Siatta’s last night of drinking and the home invasion in light of his combat service and PTSD, and his apparent progress since. He hoped the state would consider a better plea deal. “If Sam didn’t have the best mitigation package in the world, who did?” he said. Alferink, in keeping with the wishes of the man who had fought Siatta, declined to change the offer. Ten years in prison, or trial. The trial opened on Nov. 9. Jennings and Luckman hoped the judge would allow jurors to consider Siatta’s actions a result of involuntary intoxication. This defense had precedent in Illinois among defendants who had been drugged by others, but not with defendants trying to drown PTSD with alcohol. The state tried to quash the argument outright. Alferink told the court that “the reason why he consumed the alcohol has nothing to do with this case. ” She added: “He could have consumed the alcohol because he was suffering from PTSD and wanted to be able to go to a party. Again, he could have consumed the alcohol because he was trying to get over a breakup, because he just lost a job. The reason for the underlying alcohol consumption does not matter. ” At each opportunity for sympathy, the state moved against. In jury selection, Alferink asked whether any of the potential jurors had military experience. Two said they did — a former Navy petty officer and a Marine reservist who had been injured in an accident in Afghanistan. Alferink had them excused from serving on the jury. This denied Siatta, in Jennings’s view, a trial by peers. “She excluded the only people who had any chance of understanding this defendant and what he went through,” he said. Siatta’s lawyers did not dispute the central facts of the case. But Catherall, the psychologist, offered a profile of Siatta as a Marine utterly unmoored by war. “Seeing these children die as the result of what he went over there to try and do in a positive way was kind of shattering for him,” he told the jury. Alferink countered by asking how much Catherall was being paid as a defense witness — he said his rate was $300 an hour — and sketched him as a shill. The trial was over in two days. The jury found Siatta guilty within hours. Siatta spent the holidays at home, awaiting sentencing. About two weeks before going to prison, he finally told Volk of his problems. But he insisted that he had a good legal team and that the conviction could be worked out. Volk made a dinner reservation at the Signature Room, the luxury restaurant on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Center, for the night of his sentencing hearing. She planned to celebrate a good ending. The day before sentencing, she saw him off from her home. “You promise, you promise, I’ll see you tomorrow night?” she said. “I promise,” he said. Siatta knew his options had run down. He returned to court and apologized in a statement leaden with resignation. “I have no memory of that night,” he said. “I can’t explain what happened that night. I wish I could. You know, I’m getting treatment for my illness. I think I’m doing better, but I’ve got a long road ahead of me, and that’s all I got. ” The case of the People of the State of Illinois v. Samuel Siatta then took a rare turn. The trial judge, Scott Drazewski, expressed gratitude to the man he was sending away. “Mr. Siatta, as an American citizen, I thank you for your service to your country,” he said. “Your patriotism, your valor, your courage and your heroism — according to those you’ve served with, you were an exceptional soldier who led by example. ” But Drazewski added that he was hearing the case as a judge, not just a citizen, and because of guidelines he had no option of assigning Siatta to probation. “Although it is with regret,” he said, “I’m still required to follow the law. ” He sentenced Siatta to six years in prison, the legal minimum — four years less than the prosecutors had offered in their plea deal. Siatta passed the next month at the Stateville Correctional Center, awaiting transfer to the prison where he would serve his sentence. Inmates in reception status have few privileges. Siatta was on lockdown and received no visitors. His cellblock seemed to him like an enormous warehouse, with inmates in cells stacked upon cells. The air filled with their din. During 28 days there, he said, he rarely left his cell. Meals were delivered to the door and eaten inside. Every Tuesday he was allowed out for a shower, in a stall where the water was scalding hot. His cell did not have a window, and the lights were never off. Between the noise and the incessant brightness, he slept fitfully. As he lost his sense of time, he was not sure when he was supposed to rest. He remembers seeing a clock once, during a group orientation. It said 9 a. m. By his estimate, he had eaten breakfast seven hours before. His anxiety rose again, and when he asked for medications, none were provided, he said, though he had a diagnosis and prescriptions from the V. A. A schedule took shape. He would lie on his bunk until breakfast, then eat and get back on the bunk until lunch. After lunch he would do squats and then return to the bunk until dinner. Each day he received a carton of milk. A previous inmate had accumulated enough cartons to make a crude deck of playing cards, which he had left in the cell for others. Siatta did not use them. He felt himself sliding into a mental hibernation. He managed to send Volk a short letter. “I love you so very much my love,” he wrote. “You are my one and only, and I promise. I love you so so so much and we will have a life filled with love and happiness. To my pretty gypsy, from your love, Samuel. ” He didn’t know what else to say. The legal system bewildered him, and he found it hard to think in concrete terms, beyond that he had to leave. Outside the prison, his new lawyer, Richard Winter, was preparing an appeal. Winter had agreed to represent Siatta in late 2015, between the conviction and the sentencing. A partner at Holland Knight, an international firm, he specialized in commercial and antitrust litigation from his office in downtown Chicago. He had no experience in criminal law and had taken Siatta as a client via a peculiar impulse. Holland Knight offers pro bono representation to clients who cannot otherwise afford it. Over the years, Winter had helped autistic children in court fights against school districts in and around Chicago and had worked on Hague Convention cases, trying to reunite children with parents in international custody disputes. In November 2015, he had just read “Rogue Lawyer,” a novel by John Grisham about Sebastian Rudd, a lawyer with a bulletproof van who fights for justice for unappealing clients. Winter was amused by Rudd, a cartoonish figure. He was also impressed by his legal tactics, which he thought were able. Soon after finishing the book, Winter received an officewide email describing Siatta’s case and asking if anyone wanted to step in. He figured this was a case for someone of Rudd’s talents, and it looked interesting on the merits. He volunteered to try. Two weeks later, he met Siatta and his mother at a rest stop on Interstate 294. Siatta impressed him. He was in his last weeks of freedom before an expected prison term and was on his way home from PTSD counseling. Winter read the case file, looking for a basis for appeal. He attended the sentencing hearing in January and watched his new client depart for prison. The judge allowed Siatta about a minute with his mother, and after he was gone Maureen lingered in the courtroom, then in the hallway. She looked numb. Winter told her, “I’ll see what I can do. ” Winter knew the appeal would consume much of 2016. He also figured that while he might persuade the appellate court to consider a retrial, allowing a judge to instruct jurors to consider an defense, the chances were probably slim. And even if the judges granted a new trial, he knew, Siatta would still need to prevail before a jury, of which there was no guarantee. Winter’s backup plan was to seek a pardon from the Illinois governor after the appeals process was exhausted. Either way, Siatta was not coming home anytime soon. By March, the state had moved Siatta from Stateville to Shawnee, where inmates lived in buildings, called houses, each with a central station from which guards watched over the population. Siatta was assigned to a cell in . It was a drab and musty place with missing floor tiles, an upper and lower bunk, a toilet and a small steel sink. His cellmate, a moody man with a thin mustache, was doing time for failing to register as a sex offender. Early each morning, the locks would click open. Inmates could step into the cellblock corridor and file into the darkness and cold for a short walk to the cafeteria for breakfast and a cup of water. The routine was repeated for lunch and dinner. The schedule also allowed for about an hour of “day room” time — to lift weights in the yard, use telephones in a call center or buy food and toiletries in the commissary with money their families added to their prison accounts. Buying extra food drew attention. In the ecosystem of prison, purchases became currency. A a coffee cup, a package of cookies — these could be traded or gambled. They also attracted thieves. The guards tended to cluster in the central section of each house, and they ventured only occasionally into the cellblock corridors. This meant that when the locks were released, there was a moment in which inmates could furtively enter one another’s cells. Siatta returned from one meal to find about $50 worth of food stolen. His cellmate was enraged at the breach of turf. He told other inmates that he would find the thief and punish him. Siatta had probably seen more violence in his life than anyone else in . But he understood that fighting as an inmate carried special risks, and not of injury. If the guards discovered a fight, everyone involved could be taken to solitary confinement — called “seg” for “segregation” — and have their prison records marked up. This could prevent an early release. Siatta’s case was on appeal. He could not afford trouble. He tried talking his cellmate down. “I got a lot of stuff going on,” he told him. “I got a good case. I can’t be getting into fights, going to seg, getting new charges over some tuna packet. ” One day during time, a few gang members appeared in the corridor near their door. Siatta’s cellmate had heard who the thief was and had been giving him angry looks. The man wanted to know why. “I’m coming to the conclusion you stole our stuff,” the cellmate said. Siatta did not want to be involved. He slipped out of the cell, and the gang member stepped in, while his friends stood casually in the hallway. The fight lasted maybe 15 seconds. One gang member watching from the corridor looked into the cell and pronounced the fight over, and the group broke up and drifted away. Siatta’s cellmate was left on the floor. He had been beaten badly. He had a gash in his head, which had been slammed against the steel bunk. He was bleeding all over the tiles. Siatta examined the wound and knew it needed medical attention. But the man refused to approach the guards. He told Siatta he would stay in the cell for a few weeks and eat commissary food until the bruises and cuts healed. The plan did not last long. The guards opened an investigation. Six inmates were sent to seg, Siatta said, including the two who had fought. Siatta was transferred to another house. His new cellmate was a member of the Latin Kings among his many tattoos was the gang’s symbol, a crown. He laid down the rules. “In here, this house, it’s our house, and we’re cool,” he said of their cell. “But out there you are not affiliated, and if you get in trouble I can’t help you. ” Siatta left Shawnee for a court appearance related to his appeal and was held at the decrepit Pontiac Correctional Center before returning to Shawnee and a cell with another Latin King. The same code applied: We get along inside the cell. Out there we don’t know each other. Siatta never quite found a friend. He tried participating in a group but saw it as a sham. In his first session, when inmates were introducing themselves, an attendee claiming to be a former Marine mangled Marine Corps jargon. The counselor asked the man, who looked to be in his 30s, what rank he had held. “General,” the inmate proudly answered. Siatta had heard enough. He never attended again. Each day Siatta had phone privileges. But calls to his mother, which he yearned for, usually left him disappointed. He would ask if there was news about his appeal, he said, “and it was always just, ‘No. ’’u2009” The counseling he had attended at the V. A. with a therapist who knew him was replaced by a checkup. “It was basically: ‘Do you want to hurt someone? Do you want to hurt yourself?’ and ‘All right, see you next month,’’u2009” he said. Depression gripped him again. He tried exercising during his yard time, knowing it soothed his symptoms. Some weeks he managed to work out in committed bursts, though three or four inmates were usually lined up at each piece of equipment, waiting a turn. But as his depression settled over him, he passed his weeks passively, unable to push through the pack. Mostly he slept — an activity he was assured of, because his cellblock was on lockdown 21 hours a day. In April, as Siatta brooded in prison, I wrote to Scott Drazewski, the judge who had not wanted to send him there. He declined to discuss the case. State rules, he said by email, prohibited judges from commenting on matters under appeal. But after visiting Siatta in Shawnee, I met with Donald D. Bernardi, a retired state judge and former peer of Drazewski’s, who understood how rules had forced Drazewski to incarcerate Siatta. Bernardi knew the outlines of Siatta’s criminal file. I shared details from his combat tour: the boy shot through the head, the civilians struck by Hellfire missiles, Siatta’s run of methodical killing in late 2009. It was all news to him. We talked about the frustration and anger many combat veterans share as their wars have dragged on with no visible end, and how Siatta’s depression and PTSD were not unusual. We discussed the words of support from Cuomo, Siatta’s former commander. “Having watched and fought, up close and personal, with Mr. Siatta, I remain humbled by his incredibly courageous actions,” he had written. We also talked about the severity of Siatta’s crime. A man of his background smashing into anyone’s home was a frightening prospect. Bernardi’s reaction surprised me. He looked at my notebook on the table, in a way those familiar with reporters do when they are about to say something quotable, and said, “If this case does not call for mitigation, then mitigation has no meaning. ” The county’s legal circle is small. Bernardi said the elected state’s attorney, Jason Chambers — Alferink’s boss — had practiced in his courtroom early in his career. “He’s a good guy,” he said, a reasonable lawyer who could see more than one side of an issue. A few hours later, I met Chambers in his office for a conversation with him and Alferink. We reprised the conversation with Bernardi. Alferink politely excused herself for a scheduled court appearance. Chambers was pleasant but inscrutable. I told him I planned to visit the crime scene and talk with the people who were in the house when Siatta broke in, and would get back to the prosecutors with questions. I was in New England two days later when Chambers sent me a text message. He asked for a phone number for Richard Winter, Siatta’s attorney. That afternoon he called Winter and made an unsolicited proposal. He was ready to vacate Siatta’s conviction, he said, and allow him to leave prison and plead to a lesser charge with a sentence of probation. And he was willing to make it easy. He wanted Winter to get documentation from the V. A. confirming that Siatta would be enrolled in care. Once he had it, the state would ask the appellate court to let Siatta out of Shawnee — immediately. They would work out the new plea deal later. Siatta was asleep on his bunk on the afternoon of May 19 when he heard a voice on the intercom saying his door was to be unlocked and he should approach the guards’ station. A guard told him that he needed to go for fingerprinting. This made little sense to him the Department of Corrections already had his prints. Until this point Siatta had little inkling of his shift in fortunes. Winter had kept his mother up to date on Chambers’s plans, but she did not want her son crestfallen if they stalled or were rejected in appellate court. She had told him only that Winter was working on his case and that “there might be some news one of these days. ” That afternoon, after lawyers and the clerk refined the language and conditions for a court order, the appellate judges issued an order to release Siatta on a $10, 025 bond, pending disposition of his appeal. A guard escorted him to a prison office. Siatta was unsure what was happening. “They asked me, ‘Where’s your property? ’’u2009” he told me later that day. “And I was like: ‘Why? Why do I need my property?’ And they said, ‘Because you are going home. ’’u2009” Siatta was escorted back to his cell with a plastic bin to collect his possessions. The guard gave him three minutes — barely enough time to hand off a coffee cup and about 20 packages of ramen noodles and cream pies to his latest cellmate, who was serving 12 years. “I’m going home,” Siatta said. “What do you mean, you’re going home?” he asked. “I guess my lawyer is working on some stuff, and I’m getting out of here,” Siatta said. The cellmate, whose prospective parole date is in 2022, shook his head. Minutes later, Siatta was gone, walking down the cellblock, carrying the bin. The prison officials inventoried his possessions — a hot pot, a few books and magazines, a pair of plastic — and handed him an envelope with $63. 90 in cash, the balance from his commissary account. Someone gave him a pair of gray sweatpants and a white and Siatta changed out of his prison blues. He kept the white sneakers with his inmate number, Y11107, handwritten on the side. He looked very much a prisoner still. A guard told him to sit and wait. His possessions were transferred to a cardboard box. After an hour or two, Siatta was led through a series of heavy doors to Shawnee’s reception area, where T. G. Taylor, the former Army officer who first told me of Siatta’s incarceration, was waiting. “Hey,” Siatta said and smiled lightly. Taylor explained that he would be driving him to a motel in Marion, where his mother would meet him. They spoke in the clipped language of two grunts readying for a patrol. “Are you good?” Taylor asked. “I am good,” Siatta said. He walked across the lot, past the guards’ cars, with an expressionless face. In the car, he was subdued. He ate a cheeseburger as Taylor tried to explain what just happened. “I had no idea,” Siatta said. Taylor called Maureen. “We have him,” he said. Maureen had posted his bond in Bloomington and was en route to meet them. Siatta took the phone. “Hey, Mom, how you doing? I’m good. What? I did, yeah. Where you guys at? An hour and 10 minutes away. You’ve seen Shawnee before. It’s not great. Yeah. Yeah. Me, too. ” He hung up. Behind the wheel, Taylor had a wad of snuff tobacco behind his bottom lip. There had been no tobacco in prison. “You, uh, wouldn’t have a pinch of that Copenhagen, would you?” Siatta asked. Taylor shared what he had and pulled into a convenience store to buy another can. He asked Siatta to wait in the car. He had been released so quickly that he risked being mistaken for an escapee. In the motel lot beside the highway, Taylor opened a duffel, found a workout shirt and tossed it to him. Siatta now looked like the free man he was. He headed to the motel coffee bar, made a tall cup and positioned himself with his back to the lobby wall, watching the entrance. For an hour, he paced between the lobby and Taylor’s room, until Maureen showed up. She and her son walked slowly toward each other and locked in a silent and almost motionless embrace. When she let go, she addressed Taylor with near disbelief. “Thank you,” she said, over and over, softly. Siatta borrowed her phone. He had a call to make. Ashley Volk was home in her kitchen in Chicago. She had been working graveyard shifts tending bar. She knew that Winter had been trying to get Siatta out but did not know about Chambers’s offer, or that a release was imminent. She saw Maureen’s number and answered. Siatta’s voice was on the other end. “Love,” he said. “Oh my God!” she screamed. She fell against the kitchen cupboard and then to the floor, where she curled up, sobbing. Through the phone she could hear Siatta. He was crying, too. The next day, I met Chambers in a coffee shop. Everyone was surprised by the state’s abrupt change in position. There was a question to explore: Why did Chambers propose exactly the resolution to the case that his office had resisted for two years? Chambers described a system that resembled an overworked mill. His office handles almost 5, 000 cases a year, he said, and it was not possible for him to follow each of them closely, much less read all the case materials. In Siatta’s case, he said, the journal that illuminated his combat history was not available during the phase. It showed up just before trial. After we met the first time that spring, he said, he reviewed the file and found the journal. By the time he was done reading, he said, he was not surprised Siatta had ended up in handcuffs. “You take a and you put them in this extreme situation where they are being asked to do things — or maybe not asked, but are choosing to do things — that are contrary to the values they had growing up, and the U. S. government pats your back and says, ‘Good luck,’’u2009” he said. “I don’t see how that is not a recipe for something to go wrong. ” From his point of view, Chambers said, the plea deal in the works was not actually a large shift. Siatta had received the minimum sentence for a felony and would soon plead to more than the minimum sentence for a felony one class down. “From a practical standpoint, it is a big change,” he said, because Siatta was out of prison. “From a legal standpoint, it is a hair’s width apart. ” And for society, Chambers added, the new arrangement was probably safer. If Siatta were to behave well in Shawnee, he would be eligible for release in less than three years and would return with virtually no counseling or care for his PTSD. Now Siatta would be under state supervision for several years, receiving care throughout. “The rationale for me became, ‘What makes people safer over the long term? ’’u2009” he said. “Is it treatment or just getting him off the street?” The man who had fought Siatta in the house in Normal found that his feelings had changed, too. Though he himself did not serve in combat, the Marine Corps remained central to his life. He served four years as a clerk and was honorably discharged as a noncommissioned officer. G. I. Bill benefits helped underwrite his college studies, and his brother was on active duty. Having been sequestered as a witness during the trial, he did not hear details of Siatta’s combat tour until January, at sentencing, and as he learned more he came to see Siatta as a drunken Marine who did something stupid. The home invasion was not personal. “At the end of the day, it was just a random act,” he said. When Chambers called him in the late spring to discuss vacating Siatta’s conviction, he listened to the prosecutor’s new proposal. After he thought about it, he told me: “I wasn’t angry anymore. I was ready to put it past me and to forgive. ” After talking with Volk on the phone to tell her he had been released, Siatta went with his brother to a Target to replace his prison sneakers. Whether it was the sudden change from Shawnee to the big box store or the effect of the food, caffeine and nicotine he had consumed, he was overwhelmed. He vomited. The next day he registered with the bond office in Bloomington, and in the summer he appeared in court and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge, attempted home invasion, and began four years of probation with weekly counseling at the V. A. He felt sluggish. He did little more in the first weeks than visit Volk and go to the gym. “His energy level was way down,” she said. Volk was struggling as well. The months Siatta spent in Shawnee, Volk said, had passed for her in gray procession. Every day was tasteless and colorless. But she understood that Siatta had it worse. Now that he was back, she was patient, willing to let therapy have its effects and allowing him to set his own pace. She was thrilled by his shift in fortune — “when I saw him, it was like being reborn,” she said — but was not expecting a fairy tale. When he seemed withdrawn, she invited him to walk. “We took the dogs around the block,” she said. “The next time, we walked a few more blocks. ” By the fall, Siatta was making his appointments, in good standing with his probation officer and going out more. He was physically fit. The V. A. reduced his disability rating from 70 percent to 50 percent — a shift suggesting that doctors there felt his PTSD had less of a hold on him. When I visited him in late November, we ate three meals together in restaurants over four days. Each time he was amiable with the staff and did not appear vigilant. Twice he sat with his back to the door. He had not had a drink in almost two and a half years. His eyes seemed bright, his voice light, his demeanor relaxed. He was also looking for a job, although it was hard as a felon on probation to get past a background check. He was almost hired by a moving company, he said, until he told the supervisor of his conviction. He had not given up. Volk thought she might soon have something lined up for him to check IDs at the door of the sports bar where she worked. While he waited, he was splitting time between his mother’s home and Volk’s place, and speaking of marriage. Volk knew where he had been and what he had done, and she accepted it all. Familiarity, Siatta suggested, was relief. “Explaining is exhausting,” he said, “and we’ve got most of it done. ” One morning after meeting his probation officer, Siatta was in the basement of his mother’s house, hitting a heavy bag. Upstairs in a scrapbook were photographs of his life, including one taken days before he left home for the Marines, when his recruiter had brought the family a cake. He was a shy kid with acne and muscular arms, able to do 28 even before arriving at boot camp. He did not look much older now, in the basement, working the hanging bag. He had wrapped his hands with tape. His legs and feet were bare. Sweat beaded on his shoulders. The air carried the smack of each impact, followed by a pause. He was striking the bag steadily, resisting the urge to acknowledge the sharp pulsating in his hands as he tried to build pain tolerance and toughen his fists. “You don’t want to break your hand on someone’s face,” he said. Siatta was training to make an amateur fight card and break into the Midwestern scene. His regimen included sparring with a friend. He had only one problem so far. He lacked full control of his left arm. The stab wounds, it seemed, had caused nerve damage. He jabbed the bag with his left hand — thwack — and frowned. “It feels off, my coordination, almost like my targeting system has been severed,” he said. I asked him whether entering the ring with one good arm to exchange blows with a trained fighter carried more risks than he might want, especially considering the delicate platinum coils in his neck that could be dislodged. He seemed tired of the question. It was the type of discouragement he had heard since telling friends he was enlisting in the Marines. “If my dream was to be a lawyer or doctor, something that was socially acceptable, then everybody would be happy,” he said. “But when I tell people I want to be a fighter, they are like, ‘Ooh, you’re going to fuck yourself. ’’u2009” People warn him that he is going to get hurt, he said, and “I’m like, ‘Well, it is fighting, so that’s almost a definite. ’’u2009” He hoped to earn enough money to pay the hospital bills. Hands throbbing, face blank, his targeting system not quite right, Sam Siatta hit the bag. | 1 |
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. performs his last constitutional act by presiding over the joint session of Congress Friday in the House chamber for the official acceptance of the Electoral College results from the states. [The Constitution directs Biden to break the seal on the results from the Electoral College votes held Dec. 19 in the state capitals and then tally the results to determine if a candidate has a majority of the electors. If no candidate has an absolute majority of electors, then top three candidates are put up for a new election by the House of Representatives. For the vote in the House, each state delegation votes among themselves and the winner inside the delegation is awarded the state’s single vote. Given that the Republicans hold the majority of 36 delegations, the Democrats hold 13 and Maine is a tie, if the vote goes to the House, Trump wins in a huge landslide. The Electoral College is also determined by state, except Nebraska and Maine, which allow congressional districts to vote separately, regardless of the statewide vote. Voters are actually voting for a slate of electors chosen by the presidential candidate’s party to participate in the real election that happened in November. When Americans voted Nov. 8, Republican Donald J. Trump beat Democrat Hillary R. Clinton when that vote was translated into the Electoral College. But in keeping with the constitutional plan, electors are free to vote for whomever they please, though some states have laws meant to bind them. After the vote Dec. 19, Trump led Clinton . It is the tally that Biden will verify Friday to be approved by the House and the Senate. There could be a challenge. First, a congressman makes a motion to challenge the tally, followed by a second congressman and one senator to the challenge. In 2000, members of the Congressional Black Caucus challenged the results of an election that was marred by irregularities in Florida and one where the recount there was stopped by the Supreme Court just before the Electoral College met. The challenge did not go far because, despite the pleading of the congressmen, nary a senator would join the challenge. For that spectacle, Vice President Albert A. Gore Jr. was the third man to preside over the final tally of his own defeat — Biden becomes the fourth. Four have presided over their own victory: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, and George H. W. Bush. In 2004, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D. .) joined House Democrats in their challenge based on results in Ohio, which forced both chambers to separate and to debate the challenge for two hours. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump inherited a complicated world when he won the election last month. And that was before a series of freewheeling phone calls with foreign leaders that has unnerved diplomats at home and abroad. In the calls, he voiced admiration for one of the world’s most durable despots, the president of Kazakhstan, and said he hoped to visit a country, Pakistan, that President Obama has steered clear of during nearly eight years in office. Mr. Trump told the British prime minister, Theresa May, “If you travel to the U. S. you should let me know,” an offhand invitation that came only after he spoke to nine other leaders. He later compounded it by saying on Twitter that Britain should name the leader Nigel Farage its ambassador to Washington, a startling break with diplomatic protocol. Mr. Trump’s unfiltered exchanges have drawn international attention since the election, most notably when he met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan with only one other American in the room, his daughter Ivanka Trump — dispensing with the usual practice of using State talking points. On Thursday, the White House weighed in with an offer of professional help. The press secretary, Josh Earnest, urged the to make use of the State Department’s policy makers and diplomats in planning and conducting his encounters with foreign leaders. “President Obama benefited enormously from the advice and expertise that’s been shared by those who serve at the State Department,” Mr. Earnest said. “I’m confident that as Trump takes office, those same State Department employees will stand ready to offer him advice as he conducts the business of the United States overseas. ” “Hopefully he’ll take it,” he added. A spokesman for the State Department, John Kirby, said the department was “helping facilitate and support calls as requested. ” But he declined to give details, and it was not clear to what extent Mr. Trump was availing himself of the nation’s diplomats. Mr. Trump’s conversation with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan has generated the most angst, because, as Mr. Earnest put it, the relationship between Mr. Sharif’s country and the United States is “quite complicated,” with disputes over issues ranging from counterterrorism to nuclear proliferation. In a remarkably candid readout of the phone call, the Pakistani government said Mr. Trump had told Mr. Sharif that he was “a terrific guy” who made him feel as though “I’m talking to a person I have known for long. ” He described Pakistanis as “one of the most intelligent people. ” When Mr. Sharif invited him to visit Pakistan, the replied that he would “love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people. ” The Trump transition office, in its more circumspect readout, said only that Mr. Trump and Mr. Sharif “had a productive conversation about how the United States and Pakistan will have a strong working relationship in the future. ” It did not confirm or deny the Pakistani account of Mr. Trump’s remarks. The breezy tone of the readout left diplomats in Washington with some initially assuming it was a parody. In particular, they zeroed in on Mr. Trump’s offer to Mr. Sharif “to play any role you want me to play to address and find solutions to the country’s problems. ” That was interpreted by some in India as an offer by the United States to mediate Pakistan’s border dispute with India in Kashmir, something that the Pakistanis have long sought and that India has long resisted. “By taking such a cavalier attitude to these calls, he’s encouraging people not to take him seriously,” said Daniel F. Feldman, a former special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “He’s made himself not only a bull in a china shop, but a bull in a nuclear china shop. ” Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, said his government’s decision to release a rough transcript of Mr. Trump’s remarks was a breach of protocol that demonstrated how easily Pakistani leaders misread signals from their American counterparts. “Pakistan is one country where knowing history and details matters most,” Mr. Haqqani said, “and where the U. S. cannot afford to give wrong signals, given the history of misunderstandings. ” At one level, Mr. Trump’s warm sentiments were surprising, given that during the campaign, he called for temporarily barring Muslims from entering the United States to avoid importing terrorists. His conversation with Mr. Sharif also came a day after an attack at Ohio State University in which a student, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, rammed a car into a group of pedestrians and slashed several people with a knife before being shot and killed by the police. Law enforcement officials said Mr. Artan, whom the Islamic State has claimed as a “soldier,” had lived in Pakistan for seven years before coming to the United States in 2014. Mr. Obama never visited Pakistan as president, even though he had a circle of Pakistani friends in college and spoke fondly of the country. The White House weighed a visit at various times but always decided against it, according to officials, because of security concerns or because it would be perceived as rewarding Pakistani leaders for what many American officials said was their lack of help in fighting terrorism. “It sends a powerful message to the people of a country when the president of the United States goes to visit,” Mr. Earnest said. “That’s true whether it’s some of our closest allies, or that’s also true if it’s a country like Pakistan, with whom our relationship is somewhat more complicated. ” Mr. Trump’s call with President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan raised similar questions. Mr. Nazarbayev has ruled his country with an iron hand since 1989, first as head of the Communist Party and later as president after Kazakhstan won its independence from the Soviet Union. In April 2015, he won a fifth term, winning 97. 7 percent of the vote and raising suspicions of fraud. The Kazakh government, in its account of Mr. Trump’s conversation, said he had lavished praise on the president for his leadership of the country over the last 25 years. “D. Trump stressed that under the leadership of Nursultan Nazarbayev, our country over the years of independence had achieved fantastic success that can be called a ‘miracle,’” it said. The statement went on to say that Mr. Trump had shown solidarity with the Kazakh government over its decision to voluntarily surrender the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviets. “There is no more important issue than the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, which must be addressed in a global context,” it quoted Mr. Trump as saying. Mr. Trump’s statement said that Mr. Nazarbayev had congratulated him on his victory, and that Mr. Trump had reciprocated by congratulating him on the 25th anniversary of his country. Beyond that, it said only that the two leaders had “addressed the importance of strengthening regional partnerships. ” | 1 |
Clinton Inc: Watch How it Pains MSM to Report Clinton Corruption Mainstream forced to cover Hillary Clinton's corrupt ways The Alex Jones Show - October 28, 2016 Comments
It’s so blatant that even mainstream media can’t avoid this WikiLeak document.
Finally, NYT, Washington Post, Time & others report on Clinton corruption.
A newly released 12-13 page memo by Clinton Foundation head Doug Band, brags about pay-for-play while Hillary was Secretary of State.
Watch the painful expressions on their faces as they can’t run away from the documents that boast of corruption. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 0 |
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
If a movie is based on a book that is based on a real experiment that later actually happens in real life, is it “real” or “fiction.” Join us today on The Corbett Report as we step through the looking glass in search of information about Sirhan Sirhan, the shooting of RFK, CIA mind control experiments, and the blurring of the line between real life and fantasy.
NOTE: This is a visualization of Episode 220 of The Corbett Report podcast , first released on March 03, 2012 . This video was recently posted to The Corbett Report Extras YouTube channel as part of a project to make older Corbett Report audio podcasts and interviews available on YouTube. If you are interested in seeing more of this content in the future please SUBSCRIBE TO THE THE CORBETT REPORT EXTRAS CHANNEL . | 0 |
Dutch prosecutors have announced they will not be pursuing charges against firebrand Dutch politician Geert Wilders for a speech he made in Austria in 2015. [Prosecutors rejected an appeal from an Austrian Muslim association to prosecute the populist politician for incitement after he made a strong speech in Vienna in 2015. The Dutch prosecutors said the content of Mr. Wilders’ speech was not punishable by Dutch law and that they will not pursue the matter any further, NU. nl reports. Wilders was invited by the migration Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) in 2015 to give a speech on Islamisation at the Hofburg palace. During the speech, Wilders said: “Islam calls on people to become terrorists — the Quran leaves no doubt about it. ” He also stated: “Islam is an ideology of war and hatred. ” Wilders wrote a reply to the allegations saying that the charges were a “legal jihad” and “while the elites are to blame for the existential crisis we are currently in, with their open and unprecedented love for Islam and their cultural relativism, they sell us out completely and put our freedom and security at stake. ” The Dutch prosecutor explained their decision saying: “Only if a statement focuses on a group characterised by a belief may be punishable. ” “Wilders spoke on this occasion about Islam, not about Muslims, a group characterised by their Islamic faith. This falls under criticism in Dutch law and is not as insulting a group of people. ” Wilders reacted to the decision on Twitter writing: “Beautiful. The only right decision. The truth must be said and can be correct about Islam!” Mooi. De enige juiste beslissing. De waarheid moet gezegd kunnen worden, juist over de islam! https: . — Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) June 7, 2017, The attempt to have Wilders brought to court for hate speech charges is not the first time the Party for Freedom (PVV) leader has been charged with incitement. Earlier this year, he was found guilty and fined 5, 000 euros for a speech he made in 2011 talking about the crime rates of Morrocan migrants in the Netherlands. Wilders’ PVV made substantial gains in the Dutch national elections earlier this year becoming the second largest party in the country. As the coalition talks stall, Wilders has said the PVV is “fully available” to take part in a new coalition government. Current Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has consistently said that he would not work with the PVV, as have other parties. If coalition talks continue to break down, the Netherlands could face the option of calling another election. | 0 |
Comment
Floyd Mayweather Jr. has so far been mum on whether he will don boxing gloves once again despite call-outs from Manny Pacquiao and Conor McGregor. Pacquiao is coming off an impressive win over Jesse Vargas while “The Notorious” was responding to Mayweather’s jabs.
Of the two, a rematch with Pacquiao is seen as a logical move as Mayweather eyes a 50-0 record. It would allow “Money” to break the tie though nothing has been set for now. Floyd Mayweather Sr. believes son should go for it
Floyd Mayweather Sr. has had his share of do’s and don’ts and the recent dish adds yet another angle to Floyd Jr.’s plans. According to him, Floyd Jr. should consider fighting at least one more time to break the tie believing it will take years before anyone can break it, Fighthype.com reported.
Also read : Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao Rematch Will Be A Disappointment, To Be Staged Just For Money? Floyd Sr. sends stern warning to Conor McGregor
Similar to his son, Floyd Sr. believes Conor McGregor should slow down and keep quiet. He is confident that McGregor could be in for a beating, World Boxing News reported. As most know, this fantasy match is nowhere near of happening so perhaps it would be best to leave it as it is – a dream.
On the serious side, a rematch with Pacquiao should be the perfect setting. The Filipino may do the necessary adjustments but it is still the logical and lucrative one. The revenue may not be similar to the first encounter but is nevertheless expected to be millions.
Any boxing return eventually falls on the hands of Floyd Mayweather Jr. He seems content living out his retirement though the urge to go for 50-0 is still in the air. His father believes he should go for it, same with boxing aficionados. At the end of the day, it all depends on whether “Money” is willing to enter the ring for one last fight.
Liked this story? Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more boxing news and updates. Continue Reading | 0 |
WASHINGTON — In the latest verbal acrobatics over President Trump’s allegation that President Barack Obama spied on him during the 2016 campaign, the White House spokesman said on Tuesday that he was confident Mr. Trump’s claim would eventually be found to be true. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said he was “very confident” that the Justice Department would submit data to the House Intelligence Committee after it missed a Monday deadline to produce evidence of Mr. Trump’s claim. The House committee is investigating Russian interference in the presidential election. Mr. Trump is “extremely confident” that there will be evidence to support his accusation, Mr. Spicer said on Tuesday. “There is significant reporting about surveillance techniques that have existed throughout the 2016 election. I’ll leave it to them to issue their report, but I think he feels very confident that what will ultimately come of this will vindicate him. ” Mr. Spicer also said that Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump who suggested in an interview that the surveillance could have included a microwave oven, made the comment as a joke. “The microwave is not a sound way of surveilling someone, and I think that has been cleaned up,” Mr. Spicer said. “It was made in jest, so I think we can put that to rest. ” Ms. Conway said on Monday that she had not been referring to Mr. Obama’s surveillance against Mr. Trump when she mentioned a microwave, although she made the remark in response to a question about that topic. Mr. Spicer’s comments on Tuesday were the latest in a series of shifting explanations and deflections as Mr. Trump’s inner circle has tried to adhere to his extraordinary Twitter posts two weekends ago about his predecessor. After Mr. Trump posted statements claiming that Mr. Obama had tapped Mr. Trump’s phones at Trump Tower, White House officials said they had referred the matter to the House and Senate intelligence panels and would have no further comment until those findings were complete. But that posture has been difficult to maintain in the face of mounting questions from lawmakers and others about what Mr. Trump meant and where he got his information, with calls for him to publicly explain himself. On Monday, Mr. Spicer said that the president had not meant to imply that Mr. Obama had tapped his telephone, but that he was referring in general to surveillance that had been well documented, including articles by The New York Times, during the presidential race. But The Times did not report that Mr. Trump was the target of any surveillance, even though that notion has gained currency on websites, including some that traffic in conspiracy theories. Mr. Spicer’s assertion on Tuesday that the allegation would ultimately be proved correct suggested either that the president believes there was enough evidence for himself to be implicated in a serious crime or as an agent of a foreign power, or that the Obama administration had flouted the law to spy on him. Asked directly whether Mr. Trump believed that microwave ovens or televisions had been used to spy on him, Mr. Spicer said: “I would just say that the president has tweeted about this. He’s pretty clear that he believes that there was surveillance that was conducted during the 2016 election. ” | 0 |
Obamacare Architect Admits on Live TV That This Is How Obamacare Was DESIGNED
The various revelations from WikiLeaks were also a topic of discussion, with Root bringing up a message he had seen from Democrat National Committee head Donna Brazile to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta about just how terrible the economy really was, despite all of the glowing reports and reassurances to the general public from the administration and liberal media.
Trump was actually somewhat shocked by the news, having not seen that particularly incriminating email yet, and begged Root to send him a copy or link to it so he could familiarize himself with the details and use it on the campaign trail.
The topic of voter fraud also came up in the conversation, though the ever-optimistic Root insisted that Trump’s supporters would be capable of overcoming with a massive turnout whatever tricks might be in store. Root even jested that Trump would actually win the race by 10 points but be declared a winner by only two due to widespread fraud and irregularities.
You can listen to the entire interview right here, with the interesting bit regarding Brazile’s email to Podesta about the economy coming shortly after the eight-minute mark.
While the discussion was quite encouraging for Trump, it was also rather enlightening, as Root revealed more of the duplicitous nature of the Clinton campaign that Trump had not yet been made aware of.
Hopefully Trump will follow the advice given him by Root and others and keep a focus on Obamacare over the remainder of the race, as that issue hits home with virtually all voters and most certainly doesn’t help Clinton at all. | 0 |
You Are Here: Home » Diseases » Curcumin an Effective Natural Treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease Curcumin an Effective Natural Treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease Prev post Next post What is curcumin?
Curcumin, is an anti-inflammatory molecule in the turmeric root, a relative of ginger. Turmeric has been used for thousands of years as a medicinal preparation and a preservative and coloring agent in foods. Curcumin was isolated as the major yellow pigment in turmeric; chemically diferulomethane , and has a polyphenolic molecular structure similar to other plant pigments (eg. extracted from grapes in wine (resveratrol), or in green tea (catechins) or in certain fruit juices (blueberries, strawberries, pomegranates etc.) This polyphenols share in common anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties with associated health benefits. Can eating turmeric-based curries, increase curcumin levels in the blood? India has a low incidence and prevalance of Alzheimer’s Disease, which may be related to genetics or a particular intake of specific foods. Some people attribute the low incidence of Alzheimer’s to a high intake of turmeric in Asia. As turmeric contains an average of 5-10% curcumin, the daily intake of curcumin is approximated in India is thought be about 125 mg. Importantly incooking curries, curcumin is often dissolved and extracted into fat, eg. ghee, which may increase its bioavailability. Animal studies have demonstrated that the way it is administered affects its distribution in the body. Unformulated curcumin, such as purified and dried curcumin in a capsule, is absorbed easily but the liver and GI tract tag it in a way that make it not very bioavailable to the brain. There is a lot of confusion about curcumin bioavailability versus absorption. Curcumin is absorbed, but not necessarily bioavailable. Further GI and liver glucuronidation or sulfation “tagged curcumin” which interfere with bioavailability it some tissues also leadds to its rapid removal by the kidneys. Unliked tagged curcumin, free curcumin readily crossed the blood brain barrier and is relatively stable. To increase free curcumin and its half life, one company Sabinsa has used the strategy to reduce curcumin’s clearance by inhibiting glucuronidation using piperine (Sabinsa C3 complex). Glucuronidation is a method to to rid the body of toxins and remove metabolized drugs. Therefore one should determine blood levels of currently used medications after taking this formulation for several days. Other proposed strategies are to increase its solubility (Meriva), or to encapsulate and protect it from hydrolysis and to control where in the intestine it is absorbed (Longvida). In summary curcumin is easily absorbed but not necessarily very bioavailable to the brain (such as dissolved in cooking oils or formulated). It is stable in fatty tissues such as the brain, but not in blood. If I decide to take curcumin in capsule form for Alzheimer’s Disease, should I choose pure curcumin or a formulation? There are many formulations on the market. If you decide to take curcumin for a disease peripheral to the brain such as arthritis, any formulation may suffice. There are two essential criteria to consider, first, is there evidence that the formulation will lead to adequate curcumin levels in the target tissue?, and second is the formulation manufactured by a company with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) . Since curcumin is a metal chelator it can chelate toxic metals like lead in the ground. Sometimes it is difficult to determine if the manufacturer is a GMP company, because your are purchasing the product from the distributor, not the manufacturer. Several manufacturers claim superior absorption, but it is important to view the data used to make these conclusions. Typically these data show detection of increased glucuronidated (tagged for removal by the kidneys are limited penetration to the brain) but do not assess untagged curcumin, which is permeable to the brain. In other words,data demonstrating superior absorption as measured by liver-tagged curcumin poorly predicts levels achieved in the brain. In contrast, untagged or free curcumin readily penetrates the brain and free curcumin levels in the blood correlate positively with levels in the brain in animal studies. Dr. Frautschy received a National Institute of Health drug development grant U01AG028583 a Drug Development grant to develop a formulation of curcumin that can be taken orally and penetrate the brain. This led to development of a solid lipid particle formulation of curcumin patented by UC Regents and Veteran’s Affairs and licensed to Verdure Sciences as Longvida . Each capsule is 500 mg ( 125 mg of curcumin). Verdure Sciences is certifed for Good Manufacturing Practice, ensuring the absence of toxic metals and using organically grown turmeric. DiSilvestro et.al. , at Ohio State University found that the Longvida curcumin formulation reduced plasma levels of beta-amyloid as well as cholesterol and markers of inflammation in plasma of 40-60 year old subjects. We are now conducting a clinical trial to determine Longvida’s effects in subjects at risk for Alzheimer’s. How much curcumin should I take to treat Alzheimers Disease? The short answer is ‘we do not know the dose needed’. The answer to this question will also depend on how you take it, if you take it on an empty stomach, whether you dissolve it or not and whether and how it is formulated. Unlike drugs, one cannot determine the dose needed for curcumin unless one knows the tissue levels achieved for that formulation. Clinical trials for each each disease and each stage and each formulation would need to be conducted to identify effective tissue levels and that information will be needed to be able to recommend required dosing. In animals levels of 0.6 micromolar are sufficient to reduce amyloid pathology. If effective for prevention and treatment of MCI and Alzheimer’s Disease, the dose required may depend on stage. Extrapolation from animals studies suggest that a range of 4-8 capsules of 500 mg Longvida ( 125 mg of curcumin) per day may be efficacious; however the dose for prevention may be much less, even 80 mg/day, as suggested in the Ohio State University study If effective for prevention, treatment of MCI, treatment of Alzheimer’s, the dose required may depend on stage. A published study from DiSilvestro et al. at Ohio State University, showed daily intake of 80 curcumin from Longvida reduced plasma levels of beta-amyloid as well as cholesterol and markers of inflammation plasma in subjects 40-60 years old. Extensive toxicology conducted by the National Toxicology Program demonstrated that turmeric oleoresin (80% curcumin) is safe. As described in Title 21, Section 182.20 turmeric oleoresin is listed as one of the oils or oleoresins in plants as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) FDA’s GRAS list . The European Food Safety Commission ( EU ), which has stricter requirements than the FDA for food safety, has also designated curcumin as safe. However formulations that increase the free form also need to be tested for safety. Longvida Toxicity studies on Longvida find similar safety as compared to unformulated curcumin. We are conducting a clinical trial to determine if Longvida is effective in Mild Cognitive Impairment on Brain Glucose Metabolism and Inflammatory Biomarkers. We have chosen s dose based on extrapolation from animal studies based on doses needed for neuroprotection and neuro anti-inflammatory properties testing whether 8 capsules daily may be sufficient. As with any drug, it is recommended to titer up to a dose slowly (1-2 capsules daily) then 2-4 capsules 2nd week and so on. Dose may depend on individual variabliity in absorption and formulation. Blood levels of free and metabolized curcumin are not typically measured, but are important to understand efficacious dose. Red blood cell or white blood cell (Buffy Coat) levels of free curcumin parallel brain levels, but not necessarily plasma levels, as plasma levels can be non-detectable when brain levels are high ( Begum et al ). It has a very short half life in plasma but a very long half life in brain because it is lipophilic (fat-loving) corresponding to its much higher concentrations in the fatty brain tissue than in blood. When in relation to a meal should I take curcumin to limit its metabolism? Fasting improves free curcumin absorption (eg. minimum of 3 hours after a meal). You make take it with a small drink (4-6 ounces; eg. cherry juice with a higher pH making it more soluble. Wait an hour before eating a meal. HOWEVER, ancectodal evidence suggests that some people may have sleep disturbances if taken before bedtime. How will I know if curcumin is working? Since there is no trial demonstrating effectiveness of curcumin in preventing Alzheimer’s Disease, we don’t know how to answer this question until the trials have been conducted and completed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that slowly titering up and conducting self-administered memory tests can be helfpul in determining if it is helpful and at what dose. Some people use solitaire to monitor improvements. There maybe also be online tests to document memory changes. Since it takes 10 days to build up levels of curcumin in tissues, it may be important to titer up or down at 10 day intervals. An immediate effect on memory has been describe anectdotally, but it would not necessarily be expected. In mouse studies spatial memory was measured after three months treatment. The most obvious initial effect would be a reduction in symptoms of joint pain or other inflammatory conditions. In one trial described here , only unformulated curcumin was used and free curcumin was relatively undetectable. Importantly, in extended results from the naproxen trial for Alzheimer’s Disease prevention, naproxen showed prevention of conversion to Alzheimer’s; however, during the first year subjects’ memory worsened. It has not yet been determined whether lowering the dose until symptoms subside might avoid these deteriorations. Considering that we know that in animals curcumin clears out toxic amyloid and tau aggregates, it could conceivably transiently worsen memory. Although transient worsening of memory has not been observed in animals, it has been anecdotally been reported by some patients. | 1 |
The liberal media is going bat$hit crazy over David Duke participating in Louisiana senate debate. BLM holds massive riot, attack police officers and damage their cars.
David Duke is a former Imperial grand dragon, wizard, sorcerer, magician cyclops of the knights of KKK and whatever you want to call him but what the bat$hit media is always conveniently forgetting to mention about him is that he is also a former Republican State Representative from 1989 to 1992 who reformed the party.
According to an online poll hosted by FOX 8 , the channel which hosted the debate, David Duke won the debate in a landslide. 92% of the respondents voted for David Duke but could this poll be accurate? Certainly NOT! David Duke has a lot of national support among his wizard circles while no one heard of the other 5 candidates outside of Louisiana. So his supporters rushed in to vote, but does he have any real authentic support in Louisiana? Yes, he has at least 5% state-wide support since he participated in the debate because you need at least 5 points in Louisiana state polls in order to qualify for the debates.
David Duke is associated with the devil across America so people naturally avoid admitting to support him in public polls so it is only logical to assume that his actual numbers may be more than double. This is a phenomenon now known as “the shy voter”. Donald Trump suffers with the same phenomenon. When you see his polls out there. Those are only the known voters. There are many more voters who avoid publicly admitting that they support Donald Trump out of fear of repercussions from tolerant lefties.
If you have no idea who David Duke is, MSNBC of all TV stations out there did a quite fair description of him. He is a cutting edge politician whose ideas were stolen by establishment politicians, even top Democrats such as Bill Clinton, then claimed it were their ideas. Chris Hayes described David Duke as “The Duke Effect”, admitting that his ideas and policies were stolen by other politicians, such as: repealing affirmative action programs, stricter public housing guidelines, eliminating minority set-asides, welfare.
Philip Bump who was the guest at “All In With Chris Hayes” said that Duke’s fight from 1991 over welfare which evolved into a centrist position for Bill Clinton.
Chris Hayes said “He’s leading the edge over of the kind of political discourse that takes the country in a certain direction, not single-handedly.”
The former KKK wizard/magician/dragon/knight/snake/sorcerer, alright let’s be fair to him… the former Representative was definitely the most dominant figure in the debate and he stood his ground after Ted Cruz slandered him saying that he scammed his supporters.
John Neely Kennedy who is a former Democrat and who looks like and even sounds like he’s Ted Cruz’s lost twin brother, accused David Duke of being a convicted felon who went to prison for: “lying to his supporters, he swindled them out of their money and took that money and used it for his gambling addiction”.
Duke wanted to respond and the moderator granted him 15 seconds which is definitely not enough for ANY of the candidates to rebuke an attack but, after just 12 seconds the moderator interrupted Duke and jumped in to help Ted Cruz! Sorry, John Neely Kennedy!
The moderator interrupted Duke and supported John Neely Cruz’s accusations. After that, a full scandal broke out during the debate. The moderator saw that he was not going to back down so he finally decided to let him answer. Duke waved some papers in the air and said that he was audited and he actually overpaid his taxes by $6000 and that he was targeted because of his extreme political views.
We measured his second response time which he earned after being interrupted in the first place and it was a 40 seconds answer. Definitely over the allocated 15 seconds but the moderator preferred to create a scandal worth of 1 minute and 22 seconds instead of letting him answer the first time. Definitely some bias there, BUT after this incident/fight/scandal, the moderator was very fair and unbiased.
His supporters think that the moderator was also biased because of asking Duke about Trump’s pus*y tape and why he condemn “The CNN Jews”. Well the question was definitely legitimate since David Duke does spend a lot of time focusing on “The Jews” which is the reason he never gained any serious traction. Not because that “The Jews” don’t have any power, on the contrary, they do own CNN actually, from top to bottom, but because the average American doesn’t know and doesn’t care about that. The average American cares about paying lower taxes, having a strong military and a strong border and David Duke should focus more on those things if he really cares about what white people want/need and if he wants to achieve more in his political career.
Aside for the 1 minute scandal there was also a funny moment during the debate, when they were talking about Social Security which is seen in the video below, at exactly minute 40 when Democrat candidate Foster Campbell is seen writing down something on some paper, not paying any attention to the debate. 10 seconds later, David Duke is seen waking him up. Foster is then seen looking around disoriented, clearly not paying any attention. The question had to be asked again.
There was also a Democrat woman candidate on stage which was virtually like a Hillary Clinton clone: “vote for me because I’m a woman not for the snake next to me, David Duke.” Just like Hillary Clinton she works for Goldman Sachs and is funded by them with lots of cash.
Aside from everything else David Duke was a spectacular watch and if people can be opened minded about him he would win in a landslide actually because he was the strongest Trump supporter on the scene!
Trump needs a team of people who strongly support him, such as Jeff Sessions, strong loyalist people. He will need his team in order to drain the swamp and clean the system, otherwise he will just run into barriers and be unable to deliver any of his promises. Duke always came out in Trump’s defense when other fled like flees. He even defended Trump with his pus*y tape. Not once has he refuted or denied Donald Trump. It appears that Duke would make a perfect Trump loyalist.
Donald Trump strongly disavowed David Duke but even being disavowed by the Republican leader, David pursued his own quest to win the senate and vehemently outlined his strong support for the nominee.
Trump has Jews in his family, his daughter Ivanka is Jewish, his son Erick is also Jewish by marriage and he has Jewish members in his staff allover such as Michael Cohen and he’s a strong supporter of Israel and a good friend of Netanyahu. Now Trump doesn’t have to agree with Duke’s beliefs about Jews and frankly it doesn’t matter. It’s not like David would have any power to do anything as a Senator. In the senate, the power is collective, through voting thus he’s powerless on his own with his own ideas. However if he’s such a strong Trump supporter, then whenever Trump will ask for some law to be passed through Congress and Senate, Duke will deliver by voting in its favor. This is exactly the kind of people Trump needs in order to drain the swamp, obedient loyalists. Otherwise Trump will not be able to destroy the corrupt Washington octopus. Besides David stressed during the debate that he is not against all Jews, he’s just against powerful billionaires who control the narrative such as the people working at CNN or major Hillary Clinton puppet master George Soros.
David Duke is definitely the best choice for Louisiana but if you still can’t vote for him because of his past, then hopefully John Fleming would win since he was also a good supporter of Donald Trump. According to this article , “toxic Trump” is only supported for real by David Duke and John Fleming:
Each is on record supporting Trump’s candidacy. But except for Fleming, Maness and Duke (who seem eager to embrace Trump) , don’t ask them why. Because Trump is so toxic , these “leaders” must be grateful Louisiana is not a battleground state. They would surely hate to face a decision about whether to campaign with Trump if he showed up for rallies.
Rob Maness didn’t participate in the debate because he is irrelevant, he’s below 5 percent and would thus be a waste of votes. It’s only between Fleming and Duke now. You wouldn’t want to vote for another scumbag RINO who thinks Trump is “toxic” and who would “hate to campaign with Trump”, now would you? Louisiana is a true red state, the choice is clear! Show the middle finger to establishment and vote for the candidate you thought supports Trump the most.
BLM (Black Lives Matter) thugs who are at least JUST AS BAD AS the KKK, or even worse for killing cops and holding violent rallies allover the country, held a violent protest outside the Dillard University where the debate took place, to oppose David Duke’s right to run as a Senator. The thugs attacked cops and police cars resulting in at least 6 arrests . David Duke needed a police escort in order to exist the building safely.
So here’s the debate:
| 1 |
■ Only 35 percent of Americans expect Donald J. Trump to be a good or great president. ■ Mr. Trump’s choice of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. executive to be labor secretary may raise questions anew about his attitude toward women. ■ Bipartisan group of senators urges the to take a stand against Russian aggression. ■ Ivanka Trump spells out her advocacy role. Hillary Clinton, in a rare postelection public appearance, said on Thursday that “lives are at risk” from an “epidemic of malicious fake news. ” “It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly,” she said at the Capitol, days after a gunman was arrested at a Washington pizza restaurant that had been linked to a fictitious child sex ring. Speaking at the unveiling of a portrait of the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who is retiring, Mrs. Clinton joked that the occasion was not the postelection visit she had once pictured. “This is not exactly the speech at the Capitol I hoped to be giving,” she said. “But after a few weeks of taking selfies in the woods, I thought it’d be a good idea to come out. ” Nearly a month after Mr. Trump’s election as president, he still has a long way to go to win the confidence of the nation. A Pew Research Center poll of 1, 502 adults found that 35 percent of Americans thought Mr. Trump would be a good or great president 18 percent said he would be average while 38 percent said he would be poor or terrible. That is better than in October, when just 25 percent of the public said Mr. Trump would make a good or great president, while 57 percent said he would be poor or terrible. The poll found that 40 percent approved of the ’s cabinet choices and other appointments, while 41 percent were satisfied with his explanations of policies and plans for the future. By comparison, in December 2008, 71 percent approved of Barack Obama’s cabinet choices. In January 2001, 58 percent had positive views of George W. Bush’s appointments. Similarly, 72 percent approved of the way Mr. Obama explained his policies and plans. Mr. Bush had a 50 percent rating in that regard. Well before the emergence of a video of Mr. Trump bragging of sexual assault, his attitude toward women posed a political problem for him. With the president said to be reaching out to the executive Andrew F. Puzder to lead Labor, look for the questions to come back. Why? A quick glance at the advertisements for his Carl’s Jr. burger chain is enough to get the point. And: And even this. “I like our ads,” Mr. Puzder told the publication Entrepreneur. “I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American. ” Women’s groups, religious activists and academics have been complaining about the racy ads for years. But with Mr. Puzder coming before the Senate for confirmation, they will have a platform like never before. The still says he does not think the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or the release of purloined emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta. Nor did he express much concern for Moscow’s annexation of Crimea or its threats to its neighbors. But lawmakers are speaking out. In a bipartisan letter to the 27 senators — 12 of them Republican, including Marco Rubio of Florida, John McCain of Arizona and Rob Portman of Ohio — demanded action to stop Russian aggression against Ukraine. The humiliation of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey just keeps coming: He has been told he will not be named to lead the Republican National Committee, according to several people briefed on the discussions in Mr. Trump’s transition. Mr. Christie was pushed out of his role overseeing the transition almost immediately after the election. The party committee role would have allowed him to remain governor while keeping a hand in national politics. But few people in Mr. Trump’s circle are offering support for Mr. Christie these days — even if he was the first national political figure to embrace Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Among the remaining contenders for the job are Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairwoman of the Michigan G. O. P. and a niece of Mitt Romney’s Nick Ayers, an aide to Vice Mike Pence, and Mercedes Schlapp, a Republican strategist. Ms. McDaniel, who strongly supported Mr. Trump during the campaign, is said to be favored by a number of people in his circle. Oh, and on Wednesday, Mr. Christie got this news: At 19 percent, his job approval rating is the lowest of any governor in any state in more than 20 years. The of the United States got into a fight on Wednesday with the president of a union local in Indiana, another sign that Mr. Trump has a hard time letting things go. Chuck Jones, the president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the had “lied his ass off” when he claimed he had saved 1, 100 jobs at the Carrier furnace plant in Indianapolis from going to Mexico. That was pretty much backed up by the chief executive of United Technologies, the parent company of Carrier, who said on CNBC that he would automate the plant and lay off many of the workers anyway. But it was Mr. Jones’s appearance on CNN on Wednesday that got Mr. Trump’s goat. “What nobody’s mentioning is 550 people are losing their jobs,” Mr. Jones said, adding that 700 other positions at a different Indiana plant would be moving to Mexico. The saw fit to fire back. Mr. Jones appeared again on CNN’s “New Day” on Thursday morning, and he didn’t back down. As she ponders a likely move to Washington, Ivanka Trump, the ’s eldest daughter, plans to develop a portfolio of issue advocacy, primarily on matters relating to women, she has told allies. Among them is pay equity for women in the workplace and trying to push for the passage of the child care policy she urged her father to develop during the campaign. Ms. Trump has also recently added climate change to her emerging set of issues, hosting the former Vice President Al Gore for a meeting at Trump Tower, and bringing Leonardo DiCaprio to her father Mr. Trump on Wednesday. Ivanka Trump may be talking up the perils of climate change, but her father is showing little concern. On Thursday morning he made it official: Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, has been chosen to be Mr. Trump’s E. P. A. administrator, potentially putting an ardent opponent of federal environmental regulations and a climate change denialist in charge of the agency. Mr. Pruitt’s confirmation may be one of the toughest to secure: Senate Democrats did not take a approach, and many said they would never support him. “I expect the American people will be shocked that Trump has chosen someone with such disdain for their health as they learn more about Pruitt during his confirmation hearings,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island. “Stay tuned. ” On the same day the chose a climate change denialist to run the E. P. A. he sat down with Mr. DiCaprio to hear his pitch Wednesday on clean energy to repair a warming planet. Terry Tamminen, chief executive of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, sounded optimistic: But in this world, most environmental activists are looking at what Mr. Trump does more than at what he says, and the choice of Mr. Pruitt, who has led the legal fight against President Obama’s climate regulations, is a bigger marker than another meeting with a celebrity. Joseph W. Hagin, a deputy chief of staff for operations under President George W. Bush, is a strong contender in the eyes of some of Mr. Trump’s advisers to take the same role in the Trump administration, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions. One person briefed on the discussions said that Mr. Hagin could play a role in informally advising the incoming staff, but that others in Mr. Trump’s circle of advisers did not want to see him take on that job. Mr. Hagin would come to the job with deep experience in crucial aspects of managing a White House. But he also rose to prominence working for the man whose tenure Mr. Trump spent his campaign criticizing. Mr. Hagin and aides to Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. A new Bloomberg Politics poll indicated that 54 percent of adults believed stock prices would be higher at the end of 2017 than they are today, and that with Mr. Trump’s election, Americans are more optimistic about their finances. Around 38 percent of respondents expected 2017 to be a better financial year than 2016, while 14 percent said they would be worse off and percent said things would be about the same. In December 2012, after Mr. Obama’s 31 percent of respondents said they were more optimistic about their finances for the next year. | 1 |
Britain’s new terrorism watchdog Max Hill has expressed “enormous concern” about returning jihadis, warning that Islamic terrorists have UK cities in their sights for future attacks. [Mr Hill, who was unveiled last week as the new independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the Sunday Telegraph that there was an “enormous ongoing risk which none of us can ignore”. One of Britain’s leading prosecutors, he said the risk of terror in Britain is at its highest since the 1970s. He cautioned that “it would be wrong to draw a simple comparison between Irish republicanism and the ideology of Islamic State. “But in terms of the threat that’s represented, I think the intensity and the potential frequency of serious plot planning — with a view to indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians of whatever race or colour in metropolitan areas — represents an enormous risk that none of us can ignore. ” Mr Hill, whose appointment follows a 30 year legal career, also expressed concern over the imminent return to Britain of hundreds of jihadis who have been fighting with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “It’s an enormous concern that large numbers — we know this means at least hundreds of British citizens who have left this country in order to fight — are now returning or may be about to return,” Mr Hill said. “Of course the imminent fall of Mosul and perhaps the prospective retaking of Raqqa are both bound to lead to a higher instance of returning fighters. Does that mean that the British public need to be immediately alarmed at a spike in terrorist activity within this country? “The answer to that is, I don’t know, but it doesn’t follow as a matter of fact that those who chose to go to live or fight abroad will bring that fight back to this country. ” Mr Hill further cautioned that British teenagers are being “radicalised by hate speech online”. But he defended ministers who approved the reported £1 million payout to Ronald Fiddler — the former Guantanamo detainee who this month carried out a suicide bomb attack. Figures disclosed by the Home Office in May last year showed that just one in eight jihadis who fought in the Middle East for extremist groups had been successfully prosecuted. Earlier this week a National Front member was sentenced to five years jail after making a series of offensive posts online, and distributing racist stickers and posters near his house. “We are as committed to apprehending and prosecuting far right extremists who commit terrorist offences and promote hatred as we are those who support and promote Islamic State. Both are intent on destroying communities and pose a real risk if they are allowed to continue” said Dean Haydon of the Counter Terrorism Command following the verdict. | 0 |
On July 24, 1959, months after coming to power, Fidel Castro took the mound at a baseball stadium in Havana to pitch an exhibition for a team of fellow revolutionaries known as Los Barbudos, the Bearded Ones. He pitched an inning or two against a team from the Cuban military police and, by some accounts, struck out two batters. “He threw a few pitches, people were swinging wildly and letting themselves be struck out by the Leader,” said Roberto González Echevarría, a native of Cuba who is a literature professor at Yale and the author of “The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball. ” Mr. Castro, who died Friday at 90, also avidly followed Havana’s Sugar Kings of the International League, a Class AAA team in the Cincinnati Reds’ farm system from 1954 to 1960. He went to some games because he was a fan and “he liked being on TV,” Mr. González Echevarría said. The persistent notion that Mr. Castro’s fastball had made him a potential big league prospect has long been debunked by historians. By many accounts, his primary sport as a schoolboy was basketball. He was tall, at or and he told the biographer Tad Szulc that the anticipation, speed and dexterity required for basketball most approximated the skills needed for revolution. Yet it was primarily baseball, along with boxing and other Olympic sports, that came to symbolize both the strength and vulnerability of Cuban socialism. Successes in those sports allowed Mr. Castro to taunt and defy the United States on the diamond and in the ring and to infuse Cuban citizens with a sense of national pride. At the same time, international isolation and difficult financial realities led to the rampant defection of top baseball stars, the decrepit condition of stadiums and a shortage of equipment. The former Soviet bloc and China also acutely understood the value of sporting achievement as propaganda, but there seemed to be some fundamental differences in Mr. Castro’s Cuba. For one thing, Cuba under Mr. Castro promoted mass sport, not simply elite sport. About 95 percent of Cubans have participated in some form of organized sport or exercise, from children who start physical education classes at age 5 to grandmothers who gather to practice tai chi, said Robert Huish, an associate professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who has studied Cuban sport, health and social programs. Secondly, “I think Fidel Castro legitimately liked sports,” said David Wallechinsky, the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians. “One got the sense with East Germany, for example, that it really was a question of propaganda and that government officials didn’t have that obsession with sport itself that Fidel Castro did. ” Whatever hardships they endured, Cubans could take pride in their sports stars. As Javier Sotomayor, the only man to clear eight feet in the high jump, soared to his records in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cubans for a time marked the height of his jumps in their doorways, according to Robert Huish, an associate professor of international development studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who has studied Cuban sport, health and social programs. “There was a real effort to connect nationalistic pride to athletic achievement,” said Mr. Huish, who was scheduled to make his 42nd trip to Cuba on Monday. “Boxing became a really important factor in that. You would hear how it was connected to revolution and how socialism and having universal access to sport meant that the victory of the boxer is really everyone’s victory. ” Teófilo Stevenson, a Olympic heavyweight boxing champion from 1972 to 1980, once famously explained why he had turned down a chance to sign a professional contract and perhaps to fight Muhammad Ali, saying, “What is a million dollars’ worth compared to the love of eight million Cubans?” The idea that sports “were healthy and good for developing bodies,” Mr. González Echevarría said, derived from the American role in helping to establish Cuba’s educational system while occupying the country from 1898 to 1902 after the War. In “Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel,” a biography by the American photojournalist Lee Lockwood, Mr. Castro spoke little of baseball, instead stressing his long love for basketball, chess, diving, soccer and track and field. “I never became a champion,” he told Mr. Lockwood, adding, “but I didn’t practice much. ” In 1946, an F. Castro was listed in a box score as having pitched in an intramural game at the University of Havana, where Fidel Castro attended law school, though González Echevarría said he could not confirm it was the future leader. The only known photographs of Mr. Castro in a baseball uniform were taken while he played for Los Barbudos, the informal revolutionary team, Mr. González Echevarría said. Mr. Castro was never scouted by the major leagues, Mr. González Echevarría said, and the notion that Mr. Castro was once a promising pitcher “is really a lie. ” Instead, Peter C. Bjarkman, a baseball historian, argues that Mr. Castro’s identification with baseball derived from two factors: One, an acknowledgment of the entrenched popularity of a sport played in Cuba since the 1860s and as popular there as soccer was in Brazil. And two, a stoking of revolutionary zeal at home and a forging of propaganda victories abroad. While Mr. Castro staged some exhibitions and played some pickup games after coming to power, a primary objective was to bedevil the United States in a “calculated step toward utilizing baseball as a means of besting the hated imperialists at their own game,” Mr. Bjarkman wrote in an article for the Society for American Baseball Research. Mr. Castro banned professional sports in Cuba in 1961, and several years later, said, “Anybody who truly loves sport, and feels sport, has to prefer this sport to professional sport by a thousand times. ” His strategy worked for decades as Cuba played baseball against mostly amateur competition, or leaguers, winning 18 championships in the Baseball World Cup from 1961 to 2005 and three Olympic gold medals from 1992 to 2004. But the collapse of the Soviet Union (and later Venezuela’s oil economy) cost Cuba its financial benefactors. And its dominance began to ebb amid rampant defections of top Cuban players and the growing inclusion of professionals from other nations in international baseball tournaments. Cuba won only one of the three Olympic tournaments held after 1996, before baseball was discontinued for the 2012 London Games (it will return at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.) And Cuba has yet to win the World Baseball Classic, a quadrennial tournament that began in 2006 and features major leaguers. Meanwhile, the American trade embargo, still in place even though the two countries have begun to normalize relations, has left Cuba with poor sports facilities, including some pools with no water fewer night baseball games because of the cost keeping the lights on games halted in some stadiums until fans can retrieve foul balls and a leaky roof and soaked mats at the national wrestling center. In 2013, Cuban officials took a more pragmatic approach to professionalism, allowing athletes to compete for earnings and to play in other countries (though not in Major League Baseball). Cuban coaches are also being exported to other countries in exchange for hard currency. The athletes keep 80 percent of their winnings and agree to compete for Cuba in international competitions. Antonio Castro, a son of Fidel Castro and a vice president of the International Baseball Federation, told ESPN in 2014 that Cuban players should be permitted to play in the Major Leagues and be able to return to Cuba “without fear. ” “Then no one loses,” Antonio Castro said. “And they don’t have to be separated from their family, from their friends. ” But after President Obama attended an exhibition baseball game in Havana in March as the first sitting American president to visit Cuba since the 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro threw a brushback pitch. In a column, he criticized renewed relations between the two countries, writing, “We don’t need the empire to give us anything. ” | 1 |
Politico Senior White House Reporter Darren Samuelsohn kicked off Memorial Day 2017 by hawking a hot investigative scoop: Lara Trump, wife to President Donald Trump’s son Eric, supports a beagle adoption advocacy group where one top executive once served time in prison for encouraging activists to torment animal researchers. [Lara Trump’s animal rights partner did 6 y in fed prison 4 harassing stalking researchers. https: . pic. twitter. — Darren Samuelsohn (@dsamuelsohn) May 29, 2017, “Eric Trump’s wife has publicly aligned with a controversial animal rights group,” Samuelsohn writes, “the Beagle Freedom Project, whose leadership includes a felon who served a sentence in federal prison for harassing and stalking researchers. ” The connection, he asserts, “brings political risk. ” Said felon, Kevin Chase (née Kjonaas) was sentenced in 2006 and released from prison in 2011. And while there is no defending the acts which led to Chase’s conviction, Samuelsohn employs little more than innuendo to link them to BFP. “Lara Trump’s support for the Beagle Freedom Project has alarmed researchers and leaders from the pharmaceutical industry,” Samuelsohn writes, “as well as other animal rights organizations who say studies involving dogs and cats are well regulated by the federal government. ” BFP advocates for state laws forcing animal testing facilities to put research animals up for adoption instead of euthanizing them and performing more tissue tests — as well as encouraging individuals to rescue said animals. The group has partnered with celebrities such as Maria Menounos, Whitney Cummings, Corey Feldman, Amy Smart, Sia Furler, and Miley Cyrus in the past. Samuelsohn acknowledges that the only controversial element of BFP is Chase’s criminal history. “The Beagle Freedom Project’s stated goals are more mainstream” than his past groups, the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, he writes. He also notes that the org received a $500, 000 contest reward from Microsoft — even after critics brought up Chase’s past. Samuelsohn did not answer an email asking if it was his idea or an editor’s assignment to veer from his White House beat to cover the loose association between a activist and a New to the President. | 0 |
STD infection rates reach all-time high in the United States
Thursday, October 27, 2016 by: Isabelle Z. Tags: STDs , infection rates , disease pandemics (NaturalNews) The news keeps getting worse for a nation that is already known for embracing unhealthy habits, as the CDC reveals that the U.S. saw more reported cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) last year than in any year in the country's history.According to the CDC's annual report, the nation's three most common STDs – gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis – rose between 2014 and 2015 to reach an all-time high.The number of primary and secondary syphilis cases that were reported increased by an alarming 19 percent, while gonorrhea rose by 12.8 percent and cases of chlamydia climbed by 5.9 percent. While all three of these diseases can be cured by antibiotics, the CDC says that most of these infections end up going undiagnosed and therefore untreated.More than 1.5 million new cases of chlamydia were reported last year, and two thirds of these were young people aged between 15 and 24. This disease can harm a woman's reproductive system, and if left untreated, can adversely affect her fertility.Meanwhile, 395,216 new cases of gonorrhea were reported last year. This number might be lower than that of chlamydia, but this STD is particularly concerning, as it's becoming increasingly difficult to treat. This summer, CDC scientists warned that the bacteria responsible for gonorrhea is developing resistance to the antibiotics that are normally used to treat it.Syphilis cases, which noted the biggest rise of the three main STDs, numbered 23,872 last year, with men who have sex with other men making up the majority of the new cases. Syphilis can have devastating effects, including blindness, stroke and stillbirth. There has also been a surge in newborns being born with syphilis after being infected by their mothers. Concerning lack of testing The director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention, Dr. Gail Bolan, expressed concern that Americans are simply not getting the preventive services that they need. She believes that every pregnant woman needs to be routinely tested for syphilis, and bisexual and gay men who are sexually active should also get annual tests.Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, pointed out that half of all STDs are occurring in young people under the age of 25. Part of the problem among young people could be the mistaken belief that the better HIV treatment that is now available means condoms aren't necessary.While so-called "hook-up apps" have been shouldering a lot of blame for facilitating casual sex, experts believe that the surge in STDs is largely down to budget cuts to STD prevention and care programs at the local and state levels. More than half of such programs have been subjected to budget cuts in recent years, with a number of health departments closing STD clinics altogether.Dr. Bolan pointed out that more than 40 percent of health departments have reduced their clinic hours, screening and tracing of people who might have been infected with STDs. This means people could be living with STDs for a longer period, during which time they could potentially transmit them to even more people. These diseases all tend to have no obvious symptoms in their early stages, which means testing is vital to prevent their spread. The CDC reports that the economic burden this is causing the American healthcare system is almost $16 billion per year. Unhealthy habits destroying Americans' health This uptick in STD cases is very concerning in a nation that is already noting unprecedented obesity rates. All of these statistics show an increasing inclination toward risky behavior – whether it's eating an unhealthy diet or having unprotected sex – without any regard for the potential health repercussions. It's not just what Americans are doing that is so problematic; it's also what they are not doing, like exercising and eating a diet rich in organic fruits and vegetables .America is quickly gaining a reputation for being one of the unhealthiest nations in the world, and the government looking the other way on GMO dangers and cutting funding for STD clinics is only going to create even more of a health crisis. Sources include: | 1 |
Subscribe
In politics, the Third Way is a position that tries to reconcile right-wing Republican Party and left-wing Democratic Party politics by advocating a synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies. It was created as a re-evaluation of center-left political ideals in response to international doubt regarding the viability of interventionist (Keynesian) economic policies versus the economic libertarianism of the New Right. The Third Way is promoted by some social democratic and liberal movements.
One of the significant factors concerning the 2016 Democratic Party presidential race is that corporate Democrats are scared of Bernie Sanders’ quick rise in popularity in the Democratic Party. This explains why corporate Democrats support Hillary Clinton.
In political campaigns, you have to follow the money. Third Way has been very secretive about where its think tank funding comes from. However, several investigative journalists have uncovered some of the donors and they are not surprising: The Chamber of Commerce The Business Round Table AT&T
These are just a few donors to the Third Way. There is also a laundry list of hedge funds that are donating money. The bottom line is that Third Way is backed by Wall Street titans, corporate money, congressional allies, and corporate Democrats like Hillary Clinton. It is important to note that these same corporate factions also donate to the Republican Party. The existence of Third Way should not come as a surprise. There are essentially no economic differences between a corporate Democrat and a Republican. ‘Third Way’ Members Are Backroom-Cigar-Smoking Wall Street Types.
Third Way and its members would like to see politicians like Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) disappear. Why do Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party scare the hell out of corporate Democrats?
There is the issue of labels in modern day politics. The Third Way Democrats, the Blue-Dog Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats are all centrist in their ideology. It begs the question: Who is in charge of the Democratic Party right now?
Until something drastic happens like electing a Democratic Socialist non-establishment politician like Bernie Sanders, the truth is the Democratic Party is controlled by Wall Street just like the Republican Party. There is much talk how the Republican Party is falling apart. The Tea Party has taken over, and the fringe is now the GOP mainstream.
There is a similar fight taking place in the Democratic party between people who care (like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), who are concerned about the middle class and working people of America, and corporate centrist Democrats like Hillary Clinton whose economic policies are not much different than the Republicans.
Third Way President Jonathan Cowan , who claims he is a Democrat, is joined at the hip with Wall Street and is a poster boy for the right wing-oriented Chamber of Commerce. He and his Third Way organization have done nothing for labor unions. This guy is a Republican in a Democrat’s clothing.
The 2016 Democratic presidential race will go a long way in determining if the Democrats reject this corporate agenda. The corporate Democratic Party think tank has submitted over 70 policy proposals they want corporate Democrat Hillary Clinton to take up. The new populist movement by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is not welcomed by corporate centrist Democrats. Third Way are trying as hard as they can to force Bernie Sanders out of the race. They have tried to put a muzzle on Elizabeth Warren.
Third Way’s position is that someone who is left of center (a Democratic Socialist, liberal, or progressive) will lose by a landslide in the general election. What is ironic is that every major poll right now shows that Bernie Sanders would beat Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, and Ted Cruz. Moreover, these polls show Bernie Sanders beating these flavor-of-the-week Republicans by a larger margin than the centrist corporate choice Hillary Clinton in the swing states .
Bernie Sanders’ campaign has the potential to change the dynamics of the entire electorate. His campaign is getting young voters’ attention and more importantly, getting them involved in the political process. Bernie has already gotten the endorsement from the American Postal Service Workers Union . Several African American politicians are backing Sanders. Independent voters are choosing Sanders over Hillary Clinton by a wide margin. The truth is Bernie Sanders’ voting base is growing while the corporate centrist Democratic base is stagnant at best.
These facts have caused the Democratic Party Wall Street types to panic and to start attacking Bernie Sanders on being too far left . Plus, who better to lead the charge than pre-ordained corporate Democrat Hillary Clinton?
One of the major problems the Democratic Party has faced is that huge blocks of potential Democratic voters have become disenfranchised from the voting process because they feel there is no real difference between the two parties. They feel that elections are rigged, and their votes don’t count . What Bernie Sanders’ run for president has re-energized these voting blocks.
Polls have shown 60 percent of Americans feel Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy and dishonest . Many liberal progressive Democrats don’t trust Hillary Clinton at all.
Granted, there are some major social issues where there is a stark contrast between the two parties. But with issues that deal with low- and middle-earning families being able to feed their children and everyday Americans having a better quality of life, it is fair to say there are no real differences between the Republican Party and the corporate Democrats.
One of the main reasons for this paradox is organizations like Third Way. Corporate Democrats like Hillary Clinton want that Wall Street money. Their belief is you cannot win if you don’t have Wall Street donors and Super Pacs. Bernie Sanders’ campaign is proving that this assumption is not true. Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 showed this wasn’t true. There is little doubt in this writer’s mind that Hillary Clinton and her corporate Democrat buddies are feeling 2008 deja vu all over again.
Featured Image By DonkeyHotey via Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. About Johnny Hill
Johnny Hill is a freelance writer who has extensive experience in writing for sales, marketing and advertising. He has a background in radio broadcasting which is showcased in the music mixes he creates for his Facebook page, "One Nation Under the Groove." Johnny has been an avid and life long student of politics . He is the founder of the House of Public Discourse Political Organization, which he created as a platform for his progressive liberal ideology. You can follow Johnny on Twitter, @hillj60. Connect | 1 |
A sophisticated analysis of polling data shows that the House Freedom Caucus saved the GOP’s House majority from a huge electoral backlash by helping to defeat the House Speaker Paul Ryan’s alternative to Obamacare, says Chris Wilson, head of WPA Research. [The “House Freedom Caucus members held the line, and the data show that is precisely what their constituents wanted,” he wrote in a report, titled “Analytics shows HFC saved GOP on Health Care. ” On Thursday, Texas GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert predicted any approval of Ryan’s healthcare overhaul would wreck the GOP’s House majority in 2018. “This bill is going to ultimately result in Republicans losing the majority … [and] If we pass a bill that doesn’t bring down premiums and give the American people hope, and not give more power to the government … then we will deserve to be voted out,” he said in a speech on the House floor, according to TheHill. “While full repeal and replace of Obamacare has overwhelming support in these districts, even keeping Obamacare intact was more popular than the AHCA, often by more than a margin,” said Wilson, who managed Sen. Ted Cruz’s voter analysis and tracking efforts in 2016. The same analysis was applied to 2018 Senate races and concluded that “the House Freedom Caucus did … Republicans’ hopes of expanding their Senate majority, a great service in stopping the [Ryancare] bill before it made it across the Capitol,” Wilson wrote. But Wilson’s analysis also shows strong public support for an alternative “plan that allows for the sale of insurance across state lines, expands Health Savings Accounts, incentivizes states to create pools, block grants Medicaid, and is portable so it can be taken from job to job. ” Wilson’s analysis is based a huge national survey, which allows his group to understand the preference of each population subgroup. For example, voters are asked three questions about each issue, he said. Typically, one question is skewed from a perspective, one question is skewed from the right, and the third question is intended to be unbiased, he said. In turn, the team then used three models to predict preferences among each politicians’ particular subgroups of voters. In this survey, the models were used to gauge each district’s’ voters preference for three healthcare options — continuing Obamacare, establishing Ryan’s “Ryancare” replacement, and the third option, “Repeal and replace. ” Subsequently, the analysts spend much time check and rechecking the accuracy of the models in each district, he said, adding “you’ve got to spend time ” Politicians are increasingly using this style of voter analysis to understand their constituents, amid constant pressure from lobbyists and donors, he said. In the healthcare analysis, Wilson said he didn’t try to gauge why the voters approved or rejected each of the three policy options. “I don’t have the ability to discern or divine the reason why the voters answered as they did … that’s the next stage” of development, he added. | 0 |
Apparently Michelle hasn’t ruined the kids’ lunches enough already. An example of Michelle Obama’s mandated school lunches
From Yahoo : Students might notice some changes in the cafeteria when they go back to school in a few weeks. The USDA will announce rules today that require schools to get rid of unhealthy snacks and eliminate students’ exposure to junk food , ABC News has exclusively learned.
The biggest difference this year will be what students see around the school. If a snack, food item or beverage is not healthy enough for a school to sell or serve, it can’t be advertised either. That means no more pictures of soda on vending machines or in the cafeteria.
Katie Wilson, USDA deputy under secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, said many schools requested these changes. “Education and wellness and advertising to kids about healthier choices [and] that all has to be part of the school environment just like making sure they have pencils and paper and computers,” Wilson said.
One study found that 70 percent of elementary and middle school students see ads for junk food at school and research published earlier this month showed that kids tend to eat more after seeing ads for unhealthy food. Another lovely school lunch
Snacks can’t have too many calories or too much sodium, fat or sugar, according to the guidelines for schools . Foods that are “whole grain-rich” or mostly made up of fruits or vegetables are emphasized, and schools are recommended to sell only water, low-fat milk or milk alternatives, or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice.
Wilson said 98 percent of schools around the country already meet these standards. Now that the rules are finalized, she said the USDA will continue its efforts to educate parents, communities and school staff about better nutritional food choices.
Healthier food in schools is nothing new. Guidelines about healthy school lunches and snacks have been rolling out for several years and are part of First Lady Michelle Obama ’s “Let’s Move” campaign launched in 2010 to fight childhood obesity .
DCG | 0 |
Christopher Manion https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/threats-real/
Back in the 1980s, I was involved in Senate hearings that exposed some of the corruption in the Mexican government, business elites, police, and the military.
We were only touching the tip of the iceberg, of course, but the State Department vehemently opposed us nonetheless (yes, there were neocons there then as well).
The hearings were ignored in the States, but they raised Hell in Mexico, and that meant that it raised Hell in the coven of apparatchiks at State as well. They did their best to retaliate, and, fortunately, the leader of the pack pleaded years later to federal charges of lying to Congress (“Hey, doesn’t everybody???!!”) on another matter (Sometimes the chickens do come home to roost.).
But the Mexican corruptos were a different breed. Nobody was going to bring them to justice – the ruling PRI (then and now) was seamlessly coordinating and cooperating with the drug gangs, the military killers, and the corrupt elites.
Several years later, I planned to attend a conference in Mexico City – where I used to live, but had not visited since our hearings. Then, out of nowhere, at a social function, a diplomat from the Embassy of Mexico in Washington approached me and said, “I hear you’re going to Mexico.” (How did she know?)
“Go nowhere alone,” she said sternly. “Stay in your hotel after dark. Travel only with the other conferees on the bus (she knew everything about this very non-political conference). And NEVER hail a cab!”
So there I was. I couldn’t go to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I couldn’t go visit old friends in their homes. I couldn’t even go look at the house in Colonia Polanco where Stalin’s secret agent from Barcelona killed Leon Trotsky with a pickaxe.
So I asked this generous woman, who was probably risking her career, why she was telling me this.
“They have long memories. They have a kill list. I’ve seen it,” she said.
Period.
The (im)moral of the story: Death threats are real. So this recent headline caught my attention:
Dave Schippers, who served as the Chief Investigative Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s probe into whether Bill Clinton committed impeachable offenses, is “terrified by Hillary Clinton.”
Read it . He wanted to investigate everything, including the corruption, the cattle futures, the murders – not only Vince Foster’s, but all those folks in Arkansas But he was waved off. He read every single document that had been collected on the breadth and depth of the Clinton Corruption Machine, but he was stiffed by unidentified higher-ups.
Ever since, he’s watched his back. I’m sure that he can’t walk around alone at night, or hail a cab on a busy street, or take his kids to the park.
Why? Because death threats are real. Ignore them and you die. | 0 |
(Before It's News)
Obvious political double standards
When it comes to scandal-plagued and utterly dishonest Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch clandestinely meets on the tarmac of Sky Harbor airport for a tête-à-tête with Hill’s husband Bill aboard a private jet — ostensibly to discuss grandchildren.
And, though FBI Director James Comey found compelling evidence of concerning issues in Hillary Clinton’s use of multiple private email servers, he concluded that he would not recommend charges against her, though he conceded Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” in handling classified information. Comey refused to recommend an indictment against Hillary Clinton, despite “evidence” she violated laws pertaining to the handling of classified information, jeopardizing U.S. national security. These breaches occurred during her term as Secretary of State. “There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that information,” Comey acknowledged.
Additionally, Comey noted that other individuals in a similar situation would not necessarily be let off the hook with no charges, and would probably face penalties. “But that’s not what we’re deciding now,” he glibly fed us, the sheeple. “We are expressing to Justice our view that no charges be made in this case.”
“Justice,” of course, is U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the tarmac meeting fame. Addressing the people of the United States, the FBI director actually said that “no outside influence of any kind was brought to bear” on the investigation. He neglected to mention the inappropriate meeting between former president Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch aboard a private jet.
Hillary Clinton is free to run for the U.S. Presidency, guaranteeing Obama’s third term.
Here in Arizona, we have what clearly appears to be a personal vendetta carried out by a federal judge timed to coincide with the General Election in which popular Sheriff Joe Arpaio is on the ballot running for a seventh term. He was formally charged Tuesday with criminal contempt of court for ignoring U.S. District Judge Murray Snow’s order in a three-year old racial-profiling case. Arpaio acknowledged violating Snow’s order but insists the breach wasn’t intentional
Arpaio’s challenger in the race is once again rough ‘er up Democrat Paul Penzone, funded by multi-billionaire Socialist George Soros, who is contemptuous of national borders. Soros also funds Hillary Clinton and John McCain .
If convicted, Sheriff Arpaio could face up to six months in jail. A misdemeanor conviction would not bar Arpaio from serving as sheriff.
Sheriff Arpaio’s interview with Lou Dobbs is worth your time: | 0 |
The first time I saw Josephine Baker up close I was in London. I went to the Alexander Calder exhibition at the Tate Modern and there, at the entrance to the exhibition, was a wire sculpture of Baker. You can see why it was one of the very first wire sculptures that Calder made — the subject demanded a new medium. With all due respect to Beyoncé, Josephine Baker has the most famous physique in showbiz history — a body so often compared to a spring, it’s only natural that an artist would try to capture her in that form, complete with spiraling breasts. Four months later, I left for a writer’s retreat in the Périgord region of France, no longer thinking about Josephine Baker. This is an area comparatively light on American tourists. It’s not that it’s lacking in visual splendor — the Dordogne River, Marqueyssac gardens, the medieval town of and Castelnaud Valley, fittingly named considering its collection of castles perched on cliffs — but no beaches were stormed, no patron saints burned, no water lilies painted. The region’s primary claim to fame is the prehistoric caves of Font de Gaume, Grotte de Rouffignac and Lascaux (Lascaux 4, the latest reproduction of the original, opens in December). The area’s other extremely popular attraction happens to be the Château des Milandes, a breathtaking Renaissance castle overlooking the Dordogne. This, it turns out, is where Josephine Baker, who was born in St. Louis in 1906, lived during the second half of her life. She married and raised her children here. “I have two loves,” sang the queen of the Jazz Age in “J’ai Deux Amours,” her most enduring tune, “my country and Paris. ” If she had recorded a remake, she might have added a third love to the list: Milandes. And seeing as how I was staying a mere 15 minutes away, in the town of Les I decided to pay it a visit. I thought perhaps I could learn more about Baker’s passionate relationship with France — and its mutual fascination with her. The chateau is up a twisting, idyllic road bordered by trees and stone walls. When you walk in the front door, you are greeted by the sound of radio interviews with Baker and an exhibition of her stage costumes. There are over a dozen gowns, bustiers and jumpsuits, most involving crystals, all in size . I was not prepared for such a display. Because most French chateaus are privately owned (including this one, currently inhabited by the Sarlat native Angélique de whose husband is a relative of “The Little Prince” author) most are limited in access. But here visitors may wander through a labyrinth of children’s bedrooms furnished with gramophones and trunks, Art Deco bathrooms, a huge kitchen and a vaulted gun room (not the official name of the room, but there’s a rifle on a tripod pointed at your head as you enter). There are also cases of military medals and a commendation letter from Charles de Gaulle for Baker’s efforts during World War II. Baker was a spy for her adopted country. She hid weapons for the French Resistance and smuggled documents across the border, tucking them beneath gowns like the ones on the first floor. The crown jewel of the tour is Baker’s famous banana belt, which she wore — along with nothing else — in the Danse Sauvage at the in 1926. Baker did more for the sexualization of bananas than the collective class demonstrations of the last century. The bananas are gold, not yellow — something impossible to tell in the black and white footage. As I admired the belt, a British tourist next to me turned to her husband and said: “She wasn’t actually naked all that much, it’s just what everybody chooses to remember. ” “Everybody” included me. It’s exactly what I saw when I looked at the Calder piece and it’s probably what Calder saw when he looked at Josephine Baker: an outline. But on the 110th anniversary of her birth, it’s worth noting that there is so much more to Baker — and to Baker’s France — than meets the eye. In addition to being a performer and a spy, she was the last speaker before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 march on Washington. Slightly less celebrated is the fact that, in her 40s, she began adopting children from different countries. There were 12 in all and they would come to be known as the Rainbow Tribe. For Baker, they were the living embodiment of a Utopian racial ideal. The easy contemporary parallel would be Angelina Jolie — except that when Baker’s children became an attraction for tourists, she fully embraced the gawking. Then, after World War II, Baker firmly settled at Milandes. She employed half the town. Her brother married the postwoman. Unlike her hectic nights of performing, her days in the Périgord were peaceful. Or as peaceful as anyone’s days can be with 12 small children, multiple monkeys and a pet cheetah. Once I started listening for Josephine Baker, I heard her everywhere. Back in Les Eyzies, I ran into Josette Garrigue, the woman who owns the farm down the road. I told her where I had been and she nodded and smiled. “I remember her well,” she said, “Back then, this place was only little roads, just a romantic spot where she could drive around in her old cars. It’s tragic what happened to her. ” What happened was bankruptcy. Baker, who once claimed to be the richest woman in the world, fell into insurmountable debt, despite the help of friends like Grace Kelly and Brigitte Bardot. In 1968, she was forced to give the chateau over to creditors. After the bananas, the second most famous image of Baker is of her sitting in the rain, locked out of her home by the new owner. The local loyalty to her is unwavering to this day Ms. de referred to the new owner in an email as “a bad guy. ” “I don’t want to speak about him!” she responded quickly. “Josephine sold because she was without money, and a lot of people exploited the situation. ” That evening, I sat at my neighbor’s kitchen table with her friend, Michel Salon, a retired career waiter who has served everyone from Serge Gainsbourg to the king of Belgium. “The first time I saw her was a Sunday,” Mr. Salon, 70, recalled. “She was cleaning dishes in the castle cafe. A little girl was watching her and Josephine called to her, picked her up and hugged her. She loved children but couldn’t have any of her own. The girl’s mother yelled at her husband for not bringing a camera. “Oh, she was so famous. But she was an artist and she didn’t know how to manage money. She employed people who billed her for projects she didn’t order. I know one waiter who would steal money from the cafe while Josephine was in Paris. Can you imagine someone doing something like that to her in Paris?” I could not. Then again, I imagined Baker’s life as a young woman in Paris was light on the dishwashing in general — but who knew? So after seeing where she spent the latter half of her life, I decided to head back to the beginning. I contacted Julia Browne, who runs Walk the Spirit Tours: Black Paris and Beyond, which offers specialized tours with themes like “Pioneers of the Left Bank,” “Great Black Music Walk” and, of course, “Josephine Baker. ” Ms. Browne paired me with David Burke, 79, an American author and film producer who is working on a documentary about Baker. Thirty years ago, he and his wife decided to live in Paris for a year — and they never left. We met outside the boutique Hotel Joséphine, right at the Baker epicenter of Montmartre and Pigalle. “It’s funny,” Mr. Burke said, “Josephine wasn’t really a jazz person and she was a dreadful singer at first, but she was involved with the whole Jazz Age community. She’s the most famous person in the whole group, the most famous of any American to ever live in France. ” I raise my eyebrows. Really? Mr. Burke mostly gives Lost Generation tours: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald. “Really. ” We begin our walk on the Rue Fontaine, which leads to the Moulin Rouge. Mr. Burke described the area in its heyday as being “like 52nd Street back in the bebop days. ” The street used to be dotted with jazz clubs, none of which still exist. It took a bit of an imaginative leap to picture the scene our conversation took place between a nail salon and a pizzeria. The one structure still standing is the former Le Grand Duc, where Langston Hughes was employed as a busboy and where Ada Smith, a. k. a. Bricktop, who later took Baker under her wing, first performed. Six Degrees of Josephine Baker would be too easy a game to play in France. Or in America, for that matter. Baker was a star even before she arrived in Paris (starring in “Shuffle Along,” one of the first musicals, a revival of which opened on Broadway in April). But Paris made her a megastar. “People just went wild for her,” Mr. Burke said. “There was a need for something fresh and Josephine brought this combination of Africa, jazz, humor and America in her presentation. And she was personable. Everyone loved her. ” Well, not everyone. I broach the subject of “The Hungry Heart,” a scathing portrait of Baker I read on the train up to Paris. It’s written (with a ) by Baker, her unofficial 13th son, who met Josephine when he was already a young man. Mr. Burke said he finds the book “unreliable and worrisome. ” I can see why. In it, Baker is an oversexed fabulist who, “like a black Chaplin,” stepped on anyone “to get where she wanted to get. ” She answers the door naked for Balanchine and repeatedly refers to Marlene Dietrich as “that German cow. ” He recommended I read “Josephine Baker in Art and Life” by Bennetta instead. I eventually did, and it was twice as sophisticated and half as fun. We turned onto the Rue de Clichy. The arch of the Casino de Paris — Baker’s third musical hall home, where she performed with feathered wings — rose up in the distance. “Josephine almost never played an American,” Mr. Burke said. “She was always playing a woman of color from somewhere else. So she would play a Vietnamese girl who was in love with a French planter in occupied Vietnam. ” “That’s quite the colonial fantasy,” I said. “ ‘Thank you for occupying us, how can we serve you?’ ” “And it was Josephine,” Mr. Burke said, “so it’s everyone’s fantasies at once. ” Next, we make our way over to the Avenue Montaigne off the a and stretch that was familiar to Baker. One side effect of immense fame is a fluency in fashion: Josephine was beloved by designers like Balmain and Dior. Were she alive now, she surely would have had her own line of perfume. Instead, she had the lucrative Baker Fix, a hair pomade inspired by her own shellacked curls. But the area also symbolizes the end and the beginning of Baker’s Parisian life. At one end of the street is the lovely Théâtre des . It was here, in October 1925, that Baker performed in La Revue Nègre, her first performance in Paris. And a short walk away is L’Église de la Madeleine, the site of her funeral procession in April 1975 she was given full French military honors and drew over 20, 000 mourners. Mr. Burke and I attempted entry, but it was the middle of the afternoon and all efforts to talk an usher into opening the doors were thwarted. We were left on the outside, looking in — a bit like I felt at the end of the tour. As informative as it was, it was more walk and less spirit. I finished with a greater sense of where Baker led her life, but why she could be considered the most famous American expat remained a mystery. So I did what anyone would do: I contacted a man who has devoted the majority of his professional life to paying homage to Josephine Baker on stage. The cabaret singer and choreographer Brian Scott Bagley, 37, hails from Baltimore like Mr. Burke, he came to Paris temporarily — in 2006 — and simply never left. I met him on the bustling Boulevard Beaumarchais in the Marais and we took a stroll through the neighborhood, Mr. Bagley’s patent leather shoes clicking along. The Marais is not Josephine Baker’s Paris, but it is, objectively, a good place to get lunch. “Honey boo,” Mr. Bagley said, taking my arm. “I dream in French now. I have different accents for American people and for French people. I’m kind of like a spy in that way, like our girl. ” Mr. Bagley believes that Baker’s charisma was so stupendous, it still “latches on” to performers like him (“I am the love child of Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minnelli adopted by Josephine Baker”). She brings people together from the great beyond. I expressed a healthy degree of skepticism about this — right before “J’ai Deux Amours” came dripping out of some cafe speakers and Mr. Bagley and I discovered that we were born the same day of the same year. O. K. maybe. Once seated, we flipped through his collection of vintage Paris Matches with Baker on the cover and he elaborated on what makes her so important. “Everybody imagines something different when they come to Paris, but it’s the Harlem of Paris that not everyone knows about but should, because that’s where the energy is still so potent. Josephine was the center of it,” he said. “She came here and — boom — she could live in a world without segregation. Boom, she was a major star. She lived that European dream we all want, of liberation and sexual freedom. We all want to come here and meet some amazing French guy, make love in some chambre de bonne and then fall in love with some European aristocrat. ” Paris had long been “the Bermuda triangle of the muses,” as Mr. Bagley put it, one of the world’s great magnets for writers, painters and musicians. But like Mr. Burke, he thinks that Baker was much more than an artist. She was a lifestyle. She was “the ultimate connector,” inspiring fellow performers, sitting with audience members and chatting long after the curtain closed. And, she “did everything. ” He, too, has his preferred Baker narratives (he’s partial to “Remembering Josephine Baker” by Stephen Papich). “But it doesn’t matter what you read,” he said. “What matters is embracing Paris the way she embraced it. ” (Mr. Bagley was recently named assistant artistic director of le Parc de Josephine Baker, an events space and resort, complete with pool, just down the road from the Château des Milandes.) Baker’s last show was . She was 69, and she died in her sleep a few days later. But Mr. Bagley is right — she’s not gone. Not just in the sense that she is remembered or in the sense that there is a square named after her in Montparnasse, but in the sense that she is present. There are still many walls up for black performers around the globe but, as Mr. Bagley noted, “Josephine broke down a ton of them. ” Like Paris itself, Baker is at once idolized and familiar — once you fall in love with her, you both want to share that love and keep it for yourself. This is evidenced by the fact that not a single person with whom I spoke referred to her by her last name, as they did with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein and Porter. Everyone feels as if Josephine was theirs. | 1 |
Last Saturday, swarms of women (and more than a few men) marched in Washington and around the world following Donald Trump’s inauguration. Some readers were concerned that The Times did an inadequate job estimating how many people showed up when it described the number as more than a million worldwide. Estimating crowd sizes has long been a fraught topic. Large gatherings of people can be difficult to estimate in precise terms — and no one will be happy with the outcome. There’s even a group of scientists who specialize in “crowd estimates,” as a Times piece comparing the sizes of the Washington women’s march to Trump’s inauguration noted. The Times used estimates compiled by the police, as well as figures from mayoral, public safety and homeland security offices. For greater accuracy in estimating the Washington numbers, editors asked Marcel Altenburg and Keith Still, crowd scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, to analyze aerial photographs and video. The Times incorporated all this material to reach its final estimate of “more than one million. ” Since march organizers have a vested interest in a high turnout, The Times only included their estimates parenthetically, through a link to a website reporting a total turnout of nearly five million: “(March organizers offered a worldwide tally for the 673 ‘sister’ marches, but when asked, could not provide an explanation of how the tally had been calculated. )” An editor who helped anchor the coverage in New York said: The marches here in the States drew foreign protesters, too, but some were denied entry on questionable grounds. That story did not appear in The Times’s pages, and several readers noticed. The public editor’s take: Not a huge story, but from what I’ve read on other news sites, it seemed like a compelling one. Unfortunately, Times readers missed out. Readers also noticed a story that is a repeated issue for The Times and one on which the public editor has written about previously. The public editor’s take: I’m with Schafran on this one, for the reasons she states. Then there were Trump’s views on women during the presidential campaign, which came up again last weekend during the marches, such as his remarks about Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina, Hillary Clinton, and that infamous recording in which he brags about groping women. The issue? That The Times did not say that Trump’s statements were misogynistic. “Many participants,” The Times wrote, “believed Mr. Trump expressed misogynistic views during the presidential campaign. ” The public editor’s take: Hmmm. I’m generally reluctant to think that a journalist’s work is achieved through labels, but it’s hard to look at many of Trump’s statements and not find them misogynistic. It depends on which statement we’re referring to, but to say “some” of his statements about women are misogynistic is unequivocal. The issue of Trump and labels came up in a different context this week when The Times called one of his baseless claims a lie in a headline: “Trump Repeats Lie About Popular Vote in Meeting With Lawmakers. ” The majority of readers who wrote in wrote to applaud The Times for doing so. Some other readers, however, were warier, arguing that The Times would never be able to find its way inside Trump’s mind. We went to the associate managing editor for standards, Phil Corbett, for his take on the issue. The public editor’s take: These parameters make sense to me. My vote is for using the word “lie” in a highly limited way, under specific circumstances and with approval, as I’ve written before. As some of our readers point out, the intent of the person called out for lying matters. It can’t be just the routine stuff of the spin room. Shortly after the election, The Times ran an piece by Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, in which he wrote, “When you call us the Rust Belt, you demean our work and diminish who we are. ” A reader wrote in then to applaud. This week, Derck wrote in again when The Times ran a story on the front page with the headline: “In a Rust Belt Town, the Women’s March Draws Shrugs and Cheers From Afar. ” “No, I’m not going to give this up,” she wrote. “I know how much work is left to do but are you still going to be calling us Rust Belt when we may be the leader in alternative energy or something else in 2090?” We shared Derck’s letters with the national editor, Marc Lacey, who said: The public editor’s take: Lacey’s answer is spot on. Last Monday, the public editor criticized a story on dads taking care of their kids while the moms marched against Trump, arguing that it should have never run. The column drew some wry responses from fathers, which we decided to highlight here. Here’s to dads. | 1 |
A new study finds that 88 percent of coverage of President Donald Trump and his administration is negative. [The study by the Media Research Center (MRC) found that the evening newscasts on the “Big Three” TV networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, were overwhelmingly hostile to Trump. In its study, the MRC found that over the president’s first 30 days in office, the networks dedicated 16 hours of coverage to President Trump, 54 percent of its total news coverage. MRC found up to 674 negative statements aimed at Trump while only a tiny 88 statements were deemed positive. “Our measure of media tone excludes soundbites from identified partisans, focusing instead on tallying the evaluative statements made by reporters and the talking heads (experts and average citizens) included in their stories,” MRC noted. “In their coverage of Trump’s first month, the networks crowded their stories with quotes from citizens angry about many of his policies, while providing relatively little airtime to Trump supporters. The MRC also noted that “anchors and reporters often injected their own editorial tone into the coverage. ” The study also noted that the president’s call for a temporary moratorium on travel from seven nations drew the most negative coverage. Other negative coverage centered on Trump’s border policies, his economic plans, the battle over his cabinet picks, as well as Trump’s “complicated relationship” with Russia. “Further highlighting the hostile tone of these newscasts, nearly an hour of coverage (56 minutes) was given over to protests on various topics, with nearly (82 out of 442) of the Trump stories or briefs aired during these 30 days including at least some discussion of an protest,” the MRC concluded. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0 |
In Italia la terra trema ancora, premier Renzi segue la situazione © REUTERS/ Emiliano Grillotti URL abbreviato 1 12 0 0 Il premier Matteo Renzi ha contattato il capo della Protezione Civile Fabrizio Curcio a seguito della forte scossa che è stata registrata nella parte centrale del Paese, riporta l'agenzia Askanews.
Un terremoto di magnitudo 5,4 si è verificato alle 19.11. L'epicentro del sisma è stato registrato ad una profondità di 9 km tra le città di Perugia e Macerata. Le scosse sono state sentite dagli abitanti di diverse regioni: Lazio, Marche e Abruzzo.
I sindaci delle città italiane nelle vicinanze dell'epicentro parlano di alcuni danni. ... © 2016 Sputnik. Tutti i diritti riservati Registrazione Cliccando su “Registra” si conferma il consenso al trattamento dei dati personali e l’accettazione delle nostre norme sull’Utilizzo dei dati personali. Registra Per favore inserisci il codice Ripristina Chiudere Regolamento
La registrazione e l'autorizzazione degli utenti dei siti Sputnik tramite la creazione di propri account o mediante gli account dei social network presuppone l'accettazione delle seguenti regole:
Gli utenti sono tenuti a comportarsi nel rispetto delle normative nazionali e internazionali vigenti, rispettando gli altri partecipanti alla discussione, i lettori e le persone menzionate nei loro post.
L'amministrazione del sito ha diritto a cancellare i commenti scritti in una lingua che non sia quella della maggior parte dei contenuti del sito stesso.
In tutte le versioni dei siti sputniknews.com i commenti scritti possono essere modificati.
Un commento di un utente può essere cancellato nei seguenti casi: Non corrisponde al tema del post. Incita all'odio ed alla discriminazione razziale, etnica, religiosa, sessuale o sociale e viola I diritti delle minoranze. Viola i diritti dei minori, arrecando a questi ultimi danni di varia natura, compresi danni morali. Contiene idee di natura estremista o incita al compimento di attività illegali. Contiene insulti, minacce ad altri utenti, organizzazioni o individui, denigra la dignità o mina la reputazione commerciale. Contiene insulti o messaggi oltraggiosi nei confronti di Sputnik . Viola la privacy, rivela dati personali o dati di terzi senza il loro consenso o viola la segretezza di una corrispondenza. Descrive o fa riferimento a scene di violenza e crudeltà nei confronti di animali. Contiene informazioni su metodi di suicidio o incita a commettere il suicidio. Persegue obiettivi commerciali, contiene pubblicità occulta, propaganda politica fuorilegge o link a risorse online recanti tali informazioni. Promuove prodotti o servizi di terze parti senza autorizzazione. Contiene espressioni offensive o volgari e/o elementi lessicali che possono essere definiti come tali. Contiene spam, pubblicizza spam, forme di phishing, truffe commerciali e mailing list illegali. Promuove l'uso di stupefacenti e sostanze psicotrope, fornisce informazioni sulla loro produzione e utilizzo. Contiene links a virus e malware. E' parte di azioni volte a produrre un grande volume di commenti recanti contenuto simile o identico, "flash mob". Riempie la discussione di messaggi fuori tema o irrilevanti. Viola l'etichetta o asseconda comportamenti aggressivi, provocatori o volti ad umiliare gli altri interlocutori "trolling". Non segue le norme linguistiche, ad esempio è scritto interamente in maiuscolo oppure non è suddiviso in frasi di senso compiuto.
L'amministrazione del sito ha il diritto di bloccare l'accesso alla pagina ad un utente, oppure bloccare l'account di quest'ultimo qualora i suoi commenti violino le suddette norme, oppure rechino un contenuto giudicato assimilabile ad una violazione delle stesse.
L'utente può inoltrare richiesta di ripristino o sblocco del proprio account scrivendo a .
Il messaggio deve contenere i seguenti parametri: Oggetto del messaggio: Ripristino dell'account/sblocco dell'accesso Nome Utente Spiegazione delle azioni che hanno violato le suddette regole ed hanno portato al blocco dell'account.
Qualora i moderatori ritengano sia possibile ripristinare l'account o sbloccare l'accesso, questo verrà eseguito.
In caso di ripetute violazioni delle suddette regole l'account dell'utente verrà bloccato per la seconda volta, senza possibilità di venire ripristinato.
Per contattare i moderatori scrivere a . Log in | 0 |
Erdoğan Ailesi ve IŞİD (devamı) Voltaire İletişim Ağı | 5 Kasım 2016 français Español italiano Deutsch Türk Hacker grubu Redhack, Enerji Bakanının elektronik postalarını hack’ladı. Hiç beklemeden bir Türk mahkemesi bu elektronik postalara ilişkin yayın yasağı koydu.
Bu arada, söz konusu 20 gigabaytlık veriler, ICSVE (Şiddet İçeren Aşırılık Araştırmaları Merkezi) Müdür Yardımcısı ve Türkiye’nin eski terörle mücadele amiri Profesör Ahmet Yayla tarafından incelendi [ 1 ]. Elektronik postalar sürüp giden söylentileri teyit ediyor ve yeni ayrıntılar içeriyor.
Suriye’de IŞİD tarafından çalınan petrol, tekel olarak Türk topraklarına taşıma işini ihalesiz alan Powertrans şirketine ait 8 500 tanker ile naklediliyordu. Powertrans, başlangıçta Singapur merkezli olan ve daha sonra Cayman Adalarına nakledilen, çok gizemli Grand Fortune Ventures şirketine ait. Bu montajın gerisinde, Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan’ın damadı ve onun Enerji Bakanı Berat Albayrak’ın (fotoğraf) şirketi gizleniyor.
“ Hacked Emails Link Turkish Minister to Illicit Oil ”, Ahmed Yayla, World Policy , October 17, 2016.
Çeviri
Murat Özdemir | 0 |
Chelsea Handler has blasted the “gun lobby” and issued a renewed call for increased gun control measures days before the talk show host is set to be honored at the Brady Center Bear Awards Wednesday night. [In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter this week, Handler said she believes President Donald Trump loves the “gun lobby” and “doesn’t give a sh*t about people. ” In fact, Handler contends that Trump “doesn’t care about anybody. ” Handler told THR: Obviously, [the state of] gun control in this country is totally unacceptable, and the gun lobby is so strong and so powerful that anytime a celebrity can bring attention to this cause — among many other [causes] — you know it’s an easy thing for anyone to do. We’re way behind the times in terms of gun control in this country, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. Our voices just need to keep getting louder, and the people that make an impact need to really just step up and stick their necks out a little bit more. THR then pointed to the NRA’s support of Trump during last year’s campaign campaign and Trump’s Amendment stance then and now. Handler responded, “People need to be louder than ever with this president and his relationship to the gun lobby. He doesn’t give a s — about people. He doesn’t care about anybody. ” The host of Netflix’s Chelsea also appeared to suggest that gun ownership is nothing more than a “hobby. ” “Nobody is trying to take away your guns. If you want to go shoot, you know, whatever, in the woods, that’s fine, but it’s a hobby,” she told THR. “If your hobby is [affecting] innocent people being killed all the time, children included, don’t you think you should reconsider the lack of restrictions placed on your hobby?” Handler mentioned a few specific gun controls she believes are needed, such as “heightened … restrictions on buying guns. ” The left has been pursuing such restrictions in the form of universal background checks for decades, but the American people have continually elected people — either to Congress, the White House, or both — who will prevent such checks from being put in place. The opposition to the checks springs from the understanding that they not the real goal of the left. Rather, the goal is the gun registration that follows such checks (see California). Moreover, the American people have rejected such checks because they do not work determined attackers still kill large numbers of innocents at will with firearms, knives, trucks. After all, France has universal background checks, yet they witnessed 142 innocents gunned down by terrorists in 2015 alone. London has such checks too, but that did not stop three attackers from driving a van into pedestrians on London Bridge on June 3, 2017, then chasing and stabbing innocents in Borough Market. Closer to home. California has universal background checks, but that did not prevent the May 23, 2014 Santa Barbara attack, the December 2, 2015, San Bernardino attack, the June 1, 2016, UCLA or the October 8, 2016, ambush and murder of two Palm Springs police officers. Additionally, the attacks in France and the one in San Bernardino occurred in zones, and Trump condemned such zones from the campaign trail, arguing that citizens ought to be able to be armed to shoot back. On January 10, 2016, just over after month after the San Bernardino attack, Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press: If in Paris or if in California recently, where the fourteen people were killed and probably others to follow — in terms of that group because you have some people who are very, very badly wounded — if in Paris they had guns or if in California [they had guns,] on the other side, where the bullets go both ways, not just in one direction. You wouldn’t have had the kind of carnage that you had. That does not sound like a man who “doesn’t care about anybody. ” Instead, it sounds like a man that wants American citizens to have a fighting chance should a terror attack occur. This article has been updated to include additional information. 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. | 1 |
0 |
|
Tweet Home » Headlines » World News » Watch This Incredible Video And Decide For Yourself: Did Hillary Cheat At The Last Debate By Using An Embedded Tablet Device In Her Podium?
New Wikileaks documents show that Hillary Clinton, in association with the mainstream media, was given debate questions ahead of time. What’s more, as you’ll see below, Hillary, who claims she was merely taking notes, was actually reading directly off of the podium , almost as if someone was feeding her answers and bullet points…
From Mac Slavo, SHTFPlan :
New Wikileaks documents show that Hillary Clinton, in association with the mainstream media, was given debate questions ahead of time. It’s also been rumored that the former First Lady may have used an ear piece at one of the debates, giving her a significant advantage.
Last week footage of the final Presidential debate begain circling the internet and showed that Clinton may have been using some sort of screen at her podium. While many dismissed this as a lighting effect, an investigation by Piper McGowin at The Daily Sheeple suggests thatHillary may have actually been using some sort of tablet device.
The following video will leave little doubt that something just wasn’t right at the last debate. As you’ll see, Hillary, who claims she was merely taking notes, was actually reading directly off of the podium, almost as if someone was feeding her answers and bullet points.
Moreover, and quite damning, the notes Hillary was supposedly taking were were being written down with a pen that didn’t have a tip on it . So, either she wasn’t taking notes, or, she was using a stylus on an electronic device.
Watch this incredible video and decide for yourself:
( Watch directly at Youtube )
For an extensive breakdown of the Wikileaks notes that add further legitimacy to the claims that Hillary’s podium is loaded with cheat-tech, we encourage you read Leaked Emails Reveal Hillary Can’t Speak for Very Long Without a Podium | 0 |
MANILA — A fire raced through a squalid Manila shantytown teeming with people on Tuesday night, as residents armed only with buckets of water tried to fight the inferno. As day broke on Wednesday, more than 15, 000 people found themselves homeless, bereft of their few worldly possessions and forced to sleep on the Philippine capital’s streets. “It spread fast across the neighboring homes made of light materials,” said Wilberto Tiu, Manila’s fire chief. “Firemen had trouble reaching the area because of small alleyways,” Mr. Tiu said of the warren of closely built homes, some constructed of no more than plywood and scrap metal. He said the alleys between homes were too narrow for fire trucks. Residents tried to outrun the blaze, grabbing whatever they could carry: pots and pans, family pets, washing machines and electric fans. Dozens of people were injured in the stampede, but miraculously, officials said, no one was killed. The blaze had been brought under control by Wednesday morning. Fires in the country’s slums are a regular occurrence. About 1, 200 families were left without homes in January after a fire in Navotas, a suburb of Manila. Residents of shantytowns are at particular risk in the months of February and March, as the weather warms and the rains stop, officials said. In March 2015, more than 7, 000 families were left homeless when a blaze tore through the same slum, Parola Compound, near the capital’s main port. In 2014, the homes of at least 2, 500 families in the slum were destroyed in a predawn blaze. Investigators said they believed Tuesday’s blaze was caused by faulty electrical wiring or a malfunctioning gas stove. By Wednesday morning, hundreds of families were left to sleep on the street, some at a makeshift shelter at a covered basketball court, disaster officials said. Television footage showed children sleeping on sidewalks along streets near the slum, as health workers distributed food and other supplies. | 0 |
A survivor of a Muslim grooming gang in Rotherham said she reported being raped when she was 13 years old, but authorities did nothing and told her not to mention the ethnicity of the attackers. [The rape survivor, Emma, told Katie Hopkins on LBC radio on Sunday: “I actually reported my abuse 14 years ago. I went to the authorities, my parents did. I sat and gave video interviews with the police, I was willing to work with them. “But as soon as I said the names, I was made to feel as though I was racist and I was the one who had the problem. ” “I was specifically told not to comment on the ethnicity of the perpetrators,” Emma said, adding she was told “numerous times” by police and social workers not to mention race. “I knew I wasn’t racist, but I felt like that was used as a way to silence me. ” Asked by Ms. Hopkins how that made her feel at the time, Emma said: “My perpetrators made me feel like I was in the wrong and they [police and social workers] fed into that. And I felt like: ‘Maybe my perpetrators are right. Maybe it’s not them that’s got the problem, maybe it’s me’. ” Groomed from 12, Emma told LBC listeners she was a virgin when she was raped at age 13. Detailing that the rapes happened regularly, she described one occasion where she was locked in a property and sexually assaulted by multiple men. The Muslim grooming gang then began blackmailing the young teen, and threatened to gang rape her mother if she told her parents. “That was my life,” she said. The rapes continued after she reported it to police, as authorities told her it was “[her] word against his”. The police had also lost the clothes she had been raped in, leaving her with no evidence for a prosecution. Let down by authorities, she found herself being further abused by other rape gangs. She reported rape again at the age of 14, but police said there was not enough evidence. Eventually, her parents moved her out of the country. “Nobody wanted to stop it, and that was the only way they could stop it,” Emma said. Ms. Hopkins told Emma that other parents of victims of Muslim grooming gangs had moved their daughters abroad, saying moving girls to different parts of the country was ineffective as the rape gangs are “networked between cities”. The Rotherham child sex abuse scandal is the biggest child protection scandal in Britain’s history, where, since the late 1980s, police and social services failed to protect girls from predatory grooming gangs made up of Muslim men for fear of being labelled racist, leading to institutional . Other Muslim grooming networks, including in Sheffield and Rochdale, have also been exposed since the first convictions in Rotherham in 2010. Last week, Breitbart London reported that the BBC drama Three Girls, which tells the story of three children from Rochdale targeted by a gang of Pakistani and Afghani origin Muslims, makes no mention of Islam in the trailer or in any press releases. | 0 |
Long after her two sons were in bed, Shanel Berry kept vigil in front of the television at her home in Waterloo, Iowa, watching the week’s horror unfurl and obsessing over a single question: Was the gunman who killed five Dallas police officers black? “I just thought, ‘Please, please don’t let him be black,’” because if he was, she worried that police shootings of black men could become easy to justify. Ms. Berry, an teacher, said she hurt for the officers and their families. But when the gunman was identified and his photo flashed on the screen, she sank even lower. “I told my boys, ‘Now, this will make it even harder. ’” Fifteen hundred miles away, David Moody, a retired Las Vegas police officer, woke on Friday morning to fellow officers writing messages of anger and condolence on their Facebook pages, posting badges in solidarity with the Dallas Police Department. He had seethed at what he called the sentiment of protests over the deaths of two black men fatally shot by the police in Louisiana and Minnesota. And now this. “The atmosphere that’s out there right now,” he said. “We don’t get up in the morning thinking how can we violate somebody’s rights today, how can we pick on this type of person. Every guy I know that’s out there working is getting up every day and thinking he’s going to make a difference. ” Even as political leaders, protesters and law enforcement officials struggled to find common ground and lit candles of shared grief, there was an inescapable fear that the United States was being pulled further apart in its anger and anguish over fatal shootings by police officers followed by a sniper attack by a military veteran who said he wanted to kill white police officers. Just days after the United States celebrated its 240th birthday, people in interviews across the country said that the nation increasingly felt mired in bloodshed and blame, and that despite pleas for compassion and unity, it was fracturing along racial and ideological lines into angry camps of liberals against conservatives, Black Lives Matter against Blue Lives Matter, protesters against the police. Whose side were you on? Which victims did you mourn? In a televised interview, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations blamed President Obama for waging a “war on cops. ” On social media, others confronted the discrepancies in the everyday lives of black and white Americans, hoping understanding would lead to conversations and action. Along the Las Vegas Strip, a sunbaked of races, backgrounds and political views, tourists and workers said the relentless parade of violence during the week had left them mostly in shock and disbelief. They worried that more would follow. Police departments across the country took precautions, ordering officers to double up in their patrol cruisers and to work in pairs or teams. Civilians were also on guard. Trey Jemmott, an incoming freshman at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said his mother warned him to be careful before he left for the gym the other night. “She always told me, being an you already have strikes against you,” he said. “I just feel like something’s got to change. We thought we were over this. ” At an outdoor food stand on the Strip, three — black, white and Asian — debated whether the bloodshed would lead to healing or deeper divisions as they talked about their own experiences with the police. Martin Clemons, 28, said he and other black friends had been frisked for jaywalking across the Strip. Zach Luciano, 23, who is white, said he had never been stopped or had a negative with law enforcement, and had considered becoming a police officer. “There’s more good cops than bad cops,” Mr. Luciano said. “I wanted to be one of those good ones. ” What the three shared was a grim view that the country’s divides would not heal anytime soon. “It’s sad, but this is what the world’s coming to,” Mr. Luciano said. In New York, Monifa Bandele has spent the past 17 years working to get citizens to video record police interactions, yet as the Facebook Live recording of Philando Castile’s shooting in Minnesota coursed across social media on Wednesday night, she could not bring herself to watch. “I literally thought I would have a stroke. I could feel my blood pressure going up,” said Ms. Bandele, 45, a Brooklyn native. “I work day and night to end police brutality, and no matter how much responsibility I felt, I just couldn’t do it. ” Ms. Bandele and her husband, Lumumba, helped found Copwatch after the 1999 death of Amadou Diallo in a hail of bullets fired by New York City police officers who mistook a wallet in his hand for a gun. She is frequently called upon to comment on police killings, and so watching these videos is part of her work. The night before the Castile video posted, Ms. Bandele had to watch the recording of a police officer in Baton Rouge, La. shooting Alton Sterling as he lay pinned to the ground. But the videos, after what has felt like a constant cycle of videos of police killings of black Americans, proved too much. “It was just a breaking. I have spoken to people who are broken, and they just can’t take any more,” Ms. Bandele said. “Those images visit me at night. The impact is emotional and it is physical. ” Instead, she rushed upstairs to try to take the phones of her two teenage daughters before they could watch the video. But her oldest, Naima, 17, met her on the stairs, distraught, her eyes filled with tears. Ms. Bandele had to take off from work Friday to comfort her girls, to help them deal with the pain they were feeling. Mr. Moody, the retired Las Vegas officer who also is the president of the Las Vegas Fraternal Order of Police, represents the reverse side that vigilance. He said he spent much of his career patrolling the city on motorcycle, and now, when he comes across a traffic stop or a police cruiser flashing its lights, he pauses to watch out for the officers. “You need citizens out there doing this kind of stuff,” Mr. Moody said, “because you never know what’s going to happen. ” Ms. Berry, the teacher in Iowa, said she worked hard to raise her two boys, Dallas, 15, and Amari, 11, to make a good impression. Square your shoulders, she has always told them, look people in the eyes when they talk to you, and stand up for what is right. But that advice comes with a painful exception: Do none of these things if stopped by the police. “That is the hurting part,” said Ms. Berry, 37. “Because that is the part that Dallas doesn’t quite get. ‘Why are you telling me to comply if I am not doing anything wrong?’ I am trying to teach them to be men and stand up for themselves, but at the same time I am telling them to back down and not be who they are. ” This past week has only made that tightrope walk all the more difficult, trying to balance protecting her children’s innocence with preparing them for what feels like an eventuality. She sat down with her sons to watch the news coverage of the shootings and said she struggled with how to simultaneously caution her boys and comfort them. Dallas is about to turn 16, that age when the chests of teenage boys swell with bravado, when they obtain that quintessential American rite of passage — the driver’s license. “This is something we should be celebrating,” Ms. Berry said, “but I am terrified. ” | 1 |
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that the Syria conflict was “tricky” for President Trump because “If Trump does the wrong thing, Putin might not him. ” And that for Trump “the temptation to use his new toys” in launching the strike on Syria “was too much. ” Maher said, “Now, this is very tricky for Donald Trump, because the Syrian regime, of course, is propped up by Russia, and Russia does not want us bombing there. If Trump does the wrong thing, Putin might not him. So — but, you know what, the temptation to use his new toys was too much. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0 |
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The young boy was getting reacquainted with his father after an absence of six months and climbed on him as if he were a tree. The boy kissed his father and hugged him and clambered onto his shoulders. Then, when a protest video streamed on television, the boy grabbed a stick, and the lid of a pot to serve as a shield, and began to mimic a dance of dissent in the living room. There is much joy and relief, but also continued political complication, in the modest apartment of Feyisa Lilesa, the Ethiopian marathon runner who won a silver medal at the Rio Olympics and gained international attention when he crossed his arms above his head at the finish line in a defiant gesture against the East African nation’s repressive government. Afraid to return home, fearing he would be jailed, killed or no longer allowed to travel, Lilesa, 27, remained in Brazil after the Summer Games, then came to the United States in early September. He has received a green card as a permanent resident in a category for individuals of extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business and sports. On Valentine’s Day, his wife, Iftu Mulisa, 26 daughter, Soko, 5 and son, Sora, 3, were reunited with him, first in Miami and then in Flagstaff, where Lilesa is training at altitude for the London Marathon in April. Their immigrant visas are valid until July, but they also hope to receive green cards. “I’m relieved and very happy that my family is with me,” Lilesa said, speaking through an interpreter. “But I chose to be in exile. Since I left the situation has gotten much, much worse. My people are living in hell, dying every day. It gives me no rest. ” Lilesa’s Olympic protest was against Ethiopia’s treatment of his ethnic group, the Oromo people, who compose about a third of the country’s population of 102 million but are dominated politically by the Tigray ethnic group. Last month, Human Rights Watch reported that, in 2016, Ethiopian security forces “killed hundreds and detained tens of thousands” in the Oromia and Amhara regions progressively curtailed basic rights during a state of emergency and continued a “bloody crackdown against largely peaceful protesters” in disputes that have flared since November 2015 over land displacement, constitutional rights and political reform. The Ethiopian government has said that Lilesa could return home safely and would be considered a hero, but he does not believe this. He lists reasons for his suspicions, and they are personal: His Tokkuma Mulisa, who is in his early 20s, has been imprisoned for about a year and reportedly tortured, and his health remains uncertain. His younger brother, Aduna, also a runner, was beaten and detained by the Ethiopian military in October. Aduna Lilesa, 22, said he was training in Burayu, outside the capital, Addis Ababa, on Oct. 16 when soldiers approached him. They hit him in the head with the butt of a rifle, kicked him and threatened to shoot him, he said, while demanding information about Feyisa. Fearing for his life, a gun pointed at him, Aduna said he lied and told the soldiers what he thought they wanted to hear about his brother: “He is a terrorist he is no good. ” Since the Olympics, Aduna said, his wife has been suspended from her job with Ethiopian government radio. He is living with Feyisa in Flagstaff until when he will return home to his wife and young son. “It is not safe, but my family is there,” Aduna Lilesa said. “If I live here, they will be confused. ” Unease extends, too, to the Ethiopian running community. When Feyisa Lilesa runs the London Marathon, one of his primary challengers figures to be Kenenisa Bekele, a Olympic champion on the track and a fellow Oromo who is considered by many the greatest distance runner of all time. The two runners were never close and tension between them increased last September in Berlin, where Bekele ran the marathon time ever. Before that race, Bekele said in an interview with Canadian Running Magazine, speaking in English, which is not his first language, that “anyone have right to protest anything” but “you need to maybe choose how to protest and solve things. ” Asked specifically about Lilesa’s Olympic protest, Bekele said it was better to get an answer from him. Asked about other Ethiopian runners who have made similar gestures, Bekele said that sport should be separate from politics, that everyone had a right to protest in Ethiopia and that the government was trying to “solve things in a democratic way. ” Bekele has received some criticism for not being more forceful in his remarks, and on social media in Ethiopia there is a split between supporters of the two runners. “Many people are being killed,” Lilesa said of Bekele. “How can you say that’s democratic? I’m very angry when he says that. ” His own social awareness, Lilesa said, began when he was a schoolboy, living on a farm in the Jaldu district, sometimes spelled Jeldu, west of Addis Ababa. Security forces used harsh tactics to break up student protests, he said, and sometimes his classmates simply disappeared. He belongs to a younger Oromo generation emboldened to resist what it considers to be marginalization by Ethiopia’s ruling party. “Before, people would run away they feared the government, the soldiers,” Lilesa said. “Today, fear has been defeated. People are standing their ground. They are fed up and feel they have nothing more to lose. ” When he was named to Ethiopia’s Olympic team last May, three months before the Summer Games, Lilesa felt it was urgent to make some kind of protest gesture in Rio de Janeiro. But he did not tell anyone of his plans. If he told his family, they might talk him out of it. If the government found out, he might be kicked off the Olympic team or worse. He continued to visit Oromo people detained in jail and to give money to Oromo students who had been dismissed from school and left homeless. He was wealthy for an Ethiopian, independent, and he sensed that the government monitored some of his movements. He worried that he could be injured or killed in a staged auto accident. Or that someone might ambush him when he was training in the forests around Addis Ababa. When the doorbell rang at his home, he went to the second floor and peered outside before answering. “I was really fearful,” Lilesa said. “Being an Oromo makes one suspect. ” On the final day of the Olympics, his moment came. As he reached the finish of the marathon, in second place behind Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya and ahead of Galen Rupp of the United States, Lilesa crossed his arms. It was a familiar Oromo gesture of protest and one that carried great risk, both to his career representing Ethiopia and to his family. “Giving up running for Ethiopia was the least I could do, because other people were giving up their lives,” Lilesa said. Iftu Mulisa, his wife, was watching at home in Addis Ababa with 15 or 20 relatives and friends. There was loud cheering and celebrating, and then Lilesa crossed his arms. The cheering was replaced by silence and confusion and fear. “Everyone was asking: ‘Does he come home? Does he stay? What happens next? ’” Mulisa said. “It was so shocking. He hadn’t told anyone. ” For two or three days, Lilesa said, he did not answer the phone when his wife called. “I had put them in this position and I just didn’t know what to say to her,” he said. Still, he felt he had made the right decision. “I needed to do this,” Lilesa said. “I thought of it this way: When a soldier enlists, you know the risks, but because you swore to defend the country or the law, you don’t think about the consequences. ” When he finally spoke to his wife, Lilesa said, he tried to calm her and tell her everything would be O. K. But the uncertainty was difficult. “He had never been gone more than a week or two,” Mulisa said. “Having young kids made it more difficult. They missed him and asked questions I couldn’t answer. But I was hopeful we would be reunited one day. ” In a diplomatic whirlwind, Lilesa secured an immigrant visa to the United States and eventually moved to Flagstaff, a training hub at nearly 7, 000 feet where athletes often go to enhance their capacity. He was invited there by a runner from Eritrea, which neighbors Ethiopia. Even in the best of situations, distance running can be an isolating life of training twice a day and sleeping. Lilesa kept in touch with his family through video chats, but they were disrupted for a period when the Ethiopian government restricted internet access. In Ethiopia it is the traditional role of the wife or maid to prepare the food, to do the domestic chores. Without his family, Lilesa said, he sometimes ate only once or twice a day, too tired to cook dinner, hardly recommended for marathoners who routinely train more than 100 miles per week. “I had to fend for myself in a way I’ve never done in my life,” he said. Perhaps the most difficult moment, Lilesa said, came when he was still in Rio de Janeiro after the Games and learned of the death of a close friend, Kebede Fayissa. He had been arrested in August, Lilesa said, and was among more than 20 inmates to die in a fire in September under suspicious circumstances at Kilinto prison on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. Opposition figures have said that the bodies of some prisoners had bullet wounds. “I didn’t even know he had been arrested and there I was in Brazil, finding about his death on Facebook,” Lilesa said of Fayissa. “He had helped me so much at different times of my life. ” Eventually, Mulisa and their two children received immigrant visas to enter the United States and left Addis Ababa in for Frankfurt, Germany, then Miami, where Lilesa greeted them at the airport. The scariest time, Mulisa said, came when she walked down the Jetway to the plane, afraid the Ethiopian government would prevent her from leaving at the last minute. Most likely, Lilesa said, his family was permitted to leave because to do otherwise would have generated negative publicity. In Miami, there was more emotion than words, Mulisa said, as the children hugged their father and she told him, “I didn’t think I would see you so soon. ” While he will surely not be chosen to compete for Ethiopia at the Olympics and world track and field championships while in exile, Lilesa can still make hundreds of thousands of dollars as an independent, elite marathon runner. Since the Olympics, he has run a marathon in Honolulu and a half marathon in Houston. A GoFundMe campaign for him and his family, started by supporters, raised more than $160, 000. The London Marathon is two months away. He now has a voice as strong as his legs. Lilesa has met with United States senators, addressed members of the European Parliament in Brussels, written an essay in The Washington Post and spoken with numerous reporters, trying to spread the story of the Oromo people. If the political situation changes in Ethiopia, he said, he and his family will move home. He does not expect that to happen soon. In the meantime, he hopes that his wife and children will be permitted to make yearly trips there to visit relatives. For himself, he said he had no regrets. “This has given me more confidence, more reasons to try harder, more reasons to compete so that I can use this platform to raise awareness,” Lilesa said. “I’m constantly thinking, what else can I do?” | 1 |
BNI Store Nov 2 2016 “We are losing control of the streets,” say police as Angela Merkel’s Germany descends into chaos and lawlessness GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing catastrophe over her failed mass Muslim migration policy, according to a new report. Germany has been hit by a tidal wave of horrendous violent crime including rapes, sexual and physical assaults, stabbings, home invasions, robberies, burglaries and drug trafficking…not to mention Islamic terrorist attacks. UK Express Adding to the country’s woes is the fact that thousands of people have gone missing after travelling there on invitation from Anegla Merkel. Germany took in more than 1.1million migrants in the past year and parts of the country are crippled with a lack of infrastructure. Now the true reality is hitting home ahead of next year’s elections as the far right surges in the polls threatening to topple the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Mrs Merkel. According to a report by the international policy council the Gatestone Institute, local police in many parts of the country admit that they are stretched to the limit. Despite the mayhem caused by skyrocketing violent crime and terror attacks by Muslim migrants, German officials insist on blaming the unrest on the rise of the “far right extremists” (aka German patriots). The report states: “The rape of a ten-year-old girl in Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony, has drawn renewed attention to the spiralling levels of violent crime perpetrated by migrants in cities and towns across Germany. “Thousands of migrants who entered the country as ‘asylum seekers’ or ‘refugees’ have gone missing. They are, presumably, economic migrants who entered Germany on false pretences. “Many are thought to be engaging in robbery and criminal violence.” According to Freddi Lohse of the German Police Union in Hamburg, many migrant offenders view the leniency of the German justice system as a green light to continue delinquent behaviour, says the report. He said: “They are used to tougher consequences in their home countries. “They have no respect for us.” After the “refugee” disaster that Angela Merkel has created, she is now unsettled about Europe returning to nationalism. Nationalism is a nightmare for all the liberal leaders working for a New World Order. “During the first six months of 2016, Muslim migrants committed 142,500 crimes , according to the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, an increase of nearly 40 per cent over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a suspect has been caught. Muslim migrants committed 208,344 crimes in 2015 , according to a confidential police report leaked to Bild. This figure represents an 80 per cent increase since 2014 and is equivalent to 570 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 23 crimes each hour, in 2015 alone. “Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said they fear for their lives and property in German train stations and subways, while 63 per cent feel unsafe at large public events.” The report added: “The growing sense of lawlessness is substantiated by an October 24 YouGov poll which found that 68 per cent of Germans believe that security in the country has deteriorated during the past several years. Germans are taking to the streets in the thousands in weekly protests against the Muslim invasion started by the Obama/Soros/Clinton Arab Spring and aided and abetted by Angela Merkel. Meanwhile a female police officer has admitted that officers are under attack and that the courts are a “joke.” In a new book, Tania Kambouri, a German police officer, said: “For weeks, months and years I have noticed that Muslims, mostly young men, do not have even a minimum level of respect for the police. “When we are out patrolling the streets, we are verbally abused by young Muslims. “There is the body language, and insults like ‘s*** cop’ when passing by. “If we make a traffic stop, the aggression increases ever further, this is overwhelmingly the case with migrants. “It cannot be that offenders continue to fill the police files, hurt us physically, insult us, whatever, and there are no consequences. “Many cases are closed or offenders are released on probation or whatever. “Yes, what is happening in the courts today is a joke.” The construction of a small mosque, the first in the German state of Thuringia, created controversy after the Alternative for Germany party labeled it a ‘land grab project’ and announced a massive anti-Islam rally. | 1 |
CHENGDU, China — Mao once said that a revolution was not a dinner party. But with the communist revolution turning into opulent capitalism, China’s rich are now making sure the dinner party settings are immaculate and the wine is poured just right. Inspired in part by the “Downton Abbey” television drama, the country’s once raw and raucous tycoons are aspiring to decorum, fueling demand for the services of homegrown butlers trained in the ways of a British manor. “What they would like to say to their friends is, ‘Look, I have a butler, an butler in my home,’ to show how wealthy they are,” said Neal Yeh, a Briton living in Beijing, who for over a decade has helped train and find jobs for butlers. “The country now with the biggest trend in butlers is China,” said Mr. Yeh, whose English accent would be at home on “Downton Abbey,” the television series about a blue blood family in England, which was avidly watched in China. “I dare say I have played a part in starting this trend. ” Butler training schools and agencies have been doing business in China for more than a decade, but the number of recruits has grown sharply in recent years, according to those in the business. Most are Chinese and many are women. The International Butler Academy China opened in 2014 here in Chengdu, a city in southwest China, and offers a boot camp on dinner service, managing homes and other minutiae of high living. “The Chinese are vacationing more now than ever in history, and so they’re being exposed to the West more and more,” said Christopher Noble, an American trainer at the academy who previously ran bars in Cleveland. “But Chinese people see that, experience personal service abroad, and they want to experience it here. ” A boom in butler service might seem incongruous as President Xi Jinping campaigns zealously against corruption and extravagance, and an economic slowdown undercuts lavish spending. But China’s rich continue amassing ever greater fortunes and want what they see as the trappings of respectable refinement. Even under Mr. Xi, butlers are finding growing work as symbols of good taste, according to people in the business. “You read about an economic slowdown, but China’s wealth is still growing,” said Luo Jinhuan, who has worked as a butler in Shanghai and, most recently, Beijing, after learning the job in Holland. “Old money has passed from one generation to the next. But the new money doesn’t have the same quality. You need to help them improve. ” If butlers symbolize maturing Chinese capitalism, the somewhat awkward status they have here also reflects how the rich in China must play by different rules than the wealthy in many other countries. It often comes down to a lack of trust. Wealth in China, where a cutthroat business culture is pervasive, comes with insecurity about being brought low by resentful employees, rivals, and officials, especially with the continuing crackdown against corruption. That wariness discourages many millionaires from hiring their own Jeeves to run their homes, people in the business said. “Some of them discover that in reality they can’t trust an outsider to manage the household,” said Tang Yang, a marketing director at the butler academy. “They’re unwilling to have a butler who knows all the information about the family. ” Relatively few graduates of the academy end up as traditional household butlers. Instead, many work in clubs, housing estates and executive floors, serving several clients at the same time — not with the same intimacy as a personal butler. Promoters of butlers in China often point out that the country has its own tradition of service, and the classical Chinese novel, “Dream of the Red Chamber,” features traditional butlers, called “guanjia,” or “domestic manager,” in Mandarin. But “Downton Abbey” helped rekindle a new romanticized interest in service in China. Many student butlers here said they had watched and rewatched the show as an instruction video on the unflappability of domestic service. “I only began to grasp this profession of butlers after watching ‘Downton Abbey,’” said Xu Shitao, a Beijing native studying at the Chengdu academy. “I think that in the future this profession will be quite popular and will have a market. ” But Ms. Xu and her classmates have found that, in reality, being a butler is strenuous work. On a recent morning, they practiced for hours, learning to serve wine and water the proper way. Again and again, the class of eight clasped a wine bottle near its bottom and stepped forward in unison around a dinner table to dispense just enough wine to reach the widest part of a wine glass. Not a drop was to splash the tablecloth or, heaven forbid, a guest. “Stretch, pour, up, twist, back, wipe. Try to extend your arm,” Mr. Noble commanded, using his translator. “You want to be able to extend your arm as much as possible. You’re doing a ballet. ” Students also take classes on serving formal dinners, packing luggage, cleaning house and countless other details of managing life for the rich. “You have to get the details right to do your job right,” said Yang Linjun, a student in the class. “Your arms get sore and your hands hurt, but this is a lifestyle. ” After they graduate, many hope to attach themselves to China’s growing number of superrich. In return, they may earn monthly wages of $2, 800 or much higher as personal butlers, depending on experience and luck — more than for many service jobs. By 2015, China had 400 billionaires and billionaire families, an increase of 65 from just a year earlier, according to Forbes’ annual list. The country’s richest 1 percent own about of household wealth, a share similar to the concentration of wealth in America. Manners can be rough in China, sometimes in a warm way, sometimes less so. But that has been changing as people grow richer, travel and live abroad, and bring back a demand for polished, attentive service. “A decade ago, very few Chinese people stayed in hotels,” said Yang Kaojun, a property manager with the Summit Group, which employs teams of trained butlers who are at the beck and call of residents. “But now many people have, and that’s given them some understanding of what good service is. ” As well as the Chengdu academy, the Sanda University, a private college in Shanghai, has incorporated butler training into its hospitality program. Many Chinese also learn how to be butlers in Europe. And Sara Vestin Rahmani, the founder of the Bespoke Bureau, a British company that finds domestic staff members for wealthy employers, said her company planned to open a school for butlers and domestic staff people in China this year. The number of butlers in China is hard to determine. There may be hundreds or thousands, especially in Beijing, Shanghai and the prosperous south. Ms. Rahmani said that in 2007 her company found positions in China for 20 butlers by 2015 that number had grown to 375, including 125 with families. Others reported similar growth. “We are in actual fact exporting to China a trade which was once their own,” Ms. Rahmani said. “With communism, everything that was refined, unique and became a distant memory. ” But Chinese employers often treat butlers as expensive flunkies who should be on call 24 hours a day. That violated the traditional idea of a butler as a respected manager of the household and above most menial tasks. Ms. Luo, the butler, said her work was far more hectic than she imagined. Her daily routine included overseeing the sauna, cinema, bowling alley and other rooms in a home. “I feel that when work starts, there’s no time at all to stop and rest,” she said. “It’s a lot harder than working in a hotel. ” The pressure is compounded by employers’ fears that household servants could exploit sensitive information. Butlers are supposed to have a deep knowledge of their employers’ every foible, traditionally recorded in a book. But the worry that information could be used to rob, extort or prosecute them has discouraged many rich people from taking butlers into their confidence. “Many of our wealthy are the first generation to be rich, and they don’t have a long accumulation of family history,” said Mr. Yang, the student at the butler academy in Chengdu, who works for a real estate company. “You need trust and a long period of adjustment to have another person suddenly by your side. ” | 1 |
Cast Your Vote: Whose Foreign Policy Position Do You Prefer? Posted on Oct 28, 2016 Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton argued over foreign policy during the third presidential debate. (Screen shot via YouTube )
We are only 10 days away from Election Day, and the two mainstream candidates are steamrolling through the swing states in an effort to court votes. Over the past week, WikiLeaks provided some revelations on how Clinton and her husband used the Clinton Foundation to their advantage. Donald Trump, meanwhile, continued to close in on Clinton in the polls.
The week began on a somber note, when news broke that longtime peace activist and California legislator Tom Hayden died at age 76. His original Truthdig reports , which have been reposted throughout the week, reinforce the importance of an anti-war foreign policy. “Our systems—politics, media, culture—are totally out of balance today because of our collective refusal to admit that the Vietnam War was wrong and that the peace movement was right,” he said in 2016 .
Many of his reports written back in 2006 focus on American foreign policy in the Middle East. Although written over a decade ago, Hayden’s words of caution still ring true, as in this piece on a potential U.S. withdrawal from Iraq :
Many activists are learning for the first time, or perhaps all over again, what it means to be winter soldiers in a long war. All the wasted lives can never be brought back, all those squandered tax dollars will never be redistributed, true enough. But if the war itself was never going to be a cakewalk, why should ending it be any different? It may still be far from over, with the simmering question of Iran on the immediate horizon.
As Hayden warned, U.S. involvement in the Middle East is far from over, and throughout this election season a new player has entered the arena: Russia.
Earlier this week, Trump stated that Clinton, if elected, would cause World War III with Russia. Truthdig contributor Juan Cole argued that “[s]uperpowers don’t fight one another in the nuclear age…[they] fight proxy wars like Vietnam and Afghanistan.” Cole asserts that Clinton’s experience as secretary of state will make it easy for her to communicate with the Russian government and the Pentagon alike.
Others, however, don’t feel too positive about a potential Clinton administration’s foreign policy. Clinton has proposed a “no-fly” zone over Syria as part of her foreign policy plan, alarming security experts .
As Lauren McCauley writes, reports also surfaced this week showing how a Clinton administration “will likely usher in a more aggressive, bipartisan foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.” She quotes Greg Jaffe:
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House,” the Washington Post’s White House correspondent Greg Jaffe reports.
One such study, published Wednesday by the Center for American Progress (CAP)—which is run by president Neera Tanden, policy director for Clinton’s presidential campaign—recommends the next administration step up its “military engagement” amid a more “proactive and long-term approach to the Middle East.”
But what of Trump’s foreign policy? Juan Cole also argued earlier this week that when it comes to Trump’s assertions on the U.S. presence in the Middle East, “he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he is talking about.”
Truthdig’s own Bill Boyarsky expressed a similar concern in his column this week, labeling Trump “a threat to democracy.”
“Trump’s scorn for the electoral system and democratic institutions is reason enough to fear a Trump presidency,” Boyarsky writes. “Added to that is his racist rabble-rousing against Muslims, those of Mexican descent and other immigrants.”
And of course, the discussion on foreign policy doesn’t solely revolve around just two presidential nominees. This week, NATO urged “all allies to deploy more troops and military equipment to Russia’s borders” in a move that Common Dreams staff writer Nika Knight called “shortsighted.”
There is also an inherent problem with the American military spending, says William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. “Through good times and bad, regardless of what’s actually happening in the world, one thing is certain: in the long run, the Pentagon budget won’t go down,” he writes. “As long as fear, greed, and hubris are the dominant factors driving Pentagon spending, no matter who is in the White House, substantial and enduring budget reductions are essentially inconceivable.”
So although there are broader, deeply embedded institutional factors responsible for American foreign policy, whoever wins on November 8 will certainly make an impact. Given the events of the past week—the focus on increased tensions with Russia, and the tightening race between Clinton and Trump—we turn to you, our readers. Which candidate has a foreign policy position worth pursuing? Will Clinton’s experience, although “war hawkish,” serve in her favor, or will Trump’s business acumen serve him better as Commander in Chief?
Let us know in the poll below. One vote per person, please. (Make your selection and then click on “Vote.” To see results of the polling, click on “Results.”) Which presidential nominee’s foreign policy position do you prefer? Hillary Clinton | 1 |
Sonntag, 6. November 2016 Sonntagsfrage: Wer soll nächster Bundespräsident werden? Am 12. Februar 2017 wird im Reichstagsgebäude der nächste Bundespräsident gewählt. Während Angela Merkel in Berlin noch verzweifelt ihre alten Adressbücher nach möglichen Kandidaten durchforstet, können Sie ja schonmal loslegen. In dieser Woche will der Bellevueillon (unterstützt durch Representation Control ) von Ihnen wissen: Und hier noch die unglaublich spannenden Ergebnisse der letzten Sonntagsfrage (Stimmen gesamt: 54.079): Was machen Sie heute mit der zusätzlichen Stunde? (Top-3-Antworten) 3. Ich überlege, welche Antwort ich in der Sonntagsfrage auswähle. - 13,06% (7064 Stimmen) 2. Ich erwähne das Wort „Fleisch“ einem Veganer gegenüber. - 14,06% (7603 Stimmen) 1. Ich habe großartigen Sex und lese in den restlichen 57 Minuten ein schönes Buch. - 20,5% (11.089 Stimmen) Artikel teilen: | 0 |
November 8, 2016 France will promote peace initiative despite Israeli opposition
France will not stop trying to promote its initiative to convene an international peace conference by the end of the year despite Israel’s negative response to the idea, senior French diplomats told the Haaretz newspaper on Monday evening.
Earlier on Monday, Israeli officials meeting with French envoy Pierre Vimont reiterated Israel’s firm opposition to the peace initiative, aimed at restarting long-stalled peace efforts with the Palestinian Authority (PA).
“Envoy Pierre Vimont’s discussion with Israeli government representatives in Jerusalem [on Monday] was sincere and difficult,” French diplomats told Haaretz after the meeting.
“The negative Israeli response was predictable, and we will take Israel’s position into consideration. However, we plan to carry on promoting our peace initiative,” they stressed. | 0 |
Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco lawyer representing the UCB College Republicans, held a press conference today to discuss the case being brought against the college due to their mishandling of an event hosting conservative speaker Ann Coulter. [Dhillon held a press conference today where she outlined the charges being brought against UC Berkeley, described the issues surrounding free speech and the first amendment that conservative speakers are facing and clarified that although she does not represent Ann Coulter, she is there to defend her right to speak on campus. Dhillon defended the right of conservative speakers such as former Breitbart Senior Editor MILO to speak on campus and condemned the AntiFa rioters who caused havoc on Berkeley campus when MILO attempted to speak there earlier this year. Dhillon questioned why the Berkeley police department did nothing to stop the riots and stated that she would like to hear the mayor of Berkeley explain why he allowed the riots to take place in his city. Watch the livestream provided by CBS below, Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 0 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 by DCG | 2 Comments
Ain’t multiculturalism grand?
From Daily Express : The father of the pupil at the girl’s primary school in German ski resort Garmisch-Partenkirchen discovered that his daughter had been forced to learn the Islamic prayer when he discovered a handout she had been given.
He claimed she had been “forced” by teachers to memorise the Islamic chants and forwarded the handout to Austrian news service unsertirol24.
The handout read: “Oh Allah, how perfect you are and praise be to you. Blessed is your name, and exalted is your majesty. There is no God but you.”
It had been given to the girl during a lesson in “ethics” at the Bavarian school.
Headteacher Gisela Herl did not confirm the incident when questioned, but said the school would issue a written statement detailing its position in the coming week.
The incident comes just weeks after parents complained to German newspaper Hessian Niedersächsische Allgemeine (HNA) that their children’s nursery was refusing to acknowledge “Christmas rituals” to accommodate the “diverse cultures” of other pupils. The Sara Nussbaum House daycare centre in Kassel refused to put up a Christmas tree, tell Christmas stories or celebrate Christmas in general because it said only a minority of pupils were Christian.
A spokesman for Kassel explained: “There will be no Christmas celebrations, in the strictest sense. Because the majority of children at this kindergarten are not Christian the festival will not be celebrated in the way that it is at other schools.”
Migrants now outnumber native children at many schools in Germany as the country has been inundated with migrants in recent years. More than one million migrants are estimated to have arrived in Germany during the last year alone.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees estimates that another 200,000 people will apply for asylum in 2017.
DCG | 0 |
Bill White November 20, 2016 8 Things To Keep Under The Radar During A Blackout
Major blackouts are becoming more and more common, according to data from the National Energy Administration.
Our aging power grid, along with ever-increasing demands for electric power are taking their toll on the electrical industry’s ability to keep us all supplied with power.
Currently, the number of major blackouts per year doubles every five years. At that rate, we will soon find ourselves catching up with some third-world countries. We have an answer to help you out with this challenge.
While the major reason for this is our aging power grid, the problem is much more complex than that. Replacement of aging equipment is extremely expensive and the process filled with red tape. Energy companies find themselves bogged down for years in the quagmire of conflicting government requirements, on both a state and national level.
This problem is becoming worse, with the massive amount of regulations that the Obama Administration has promulgated through his presidency.
The EPA especially, has attacked the energy sector ruthlessly, especially the coal industry and coal power plants.
But even this isn’t really our biggest issue with the grid, although it is an important issue. The biggest issue is that the grid is highly vulnerable.
As a large, decentralized network, spanning the country, it is virtually impossible to protect. Even the minimal protections that are in place, have been proven to be ineffective.
The fact is, our electrical grid is highly susceptible to damage, and it’s common knowledge that it is.
Any number of enemies could take out the grid, or larger portions of it, either through direct, kinetic terrorist attacks, cyber-warfare or a high-altitude EMP. Even the sun could take it out, with a Coronal Mass Ejection. We had a near miss on that as recently as last year.
With so much risk to our aging power grid, it’s not a matter of if we’re going to be faced by a major blackout or even a semi-permanent one, but when we will be faced with it. Odds are catching up with us, bringing us to a place where we can all count on that happening to us sometime in our lives.
Clearly, preparing for such an event, regardless of how it happens, has to be part and parcel of our disaster preparation.
Anyone who chooses to ignore this possibility is merely putting themselves and their families in the massive group of people who don’t prepare, because they expect the government to take care of them. In other words, they are planning on becoming victims of the blackout, rather than becoming ones who overcome the blackout.
Blackouts instill fear in people, as we all have a little bit of natural fear of the dark. Mankind was created to live and function in the daylight, not the night.
While we have learned and adapted to doing many things in the dark, a lot of that has been by overcoming the dark with artificial light. We simply function best, when we can see what we are doing.
But what if you’re the only one in your neighborhood who can see what you’re doing? What if the lights go out, in a major blackout, and they stay out long enough that batteries in your neighbors’ flashlights go dead?
When they are sitting in the dark, cold and hungry, how are you going to protect yourself?
When the lights go out, so does everything else too. We depend on electricity for so many different things, that without it, society comes grinding to a standstill.
Not only do we lose the ability to do things at night, but we also lose our entire supply chain, because it depends on electricity for the flow of information, control, and even pumping the gas into the trucks and airplanes that make the deliveries.
So losing power means losing pretty much everything we depend on in our modern, technology-based lives.
We must always keep in the back of our minds that desperate people do desperate things. When the lights go out and the heat goes off, that feeling of desperation will begin to take root in their hearts. Bit by bit it will grow, fed by each and every thing that they find missing from their lives.
When they can’t get gas for their car, the desperation will grow a bit more. When they can’t buy food, because the grocery store shelves are empty, the desperation will increase. And when they turn on the faucet and nothing comes out, because there isn’t any electricity for the pumps, their cups of desperation may very well overflow.
The best thing that any of us can do in such a situation is ensure that we don’t let anyone around us know that we’re better off than they are.
OPSEC will have to become our byword, as we quietly try to survive in the midst of them. Specifically, there are a number of things we will want to hide from those around us.
1. The Means to Create Light
The first thing that people will notice is also one of the hardest to hide… light. That’s the first thing that anyone is going to turn on, when the power goes out. Whether it is flashlights, candles or oil-burning lamps, they’re all going to turn on some light.
The problem is, their light will go out after a short time, perhaps a day or two. After that, any light you have will be extremely conspicuous.
If the windows of every house on your street are dark and even a little light is coming out of yours, your house will seem like a lighthouse to those around. Their lack of light will make yours seem even greater.
Extreme light discipline will have to be the order of the day. You’re going to have to hide your light, and avoid using it in places where they can see. One key component of this will have to be blackout curtains on over all your windows.
Regular curtains won’t be enough, because they will look like they are lit up to people on the outside. You need curtains that are dark enough and heavy enough to block the light, so that your windows appear dark, like theirs.
2. Power Generation
Many of us have invested in either solar power or wind power, both to augment the electrical power we buy from our local utility company and as a means of producing power in a blackout.
But a roof full of solar panels or a wind turbine sticking 30 feet up in the air in your backyard are easy to see, letting everyone know that you have power, when they don’t.
That’s going to attract people like moths to an open flame. About the only thing that could be worse is a gas powered generator.
Even those who aren’t looking for your solar panels will hear that, especially considering how quiet it will be without cars running down the roads and entertainment systems blaring out music.
While I wouldn’t want to dissuade you from investing in solar or wind power, in the midst of a blackout you’ll actually be better off with something stealthy. A portable system, with the solar panels at ground level would fit that bill, as a fenced backyard would hide it pretty well.
You can quietly provide power and keep your family safe during an outage Hurry up and grab this offer right now to pay in monthly installments!
3. Solar Powered Anything
Speaking of solar power, pretty much anything that is solar powered is going to be in high demand. Even if all you have is a solar charger for your phone, you can count on everyone around you wanting to use it. More major solar powered devices, such as a solar oven, will become very high on the list of things that people will want to steal.
Of course, the longer the blackout lasts, the more people there will be who will be willing to turn to stealing. So the threat for your solar oven being stolen will actually increase as time goes on, requiring more and more diligence to protect it.
4. Food and the Ability to Cook that Food
As I already mentioned, the supermarket shelves will be bare, which will force people to use up whatever food they have stored within their homes. But what will they do when they’ve eaten the last of the popcorn and scraped the peanut butter jar dry?
Most preppers believe that people will turn to attacking one another and raiding other’s homes in search of food at this time. Small gangs will form, either neighbors working together or people who are friends who decide they can help one another.
In either case, these gangs will be looking for food, more than anything else, and they won’t be reluctant to break into homes and hit the residents over the head to get it.
Not only will they be searching for food, but for the ability to cook that food. A large portion of the things we eat need to be cooked in order to be edible.
But cooking in modern times is done with electricity or natural gas, both of which will be conspicuous by their absence. Barbecue grills will become the number one means of cooking… at least until people run out of propane or charcoal.
That’s when the solar oven is going to become popular. Even without knowing how to use one, people will be quick to steal an unattended solar oven, thinking that they can figure it out.
One of the problems with hiding your food is that cooking creates odors which will attract attention.
You’ll need to be careful about this, avoiding cooking in ways that create odors. Meats are the worst for this, as they produce the most odor when cooking. But by cooking them in soups, you reduce the odor that passes through the air.
5. Water and the Means to Pump it Out of the Ground
We really can’t talk about food, without talking about water as well. Water is a higher survival priority than food is, so people will be desperate for it much quicker.
If you’ve got a river, lake or canal near enough to draw water out of, you’ll probably be safe. But if not, and people find out you have a well, they’ll be knocking on your door.
At that time, you’ll have to make a decision. Will you provide water to your neighbors or not. A lot of that will depend on how good your well is and how effective a pump you have.
Sharing water might be great for public relations, but there’s a danger there too. Some will thank you, while others might see it as an opportunity to take over your well.
6. Heat for Your Home
One of the worst times to have the lights go out is in the wintertime. Then, light isn’t people’s biggest concern, heat is.
Every year people die during the cold northern winters, either because there is no power to heat their homes or because they can’t afford to pay for heat. Sadly, this mostly happens to the elderly, who are the most vulnerable people in society.
When the power is out and people get cold, there’s a natural tendency to gather together, seeking to share whatever heat they have, even if it’s only body heat. That means that they’ll come knocking on your door, if they think you have heat.
Depending on how you are heating your home, doing so might be difficult to hide.
Burning wood, which is what most of us are planning to do, produces smoke, as well as the smell of burning wood. Just like the steak cooking on the barbecue grill, that smell will attract attention.
One thing you can do to help alleviate this is to buy firewood that produces little smoke and odor. Different woods burn differently, producing different amounts of heat, as well as smelling differently.
You’ll need to experiment a bit, but if you can find a low-odor wood, it will help.
7. Fuel for Your Car
As the blackout progresses, one thing you can be sure of is that people will begin to migrate. The lack of news about what is happening elsewhere will cause people to wonder if things would be better, if they could just get out of the area where the blackout is. So, some will leave, trying to find a better place.
Of course, that means leaving in their cars and trucks. But without the gas pumps working, that’s going to be hard to do. Even so, they’ll try… mostly by stealing gas from others.
Some will siphon it out of gas tanks and others will try to pump it out of the gas station’s tanks with a manual pump.
The best thing you can do to keep from losing your gas and even your car is to hide them. If you don’t have room in your garage, then put them in the backyard.
If you can’t do that, then drain out the gas yourself and disable the car. Removing a tire and the battery, as well as allowing the car to get covered with a layer of dust, will go a long way towards making it look unusable.
8. Guns & Ammo
Finally, it would be a good idea to keep your guns and ammo out of sight. Some might think that being obviously armed would be a deterrent to attack.
While that might be true for the more timid in society, it would be just as likely to make others think that you must have something in your home worth protecting. For those people, your guns would be an advertisement, not a deterrent.
That doesn’t mean that you should be unarmed, merely that you shouldn’t advertise the fact. Those will be dangerous times and you may very well need your guns to protect yourself. So, keep them close at hand, but keep them hidden at the same time.
Most people who carry concealed are actually against open carry of firearms. That’s not because they don’t agree with the implied right under the Second Amendment, but rather that they want the element of surprise.
If someone doesn’t know what you’re carrying, they can’t prepare effectively to counter it. That gives you a huge tactical advantage, when the time comes and you bring your guns out of hiding.
Bill White for Survivopedia. 664 total views, 664 views today | 1 |
For the 12th straight year, the Travel section presents its annual Places to Go issue. You will likely have some questions: How did the No. 1 spot get there? Why is my favorite spot not on the list? What’s the deal with those 360 videos online at nytimes. ? Here are some frequently asked questions about how we chose our 52 Places to Go in 2017. What made Canada the top choice? And why would you choose a country? Canada has it all (O. K. maybe not tropical beaches). It’s a world unto itself, with Vancouver Island surf breaks, culinary delights in Toronto and Montreal, and natural glories of parks like Banff in Alberta. And, let’s face it, clichés of Mounties and hockey aside, Canada remains a terra incognita for Americans and much of the world. It’s a great time to correct that, as the country celebrates its 150th anniversary this year (which means free admission all year to those national parks) and currently offers a generous exchange rate with the United States dollar. What is special about the list online? And in print? Look at the interactive version of the list on a computer or mobile device and you’ll notice a bunch of 360 videos that allow you to explore some of these places in a newly immersive way. “Travel is a great match for 360 videos because the medium provides a vivid sense of place,” said Maureen Towey, the senior producer for 360 News at The New York Times. “We ask our shooters to be adventurous in their camera placement. When they ask if they can rig the camera to a motorcycle, a balloon or a ski lift, we say yes every time. ” On a computer, you’ll also notice a stunning drone video, shot in Tofino, on the western coast of Vancouver Island. “After many wet days, there was one morning the clouds broke and the waves were a bit better,” said Josh Haner, a staff photographer who shot the footage. “As my drone’s batteries were running out, I looked to the right and a beautiful rainbow filled the beach. It was a spectacular 45 minutes. ” And print readers will notice something new as well: a special presentation of the list that can be removed from the section and pored over (or hung on the wall). How do you start the process? We ask our regular contributors, many of whom live overseas or roam the globe, for ideas. We get hundreds of them. What are you looking for in those ideas? First, why now? That is, why is this the year to go to a particular place? We also aim for a geographic and thematic diversity. And we look for a mix of destinations both and off the beaten path. (That means we often exclude the very obvious spots even though cities like London, Berlin and Tokyo are always exciting, they didn’t make this year’s list.) How do you narrow it down to the final list? A meeting, in which we discuss each idea. We get pretty punchy toward the end but are always happy with the final list. My favorite destination didn’t make the list. Why not? The 52 places we select are, of course, just the start. There are thousands of wonderful destinations to consider. We’d love to hear your suggestions — use the #52Places2017 hashtag on Instagram to suggest yours. | 0 |
Over the weekend, a virus infected thousands of computers around the world, locking up their data until a ransom was paid. Experts believe the virus uses tools stolen from the NSA to infect computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. [The impact of the attack, using a virus known as ‘WannaCry’ appears limited in the United States so far, although security analysts fear that could change in the coming days. The virus has been running wild across Europe and Asia, inflicting an untold amount of financial damage and putting lives in danger, since one of the biggest targets was Britain’s National Health System. Following are 15 important facts about WannaCry, including tips on how to protect vulnerable systems. The virus infected some 200, 000 computer systems in 150 countries in a single weekend. The first known infection was reported early Friday morning. WannaCry — also known as WCry, WannaCrypt, or Wana Decryptor — spread like wildfire over the next three days. Investigators do not know the full extent of the attack because a huge number of systems are believed to have been infected in China — almost 30, 000 different companies, government agencies, shops, and academic institutions, according to one estimate. The virus was tailored to work across the globe, with ransom messages in dozens of different languages. When a theater chain in South Korea was infected, movie screens began displaying the ransom message in Korean, instead of the paid advertising they normally show before a movie. Europol chief Rob Wainwright said much of the world was in “disaster recovery mode” after the weekend’s attacks. WannaCry is a ransomware virus. The primary objective of this viral infection is to encrypt all of the data on targeted systems, rendering the data inaccessible until the owner pays a ransom to the hackers. The ransom is generally paid with an untraceable digital “ ” like Bitcoin. Once payment is received, the hackers give their victim a code that will unlock their hijacked data. This type of attack is known as “ransomware,” and it has been alarmingly successful over the past few years. Ransomware virus packages are sold in secret “dark web” marketplaces for a pittance. Some are available for less than the price of a video game. Virus creators hawk their wares to hacker customers with promises of easy setup, adaptability, and income from blackmail victims. Satisfied customers leave Amazon. testimonials like, “Up and running within a couple of days! Hopefully start getting some money in now. :)” Some of the more alarming estimates say ransomware infections are growing at a rate of 36 percent per year, with over 100 different strains of ransom virus currently active on the Internet. WannaCry is, by nearly universal acclamation, the largest ransomware heist ever recorded. The hackers reportedly only made about $50, 000 from plunging the world into panic. A key feature of successful ransomware is that the ransom is usually a modest sum — far less than the cost of paying a team of security experts to try to defeat the encryption attack. The ransom demanded from WannaCry victims reportedly ranged from $300 to $600, with a threat that higher payments would be demanded if victims did not pay up quickly. The total haul for the criminals responsible for the attack has been estimated at just $50, 000, but the financial damage to victims around the world will be several orders of magnitude higher by the time all is said and done. For example, the China National Petroleum corporation took 20, 000 gas stations offline to control the spread of the virus, while India shut down some financial networks in an apparently successful bid to minimize WannaCry damage. The total cost of dealing with this viral attack will probably run into billions of dollars worldwide. Analysts told CNBC on Monday that the hackers’ take could increase dramatically as the first cutoff time for increased ransom payments is reached, desperate victims give up on trying to fight the virus, and baffled businessmen figure out how Bitcoin works so they can meet the criminals’ demands. Victims often pay the ransom demanded. Security analysts say that over 200 of the WannaCry victims who promptly paid the ransom have gotten their data back. However, cybersecurity experts advise against paying the ransom, noting that historically only about of compliant ransomware victims get their data back after meeting hacker demands. Cybersecurity expert Peter Coroneos summed up the difficult position of ransomware victims by telling the UK Guardian, “As a matter of principle, the answer should always be no … based on the simple dynamics of perpetuating bad conduct. However, as a matter of practicality and necessity, the situation is somewhat more complex. ” Even Microsoft’s answer to the frequently asked question of “should I just go ahead and pay to regain access?” is not an unequivocal “no. ” Instead, the computer giant says: “There is no response if you have been victimized by ransomware. There is no guarantee that handing over the ransom will give you access to your files again. Paying the ransom could also make you a target for more malware. ” A vulnerability in Microsoft Windows allowed the WannaCry hackers to strike. The WannaCry virus exploits a bug in Windows networking protocol, which Microsoft patched in March, possibly after receiving a from the U. S. intelligence community. Some blame Microsoft for enabling this global ransomware attack with poor product design and for abandoning users running older versions of the Windows operating system. In particular, users of Windows XP, which Microsoft officially stopped supporting in 2014, were vulnerable to attack. The company provides very limited support to XP users who pay for special service, but no longer provides Windows XP patches to the general public. That means most of the world’s XP users had no idea they needed a security patch, and no way to get one if they were somehow aware of the WannaCry vulnerability. Microsoft has said end users must take some responsibility for failing to install critical security patches. Some observers blame the slow rollout of security updates on corporate inertia — it can be difficult to get a large number of users in a network to install updates in a timely manner, let alone upgrade an entire corporation or government agency to upgrade to a new version of Windows. Also, some observers believe part of the problem is a sizable number of users run illegal or pirated copies of Windows, and cannot easily obtain security updates. An emergency security update was made available for Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003 users on Friday, as the extent of the WannaCry threat became clear. Over a million computers around the world are said to remain vulnerable to the virus. Britain’s National Health System was among the biggest victims. The NHS still runs Windows XP on many of its computers, so it became one of the biggest ransomware victims. The situation became so dire that doctors sent text messages to patients, informing them critical services such as and blood tests were unavailable until further notice. Some clinics shut off their computers and reverted to pen and paper. Hospital websites notified patients that medical records were unavailable, so prescriptions could not be dispensed. NHS facilities have been criticized for using outdated Windows software, even though funding for upgrades was provided years ago. Observers have castigated the British government for failing to provide essential cybersecurity training to its employees. Other notable victims of the attack included automaker Renault in France, Spanish telecommunications firm Telefonica, German railway operator Deutsche Bahn (whose passengers snapped photos of arrival and departure screens displaying the ransom message) Russia’s Interior Ministry, Russia’s Sberbank financial group, and FedEx in the United States. Microsoft blames the National Security Agency and other intel services for hoarding exploits. Microsoft’s chief legal officer and president, Brad Smith, wrote a blog post on Sunday in which he said the ransomware employed “exploits stolen from the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the United States. ” Smith said the attack was an “example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. ” “We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U. S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen,” he wrote. Smith said the WannaCry crime spree should serve as a “ call” for the governments of the world, calling for a “digital Geneva Convention” and a resolution for all of the world’s intelligence agencies to “report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them. ” Russian President Vladimir Putin cited Smith’s letter to blame the U. S. government for enabling the WannaCry attack on Monday. “Microsoft said it directly: the initial source of this virus is the U. S.’s security agencies. Russia’s got absolutely nothing to do with it,” he said. The “Shadow Brokers” disclosed the NSA code used in WannaCry. Several weeks ago, a hacker group called the Shadow Brokers published a set of powerful malware tools purportedly stolen from the NSA, generating considerable excitement in the hacking community. Russian cybercriminals and Chinese hackers buzzed about the possibility of using these tools to create a ransomware virus in . The Shadow Brokers have leaked over a gigabyte of information from the NSA over the past year. The dump included some 300 megabytes of the most dangerous material the group has released. One analyst called it the “most powerful cache of exploits ever released. ” The Shadow Brokers accompanied this dangerous inventory of hacking tools with the message: “Is being too bad nobody deciding to be paying theshadowbrokers for just to shutup and going away. TheShadowBrokers rather being getting drunk with McAfee on desert island with hot babes. ” McAfee is a reference to software pioneer John McAfee, whose colorful life is soon to be dramatized in a movie starring Johnny Depp. The stolen NSA code appears to be the reason WannaCry spread so quickly. The ransomware used in this weekend’s attack has been described by programmers as an older, much less effective program that was “souped up” or “turbocharged” with the NSA’s tools — in particular, an exploit called EternalBlue, which allows it to propagate using a flaw in Windows file sharing software. Hackers traditionally spread ransomware infections with “phishing” emails, designed to trick users into opening a document or clicking on a link that infects their computer with malicious code. WannaCry appears to be capable of jumping between computers on its own. Security experts say there is little evidence that phishing techniques were employed to spread this particular worm. A British IT expert temporarily halted the spread of the virus. As bad as the virus attack was, it could have been far worse without the quick action of a British computer tech who prefers to be called “MalwareTech. ” He wants to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals from cybercriminals, but the British media seems determined to expose his identity. MalwareTech carefully examined WannaCry’s code and determined that it was programmed to contact a particular website whose name was an incomprehensible string of letters and numbers. He discovered this website did not exist yet, and registered its name for himself, thinking the virus might be attempting to contact the site to report on its activities or upload data — a common tactic with worms and “bot” programs. Instead, the mystery website was a “kill switch,” a way the creators of the virus could shut it down if they wanted to stop it from reproducing. WannaCry was designed to stop spreading as soon as attempts to contact the website became successful. For the cost of a $10. 69 registration fee, MalwareTech halted an infection that was spreading across the world. Intriguingly, MalwareTech says that shortly after he registered the website, Chinese hackers tried to steal it from him. This does not necessarily mean the Chinese group is the WannaCry perpetrator, however. Cybercrime experts deemed it more likely they wanted the kill switch as a trophy, or to analyze the incoming messages from WannaCry infestations around the world. New versions of WannaCry appeared soon after the kill switch was thrown. It did not take long for new instances of the virus to appear with the kill switch code removed. “We are in the second wave. As expected, the attackers have released new variants of the malware. We can surely expect more,” said Matthieu Suiche of cybersecurity firm Comae Technologies. “This is probably version 2. 1, and it has the potential to be much more effective, assuming security defenders haven’t spent all weekend patching,” said Allan Liska of another security firm, Recorded Future. The Department of Homeland Security is involved in the U. S. response. The DHS released a statement on Friday acknowledging reports of WannaCry infections “affecting multiple global entities. ” “We are actively sharing information related to this event and stand ready to lend technical support and assistance as needed to our partners, both in the United States and internationally. DHS has a cadre of cybersecurity professionals that can provide expertise and support to critical infrastructure entities,” said Homeland Security. DHS officials stated on Monday that “limited number” of American companies were affected, adding that the victims “represent many different sectors of the U. S. economy. ” President Donald Trump ordered Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert to convene an emergency meeting Friday night to assess the WannaCry threat. Another meeting was held in the White House Situation Room on Saturday. Administration officials said the FBI and NSA are attempting to determine the identity of the hackers. “I think people heading to work this morning should be thinking about this as an attack that for right now we’ve got under hold,” Bossert said on Monday. Bossert said the virus was weaponized and distributed by criminals, who created “something that is holding ransom data but putting at risk lives and hospitals. ” The next wave of WannaCry attacks does not seem as bad as experts feared. There was great apprehension that a new wave of attacks would hit on Monday, as business computers were brought online after a weekend off, American users interfaced with infected European and Asian systems, and people began opening emails received on Saturday and Sunday. However, the second wave does not seem as bad as the scenarios, at least not yet. The simple explanation would be that MalwareTech’s kill switch was even more effective than he originally thought, vulnerable systems are receiving vital security patches at a good pace, and the initial burst of “WannaCry 2. 1” modified versions aren’t as powerful as the original. Bossert stressed that “we’re not yet out of the woods,” and pessimistic analysts warn it might simply be taking a few days for cybercriminals to create a new version of WannaCry that ignores the kill switch. On Sunday, a firm called Heimdal Security reported discovering a ransomware variant called Uiwix that “can be worse than Wannacry,” because it spreads just as quickly but lacks the kill switch code. The WannaCry perpetrators were sloppy. One reason the attack is tapering off quickly after a terrifying weekend is that the perpetrators were “sloppy” cybercriminals who made “amateur mistakes at practically every turn,” as Wired puts it. Besides the kill switch, Wired zings the gang for careless handling of their bitcoin payments, poor communications with copies of their virus in the field, and a ridiculously low profit margin for unleashing a global pandemic that turned them into some of the most wanted criminals on Earth. Apparently, the gang is manually tracking who pays the ransom and issuing decryption keys, rather than configuring the virus to automatically know if they paid the money. That is a lot of work to collect a measly $300 payment, and they’re leaving Bitcoin footprints for investigators to follow. Far more subtle, less risky ransom capers have brought in paydays. As Errata Security consultant Rob Graham memorably put it to Wired, “It looks impressive as hell, because you think they must be genius coders in order to integrate the NSA exploit into a virus. But in fact, that’s all they know how to do, and they’re basket cases otherwise. ” Defending against WannaCry and other ransomware. Everyone, from Microsoft to private cybersecurity analysts to the Department of Homeland Security, agrees that the most important defense against WannaCry is installing the latest Windows security updates. Resolving the flaw that allows this virus to propagate is vital. Although WannaCry does not appear to have relied on phishing emails to spread, most ransomware viruses do, so the second most important tip is to avoid opening suspicious attachments or clicking mystery links in emails. Note that phishing emails are often sent by computers and camouflaged with personal information to make them look realistic — they’re not always easy to spot. Ransomware encrypts data, so one of the best defenses against ransom attacks is to maintain good backups of valuable data. That way, if a ransomware virus strikes, the system can be cleaned off, and a safe backup copy of the data installed. Backups of important data should be kept safe from contamination, so the best protection strategies don’t rely entirely on backup devices that are constantly connected to your computer, like those popular external hard drives. Good password security is also important for defense against ransom attacks. Users often rely on a single password that isn’t difficult for hackers to guess, used on many different websites. If one of those sites is compromised, hackers may begin attempting to hit other online accounts with variations on the same password. | 1 |
HILLSIDE, N. J. — The wooden doors flung open and Mike Rice strolled into the cozy gym at the Patrick School, anxious to get going with his latest appointment. Already that morning, Rice had worked out six high school and middle school basketball players in his day job at the Hoop Group in Neptune, N. J. and later he would return there to run two or three middle teams through their paces before finishing up the night shooting with his daughter, Katie, and her friends at Red Bank Catholic High School. Between each stop, he said, he is usually in the car, “with a sandwich at my side. ” But now, arriving in the Patrick School gym, Rice, his voice perpetually hoarse, cracked a couple of jokes to the dozen or so players stretching in a circle who form his new team. At least four of the players stand or taller, and five of them recently committed to play for Division I programs, including Kentucky, Minnesota, Monmouth and Tulane. For the next two hours, Rice, dressed in gray sweatpants, gray sneakers and a green ran the team through drills and some play. With a whistle bouncing on a string around his neck, he pointed, gesticulated and stalked. There was the occasional burst of profanity, but never more than an average coach might let slip during a practice. That Rice, 47, now spends his days doing nothing but coaching children the sport of basketball might come as a surprise to some, considering his recent history. In 2013, he was fired as the basketball coach at Rutgers after a videotape surfaced showing him hurling basketballs and homophobic slurs at his players. Cast out of the game that he had made his career, he became something of a national disgrace, castigated by columnists and lampooned on “Saturday Night Live. ” Yet now, on the eve of his second season as the coach at the Patrick School, Rice may be well positioned to continue his career rehabilitation in a major way: with a job on a much bigger stage. His Patrick School team, which opens the season Dec. 16 at the City of Palms tournament in Florida, is loaded with talent and will appear in several nationally televised games. Rice also coaches the Team Rio A. A. U. program, which features two of the most highly regarded sophomores in the nation, Scottie Lewis and Bryan Antoine of the Ranney School in New Jersey. That means that when top coaches come through the gym to scout any of his players, they also get to see Rice running those workouts. “People say, ‘Oh, are you getting back? ”’ Rice said. “I’m back every day. I’m back in the gym every single day, and I’m in the gym 100 times more than I’ve ever been in the gym when I was a college coach. “People said they took basketball away. No, it’s just they took college coaching away. I got in my own way and so it’s something you learn from. And I use that time in my life as a kind of an understanding of the mistakes I made and to improve upon those mistakes. ” The story of Rice’s professional comeback is a mix of trusted friends, timely connections and a frank assessment of his failings. John Lucas, the former N. B. A. player and coach who runs a wellness and addiction aftercare program in Houston, took Rice in for a month after he was fired and has become a mentor. Rob Kennedy, who has known Rice for more than 20 years and founded the Hoop Group, was the first to hire him, and before long his own son was raving about Rice’s training sessions. It was through Rice’s work with Kennedy’s training programs — including at least one particularly memorable workout with the Patrick players — that Chris Chavannes, the principal and coach at the Patrick School, came to bring him aboard. By his own admission, he needed the help. In December 2014, Chavannes had collapsed on a flight home from a tournament in California, an incident he attributed in part to stress and to his diabetes. That scare, as well as the stress of his search, as principal, for a new home for the school, which was originally a Catholic school known as St. Patrick, convinced him that it was time to get some help running the basketball team. He initially hired Rice on an interim basis, to get through the season. Chavannes said when Rice first got the job, college coaches would rush to get a peek inside the Patrick School gym, not so much to recruit the Celtics’ talented players as to get a look at Rice running them through their practices. Chavannes said it was partly curiosity and partly espionage. “I would say the first year that Mike ran practices and coached in the gym, a lot of time they were rushing in and it wasn’t to see the kids but to see Mike, because they were coming in to learn or steal drills or whatever,” Chavannes said, adding: “It wasn’t so much like, ‘Hey, this is going to be a show of him carrying on or whatever.’ It was more about they wanted to learn from him. ” Away from the court, Rice quietly sold himself. Chavannes said he heard no resistance from the administration, the players or their parents when he decided to hire Rice despite his history at Rutgers. He said Rice’s openness about his mistakes, and about what he was doing to address them, soothed any doubts. “I didn’t really pay attention to any of that Rutgers stuff that happened with him,” said Jamir Harris, the Patrick School’s starting shooting guard, who has signed to play at Minnesota. “That wasn’t in my thought process at all. The only thing I was thinking about was having an opportunity to have him coach us, and I knew how great a coach he was. ” The result of his pairing with Chavannes, though, is that the Patrick School is in the unique situation of having both of whom are personalities. Chavannes, who set up the arrangement, said he was comfortable with it because he worked for two decades as an assistant to the former St. Patrick coach Kevin Boyle, helping to develop the N. B. A. players Kyrie Irving and Michael . And while Chavannes does not hesitate to shout his own instructions from the bench, Rice is clearly the more active half of the tandem, usually standing on the sidelines and running the show during games. “His energy is like no other,” Harris said. “I’ve seen coaches that get hyped up, just like most coaches would, but Coach Rice’s energy is on a different level. ” Now, as he seeks to take that energy to a higher level of coaching, Rice acknowledged that channeling remains a continuing process. After spending a month in 2013 working with Lucas on anger management, he says he returns to Houston every year to seek out Lucas’s advice and counsel. “I go back at least two weeks a year and spend time with his family,” Rice said, calling Lucas “a tremendous plus and positive in my life, because he’s got such a different way of looking at things and he’s been through so much himself. ” The question is where all of this will lead. In November, it led to Madison Square Garden for a Champions Classic doubleheader, when Rice sat in the third row flanked by elite recruits like Lewis, Antoine and the Patrick School’s center Nick Richards, who has signed to play for Kentucky. Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks forward, sat nearby, and three hall of fame coaches, John Calipari, Mike Krzyzewski and Tom Izzo, along with Bill Self of Kansas, worked the sidelines Rice once stalked for Rutgers. Rice probably was not the only one who wondered if he might one day be back working among them. Last year, Robert Morris expressed interest in hiring Rice as an assistant coach, but no concrete offers materialized. Several of Rice’s current and former colleagues still would like to see him get another chance. “I think that time heals all wounds,” said Bob Hurley, a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame and the longtime coach at St. Anthony’s High, the nationally ranked New Jersey powerhouse. “But I also know how conservative the coaching community is. ” Hurley, who has known Rice for years and vouched for him when he was up for the Rutgers job, suggested that Rice might be better off working with professionals, possibly as an N. B. A. assistant or in the “where he’s working with older guys. ” Chavannes said he thought it would take an established coach who was willing to persuade an athletic director or a university president that Rice had put his past behind, and that he could be an asset instead of a public relations concern. Whether or not he lands a new job next season, or the one after that, or much further down the road, Rice said that he knows one thing for certain: He is a coach, now and forever. “Unfortunately for my wife, I’ll always be coaching,” he said. “Whether it’s a workout, whether it’s an A. A. U. or a high school team or a college team or scouting an N. B. A. team, I can foresee myself figuring something out. ” “Every day I go to work with a smile on my face,” he added. “And it’s because I’m in the gym. It’s because I’m interacting with who have a passion to want to improve and develop and get better. And so it fits. ” | 1 |
JOHANNESBURG — The African National Congress, the party that helped liberate black South Africans from rule but has become mired in corruption, endured its worst election since taking power after the end of apartheid, according to results released on Friday. The A. N. C. the party of the nation’s liberation hero and first black president, Nelson Mandela, could once count on the unyielding loyalty of tens of millions of black South Africans who lived under apartheid. But widespread anger over the stagnant economy and the brazen of the A. N. C. ’s members have badly eroded the party’s standing, gradually chipping away at its ability to rack up big electoral victories on the basis of its history alone. In the biggest of the nation’s political order, the A. N. C. lost power in at least one big city, Nelson Mandela Bay, for the first time. The main beneficiary of widespread dissatisfaction in the country was the Democratic Alliance, a political party that was traditionally led by white South Africans who opposed apartheid but now has many young black leaders. During the campaign, the A. N. C. attacked the Democratic Alliance as a Trojan horse for white interests. By late Friday evening, it was locked in extremely tight races over Johannesburg, the commercial capital, and Pretoria, the seat of government — an unthinkable predicament for a party whose leader, President Jacob Zuma, was so confident of endless victories that he has said that his party would rule “until Jesus comes. ” Nationwide, with 98 percent of ballots counted in this week’s municipal elections, the A. N. C. garnered 54 percent of the vote — its lowest level in an election since 1994, when Mr. Mandela became president and the party became South Africa’s dominant political force. The decline in support for the A. N. C. was especially sharp in the nation’s eight major cities, where a growing number of black, voters turned against the politics of patronage personified by Mr. Zuma and increasingly resisted the A. N. C. ’s emotive appeals to its heroic past. “We’re waking up to a new political scene in South Africa,” said William Gumede, a political scientist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “People are clearly not voting anymore based on the past. They’re now voting on the current reality of poor service delivery and the Zuma presidency. ” The party’s showing in this week’s municipal elections fell well below the 60 percent threshold that the party’s secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, identified in a report in October as “a psychological and political turning point that would be interpreted as an indication of the demise of the movement. ” Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president of the A. N. C. and of the nation, said at a news conference on Friday afternoon that the organization would “do an introspective look at ourselves. ” “We are a party that’s not going away from the body politic of this country,” he said. “Where we have shown areas of weakness, we are going to get better and improve. That’s who we are. We learn from our mistakes. ” Mr. Ramaphosa, who is considered a leading contender to succeed Mr. Zuma as the A. N. C. ’s presidential candidate in 2019, sounded contrite, in a possible sign of how the party might try to regroup. “They think that we are arrogant,” he said of voters, “they think that we are they think that we are and I’d like to dispute all of that and say we are a listening organization. ” Mr. Zuma’s seven years in office have been marked by a series of scandals, including the use of millions of dollars in government funds to renovate his private home accusations that Indian businessmen close to him offered to dole out powerful government posts in exchange for favorable treatment and Mr. Zuma’s appointment of allies with little experience to important positions in government and companies. The party’s poor showing this week also showed the extent of frustration over the economy, which has been made worse by Mr. Zuma’s erratic decisions, and anger over one of the world’s highest levels of income inequality. The A. N. C. ’s enduring grip on rural areas dependent on the party’s deeply rooted patronage network will most likely ensure its dominance on the national stage for another decade, according to experts and even to officials in the opposition. But pressure could mount on party leaders to replace Mr. Zuma before the end of his second and final term, in 2019. The A. N. C. ’s national tally was about eight percentage points lower than the 62 percent it received in the most recent local elections, in 2011. “It’s a huge drop,” said Prince Mashele, the executive director of the Center for Politics and Research, a private group. “This means that the A. N. C. was rejected by its core constituents — meaning that there is something fundamentally wrong that the A. N. C. has done to offend them. ” For the opposition Democratic Alliance, the election results are the first significant victories outside of its stronghold in the western part of the country. Whites and South Africans of mixed race make up the party’s core supporters in that area, and blacks make up only about of the population there. The Democratic Alliance retained Cape Town, the nation’s city, with a landslide victory. The party now controls at least two of the nation’s eight biggest cities. Mmusi Maimane, who last year became the Democratic Alliance’s first black leader, claimed victory in the mayoral race in Pretoria on Friday, with more than 10 percent of the votes still left to be tallied. The A. N. C. did not concede. Under Mr. Maimane, 36, who grew up in Soweto, the Democratic Alliance appears to have made inroads even in A. N. C. strongholds, especially among young voters whose image of the A. N. C. has less to do with Mr. Mandela than with Mr. Zuma. “I wanted change,” said Tebogo Malatjie, an unemployed man in Soweto who voted for the first time for the Democratic Alliance. “You cannot vote for the A. N. C. if you want change. ” Voters in Nelson Mandela Bay — South Africa’s municipality, which includes Port Elizabeth and whose population is 60 percent black — chose as its new mayor Athol Trollip, 52, a white South African from the Democratic Alliance with a long career in progressive politics. He is fluent in Xhosa, the dominant African language in his region. But the Democratic Alliance failed to win a majority there and will have to form a coalition government with one or more smaller parties, possibly the Economic Freedom Fighters, a leftist party that came in third nationwide with 8 percent. | 1 |
Rick Perry has accused administrators at Texas AM of disqualifying a student who was elected to serve as student body president “in the name of ‘diversity. ’”[Robert McIntosh, the son of a prominent Republican fundraiser who supported President Trump in his bid for the White House, was disqualified after winning an election for Texas AM’s student body president by over 700 votes. The position of student body president was awarded to the finisher, Bobby Brooks, a junior who became Texas AM’s first openly gay student body president. McIntosh was initially disqualified over claims that he may have engaged in voter intimidation tactics. The concern was quickly dismissed by Texas AM’s Judicial Court, which The Washington Post calls “the university’s version of a student supreme court. ” But McIntosh’s disqualification was upheld, with the reason given that he “failed to disclose financial information for glow sticks briefly featured in a campaign video. ” Secretary of Energy and former Governor of Texas Rick Perry, who is an alumnus of Texas AM, wrote a column for The Houston Chronicle citing his concerns over the decision to take the position away from McIntosh over the purchase of glow sticks that appeared in his campaign video. “As Texas’ first Aggie governor and as someone who was twice elected Yell Leader of Texas AM University, I am deeply troubled by the recent conduct of AM’s administration and Student Government Association (SGA) during the Aggie president elections for ” he began. Mainstream media outlets like The Washington Post were quick to question the motivations behind Secretary Perry’s criticisms, running the headline “Rick Perry accuses Texas AM’s first gay student body president of stealing election” on their Facebook page. ”I viewed it as a testament to the Aggie character” — Rick Perry on election of gay student. Does this headline suggest that? pic. twitter. — Tommy (@tciccotta) March 23, 2017, Perry argued that the student body’s support of Brooks as an openly gay student was a “testament to the Aggie character. ” “When I first read that our student body had elected an openly gay man, Bobby Brooks, for president of the student body, I viewed it as a testament to the Aggie character. I was proud of our students because the election appeared to demonstrate a commitment to treating every student equally, judging on character rather than on personal characteristics,” he wrote. Despite The Washington Post‘s suggestion, Perry’s criticism wasn’t pointed at Brooks it was pointed at the administrators responsible for disqualifying McIntosh on a technicality. “In its opinion, the Judicial Court admitted that the charges were minor and technical, but, incredibly, chose to uphold the disqualification, with no consideration given to whether the punishment fit the crime. The desire of the electorate is overturned, and thousands of student votes are disqualified because of free glow sticks that appeared for 11 seconds of a campaign. Apparently, glow sticks merit the same punishment as voter intimidation,” he argued. Perry claimed that McIntosh received the glow sticks for participating in a charity event before the campaign and also that the other candidates weren’t asked to itemize the expenses of props used in their campaign videos. “Now, Brooks’ presidency is being treated as a victory for ‘diversity.’ It is difficult to escape the perception that this quest for ‘diversity’ is the real reason the election outcome was overturned,” Perry argued. “Does the principle of ‘diversity’ override and supersede all other values of our Aggie Honor Code? “Honestly, we were just surprised to see that the secretary of energy would take the time to weigh in in detail,” Amy Smith, the school’s senior vice president of marketing and communications, told the Texas Tribune, “and we respectfully disagree with his assessment of what happened. ” Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about education and social justice for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 0 |
TEL AVIV — The YouTube sensations known as Diamond and Silk released a new video slamming President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry for “stabbing Israel in the back. ”[The hilarious duo, sisters with the real names of Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, rose to fame when they shot videos in ardent support of Donald Trump during his bid for the Republican nomination. Their latest video, entitled “We Stand With Israel: Kerry and Obama don’t know where they stand,” lambasts Kerry for his address last week on the conflict. In apparent reference to Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz, Hardaway said, “Kerry must be slipping in all of that Heinz Ketchup — ’cause he trippin’!” Hardaway continues by attacking Obama for not having Israel’s back and for being “out of touch. ” “Let me tell you something: Israel is our ally, so that means we have to have their backs! I don’t care if their back is small, and our backs are big, we still got to have their backs — period. ” “[Obama] was out of touch with this election. He was out of touch with the American people. And now he is out of touch with Israel,” she says. “And if he’s not careful, somebody will end up stabbing Israel in the back,” she cries, as Richardson animatedly demonstrates the action. “And we can’t let that happen!” To end, the two sisters declare in unison: “Guess what — We stand with Israel! We will always have their back!” | 0 |
During his 1983 speech to the NRA Annual Meetings in Phoenix, Arizona, Ronald Reagan noted that “those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun control laws. ”[Reagan stood before an applauding NRA crowd and reminded them that he, too, was a member of the NRA. He praised the NRA for the work it was doing to defend the right to keep and bear arms and pointed out that a large portion of the group’s two and a half million members had rallied to defeat gun control in California in November 1982. He then said, “It’s a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun control laws. ” He added, “I happen to know this from personal experience,” referencing the assassination attempt on his own life in March 30, 1981. Reagan then said, “I’ve always felt a special bond with the members of your group. You live by Lincoln’s words, ‘Important principles may and must be inflexible. ’” He added: [The NRA’s] philosophy put its trust in people, so you insist [that] individuals be held responsible for their actions. The NRA believes that America’s laws were made to be obeyed and that our constitutional liberties are just as important today as 200 years ago. And by the way, the constitution does not say that government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms. The constitution says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Reagan gave his NRA speech in 1983 and no president followed suit until President Donald Trump. The NRA announced that Trump will speak at the Annual Meetings on April 28, 2017, in Atlanta. NRATV is celebrating Trump’s coming speech in a video that features snippets of Reagan’s 1983 speech, then segues to candidate Trump speaking at the Annual Meetings in 2016, when the NRA endorsed him. The video then anticipates the Amendment comments that President Trump will make at this year’s Annual Meetings and the work he and the NRA will continue doing to protect the right to keep and bear arms. The video is titled, “It’s Morning in America, Once Again. ” It’s Morning in America, Once Again. #NRAAM2017 @realDonaldTrump @NRA pic. twitter. — NRATV (@NRATV) April 24, 2017, 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 |
Authorities are now reporting that Aaron Hernandez had a verse from the Bible written on his forehead when he was found hanged with a bed sheet in his prison cell on Wednesday. [The former New England Patriots star was found dead in his jail cell only days after being pronounced not guilty in a second murder trial, the AP reported. Officials now say that Hernandez had written a portion of John 3:16 across his forehead, the New York Daily News said. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” the verse in question reads. Prison officials also noted that the troubled player’s Bible was lying near his body and opened to the same verse. Sources told the paper that an investigation had been launched to find out if Hernandez had somehow gotten hold of a synthetic marijuana called K2 on Tuesday night. Even as Hernandez’s death was labeled a suicide, some of the player’s family and friends insisted that he would never have done such a thing to himself. On Wednesday, his former lawyer, a sports agent, at least one of his former teammates, and his family all expressed doubts over the claim that Hernandez committed suicide. Some even speculated that he may have been murdered. Despite being acquitted in his most recent murder case, Hernandez was serving a life sentence for the 2015 murder of Odin Lloyd. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0 |
They are about two inches wide, squarish, and five inches tall. They hail from the Toggenburg valley of northeast Switzerland, and they are held in the highest regard by experts around the world. They are glass bottles used to hold athletes’ urine samples, and they are central to the account of a former Russian antidoping official who says that the host country executed an elaborate doping operation at the 2014 Sochi Olympics — imperceptibly switching out urine from the squat containers long thought to be . “I tried to break into these bottles years ago and couldn’t do it,” Don Catlin, the former head of the U. C. L. A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory, said. “It’s shocking. ” The bottles, used for testing at the Olympics since the Sydney Games in 2000, are made by Berlinger, a Swiss company founded in 1865 as a mechanical cotton weaving mill. Until this week, they were largely ignored vessels in the global fight against doping. Now they are prominent characters in an extraordinary ploy that affected the results of the Winter Olympics, according to Grigory Rodchenkov, who ran Russia’s antidoping laboratory for a decade. His accounts of the doping operation were first reported by The New York Times this week. Berlinger’s bottles were first presented to the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission in the late 1990s, in a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, said Andrea Berlinger, the sixth generation of her family to run the company. Dr. Catlin, then a member of that commission, recalled that the Berlingers showcased various bottle designs to a roomful of doctors. “All of us were particularly pleased and excited by this bottle,” he said, “because it looked pretty bulletproof. ” According to Dr. Rodchenkov, it is not. Russian officials somehow figured out a way to remove the cap without breaking it, he said, enabling him to replace the urine of top athletes with clean urine, stockpiled in soda bottles and other containers in the months leading up to the Games. “We’re all a bit speechless, to be honest,” Ms. Berlinger said Friday. “We’re seeing a lot of support. No one can believe it. ” The mechanics of how the feat was pulled off are a mystery to Dr. Rodchenkov. “I truly believed this was ” he said in a recent interview in Los Angeles, holding a clear Berlinger bottle with a blue stripe in his hand. “This is like a safe. I cannot think how to get under this. ” Russian officials have emphatically disputed Dr. Rodchenkov’s accounts of a doping program. “These allegations look absolutely groundless,” Dmitry S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, told Russian news agencies in a conference call. “They are not substantiated by any trustworthy data, they are not backed by any sort of documents. All this simply looks like slander by a turncoat. ” Berlinger bottles come in sets of two: one for the athlete’s “A” sample, which is tested at the Games, and the other for the “B” sample, which is used to corroborate a positive test of the A sample. Metal teeth in the B bottle’s cap lock in place, so it cannot be twisted off. “The bottles are either destroyed or retain visible traces of tampering if any unauthorized attempt is made to open them,” Berlinger’s website says about the security of the bottles. The only way to open the bottle, according to Berlinger, is to use a special machine sold by the company for about $2, 000 it cracks the bottle’s cap in half, making it apparent that the sample has been touched. Dr. Rodchenkov said that for at least 15 Russian athletes who won medals at Sochi, both the A and B samples were substituted before they were tested. None of the bottles’ caps — which are branded with unique codes — showed any signs of having been opened. Each night at Sochi, Dr. Rodchenkov said, sealed bottles were passed through a hole in the wall of the storage closet that served as his shadow laboratory. The bottles were handed to a man who he believed worked for the Russian intelligence service, the F. S. B. Within two hours, he said, those same bottles were returned to him, their caps unlocked. “Magicians were on duty,” Dr. Rodchenkov said, suspecting that F. S. B. officers had studied the toothed metal rings that lock the bottle when the cap is twisted shut. According to him, they collected hundreds of them leading up to the Olympics. Dr. Catlin theorized that heat had been applied to remove the bottles’ caps. He said he had expressed some concern about the bottles years ago, asking if they could be outfitted with internal thermometers, to show if the sample had been frozen or heated. “But that’s just a wild guess,” he said. After his account was published, Dr. Rodchenkov sent a letter to the World Agency and the I. O. C. calling on them to examine the B samples of Russian athletes from the 2014 Sochi Games, whom he offered to help identify. Bryan Fogel, an American filmmaker who helped Dr. Rodchenkov flee to Los Angeles, where he now lives, also signed the letter. While those samples would not contain traces of steroids, Dr. Rodchenkov told The Times, they would bear evidence of tampering. He said there would be scratch marks around the necks of the bottles, where the metal rings are. He also said that common table salt could be found in some of the samples. When he replaced tainted urine with clean urine, he added salt or water to the new urine to match the chemical specifications of the original sample. Ms. Berlinger said the bottles were the international standard at major sporting competitions, including the World Cup. Each bottle costs about $15, she said. More than 2, 000 athletes competed in the Sochi Games. Olympics officials have long believed the cost of the bottles to be a critical expense to ensure the integrity of the Games, Dr. Catlin said. I. O. C. officials have called Dr. Rodchenkov’s account “very detailed and very worrying,” calling on antidoping authorities to investigate his claims. Asked on Friday for its reaction to Dr. Rodchenkov’s proposal to the B samples of Russian athletes, a spokeswoman for WADA confirmed receipt of Dr. Rodchenkov’s letter. “We are currently determining our path forward, which we will be in a better position to communicate next week,” she wrote by email. In the letter, Dr. Rodchenkov and Mr. Fogel asked to be present during any examination of the B samples in Lausanne, requesting that the investigation be carried out by a committee of scientists and an independent observer. “This could cause all kinds of problems,” Dr. Catlin said. “WADA has got to get on this. ” | 1 |
Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Security Question: What is 6 + 5 ? Please leave these two fields as-is: IMPORTANT! To be able to proceed, you need to solve the following simple math (so we know that you are a human) :-) Doom and Bloom | 0 |
During his April 28 speech to the NRA’s Leadership Forum in Atlanta, President Donald Trump told the audience, “You came through for me and I am going to come through for you. ”[Trump began his speech by thanking executive director Chris Cox and NRA senior Vice President Wayne LaPierre for their hard work in defending freedom. He recalled days gone by in the NRA, saying, “No one was more proud to be an American than the beloved patriot Charlton Heston. I remember Charlton, he was out there fighting when maybe a lot of people didn’t want to be fighting. ” Trump then turned his attention to his own presidency, saying, “Only one candidate in the general came to speak to you and that candidate is now the president of the United States, standing before you again. ” He added, “You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you. ” He said, “We have news that you’ve been waiting for a long time — the assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end … No longer will federal agencies be coming after gun owners. ” He said, “We want to ensure you of the sacred right of of all our citizens” and observed, “The right of is essential to public safety. ” He said, “Our police and sheriffs know that when you ban guns, only the criminals will be armed. ” Trump then made a promise: I will never, every infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Freedom is not a gift from government, freedom is a gift from God. 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 |
On social media, our political battles are increasingly automated. People who head to Twitter to discuss their ideals are, often unwittingly, conversing with legions of bots: accounts preprogrammed to spew the same campaign slogans, insults or conspiracy theories hundreds or thousands of times a day. And one of their most competitive battlegrounds is the prime digital real estate that opens up every time Donald J. Trump tweets. Any supporters or critics who reply quickly enough to Mr. Trump can see their own tweets showcased right beneath the biggest spectacle on Twitter. But in this contest, propaganda bots always best human beings. Recently, I noticed a different kind of bot clawing to the top of Mr. Trump’s Twitter replies. It’s called @EveryTrumpDonor, and every couple of hours it tweets about the Americans who donated to Mr. Trump’s campaign — who they are, where they’re from, what they do, all from public Federal Election Commission data. People sucked into its timeline aren’t always sure if it’s a tool for shaming Mr. Trump’s supporters or a celebration of the folks who contributed to his victory. Either way, the bot reminds us of the real people behind the Twitter brigades. Unlike the typical Twitter bot, it fights disinformation with actual facts. @EveryTrumpDonor represents an emerging class of politicized bots. You could think of them as “protest bots” or, as the theorist Mark Sample calls them, “bots of conviction. ” Many bots set up to spread campaign propaganda or disinformation masquerade as humans, but protest bots typically own their cyborg natures. Some are designed to jockey for social media position with the propaganda bots, while others set out to unmask nefarious actors, distract enemies, redirect public attention to the messages they value or even build morale among human activists. They’re not always deployed for universal good sometimes, their aims and means are unsettling. But in every case, propaganda bots and protests bots are fighting over a limited resource: our attention. Propaganda bots made a powerful showing during Election 2016. Oxford University’s Project on Computational Propaganda found that at times during the campaign, more than a quarter of the tweets colonizing politicized hashtags like #MAGA and #CrookedHillary came from “heavily automated accounts. ” In the days leading up to the election, Trump propaganda bots outnumbered Clinton propaganda bots five to one. Since then, bot armies have been programmed to spread conspiracy theories about a Democratic pedophile ring known as Pizzagate. The bots help the topic trend, lend an air of momentum and create enough of a mirage of a movement that real people then join in. Bots of conviction can’t compete with those numbers — spamming is not their style — but they can work as effective tools of provocation, as this taxonomy shows. HUNTER BOTS One of Twitter’s vilest subcultures is its collection of minstrel accounts, which impersonate Jews and people of color in order to mock and discredit them. These accounts steal avatars from real people, give themselves fake ethnic names and spew racism that’s then boosted by a network of tittering racist tweeters. @ImposterBuster, a bot unleashed on Twitter last month by the Tablet writer Yair Rosenberg and the developer Neal Chandra, is designed to hunt them down. Mr. Rosenberg and Mr. Chandra have compiled a database of known minstrel accounts and haveput @ImposterBuster on their trail. The bot tracks their every move on Twitter and replies automatically to their tweets, exposing racists and alerting other users to their subterfuge. Another bot with a predatory instinct, @EveryTrumpette, is a visual variation on the @EveryTrumpDonor theme. Every few hours, it pulls up a photo from a Trump rally, then uses a algorithm to scan the crowd and zoom in on one person’s face. The resulting videos are scored with quotations from Mr. Trump himself. The bot’s creator has contended that its purpose is empathic connection, the bot designed to examine Trump supporters, “one by one, to try and see the humanity. ” But its effect is combative, even unnerving. It implies that whether online or at a rally, supporters will not be shielded by the anonymizing cloak of the crowd. At some point, this bot’s unfeeling gaze will systematically hunt them down and call them out for judgment. HONEYPOT BOTS These bots are meant to distract trolls by goading them into fighting with unthinking machines. Accounts like @arguetron and @good_opinions tweet out automated progressive lines, then lure in the folks who scan Twitter, looking for a fight. All it takes is tweeting out flash point terms like “affirmative action,” “feminist” or “Drudge Report. ” Whenever anyone responds to a provocation from @arguetron — which presents as a woman named Liz — the bot is programmed to volley back a dismissive tweet. @arguetron is not very smart — it can’t recognize anything you say to it, much less respond — but the people who debate it always lose. Some have angrily tweeted for hours before logging off. That’s time that could have been spent arguing with real progressive women, but is instead directed at a virtual brick wall. One of the most delicious honeypot bots of this campaign was targeted at one Twitter user in particular. @ilduce2016 is a Twitter bot created by Gawker journalists that exclusively tweets out Benito Mussolini quotations but attributes them to Mr. Trump. Gawker guessed that Mr. Trump’s obsession with boosting his own image — he’s known to retweet fans who tweet his quotations back at him — could be exploited to trick him into owning and promoting the words of a Fascist dictator. He took the bait one February morning, retweeting the Mussolini line “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep. ” COMFORT BOTS For a break from political struggle, turn to @tinycarebot, a robot that reminds people that they are only human. It popped up last month, in the middle of Twitter angst, and began tweeting out calming nature emoji with simple relaxation tasks like “please remember to drink some water” and “take time to look up from twitter please. ” If you tweet at @tinycarebot, it tweets back a “personal reminder for you” mine included the emoji of a cityscape at night with the message “please take time to look outside! be kind to urself!” There’s something soothing about the idea that one of the most draining forms of modern political engagement, fighting with strangers on Twitter, could be outsourced to forces of automation. Let the bots hunt down divert antifeminist trolls and crowd out the propaganda bots. I think I’ll take a nap. After all, bots don’t have feelings to hurt, professional reputations to uphold or conflicts of interest to manage. They can respond instantly and tweet tirelessly, but waste no time reading anybody else’s timeline. As inhuman as the bots are, their greatest promise may lie in their ability to cut through the artifice of political Twitter to reveal something real. Propaganda bots spew lines and lies that coat social media with impersonal rhetoric and images. Bots of conviction produce interactions that feel grounded in revealing truths of human behavior. And that’s the case whether the bot is offering up the name of a retired Trump donor from Oklahoma City or showing how fruitless Twitter political arguments really are. | 1 |
Dad in weird mood since 2004 07-11-16 A 54-YEAR-OLD man has been in a bit of a mood for the past 12 years, his family has noticed. Engineer Roy Hobbs has seemed reluctant to spend time with family members for the last decade or so, preferring to be in the shed or slumped in his chair with a can of lager and a forbidding look on his face. Son Paul Hobbs said: “Come to think of it, dad has seemed a bit pissed off since a few years after I was born. “Maybe something happened near the start of the 20th century that annoyed him. “I suppose we could ask him but that might just make it worse. I sometimes hear whistling from the shed so he seems to be okay when he’s on his own.” Hobbs’s wife Linda said: “He was quite chirpy during the 90s. He’s probably just hungry.”
Share: | 0 |
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday denied his government used chemical weapons on a town in the Idlib province. [“I stress to you once again: the Syrian army has not, did not, and will not use this kind of weapons — not just against our own people, but even against the terrorists that are targeting our civilians indiscriminately,” Muallem said at a press conference in Damascus, as reported by . Muallem went on to give the same account of the incident that Russia has insisted upon, claiming that Syrian warplanes “attacked an arms depot belonging to Front,” which is ’s affiliate in Syria. The Foreign Minister claimed the Nusra Front, ISIS, and other organizations “continue to store chemical weapons in urban and residential areas. ” He dismissed calls for an international investigation by saying Syria’s previous experience with “politicized” investigations was “not encouraging” because “they come out of Damascus with certain indications which then change at their headquarters. ” Walid also went out of his way to slam Turkey, evidently in response to Turkish denunciation of the attack in Idlib, and Turkey’s treatment of victims from the chemical weapons deployment. Turkish authorities have said autopsies of people killed in the attack revealed signs of chemical weapons exposure. | 0 |
Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, is also chairwoman of C40, a network of the world’s biggest cities committed to addressing climate change. As mayor, despite strong opposition, she has closed parts of the city — including along the bank of the Seine River — to traffic. Recently, I asked Ms. Hidalgo about her interest in environmental issues and why women are important to the solutions. Her answers have been edited and condensed. How did you get interested in environment and climate change issues? Air pollution was the issue that first alerted me to the importance of taking bold action to protect Parisians. Pollution created by heavy traffic has always been a challenge for big cities like Paris. When I was a deputy mayor between 2001 and 2008, Paris made a lot of progress by creating the Vélib’ bike sharing system, one of the first in any major city in the world, and the Autolib’ electric car hire system. When I was in charge of urban planning, we pedestrianized the first section of the bank of the Seine, from the Musée d’Orsay to the Eiffel Tower. This was disruptive at the time, but today Parisians and Paris lovers can’t imagine this iconic landscape as a road anymore. We know you’ve introduced “Paris Respire. ” What does that involve? What else have you done in this area, and what do you hope to do in the future? Paris Respire is the reclaiming of the streets of Paris, for the enjoyment of pedestrians — the adults and especially the children — and the cyclists. Some of the city’s most iconic areas, including Le Marais, Montmartre and the Canal St. are closed to all vehicles on Saturdays Sundays. This showed to Parisians what it meant to live and commute alternatively. They were given the opportunity, for the first time in living memory, to experience a healthier and more peaceful city, breathing a cleaner air. And we do even more now. Every first Sunday of the month, the is also closed to vehicles. Most recently, we pedestrianized a second section of the bank of the Seine, between Les Tuileries and creating a wonderful new space for Parisians and those who love Paris, to enjoy. We also launched “Reinventing our squares. ” This began with the Place de la République, which was one of the most dangerous or unpleasant places to visit as a cyclist or pedestrian. Today, most of the square is reserved for these users. Our plans are now to expand this initiative to seven more squares. What are the biggest contributors to the pollution problems in Paris? There are no surprises here. It is cars, particularly the oldest ones. Tourist buses also contribute significantly. All diesel vehicles cause particular problems because the pollution from these is the most damaging to human health. That is why, with the mayor of Mexico City, we announced that we will ban all diesel vehicles from our cities by 2025. All cars entering Paris must display a colored sticker called Crit’Air, indicating the age of the vehicle, engine size and emissions. In order to provide alternatives to private car use, since I became mayor we have expanded the Vélib’ bike hire system to more than 14, 000 bikes. The Cityscoot system allows people to rent an electric scooter from their smartphone, making millions of journeys each year with zero emissions. We will also launch the SeaBubbles in Paris this year: These flying taxis over the River Seine will offer another transportation alternative. How has being a woman hindered — or helped — you as a mayor of a major city and a leader in environmental causes? The fact is that women have to work 10 times harder to get the same opportunities as men. And they have then 10 times less the right to fail. For a long time, women were working on environmental issues, because men were not interested in them. It was seen as a career . And despite that attitude, an incredible group of powerful women succeeded in delivering one of the greatest diplomatic achievements in history, when more than 170 nations signed the Paris Agreement on climate change. It has truly inspired a new generation of young women and men to help tackle the climate crisis. Do you see all environmental issues as being especially a women’s issue, or specifically climate change? All these issues are humanity’s issues but they are impacting women more. I’ll give you some examples of their higher vulnerability when facing the potential catastrophes of climate change. In 1991 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of the 150, 000 people killed in the cyclone were women, because they were more likely to be at home. Women in New Orleans experienced an average loss of earnings of 7 percent in the year after Katrina, a 14 percent loss for women, while men experienced a 23 percent gain in earnings. In many communities, particularly in Africa, about half the women are still working in agriculture. Agriculture is uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, leaving millions of women around the world, and the family members who rely on them for their wages and food, at risk because of the changing climate. At the conference, people talked about women being more sensitive, more caring, more collaborative, and therefore more able to negotiate ways to attack climate change. Some critics would say that even though the idea to is enhance the role of women, these are traditional, and perhaps even sexist, ways to view women. How would you respond to that? The challenges our societies are facing while tackling climate change are enormous. And I’m convinced that we will all need to show courage, creativity and solidarity. These aren’t traits that are unique to women, but our life experience is different than that of men. For a long time, the life experience of women has been denied, and now it is time to consider what those experiences can bring. An inspiring group of powerful women managed to deliver the Paris Agreement, after years of dead ends and false hopes, they delivered it. In my experience, the successful men that I have met have not lacked confidence in their abilities. Through the Women4Climate initiative we are asking young, talented and potentially powerful women to believe in their abilities, believe in their chance, because our planet needs them. What challenges do you see in light of President Trump’s sharply differing views of climate change compared with those of President Barack Obama? Whatever happens at the White House, I am convinced that together, cities, businesses and citizens will save the planet. Their alliance is critical. We know there is no alternative. We know that if we don’t act now, our citizens will never forgive us. At the last C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico City, it was inspiring to see a group of mayors from American cities come together and repeat their determination to deliver on the Paris Agreement, regardless of what happens at the federal level. As my very good friend Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, D. C. said at that event, “One election does not change who we are in cities in America. ” My message to the cities of America and to the women of America is that there are millions of us around the world who will stand by their side in the fight against populism, against climate change and against the forces that would hold you back. You can count on us. | 1 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned from his visit with President Trump to a boost in approval ratings — and an internet meme of their uncomfortable handshake. Complicating matters even more, North Korea claims its recent launch shows progress toward nuclear capabilities. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is visiting Washington to discuss trade and jobs. Up next is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, on Wednesday. _____ • Michael T. Flynn, the U. S. national security adviser, resigned after it was revealed that he had misled the White House about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States. The retired Army general, who had served in the job for less than a month, stepped down following days of reports that he had discussed American sanctions with the diplomat, weeks before President Trump’s inauguration. Today’s episode of The Daily podcast looks at Stephen Miller, the behind many of Mr. Trump’s most contentious executive orders. Listen here if you’re on a computer, here if you have an iOS device or here for international access on an Android device. _____ • More harrowing details about the suffering of civilians in the Syrian city of Aleppo: Canisters of chlorine gas, a banned weapon, were dumped on residential areas at least eight times late last year in the final weeks of the battle to retake the city from rebels, Human Rights Watch reported. And a separate analysis drawing on satellite images, security videos and other data indicates that Russia, contrary to its repeated claims, bombed a major hospital in the city multiple times. _____ • Dozens of people employed by Xiao Jianhua, the influential Hong Kong billionaire who was whisked to China last month, are being stopped from leaving the mainland — another sign that Beijing is enforcing one of its most crackdowns on a private Chinese conglomerate. Above, Mr. Xiao’s Tomorrow Group building in Beijing. _____ • A California dam’s spillway appears to have stabilized, but evacuation orders remain in place for more than 180, 000 people as state authorities try to make emergency repairs before more rains come. Gov. Jerry Brown warned that the situation at the Oroville Dam, the tallest in the U. S. was “complex and rapidly changing. ” _____ • Spiky limestone cliffs known as karsts support strange and rare species across Southeast Asia, from Vietnam to Borneo. But they are vanishing as surely as the region’s forests, often pulverized for cement. The loss is particularly acute in Cambodia, with limited government regulation and a scientific base still recovering from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge. _____ • Peugeot, the French automaker, bought India’s most iconic car brand, the Ambassador, from Hindustan Motors for $12 million. The “Amby,” sometimes described as a bowler hat on wheels, was first made in 1948. • The U. S. Senate confirmed Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary. The Sachs banker will seek to overhaul the tax code and financial rules. • Our tech reporter considers the affinity Asia tech titans have for Mr. Trump and weighs whether they can fulfill their pledges to bring jobs to the U. S. • Japan is enjoying its longest period of growth in three years. But the pace of expansion has been slowing, and questions persist about how Japan’’s exporters will weather the Trump administration. • China’s inflation quickened to to 2. 5 percent in January, the highest rate since 2014. • U. S. stocks rose. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • In Pakistan, a bomb killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 100 at a protest by pharmacists in downtown Lahore. a group, claimed responsibility. [The New York Times] • New Delhi’s latest bout of air pollution is drawing attention to widespread toxic air in the country. [India. com] • A rising hope in France’s presidential race is Emmanuel Macron, the former minister of the economy, who will face Marine Le Pen of the National Front. He claims to transcend parties, but risks being seen as a candidate who stands for nothing. [The New York Times] • Australian firefighters are still trying to contain remaining bushfires in New South Wales, while many residents returning to scorched areas find nothing left. [ABC] • A photo essay looks at a community on the outskirts of Bangkok where migrant workers from Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos live with their children in stacks of shipping containers. [The Diplomat] • A bomb scare at Hong Kong Disneyland, which led to the evacuation of more than 500 people, was set off by a suspicious package containing batteries and wires that turned out to be a child’s toy — possibly a malfunctioning Buzz Lightyear. [Hong Kong Free Press] • Japan, with the world’s highest proportion of people 65 and older, is a global model for how to adapt to an aging society, including when it comes to “one of the greatest joys” — eating. [The New York Times] • Want to stay focused at work today? Remember to take a break. • At age 100, this man still plays, teaches and conducts. Like the music, he keeps going. • Recipe of the day: Impress your sweetheart with this chocolate fudge. • Modern goddesses ruled the Grammy music awards. Adele swept the top awards at the Grammys, but paid tribute to Beyoncé, who delivered a showstopper celebrating motherhood. Here’s the complete list of winners, and a look at the red carpet. • And the Biennale is one of the largest exhibitions of contemporary art in India. Our 360 video follows an artist as she installs her work “The Dance of Death. ” Valentine’s Day isn’t the only holiday celebrating love today in the U. S. It is also National Donor Day, a government effort encouraging Americans to register to donate organs, eyes and tissue. Fifty years ago in South Africa, Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard performed the first human heart transplant. The patient survived just 18 days, but his use of a donor who was was heralded by other doctors. “It was a monumental advance,” one said, “more societal perhaps than medical, because it applied to all organ transplants. ” Dr. Barnard’s second transplant patient lived for 19 months. The surgery was also notable because the donated heart came from a biracial man, a provocative decision during apartheid rule. Kidneys are the most frequent organ transplanted. The first operation to transfer a kidney that is considered to have been successful took place in Boston in 1954 involving a brother and his dying twin sibling. Tiff Fehr, a colleague of ours at The Times, saved a fellow journalist in December. She has this advice to anyone considering the brave act: “Donating a kidney was a kind of faith: in people, health care, hospitals and more. I’m gratified it went well on all fronts. ” For information on how to help, here is a list of organizations. Sean Alfano contributed reporting. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
NEWARK — A defense lawyer tried to undermine the credibility of the confessed culprit in the George Washington Bridge lane closings in federal court on Thursday, suggesting that he was a serial schemer and braggart who had hoped to take credit for the scheme — but now, as the star witness for the prosecution, could not keep his story straight. In the lawyer argued that Gov. Chris Christie and top aides in his office — not his client, Bill Baroni — were the ones calling the shots at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge. The witness, David Wildstein, as Mr. Christie’s “enforcer” at the Port Authority, conceded that the governor and his office had used the authority as a piggy bank to buy endorsements for his in 2013, yelling when the money did not come fast enough. But Mr. Wildstein resisted attempts to veer from the prosecution’s charges: that he had conspired with two top Christie aides, Mr. Baroni, the governor’s former top staff appointee at the Port Authority, and Bridget Anne Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to the governor, to close the lanes for four days in September 2013 to create a traffic jam they knew would punish a mayor who had declined to endorse the governor’s . Repeatedly, over five hours in court, he replied, “No sir, that’s not correct,” as Michael Baldassare, a lawyer for Mr. Baroni, accused Mr. Wildstein of embellishing or changing his accounts. As the trial of Mr. Baroni and Ms. Kelly moved toward the end of its second week, the testimony again pulled back the curtain on the unseemly politics of New Jersey, particularly under Mr. Christie, a Republican, as he sought endorsements from Democratic mayors to help win a broad victory in 2013 in the hopes that it could propel his presidential campaign in 2016. In one case, Mr. Wildstein testified, Mr. Christie pushed for the authority to grant $1. 5 million to the pet cause of a state senator the governor’s office was trying to convince not to run for mayor of Jersey City — because the governor wanted to clear a path for another Democrat that his administration believed was all but certain to endorse his bid. In another case, “seven figures,” Mr. Wildstein testified, went to a project sought by a Democratic county executive who not only endorsed the governor, but also brought on board a slate of Democratic mayors to do the same. Prosecutors have said Mr. Baroni and Ms. Kelly were part of the team steering money for endorsements. But Mr. Baldassare pushed Mr. Wildstein, who worked for Mr. Baroni at the authority, to pin responsibility on the governor, who had to approve the money, and Mr. Christie’s chief of staff at the time, Kevin O’Dowd. Asked if he recalled Mr. O’Dowd screaming at Mr. Baroni for not getting the county executive the money fast enough, Mr. Wildstein replied, “Yes, sir, I do. ” “The governor wanted the Port Authority to give that money to the Hudson Urban League so that Sandy Cunningham wouldn’t run against Steven Fulop, right?” Mr. Baldassare asked. “That is my understanding, yes sir,” Mr. Wildstein replied. Mr. Baldassare attempted to discredit Mr. Wildstein by asking him to recount how he had bragged to friends about some of his more colorful political exploits. He stole Senator Frank R. Lautenberg’s suit jacket before a debate, so the senator would be uncomfortable as he debated the candidate Mr. Wildstein was working for. When a local newspaper endorsed a rival candidate, Mr. Wildstein said he went out early in the morning and bought every paper in town so no one would read it. He offered to deliver petitions for a candidate opposing him in a local election, then threw them out so that he could win. And once, in a phone call, Mr. Wildstein said he pretended to be a representative of the actor Alan Alda, to try to convince an adversary that Mr. Alda wanted to run for the United States Senate in New Jersey. Mr. Baldassare argued that Mr. Wildstein had begun the bridge scheme with the hopes of bragging that he had moved the cones to change the lanes. And once he had been caught, he tried to drag in Mr. Baroni and Ms. Kelly. “Sir, I never had the intention of bragging about the cones,” Mr. Wildstein said. Mr. Wildstein began working with prosecutors the week after the scheme to close the lanes became public in January 2014, when a legislative subpoena revealed an email to him from Ms. Kelly a month before the lane closings: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee. ” Mr. Baldassare, the lawyer for Mr. Baroni, argued that Mr. Wildstein’s version of events had changed as he met with prosecutors over the next two years: “Your role as described by you decreased and Mr. Baroni’s increased, correct?” “Sir, I don’t know if that’s correct,” Mr. Wildstein replied. Reviewing a set of emails presented by the prosecution, Mr. Baldassare pushed Mr. Wildstein, unsuccessfully, to say that Mr. Baroni had reason to believe that the lane closings were a traffic study, which prosecutors and Mr. Wildstein said was a . Mr. Baldassare pushed, saying that there was no documentary evidence to back up some of Mr. Wildstein’s accounts of his conversations with Mr. Baroni and others about the lane closings. “So we have to take your word as to what was said in those conversations, right?” Mr. Baldassare asked. Mr. Wildstein seemed unfazed. “I can’t say you have to do anything,” he replied. | 1 |
in: Human Rights , War Propaganda , World News (image: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah) US naked aggression on Yemen gets scant scoundrel media coverage. It includes undeclared drone war begun post-9/11, Obama continuing what George Bush began, civilians harmed most of all. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and other regional rogue states, backed by America and its NATO partners, began terror-bombing Houthi forces, falsely called terrorists. Casualties are multiples higher than officially reported, civilians ruthlessly slaughtered – war in Yemen another bonanza for US, UK, French and German weapons makers, along with war-profiteers from other countries. Earlier in October, Saudi warplanes terror-bombed a Sanaa Houthi funeral ceremony, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians – the single deadliest incident in over 18 months of fighting so far. Washington bears full responsibility. Riyadh shares it. Conflict continues raging, the Pentagon selecting targets for Saudi warplanes to terror-bomb. Over the weekend, a Saudi-led “coalition” airstrike targeted a prison and nearby administration buildings in Houthi-controlled Hodeidah, destroying facilities struck, massacring dozens, wounding many more victims, separately hitting Hodeidah’s port. Saudi military spokesman General Ahmed Asiri lied, claiming facilities struck were used as “a command and control center for (Houthi) operations.” Hours before the Hodeidah terror-bombing, Saudi warplanes massacred at least 18 civilians in Taiz, including 11 members of one family. Throughout months of fighting, Saudi warplanes terror-bombed schools, hospitals, residential areas, commercial marketplaces and other nonmilitary targets. Conflict resolution efforts failed because Washington, Riyadh and their rogue partners want war, not peace – holding an entire nation hostage to their viciousness, a severe humanitarian crisis taking unknown numbers of lives. Separately, on October 28, Saudi Arabia was overwhelmingly reelected to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), a body infested with major human rights abusers. Heavy US pressure got General Assembly members to vote Russia off the HRC. Genocidal war on Yemen continues, the body failing to condemn the slaughter. It doesn’t promote human rights. It supports horrendous abuses committed by Washington and its imperial allies. Submit your review | 0 |
‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. ‘Clear Bias’ Against Hiring Veterans Under Obama Administration, Says Former VA Official By Arnaldo Rodgers on October 27, 2016 Veterans
By Fred Lucas
Veterans must be given preference in securing federal jobs, according to long-standing laws, but hiring hasn’t always worked out in their favor. A federal audit found that on numerous occasions, agencies placed Obama administration political appointees into career government jobs with civil service protections—bypassing veterans.
Much of the federal bureaucracy has turned against men and women who served the country in the military, said Darin Selnick, a retired Air Force captain and former official at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“There is a clear bias against veterans. They think veterans should start at the bottom like everyone else,” Selnick told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.
Read the Full Article at dailysignal.com >>>> Related Posts: The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VNN, VNN authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. Notices Posted by Arnaldo Rodgers on October 27, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Veterans . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can leave a response or trackback to this entry FaceBook Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment Login WHAT'S HOT | 0 |
The state Duma has postponed the adoption of the bill on “winter tires” The state Duma has postponed the adoption of the bill on “winter tires” 02.11.2016
The state Duma will not pass a bill on fines for “superiority” machines — that is summer tires in the winter and Vice versa: according to our information, on 1 November, the Duma Council decided to establish an ad hoc working group on the revision of the initiative.
photo: Gennady Cherkasov
Originally planned to be introduced in 2014 by a group of senators and MPs at the meeting of 21 October, but the agenda was very intense, and until this subject is not reached.
Then attracted great attention of the public document it was proposed to include in the agenda of the meeting on 2 November. But now his fate will be decided by the ad hoc working group.
As reported by “MK” sources familiar with the situation, even at the last Duma Council the question arose about why the bill on amendments to the Code of administrative offences went through the Committee on transportation and construction and not through the profile for all of the bills offering to rule of the administrative code, the Committee on state construction and legislation.
And here, according to another source, “MK”, November 1, the Council of the Duma the head of the Committee on transport and construction Yevgeny moskvichyov ( United Russia ) has proposed to establish a joint working group of representatives of the two committees, and to discuss again all disputed issues.
We recall that the bill was discussed on amendment of the administrative code, which promised to be fine in 2 thousand rubles for violation of requirements of operation of tires and wheels.
The Committee on transport and construction, proposing to support the project in the first reading, said that from 1 January 2015 entered into force the technical regulations of the Customs Union “On safety of wheeled vehicles”, one of which forbids to operate vehicles without winter tires in winter. But the timing of the entry into force of this regulation “was determined based on the training of owners of vehicles (especially large trucking companies) to the introduction of these rules, and also taking into account the possibility of domestic industrial enterprises to ensure that all vehicles operated on the roads of our country, winter tires”.
The disadvantage of the bill, noted in the Committee ’s opinion, is the absence in it of provisions concerning the right of subjects of Federation to change the terms of the prohibition of winter tyres and tyres with spikes of snow. | 0 |
KAKTOVIK, Alaska — Come fall, polar bears are everywhere around this Arctic village, dozing on sand spits, roughhousing in the shallows, padding down the beach with cubs in tow and attracting hundreds of tourists who travel long distances to see them. At night, the bears steal into town, making it dangerous to walk outside without a firearm or bear spray. They leave only reluctantly, chased off by the polar bear patrol with firecracker shells and spotlights. On the surface, these bears might not seem like members of a species facing possible extinction. Scientists have counted up to 80 at a time in or near Kaktovik many look healthy and plump, especially in the early fall, when their presence overlaps with the Inupiat village’s whaling season. But the bears that come here are climate refugees, on land because the sea ice they rely on for hunting seals is receding. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and the ice cover is retreating at a pace that even the climate scientists who predicted the decline find startling. Much of 2016 was warmer than normal, and the came late. In November, the extent of Arctic sea ice was lower than ever recorded for that month. Though the average rate of ice growth was faster than normal for the month, over five days in the ice cover lost more than 19, 000 square miles, a decline that the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado called “almost unprecedented” for that time of year. In the southern Beaufort Sea, where Kaktovik’s 260 residents occupy one square mile on the northeast corner of Barter Island, sea ice loss has been especially precipitous. The continuing loss of sea ice does not bode well for polar bears, whose existence depends on an ice cover that is rapidly thinning and melting as the climate warms. As Steve Amstrup, chief scientist for Polar Bears International, a conservation organization, put it, “As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear. ” The largest of the bear species and a powerful apex predator, the charismatic polar bear became the poster animal for climate change. Al Gore’s 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which depicted a lone polar bear struggling in a virtually iceless Arctic sea, tied the bears to climate change in many people’s minds. And the federal government’s 2008 decision to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — a designation based in part on the future danger posed by a loss of sea ice — cemented the link. But even as the polar bear’s symbolic role has raised awareness, some scientists say it has also oversimplified the bears’ plight and unwittingly opened the door to attacks by climate denialists. “When you’re using it as a marketing tool and to bring in donations, there can be a tendency to lose the nuance in the message,” said Todd Atwood, a research wildlife biologist at the United States Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center. “And with polar bears in particular, I think the nuances are important. ” Few scientists dispute that in the long run — barring definitive action by countries to curb global greenhouse gas emissions — polar bears are in trouble, and experts have predicted that the number will decrease with continued sea ice loss. A 2015 assessment for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List projected a reduction of over 30 percent in the number of polar bears by 2050, while noting that there was uncertainty about how extensive or rapid the decline of the bears — or the ice — would be. A version of the assessment was published online Dec. 7 in the journal Biology Letters. But the effect of climate change in the shorter term is less clear cut, and a populationwide decline is not yet apparent. Nineteen subpopulations of polar bears inhabit five countries that ring the Arctic Circle — Canada, the United States, Norway, Greenland and Russia. Of those, three populations, including the polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea, are falling in number. But six other populations are stable. One is increasing. And scientists have so little information about the remaining nine that they are unable to gauge their numbers or their health. In their analysis, the researchers who conducted the Red List assessment concluded that polar bears should remain listed as “vulnerable,” rather than be moved up to a more endangered category. Yet numbers aside, scientists are seeing other, more subtle indicators that the species is at increasing risk, including changes in the bears’ physical condition, body size, reproduction and survival rates. And scientists have linked some of these changes to a loss of sea ice and an increase in days in the areas where the bears live. denialists have seized on the uncertainties in the science to argue that polar bears are doing fine and that sea ice loss does not pose a threat to their survival. But wildlife biologists say there is little question that the trend, for both sea ice and polar bears, is downward. The decline of a species, they note, is never a steady march to extinction. “It’s not going to happen in a smooth, linear way,” said Eric Regehr, a biologist at the federal Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage who took part in the 2015 assessment and presented the findings at a meeting in June of the International Union’s Polar Bear Specialist Group. A dozen polar bears pick through the bone pile that sits just outside town. Men from the whaling crews had dumped the carcass of a bowhead whale on the pile earlier in the day. As two visitors watch from the safety of a pickup truck a few hundred yards away, the bears devour the leftover meat and blubber. The Inupiat people, who have been whaling here for thousands of years, believe that a whale gives itself to the crew that captures it. Once the animal’s body is pulled to shore, water is poured over it to free its spirit. Even a few decades ago, most polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea remained on the ice or, if they did come to shore, stopped only briefly. The sea ice gave them ready access to seals, the staple of their diet. But as the climate has warmed, the spring thaw has come earlier and the fall freeze later. The pack ice that was once visible from Kaktovik even in summertime has retreated hundreds of miles offshore, well beyond the southern Beaufort’s narrow continental shelf. The edge of the pack ice is now over deep water, where seals are few and far between and the distance to land is a long swim, even for a polar bear. As a result, researchers have found, a larger proportion of the bears in the southern Beaufort region are choosing to spend time on shore: an average of 20 percent compared with 6 percent two decades earlier, according to a recently published study by Dr. Atwood of the Geological Survey and his colleagues that tracked female bears with radio collars. And the bears are staying on land longer — this year they arrived in August and stayed into November — remaining an average of 56 days compared with an average of 20 days two decades ago. “It’s one of two choices: Stay with the pack ice, or come to shore,” Dr. Atwood said of the southern Beaufort bears. “If they sit on that ice and those waters are very deep, it will be harder for them to find nutrition. ” The shifts that researchers are seeing go beyond where polar bears decide to spend their summers. In the southern Beaufort Sea and in the western Hudson Bay — the two subpopulations studied the most by researchers — bears are going into the winter skinnier and in poorer condition. They are also smaller. And older and younger bears are less likely to survive than in the past. “You see it reflected through the whole population,” said Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, who has studied polar bears for 32 years. “They just don’t grow as fast, and they don’t grow as big. ” The proliferation of polar bears in Kaktovik in the fall has drawn wildlife photographers, journalists and tourists to the village, filling its two small hotels or flying in from Fairbanks for the day on chartered planes. About 1, 200 people came to view the bears in 2015, and the number is increasing year by year, according to Robert Thompson, an Inupiat guide who owns one of six boats that take tourists to view the bears. Some visitors are surprised at the bears’ darkened coats, dirty from rolling in sand and whale remains. “They don’t look like polar bears,” one man from the Netherlands said. “But it does not matter. I will Photoshop them when I get home. ” Susan Trucano, who arrived in early September with her son, Matthew, said they wanted to see polar bears in the wild before they were driven to extinction. “It was an urgency to come here,” Ms. Trucano said. “My fear was that we would lose the opportunity of seeing these magnificent animals. ” The increasing tourism has been a financial boon for some people in Kaktovik, but it has upset others. Tourists take up seats on the small commercial flights in and out of the village during the fall months when the bears are there, crowding out residents who need to fly to Anchorage or Fairbanks. And some visitors wander through town snapping pictures without asking permission, or get in the way of the rituals that accompany the whale hunt. Last year, an intrusive tourist nearly came to blows with one of the whaling captains. For the most part, polar bears and people have coexisted peacefully here. Village residents are tolerant of the bears — “They could break right in here, but they know the rules,” said Merlyn Traynor, a proprietor of the Waldo Arms Hotel — and with the whale remains, they have little reason to come after humans. But as the Arctic ice continues to shrink, bears are arriving in poorer condition and are staying longer, even as the number of tourists increases. Interaction between bears and humans is becoming more common, as it has in other parts of the Arctic, exposing the polar bears to more stress and the people to more danger. So far, there have been no attacks on humans, but there have been some close calls. “They never used to come into town, or maybe occasionally, like once a year or so,” Mr. Thompson said. “Now they’re in town every night. ” Polar bear experts say they worry that at some point the number of bears seeking food here will exceed what is available. “When polar bears are fat and happy and in good condition, they’re not that big of a threat,” said James Wilder, an expert who recently completed a study of polar bear attacks on humans. “But when they get skinny and nutritionally stressed, you’ve got to watch out. ” Threatened species like lions or wolves face predictable threats: poaching and hunting, or the encroachment of human settlements on their habitat. But the biggest threat to the polar bear is something no regulatory authority involved in wildlife conservation can address: the unregulated release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Sport hunting once posed a significant danger to polar bears, greatly shrinking their numbers in some areas until 1973, when an agreement among the Arctic countries restricted hunting to members of indigenous groups, and the populations began to rebound. Oil spills, pollution and still pose some risk. But these dangers pale compared with the loss of sea ice. For many researchers, the most pressing question is how many days a polar bear can survive on land without the steady source of nutrition that seals usually provide. “A bear needs sea ice in order to kill seals and be a polar bear,” said Dr. Regehr of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “That’s a bottom line. ” Some scientists have suggested that the bears might learn to survive on other types of food — snow geese, for example — or that they might learn to catch seals in the water, without relying on the ice as a platform. But most researchers say that is unlikely. Such changes usually evolve over thousands of years, said David Douglas, a research wildlife biologist at the Geological Survey, who spoke at the specialists group meeting. But the loss of sea ice “is taking place over potentially a very rapid time frame, where there may not be a lot of time in polar bear generations to home in on behaviors that could give some advantage,” he said. Much depends on how much of the ice disappears. Under some climate models, if steps are taken to control greenhouse gas emissions, the species could recover. And some evidence suggests that during an earlier warming period polar bears took refuge in an archipelago in the Canadian Arctic. In Kaktovik, at least for now, whales are providing the bears with an alternative source of food. But dead whale is not a polar bear’s preferred cuisine. “The bears are not here because we hunt whales,” said Mr. Thompson. “They’re here because their habitat has gone away, and it’s several hundred miles of open water out there. ” | 1 |
Virgil, in his immortal way, has gained possession of a second transcript of a meeting of the Deep State Executive Committee. Although he has been unable to verify this document or identify the attendees, he believes it to be an accurate portrayal of ongoing Deep State activities against President Trump. The transcript of an earlier meeting can be found here. [Chair: “The Executive Committee will come to order. We’ve made a lot of progress, so let’s get right to it let’s go ‘round to all of our operating divisions. First, the Core Deep State Division. ” Member #1: “The big news from CDSD, of course, is the defenestration of Flynn — (Loud applause) — “Yes, we leak on Flynn, and Flynn gets fired. What’s not to like? (Louder applause) “And now, The Washington Post is speculating that Flynn could be guilty of a felony. Those are the flames of a good rumor to fan!” (Even louder applause) Chair: “Indeed. And now, of course, the news is that Admiral Harward has turned down the job as Flynn’s replacement at the NSC. More ‘disarray’ stories! In fact, it’s clear that we have rattled Trump. Here’s what he had to say on the 15th: From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked. It’s a criminal action, criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time before me, but now it’s really going on. “Yes, it’s a and Trump is the fish in the barrel, if I might be permitted to mix a metaphor. ” (Gentle laughter) Member #1: “Even now, it’s not so clear that the Trump people have come to grips with a change that the Obama administration made in its final days — that is, to open up ‘sharing’ among the 17 agencies in the ‘intel community.’ There was a headline in The New York Times last month, ‘NSA Gets More Latitude to Share Intercepted Communications,’ that detailed the collapsing of the silos between the agencies — I wonder if the Trump people really understood what it meant. ” Chair: “Yes, that was a deft move, I think, by Ben, John, and Jim. The rules that safeguarded the Obama presidency were amended just in time for the of his successor. As Trump himself might say, ‘Sad! ’” Member #2: “It’s too late for the Trumpkins now. Even if they reverse the order, we’ll find a way around it — we’ve proven our capability. We are legion!” (Cheers) Chair: “Yes, but still, we always want to protect our people. We don’t insist on strict legality, but we do have to be careful. As Gregg Jarrett of Fox News — (Boos, hisses) “ — reminded his audience of neanderthals, under 18 USC 798, it’s a crime punishable by up to 10 years to leak classified information on a US citizen. ” (Murmurs) Member #3 “So what? They’ll never get a conviction from an jury!” Member #4: “Yeah! We’ll nullify!” (Cheers) Chair: “Yes, yes. If and when we have to fight that fight, we will. Any federal employee accused of anything will be able to count on getting the finest representation from the best DC law firm, pro bono — “ Member #5: “ — and the same with Snowden, if the Russians send him back to the US as a favor to Trump. He’ll never get convicted!” Chair: “We certainly hope not after all, Snowden’s a hero. Although I must say, now that we see what our friends at the NSA and other agencies can do — do to Trump, that is — I’m starting to like them better. (Mix of grumbles and applause) “Be that as it may, we don’t have to settle these matters now. Still, I have some concerns. I see, for example, that Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, wants the Justice Department’s Inspector General to look in on what’s happened, . ” Member #6: “That’s fine! The DOJ IG is one of us!” (Cheers, applause) Chair: “I knew it! Okay, so what else from Core?” Member #1: “We’ve been having fun. As our friends at The New York Times wrote the other day about the hemorrhage of leaks: So far, the White House has had little success in trying to shift the narrative from the Russian contacts to accusations about the leaking of sensitive information by the intelligence agencies, as well as by the FBI. (Cheers) “Yes, no success for them. The Trumpkins can’t change the narrative because we are the narrative. We own it! (Cheers, applause) “And on a smaller note, we can note with satisfaction this February 16th headline in Politico: “White House dismisses 6 over failed background checks. ” At the beginning of any administration, it’s pretty standard that a few people flunk their SF86 questionnaire background check, but it’s not standard that we’re all reading about it in time. We’ve smeared some Trump underlings, good ’n’ hard! (Chuckles) “And meanwhile, the Resistance continues in the agencies. There’s this report in The New York Times, citing the heroism of our brothers, sisters, and others, at the EPA: 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 Donald Trump’s contentious nominee to run the agency, a remarkable display of activism and defiance that presages turbulent times ahead for the EPA. (Cheers, applause) “Of course, as the Chair reminds us, we do have to be careful. A rag, The Washington Examiner, published a story the other day, headlined, “GAO: Cyber attack threat from federal employees. ” Which, of course, is exactly accurate, but we don’t need the Government Accountability Office flagging that. (Murmurs) “And there are other worrisome developments: For example, the House Science and Technology Committee, controlled, of course, by the Repuglicans, has taken note of the fact that federal employees are increasingly turning to encryption, as Politico puts it, to ‘thwart Trump.’ “That’s exactly what they’re doing, of course, but we don’t need the public to know about it. “Indeed, the Committee is showing more aggressiveness than we might like. In a February 14th letter to the EPA’s IG, it noted that of 3. 1 million text messages sent or received by EPA employees on devices, just 86 were archived for the federal records. That is, only about of one percent were retained. ” Member #7: “So what can the Repubs do about this? EPA employees have protection and unions. ” Member #1: “Yes, that’s correct. And so it’s not so clear that they can do anything to stop EPA people from using federal equipment like that. We do, indeed, have the system pretty well wired. We’ll just have to watch developments, that’s all. (Murmurs) “Meanwhile, by complete coincidence, the FBI is releasing the raw notes from its investigation of Trump’s company’s practices from more than 40 years ago. It’s a small thing, but very unflattering to Trump! Sad!” (Laughter) Member #7: “Question: Is there anything that Attorney General Sessions can do to stop this?” Member #1: “Sure, he can try. He can convey his thinking to FBI Director Comey. And then, of course, we’ll all be reading about the next day!” (Cheers) Chair: “Thank you, CDSD. Great job, as always. Next, we will hear from the Guerrilla Theater Division. ” Member #8: “We at the GTD have been a little bit quiet. We are in between you might say. Still, working with the Indivisible people, we’ve laid out a good road map for the months to come, targeting Republicans’ Congressional offices back in their states and districts. I saw that The Drudge Report just bannered a headline: ‘Lawmakers brace for protests during Congressional recess.’ That’s us!” Member #9: “I was a little concerned to see that incident in California, in which a Republican staffer — a woman — for Congressman Dana Rohrabacher was jostled and knocked down she had to be taken to the hospital. That was concerning to me, and I’ll bet to a lot of folks. ” Member #8: “The GTD takes a different view. As we say, in a revolution, things happen. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. ” Member #9: “So the end justifies the means? I’m not sure that all of us agree with that. And what if there are legal ramifications? What if prosecutors start linking an individual violent protester to the rest of us? There could be significant conspiracy exposure. Some of us have assets to protect. ” Member #8: “Oh, I see. So you’re a Conciliationist. I wonder — ” Chair: “That’s quite enough! We will have no sharp words here at this meeting! We want an honest exchange of views, but our hostility must be directed toward the real enemy, Trump, and never towards each other. “I think that the issue of potentially criminal behavior is one that needs to be watched closely. We don’t want to cross any lines and end up like the campus protesters and rioters of the 1960s, who inadvertently helped Richard Nixon and other backlash Republicans. ” Member #8: “I’ll just point out that in the case of the Rohrabacher protest, not a single protester was arrested. We got away clean. And always, when confronting the fires of evil, we must fight fire with fire. ” Member #9: “Fight fascism with fascism?” Chair: “All right, thank you both you will please both take your seats. Very well, we will have to consider these issues in a subcommittee. Now let’s move on let’s hear from the Popular Culture Division. ” Member #10: “The bestest news, of course, is that Saturday Night Live has turned into all the time. Alec Baldwin, Kate McKinnon, perhaps Rosie O’Donnell — the show is turning into 90 minutes of clubbing Trump! And the ratings are up! “And I just saw that Kate had dinner with Hillary Clinton — so bygones are bygones, and now Kate can move on toward perfecting her portrayal of Kellyanne Conway. Although many of us think that she’s already pretty darn perfect! (Cheers, applause) “And in other fabulous news: The Stephen Colbert has overtaken the Jimmy Fallon in the ratings. Indeed, it’s a contest now, every night, to see who can hit Trump the hardest. ” (Cheers, applause) Chair: “Excellent, excellent. Now let’s hear from the Media Division. ” Member #7: “We have good news: We have, shall we say, persuaded The Wall Street Journal news side into joining with us. As we know, the Murdoch minions who think that they run the paper had been aloof from our campaign, and so we turned up the heat. The Times, for example, hit the Journal with both barrels, news and editorial. And so, thanks to that and plenty of other pressure, the Journal news side switched sides — they’re now with us. ” Member #4: “Let’s hear it for Jim Rutenberg and David Leonhardt!” (Enthusiastic clapping) Member #7: “As evidence of our breakthrough, check out this Thursday headline in the Journal: ‘Spies Keep Intelligence From Trump.‘ That is, Trump is not to be trusted — even the spooks think so! The Office of the Director of National Intelligence firmly denied the story, but who cares — the damage is done! “And there’s more: I can point to another success at, if you can believe it, Fox News. (Murmurs) “Yes, Fox! On Thursday afternoon, Shepard Smith defended CNN’s Jim Acosta’s questioning of Trump during the White House press conference a few hours earlier. Smith looked at the camera and aimed his comments directly at Trump. And I quote: It is crazy what we are watching every day. He keeps repeating ridiculous throwaway lines that are not true at all, and sort of avoiding this issue of Russia as if we are fools for asking the question. That you call us fake news and put us down like children for asking these questions on behalf of the American people is inconsequential. The people deserve that answer, at very least. Member #8: “That is good, although, of course, Smith will have to do a lot more than that. ” Member #7: “He will, don’t you worry, he will. “I’d also like to take note of an interesting commentary in Axios by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. As they wrote the other day, ‘The media — often, but not always, with an assist from career government employees — is the new US Oversight Committee.’ Yes! That is, indeed, the role that we aspire to: The Oversight Committee for the United States! (Loud ovation) “Now I will say, in closing, that there’s a little bit of disturbing news. That is, there was a bad story in the Times — the Times! — criticizing the very idea of the deep state. (Murmurs) “The headline reads: ‘As Leaks Multiply, Fears of a ‘Deep State’ in America.’ The piece openly compared what’s happening here to what’s been happening in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey. As the article said, this is ‘bad for everyone … inch [ing] deeper into the gray zone of activities. ’” (Murmurs, boos) Chair: “Thank you. I’ll make a note to myself: It’s time to have a talk with the Sulzbergers. The quicker we can persuade Carlos Slim, or Mike Bloomberg, to buy the paper outright, the better. (Tepid applause) “Now to the Politics Division. ” Member #11: “Thank you. We’ve had some disappointments. There are still some Democrats in the Senate, such as Heitkamp and Manchin, who are way too friendly with Trump. (Murmurs) “And yet we seem to have brought other Dems around, such as Donnelly and McCaskill. (Cheers) “So it’s an ongoing process. We would love to primary all these Democrats and take them out, but we’re not sure a progressive can win. And we certainly can’t afford to lose their seats to the Republicans. Please be assured that these questions are receiving the utmost attention from the minority leaders. (Murmurs) “On a brighter note, we are well on our way to forcing the Republicans in Congress — both in the Senate and in the House — to begin formal investigations of Trump, Flynn, Russia, the whole mess. That’s the ideal, of course we get the Republicans to do the heavy lifting, and we praise them to the skies — at least until the next election. (Loud cheers) “Also, we look forward to reaching out to Evan McMullin, the renegade Republican who trashes Trump at every opportunity. I don’t know much about him, but given his own background in the deep state, I think we might have the opportunity to work more closely with him. Unless, of course, we already are, sub rosa … ” (Stone silence) Chair: “Thanks very much, PD. But we’re running out of time. So let’s hear, now, from the Corporate Division. ” Member #12: “Thank you. I know that we’re pressed for time, so I’ll be brief. We got Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour, to take back his praise of Trump, in the form of a ad in The Baltimore Sun, no less. As celebrities and athletes threatened to boycott him and take away the cool, urban appeal of the brand, the stock was tanking. And so Plank had no choice but to back away. Such wonderful humiliation! (Loud cheers) “Next, we have to get through to Elon Musk, and also, we have unfinished business with CEOs such as Ginni Rometty of IBM. ” Chair: “Thanks, CD, for that brief but inspiring report. Now to Legal. ” Member #4: “Perhaps the biggest single challenge we face is persuading Jeff Sessions to recuse himself on matters. (Murmurs) “That’s a tall order, of course. At present, Sessions has no intention, zero, of recusing. But we have just begun to fight, in public and behind the scenes. We have virtually the whole of the Justice Department on our side, and so we’re working with the IG, the OLC, and others, in the law schools and legal societies, as well as the punditariat, to mousetrap him into recusing. Because if we can, the resulting investigations, and leaks, will make Watergate look like a dress rehearsal. Wish us luck!” (Loud cheers) | 1 |
For years, central banks have been doing everything they can think of to try to get higher inflation and stronger growth. The next step just may be a metaphorical helicopter, high above Tokyo. The Bank of Japan met Friday to decide on the next steps in its long battle against deflation, or falling prices, and analysts had thought it might pursue some coordinated effort with the Japanese government using an idea with a long historical lineage. “Helicopter money” is the term economists and use for an aggressive form of monetary stimulus — the government’s power to print money — to try to spur growth and get inflation higher. There had been buzz that the Bank of Japan could move in that direction, but it elected to take only a smaller action. The bank did say it would do a “comprehensive review” of policy in the months to come that could presage more coordination between the bank and the Japanese government. It is an idea based on a metaphor used by the renowned economist Milton Friedman nearly five decades ago and given new life in this century by Ben Bernanke. It is also a policy that has echoes of some of the great catastrophes of economic history. And regardless of what, if anything, the Japanese central bank does this fall, if the global economy’s deflationary doldrums continue, expect the discussion around these metaphorical helicopters to get louder. They say desperate times demand desperate measures. Helicopter money is what monetary policy desperation looks like. What is helicopter money? Normally when we say that a central bank like the Federal Reserve or European Central Bank creates money from thin air, it does so by buying up bonds or other assets from banks using money that is just an electronic accounting entry. Banks then spread money through the economy. But what if those mechanisms aren’t effective for some reason (the banking system isn’t working well, for example) and the central bank wants to get money circulating through the economy anyway? That was the thought experiment that Mr. Friedman dealt with in a 1969 paper titled “The Optimum Quantity of Money. ” He offered this intentionally absurd hypothetical: “Let us suppose now that one day a helicopter flies over this community and drops an additional $1, 000 in bills from the sky, which is, of course, hastily collected by members of the community. ” More money floating around, used to chase the same amount of goods and services, would inevitably cause prices to rise — in other words, it would bring about higher inflation. Wait, why would anybody want higher inflation? Deflation, or falling prices, can be deeply damaging to an economy, and Mr. Friedman’s influential analysis of how the Great Depression happened focused on it primarily as a monetary phenomenon. He argued that central banks failed to supply enough money and thus allowed devastating deflation to take hold. When prices are falling, it makes consumers and businesses reluctant to spend because anything they want to buy is cheaper tomorrow. It makes debt more onerous because you have to pay it back with money that will be more valuable the next day. These conditions can fuel a vicious spiral: Economic weakness creates falling prices, which create more economic weakness. Arguably, much of the advanced world — especially Japan and the eurozone — is experiencing a mild version of this right now, and the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank have been deploying a series of increasingly aggressive tools to try to reverse it. The Bank of Japan, for example, has pledged to do whatever it takes to get inflation up to its 2 percent target. It has bought a trillion or so yen in assets to try to make it happen, but instead a key price measure fell 0. 4 percent in the year ended in May. The question now is whether some form of helicopter money is the next step in trying to achieve that goal. So would a central bank really drop money out of a helicopter? No! It’s a metaphor. As Ben Bernanke famously argued in a 2002 speech, when he was a Fed governor, if a central bank created money out of thin air and gave it to the government, and the government cut taxes or mailed a check to every citizen, it would on substantive grounds amount to the same thing as Mr. Friedman’s mythical helicopter drop. (Mr. Bernanke ignored a Fed press officer’s recommendation that he not use the “helicopter” reference in the speech, according to his memoir, for fear it would seem too flippant. Sure enough, it earned him the nickname Helicopter Ben from his critics. This is a prime example of why central bankers so rarely use colorful language). But how is that different from what the central banks have been doing for years now with their quantitative easing policies? There’s a crucial difference. The Q. E. policies have indeed consisted of central banks using money created from thin air to buy government bonds. That is, in effect, printing money to fund government deficits. But with Q. E. the central banks buy assets that the government has to pay back. The Fed, for example, has $2. 5 trillion in Treasury securities on its balance sheet, but as they mature the government has to repay the money. Of course the Fed could then plow that money back into new bonds, but that will depend on its assessment of whether or not it is time to withdraw money from the economy. By contrast, the versions of helicopter money that analysts have discussed for Japan and other countries dealing with a deflation trap involve a different type of transaction. A key possibility: The government issues a “perpetual” bond with a 0 percent interest rate, which the central bank buys and promises to hold onto forever. That may sound technical. Think of it this way: Quantitative easing is akin to your rich uncle making you a loan under favorable terms, but making it clear you’ll have to make interest payments and then pay the money back one day. Helicopter money is what happens if your rich uncle makes you a “loan,” but says that you don’t have to pay any interest and never have to pay it back. For practical purposes it’s more gift than loan, whatever the bookkeeping technically says. And just as you’re more likely to spend the money your uncle gives you with abandon in the second situation than in the first, so a government will be more likely to spread money around. Indeed, if you want to be liberal with your definitions, you could argue that the United States experienced a form of helicopter money in 2009, when the Fed was doing quantitative easing and Congress enacted a fiscal stimulus package that, among other things, temporarily reduced payroll taxes. But that doesn’t fit the classic definition. That’s because, while the Q. E. program probably reduced interest rates and boosted stock prices in 2009, it was still acquiring bonds that the government would need to repay in one way or another. Why do you keep talking about what the government can do? I thought we were talking about the central bank itself. Modern democracies have a division of power. Central banks are walled off from political concerns and granted authority over the money supply. They can buy and sell assets to try to maintain stable inflation and growth. But only democratic institutions like Congress and parliaments have the power to spend money outright. This was a common misunderstanding during the era of bank bailouts in 2008 and Q. E. The Fed wasn’t spending money in the conventional sense, but rather buying assets that would earn some return and be sold (or allowed to mature) when the Fed judged it appropriate. But for some form of helicopter money to work, there would need to be some form of spending — such as public works, mass distribution of funds to citizens or tax cuts — that would amount to the government continuing its normal government spending without either raising taxes to pay for it or increasing public debt. Some have proposed that central banks be granted the authority to distribute money directly to citizens, but that is very likely illegal now in most countries, and changing laws would grant further power to unelected bodies that are already extremely powerful. But nothing is stopping elected representatives from coordinating with their central banker in a process in which the central bank creates money and the democratic institutions spend it. So why hasn’t anyone done this yet? It’s potentially risky, and there are some technical complications to carrying it out. Printing money from thin air to fund government spending doesn’t have a sterling history. It is what happened in Weimar Germany in the early 1920s, when hyperinflation ran rampant. It is what happened in Zimbabwe in the first part of this century. And it is happening in Venezuela right now. These examples show how easily things can spiral out of control when a government finances itself using its ability to create money. After all, when boosts inflation, it tends to also increase interest rates and hence borrowing costs. Then, the government may need yet more newly printed money to fund itself the next year, and so on. The consequences when things do spiral out of control are stark. Money loses its role as a store of value, and commerce can grind to a halt. The International Monetary Fund projects Venezuela will have inflation of 481 percent this year and 1, 642 percent next year. At one point, a 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill reportedly wasn’t enough to buy a bus ticket in the country’s capital. The advanced economies have spent decades writing laws and building traditions to keep things like that from happening. And one of those core principles is that central banks should remain independent from politics and not fund the government with . The discussion of helicopter money boils down to whether the deflationary cycle in advanced economies like Japan is sufficiently problematic that they should abandon some of those traditions to try to jolt economies into a level. And even if officials decide it’s justified, there are some technical reasons that the way central banks work in 2016 — influencing the money supply by setting a target interest rate — could reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of any Q. E. program. (Mr. Bernanke explained that concern in a recent blog post). So is it going to happen? Never say never. A decade ago, no one could have imagined that major central banks would deploy quantitative easing or negative interest rates, but that is the world we are living in. In Japan, analysts think it is more likely there will be a combination of new fiscal stimulus from the government paired with yet more Q. E. from the central bank, perhaps explicitly coordinated in some way. That amounts to a soft form of the policy. Even with that, there is an open question of how much it really differs from policies that are already in place, like bond buying by the central bank combined with fiscal stimulus combined with pledges to keep going with both until inflation rises. Some of the “helicopter money” discussion, in a modern context, is as much about communication as the underlying economics. But whatever the Japanese central bank does, it is a safe bet that its counterparts in Europe and the United States will be watching very carefully, looking for signals of whether some form of helicopter money belongs in the arsenal for responding to the next downturn in the West. | 1 |
« on: Today at 09:20:29 PM » Nintendo Cuts Full-Year Sales, Operating Profit Forecasts 26 October 2016 , by Yuji Nakamura and Takashi Amano (Bloomberg) - Boost from Pokemon Go fails to make up for sales outlook slump- Shares decline in European trading after results release Logged | 0 |
For at least a year now, I’ve been telling everyone who will listen that being is the new counterculture, the new punk, an act of rebellion in an era of political correctness, safe spaces, multiculturalism and globalism. Joy Villa’s surge to fame after shocking the Grammys with a dress has proven me right again. [Villa’s politics don’t seem particularly radical or dangerous — certainly nothing on the level of, say anarchist punk rockers. “For me, I voted for Trump, and a lot of my friends did as well,” says Villa. And we felt like we had to be closeted, we had to be quiet about it, or we would face a backlash, and bullying. ” “I just got tired of the narrative of hate — you’re a racist, you’re a bigot, you’re this, you’re that, people losing jobs all because they voted for a President. [With] this dress, I was hoping to make a statement, some small little statement about unity, togetherness, and supporting our President as one unified country. ” Like me, all Villa wants is more room for free speech, free thought, and political tolerance. With views like that, it’s only a matter of time before the left start calling her a Nazi. And therein lies the source of her success: a mild call for more freedom and tolerance is, in an age of stultifying censorship from the progressive left, considered shocking and unusual. The reason punk rock shocked the world is because else dared say what they said, or dress like they dressed. The dyed mohawks, pierced faces and studded, thuggish leather jackets were profoundly unsettling to a society that still balked at long hair and flared jeans. I still balk at long hair and flared jeans of course, but only because it looks atrocious. Compare that cultural climate to today’s. Are dyed hair and piercings offensive? Leather jackets? ? Feminism? No, of course not. Everyone from state governments to Goldman Sachs panders to feminist orthodoxy these days. Ask yourself what would cause more outrage today: a CEO saying they are a feminist, or a CEO saying they aren’t? Lady Gaga caused rumbles of discontent at the Super Bowl for failing to deliver a widely expected statement. Leftists have become so accustomed to celebrity pandering to them that even avoiding politics altogether is seen by some as an act of betrayal. Once you understand that, Joy Villa’s success is easy to understand. She could have played it safe, following the example of Meryl Streep, J. K Rowling and other celebrities, and remain unnoticed. What she did instead was remain true to her values, and as a result commanded the attention of the world last Sunday. Like the punk rockers, she dared to do what else would, and reaped the benefits. Celebrities today act edgy, but restrict themselves to utterly safe belief systems. There can be no better example of this than Madonna’s speech at the Women’s March, where she casually suggested someone bomb the White House. Outrageous, yes, but also an entirely unsurprising sentiment at a time of panic and hyperbole. It was a ruse: she wanted to sound dangerous while actually buying into the safest opinions you can have. What a comedown from the Madonna of the Erotica album and the Sex book. Social justice has turned previously interesting, funny celebrities into dull, unoriginal clones who regularly embarrass themselves in fits of political hysteria. Witness Sarah Silverman, who was funny before she contracted feminism, once cracking jokes about gays, Jews and Hispanics with abandon, now seeing swastikas in road construction markings and throwing a fit on Twitter. Or Madonna’s claim that Camille Paglia criticized her for “sexually objectifying” herself (Paglia’s position is more or less the exact opposite). Villa found herself surprised by the positive response to her dress. On Fox, she explained that people at the Grammys told her in hushed voices “I voted for him [Trump] too. ” Villa’s experience on the web was much the same. “Honestly, I’ve had so many overwhelming responses of love and support, I haven’t even been able to read the negative comments. ” But despite her focus on the positive, Villa acted bravely. She knew she’d be attacked, perhaps even physically, and she must surely have realized how many doors will now slam shut in her face in the entertainment industry. The fact that so many other people at the Grammys quietly admitted to supporting Trump reveals the pickle that celebrities have got themselves into. By allowing leftist to run wild, they are now unable to admit to voting the same way as half the country, as well as a sizeable chunk of their own fans. This is an absurd position to be in, and it’s all because celebrities have allowed political intolerance to spread unchecked. Some of the braver liberal comedians — Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and even Tina Fey — have spoken out against the dangers of political correctness. Villa’s success should be a signal to other celebrities, artists, and entertainers: it’s not just safe to come out of the closet, it’s beneficial. The grandees of showbiz might hate you, but an army of rebels, renegades, and deplorables in the public will rally to your side. None of this is news to me, of course — in June of 2015, I called it the “law of Heckle Shekels”. Chadwick Moore, a gay journalist from New York who recently came out as a conservative, has discovered the same untapped market. Subjected to months of shunning, bullying, and from his former liberal friends after he profiled me in Out magazine, Moore has now found in conservatism a much bigger, more appreciative and perhaps even larger audience. Keep in mind Chadwick Moore is a gay man and Joy Villa is a black woman. The man who designed Villa’s dress is a gay Filipino immigrant. All, then, come from constituencies that the left believes it owns, and both work in fields that the left consider their home turf. But if lone rebels like them can make such an impact so quickly, something tells me that dominance is in peril. The left’s seething outrage at the sight of their formerly loyal voting blocs turning on them will be delicious to watch during the Trump presidency. Fox news has for years defied its critics with shows like Outnumbered, that feature women and minorities trampling on political correctness on a daily basis. We are about to see dissident minorities all across America rise up and rub the left’s nose in their failure. They know, as we do, that taboos and language codes don’t protect minorities, they coddle them. Already abandoned by their old class base, the left’s next humiliation will be the rebellion of their vaunted “rainbow coalition. ” Villa now says that she wants to go to the White House, meet President Trump, and sing for him wearing her MAGA dress. I hope Daddy makes it happen. DANGEROUS is available to now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself! Follow Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Hear him every Friday on The Milo Yiannopoulos Show. Write to Milo at milo@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Foreign Policy During a debate at the House of Commons in Parliament on Wednesday, British Prime Minister Theresa May shunned answering the call of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to end the country's weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has refused to withdraw support for Saudi Arabia’s place at the UN Human Rights Council despite the regime’s atrocities in Yemen.
During a debate at the House of Commons in Parliament on Wednesday, May shunned answering the call of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to end the country's weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.
"The issues are being investigated… We are very clear that the only solution that is going to work for Yemen is actually to make sure that we have the political solution that will give stability in Yemen," May told Corbyn and the parliamentarians.
Instead of answering the direct question, May spoke about the UK government’s contribution to the humanitarian aid provided to the crisis-torn country.
Corbyn also questioned May’s support for Saudi Arabia’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council. A crucial vote on the membership of Riyadh in the council will take place later this month. A Yemeni man stands on October 24, 2016 at the site of an air raid on a funeral ceremony that killed 140 people and wounded 525 on October 5. (Photo by AFP)
London has repeatedly been blamed by human rights groups, including Oxfam and Amnesty International, for fueling the Yemeni war by supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons.
Since the conflict began last year, the British government has approved more than £3 billion ($3.7 billion) in arms sales to the Saudis and military contractors hope more deals are in the pipeline.
Yemen has been under almost daily airstrikes by Saudi Arabia since March 2015. International sources put the death toll from the aggression at almost 10,000.
Rights groups have also condemned the Kingdom’s crackdown on dissent and prosecution of pro-reform activists. Loading ... | 0 |
Man Nostalgic For Simpler Era Of 20 Hours Ago Close Vol 52 Issue 44
BRIDGEPORT, CT—Thinking back on how happy and untroubled he had been during that time and how different he feels in the present day, local man Jason Moulton, 52, reportedly paused Wednesday and nostalgically recalled the simpler era of 20 hours ago. “Everything seemed so much brighter back then before 9 p.m. last night—nothing like the way things are now,” said Moulton, wistfully reflecting on how, back before yesterday evening, things had seemed to make sense and the future appeared to hold endless promise. “America was a different place all those hours ago. Things were safer then, and the economy was strong—it was just a better time. But it’s all gone downhill ever since. We just don’t have the same values anymore.” Moulton then reportedly shook his head and said that while he would love for the country to get back to the good old days of November 8 and earlier, realistically he knew that would never happen. Share This Story: WATCH VIDEO FROM THE ONION Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter
Give your spam filter something to do. Daily Headlines | 0 |
The Democrats and their media are making a big push to portray Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a Russian agent, or at least catch him in a perjury trap, because they had to talk about something other than President Trump’s address to Congress until the weekend news cycle kicks in. [One cannot overstate how bothered POTUS will be by this Sessions story (with GOPers now calling for recusal) stepping on his good news cycle, — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 2, 2017, One cannot overstate how obviously that is the point of all this, Mr. Tapper. Here are some reasons the Sessions witch hunt is ridiculous: 1. Democrats thought misleading Congress was no big deal until today: Call it an example of “whataboutism” if you will, but it bears noting for the record that Democrats were quick to dismiss blatantly false statements to Congress from such individuals as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, and Sessions’ predecessor Attorney General Eric Holder as trivial errors. And, of course, Democrats launched an jihad against the very concept of perjury to keep Bill Clinton in power in the Nineties. In each case, congressional Democrats showed the maximum possible indulgence to Obama administration officials, blithely accepting every claim of imperfect memory, misunderstanding of questions, and even rank incompetence as acceptable excuses. Holder’s defense against perjury charges amounted to a confession that he did not read his email and had no idea what anyone connected to the horrifying Operation Fast and Furious scandal was doing. Clinton’s evasions in her use of a secret email server are legendary. The server itself was essentially a mechanism for misleading Congress about her activities on a constant basis. This is not merely a double standard, although it is always worth pointing those out when they appear because the DNC Media refuses to do so. Democrats made a sustained argument over the course of President Obama’s eight years in office that one should make every possible allowance for imperfect memory, flawed and honest misunderstandings. They claimed Republicans used their investigatory powers to make mountains out molehills. Now they want to take all that back because they think they can inflict some damage on the Trump administration, and keep their “Russia stole the election!” narrative alive, by parsing Jeff Sessions’ words with an electron microscope. 2. Sessions did not commit perjury: Robert Barnes at LawNewz reviews the relevant statutes, and hammers the point that Democrats were quick to sweep them aside when there was far stronger evidence their own officials lied to Congress: The criminal law only prohibits lying to Congress under two statutes — 18 USC 1621 ands 18 USC 1001. Section 1621 requires a person “willfully and contrary” to a sworn oath “subscribe a material matter” which is both false and the person knows to be false. Section 1001 is basically the same, without certain tribunal prerequisites: it also requires the government prove a person willfully made a materially false statement. This requires three elements: first, a false statement second, the false statement be “material” and third, the false statement be made “knowingly” and “willfully. ” A statement is not false if it can be interpreted in an innocent manner. A statement is not material if it is not particularly relevant to the subject of the inquiry. Willfully is a very high standard of proof: it requires the person know they are committing the crime, and do so anyway. None of the three exist as to Sessions. There was strong evidence Hillary Clinton made false statements to Congress about a range of subjects concerning the emails, and evidence she knew they were false. She still was not prosecuted, and Professors like Laurence Tribe recommended her for the Presidency. There was strong evidence James Clapper lied to Congress about the NSA spying on Americans, and he was not prosecuted, but promoted by President Obama, without complaint from many of these same liberal lawyers, professors and journalists. Yet, these same “lawyers” and “journalists” now attack Sessions for what is manifestly not a criminal act, and for which they never demanded any inquiry of either Clinton or Clapper. Their only claim against Sessions is that Sessions, while Senator, talked to the Russian ambassador a whopping 2 times in 2016. That’s called doing his job. Senator Franken, during the Attorney General confirmation proceedings, talked about “ties to Russia” and asked if Senator Session had discussed the Trump campaign “with Russian government officials. ” Sessions answered he had not. Sessions has no “ties with Russia” and there is no evidence he discussed the Trump campaign with any Russian official. The attempt to conflate Sessions doing his job as a Senator — meeting with ambassadors — as meaning he must have talked about campaign tactics or the campaign at all is patently ludicrous. Barnes reproduces the exact exchange between Franken and Sessions: Franken asked if there had been a “continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government. ” Sessions replied, “I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it. ” Nothing about that statement constitutes a false claim that Sessions never communicated with a single Russian in his life. If Franken wanted to build a perjury trap, he should have done a better job of it — but of course, at the time, the Democrats were primarily interested in pumping hot air into their “Russia stole the election from Hillary!” balloon. Jeff Sessions was very well aware of that fact when he responded to Franken. As noted by Erick Erickson — a man who knows a nothingburger when he smells one sizzling on the media grill, even though he supports investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election — Franken’s to the question made it very clear Sessions’ role in the Trump campaign was under discussion. The question of “literally accurate but possibly misleading” answers was litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, long ago, and found to come up short of perjury. In that case, the dubious statements were more deliberately misleading than anything Sessions said, but the perjury dice still came up snake eyes. 3. Meeting with ambassadors was Part of Sessions’ job: Barnes notes that Sessions met with over 20 ambassadors in 2016, in addition to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As Erickson notes, Kislyak was one of fifty ambassadors Sessions once addressed in a single event at the Heritage Foundation. In a chronology of the Sessions affair published by the Washington Post, the Heritage panel Erickson refers to is described as focused on “Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and Georgia. ” The moderator noted that “several ambassadors asked for names of people who might impact foreign policy under Trump. ” Kislyak was one of a “small group of foreign dignitaries” who approached Sessions at the event. Whatever one thinks of the nations represented by each of these dignitaries, they were doing what all ambassadors do. Incidentally, the author of that Washington Post timeline, Philip Bump, said he thinks “Democrats are overplaying their hand” after completing his analysis. 4. Other senators met with ambassadors, including Kislyak: Sessions was hardly the only member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to meet with ambassadors, or even with Kislyak: SASC member @Sen_JoeManchin says he has met with Kislyak, with a group of other senators. @CNN, — Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) March 2, 2017, Senator Joe Manchin, for those keeping score, is a Democrat. So is Senator Claire McCaskill, who appears to be having one of those memory blackouts that afflict Democrats at crucial moments: These revelations about @clairecmc’s communications Russia’s ambassador raise serious questions about whether she can be trusted. pic. twitter. — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 2, 2017, There is also a highly inconvenient photo of Kislyak meeting with several Senators, including McCaskill and other Democrats, going around online: And here is picture proof of @clairecmc meeting Russian ambassador. Damn the internet amirite Claire?! #mosen pic. twitter. — Ian Prior (@iprior1177) March 2, 2017, Shouldn’t Democrats be calling in unison for McCaskill to resign for blatantly lying about her contacts with the Russian ambassador, to prove how serious they are about pursuing Sessions? Shouldn’t the media be hounding her about it? Or do they just assume integrity is a laughing matter when it comes to Democrats, and certain standards apply only to Republicans? A great many meetings between Democrats and Russian diplomats occurred when they were pushing the Iran nuclear deal. Does the Democrat Party really want to launch a national discussion about whether such meetings are inappropriate, or whether failing to announce them from the rooftops is tantamount to lying about them? 5. Democrats were happy to let Obama transition team wear different hats for foreign meetings: Obama 2008 campaign officials took meetings with foreign representatives, including those of Hamas and Iran, but were allowed to dismiss controversy by claiming those meetings were part of their other jobs. Democrats now say Sessions was not allowed to respond to Franken in the obvious, context of his position with the Trump 2016 campaign without also including his every action as a senator. 6. Sessions did not “conceal” meetings with Kislyak: The game played today by many media outlets is to bury, or completely omit, the question Sessions was actually responding to in his exchange with Franken, and blithely assume he “failed to disclose” crucial information. Watch how the New York Times smoothly transitions from admitting Sessions did nothing wrong, to manufacturing a hazy standard that he needed to answer questions he wasn’t asked in order to be “truthful and complete”: A spokeswoman for Mr. Sessions says that “there was absolutely nothing misleading” about his answer because he did not communicate with the ambassador in his capacity as a Trump campaign surrogate. His contacts with the Russian ambassador, he claims, were made in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That may or may not have been the case (individual senators ordinarily do not discuss committee business with ambassadors of other countries, particularly our adversaries). Regardless, Mr. Sessions did not truthfully and completely testify. If he had intended to say that his contacts with the Russians had been in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and not for the Trump campaign, he could have said that. He then would have been open to the very relevant line of questioning about what those contacts were, and why he was unilaterally talking with the ambassador of a country that was a longstanding adversary of the United States. He did not reveal the communications at all, however. He did so knowing that Senator Franken was asking about communications with the Russians by anyone working for the Trump campaign, including people who, like Mr. Sessions, had other jobs while they volunteered for the Trump campaign. The Times have mutated the subject of Sessions’ testimony to “communications” by people who “had other jobs while they volunteered for the Trump campaign. ” But the question was about contacts between the campaign and the Russians, not every conversation, about anything, in any professional capacity, by everyone who helped with the campaign, with everyone born in Russia. It is very common for people testifying before Congress to answer precisely the questions they are asked, without volunteering all sorts of other information the questioner might find interesting later on. In fact, McCaskill is using that very defense at this moment to explain why she did not mention the many times she has been photographed meeting with Kislyak and other foreign representatives when she claimed never to have done so. She is saying those meetings were not germane to the point she wanted to make — exactly as Jeff Sessions maintains. Sessions spokeswoman Sara Isgur Flores stressed that Sessions was not “misleading” Congress because he was specifically “asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign, not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee. ” That is not a dodge, it is the simple truth, and every single dishonest Democrat going after Sessions knows it. Many of them have indulged in the same kind of conversations with foreign ambassadors as Sessions, in line with their committee memberships. The likes of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are feigning shock at discovering something that’s been going on outside their doors since the day they arrived on Capitol Hill. 7. Democrats want more than just Sessions’ scalp: Rep. Paul Gosar ( ) has this exactly right: There is zero evidence to suggest Sessions acted inappropriately for doing his job as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee. — Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) March 2, 2017, To interpret Sessions’ answers during his confirmation hearing as ”lying to Congress” requires a stunning level of ignorance deceit. — Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) March 2, 2017, If Sessions is sacrificed to appease the swarm, it will be taken as confirmation that Sessions did act inappropriately, not just that he failed to meet some standard of full disclosure with Franken. (You can already see how the media is growing reluctant to mention that this entire “scandal” is based on a single question and the reply.) The media would also interpret a Sessions resignation as a confession that he did discuss some nefarious scheme to “hack” the 2016 election with Russia’s ambassador. Democrats would frenzy, shrieking about “blood in the water” and drawing up lists of the targets they want their media pals to go after next, if they do not have those lists written up already. There might already be some people in the Trump White House regretting that they did not fight harder to save National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, whose name pops up in many stories about Sessions, with reminders that he only resigned two weeks ago. The Obama White House mastered the art of scandals because they feared the cascade effect of revelations and harmful developments in rapid succession. Even nonsense stories can snowball if they happen fast enough. The pace will pick up dramatically if Democrats get more than the distraction from Trump’s address to Congress they were hoping for when they launched this silly attack on Jeff Sessions. | 1 |
All this time of thoughts and reason Now this country is full of treason This earth goes up It also goes down Mostly this life feels hellbound Do we question this crazy human race On this long crazy day please engulf me with mace Time was this and that was now Come on humans show us how All we want is to deal with time One of you can not even blow my mind This way that way which is clear Double the facts and I will drink beer Seeping peeping on the line Throwing rowing in due time Life is full of different ways To you all please have a great day This is about the struggle in life and we can all overcome this by being happy. | 0 |
In a world of MAD men, how can we ever hope to survive? Screw the bunkers... it's party time. | 0 |
Without a shred of evidence and against the expressed wishes of his superiors at the Department of Justice, the head of the nation’s most prestigious law enforcement agency announced the reopening of an investigation into the mishandling of classified material by Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. The surprise announcement was delivered last Friday by FBI Director James Comey who knew that the action would create a cloud of suspicion around Clinton that could directly effect the outcome of the election.
Recent surveys suggest that that indeed has been the case, and that Hillary is now neck in neck with GOP contender Donald Trump going into the home-stretch of the bitterly contested campaign.
By inserting himself into the democratic process, Comey has ignored traditional protocols for postponing such announcements 60-days prior to an election, shrugged off the counsel of his bosses at the DOJ, and tilted the election in Trump’s favor. His action is as close to a coup d’état as anything we’ve seen in the U.S. since the Supreme Court stopped the counting of ballots in Florida in 2000 handing the election to George W. Bush.
It is not the job of the FBI to inform Congress about ongoing investigations. Comey’s job is to gather information and evidence that is pertinent to the case and present it to the DOJ where the decision to convene a grand jury is ultimately made. Comey is a renegade, a lone wolf who arbitrarily decided to abandon normal bureaucratic procedures in order to torpedo Clinton’s prospects for election. The widespread belief that Comey is a “good man who made a bad decision” is nonsense. He is an extremely intelligent and competent attorney with a keen grasp of Beltway politics. He knew what he was doing and he did it anyway. It’s absurd to make excuses for him.
In a carefully-crafted statement designed to deflect attention from his flagrant election tampering, Comey said this to his fellow agents:
“We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Comey said. “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.” ( CNN )
Let’s take a minute and parse this statement. First: “We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations.”
True, because it is not the FBI’s job to do so. The FBI’s job is to dig up evidence and refer it to the Justice Department. Comey is not the Attorney General although he has arbitrarily assumed her duties and authority.
Second: “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
“Supplement the record”?
That’s a pretty suggestive statement, don’t you think? When someone says they’re going to supplement the record, you naturally assume that they’re going to add important details to what the public already knows. Obviously, those details are not going to be flattering to Hillary or there’d be no reason to reopen the case. So the public is left with the impression Comey is going to produce damning information that could lead to an indictment of Hillary sometime in the future.
This is precisely why normal protocols require that no new investigations be announced 60 days before an election. Why?
Because the public invariably assumes that “investigation” equals “guilt”. In other words, “The FBI wouldn’t be investigating Hillary unless they had some dirt on her. Therefore, I’d better not waste my vote on Hillary.”
This is the logic upon which Comey’s dirty trick rests. He knows the effect his announcement will have because he is law enforcements version of Karl Rove, a bone fide partisan who’s mastered the dark art of political sabotage.
And just in case Comey’s announcement didn’t produce the desired effect (by destroying Hillary’s chances for victory), a former assistant director at the FBI, Tom Fuentes, appeared on CNN shortly after the announcement was made with more explicit information. Here’s a clip from the interview:
“The FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation,” Fuentes said Saturday, citing current and former senior FBI officials as sources…
According to the CNN report, officials with the FBI and Justice Department met in Washington earlier this year to discuss opening an investigation into possible conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton State Department.”
(“ Former FBI Official: FBI Has An ‘Intensive Investigation’ Ongoing Into Clinton Foundation “, Daily Caller)
Okay. So we’re no longer dealing with just classified emails. The FBI expanded its investigation and is now wading through the real sewage, the pay-to-play corruption scandal that surrounds that vast reservoir of illicit contributions known as the Clinton Foundation. In other words, the FBI is on to something big, really BIG. I can almost see them dragging poor Hillary off to the hoosegow in leg irons and shackles. Isn’t that the impression the above quote is supposed to produce? Here’s more from Fuentes: ORDER IT NOW
“Several FBI field offices and U.S. attorneys offices pushed for the investigation after receiving a tip from a bank about suspicious donations to the Clinton Foundation from a foreign donor, according to the report….” (Daily Caller)
“Foreign donors”, “suspicious donations”, smoky rooms, bundles of money. It all fits, doesn’t it? It’s all designed to increase suspicion and make Hillary look like a crook which, coincidentally, is the relentless mantra of the Trump campaign. Funny how the FBI and Trump appear to be reading from the same script, isn’t it? It’s almost like it was planned that way.
But what about the timing of all this? Is it really a coincidence or are Comey and Fuentes part of a one-two punch from the Trump campaign?
And, more important, what does the FBI actually have on Hillary? According to Fuentes:
“When the team looking at the Weiner computers went to the team of investigators who worked on the Clinton email case, and showed the emails to them earlier in the week, they said, “This is really significant. We need to take this to the Director.” ( 2:05 to 2:23 video )
Repeat: “This is significant”.
What’s significant? Neither Comey nor Fuentes nor the more than year-long investigation has uncovered anything, unless you think the ridiculous rehash of the 15-year old Marc Rich investigation (which popped up on the FBI website this week) is “new news” that should alter the course of the election. This is pathetic. If they have something, show us. Otherwise, Ferme ta bouche.
Check this out from Thursday’s Wall Street Journal:
“As 2015 came to a close, the FBI and Justice Department had a general understanding that neither side would take major action on Clinton Foundation matters without meeting and discussing it first. …
The public-integrity prosecutors weren’t impressed with the FBI presentation, people familiar with the discussion said. “The message was, ‘We’re done here,’ ” a person familiar with the matter said.
Justice Department officials became increasingly frustrated that the agents seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions.
Following the February meeting, officials at Justice Department headquarters sent a message to all the offices involved to “stand down,’’ a person familiar with the matter said….
As prosecutors rebuffed their requests to proceed more overtly, those Justice Department officials became more annoyed that the investigators didn’t seem to understand or care about the instructions issued by their own bosses and prosecutors to act discreetly.
In subsequent conversations with the Justice Department, Mr. Capers told officials in Washington that the FBI agents on the case “won’t let it go,” these people said.” ( Wall Street Journal )
Can you see what’s going on here? There’s a nest of rogue agents running wild at the FBI who’ve been giving the DOJ the finger while they conduct their witch hunt on Hillary. And what have they achieved?
Nothing! So far, they have nothing.
Now, I’m not a fan of Madame Clinton either, in fact I wouldn’t vote for her if they rubbed me down with bacon grease and stuck me in a bear cage, but, c’mon now, do we really want rogue cops and self righteous bureaucrats inserting themselves into our elections and picking the winners?
That’s bullshit.
If the FBI has some solid proof of wrongdoing that will put Hillary behind bars for good, than I say, “Bravo”. But until then, they should keep their damn hands off our elections!
MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at . (Reprinted from Counterpunch by permission of author or representative) | 1 |
Next Prev Swipe left/right The announcement for Wales’ first female bishop attracted quite a crowd The Church in Wales has elected its first female bishop, and the historic announcement drew the most underwhelming crowd* you could possibly imagine. Church in Wales gets first female bishop. Do watch 30-sec clip of Archbishop's historic announcement, if only for crowd shot at the end… pic.twitter.com/tJZZO5xQdv
— Kaya Burgess (@kayaburgess) November 2, 2016
*nine and half people | 0 |
Responding to a growing furor from consumers and politicians, the pharmaceutical company Mylan said on Thursday that it would lower the costs to some patients who need EpiPens, which are used to treat allergy attacks. The company said it would immediately offer more financial assistance with for patients with commercial insurance and expand the number of uninsured patients eligible for free EpiPens. But the moves did not mollify critics of Mylan because the company did not lower the list price of the EpiPen, which has risen to $600 for a pack of two from about $100 in 2007. So the total cost to the health system, a cost borne largely by insurers, the federal government and school districts, will remain the same. “Mylan should not offer discounts only for a select few — it should reverse its massive price increases across the board immediately,’’ Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, who has been investigating rising drug prices, said in a statement. In its announcement of the new measures, Mylan put much of the blame for the problem not on its price increases but on insurance companies for placing a higher burden on patients for costs. “We have been a committed partner to the allergy community and are taking immediate action to help ensure that everyone who needs an EpiPen gets one,” Heather Bresch, Mylan’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We recognize the significant burden on patients from continued, rising insurance premiums and being forced increasingly to pay the full list price for medicines at the pharmacy counter. ” Mylan said that out of the $608 list price for EpiPen, it gets only $274. The rest goes to pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, wholesalers and retail pharmacies. The EpiPen is an containing the hormone epinephrine that can be used to counter or stave off anaphylactic shock caused by an insect bite, bee sting or food allergy. It is pressed against the thigh and automatically injects the drug. Offering assistance and free product is part of the standard playbook for makers of expensive drugs. Making sure patients do not go without medicines reduces any political furor. Also, providing financial assistance only to those who need it reduces a pharmaceutical manufacturer’s revenue much less than cutting prices across the board. assistance can even increase revenues by getting more patients to use a drug, for which insurance companies must then pay. The discounts call attention to how the costs for drugs vary widely for consumers, depending on their insurance coverage. Here is how it breaks down for EpiPen after the measures announced by Mylan on Thursday. The largest group of EpiPen users, accounting for an estimated 70 percent of the total, have commercial insurance. These patients usually are responsible for . If their insurance policy has a high deductible that has not yet been met, patients might have to pay the full price for EpiPen. For these patients, Mylan is offering a savings coupon worth up to $300, which can be obtained from the prescribing physician or the EpiPen website. Previously it had offered a coupon worth up to $100. So patients with of less than $300, which means most patients, would have no cost if they use the coupon. If an insured patient is paying full price because of a high deductible, the coupon will cut the cost in half, to about $300 from $600. Another group, accounting for only about 5 percent of EpiPen users, have no insurance or insurance without prescription benefits. They typically have to pay the full price. Mylan will now give free EpiPens to uninsured patients with incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level. (The company said the limit would be $97, 200 for a family of four.) Previously the limit was 200 percent of the poverty level. Patients have to apply for this every year and provide financial information and documentation. People covered by federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the military’s Tricare will not see any difference. Drug companies are not allowed to provide assistance to such patients because it is considered a kickback, an illegal financial inducement to get someone to use a product for which the government is then billed. Some drug companies give money to charities that are allowed to provide assistance to such patients. But there does not appear to be one available for the EpiPen. People with Medicare coverage can encounter big costs for drugs, especially if they enter the doughnut hole. Medicaid can require for certain patients. But a spokeswoman for Mylan said that more than 90 percent of Medicare and Medicaid patients have coverage for EpiPen. | 1 |
This Little Girl’s Mind-Blowing Protest Speech Is Everything Her Mother Told Her to Say Womanspiration - Nov 3, 2016 By: Editor SHARE:
Seven-year-old Candace Bailey wowed everyone in the room when she gave a mind-blowing protest speech about climate change, just like her mother coached her to do.
Little Candace addressed the New Mexico state legislature with an impassioned speech about the need for clean energy and a collective effort to reduce the effects of human consumption on the planet. Good job Candace—and good job, Candace’s mom, for telling her exactly what to say!
Witnesses were impressed by the maturity of the local second grader and her ability to sound out big words.
“I couldn’t believe she was able to memorize all that,” witness Anna Hines says. “It didn’t really change my mind, but she was so adorable up there on that podium!”
Candace reportedly spoke about her own challenges, like turning the water off while she’s brushing her teeth, as well as the future world she hopes to live in.
“When I grow up, I hope to live in a world where we can reduce carbon emissions and be a model for the rest of the world,” the seven-year-old said, inspiring the room with the beautiful words her mother wrote for her.
“Her speech gave us all a lot to think about,” one state representative says. “Namely, how hard the mother must have worked to make this all happen.”
“Does this kid even understand what a carbon emission is?” she added. Probably not!
“I could see her mother sort of mouthing along the words as Candace was speaking,” friend of the family June Gordon says. “I don’t know why Breanne didn’t just speak herself. It would have been less jarring, that’s for sure.”
Though Candace’s mother’s involvement is clear, the young girl is proud about standing up in public about climate change.
“I hope the state legislature will listen to me, since I am the future,” Candace says. “Mom, did I say that right?” SHARE: | 0 |
Tuesday in an interview that aired on Fox News Channel’s “Fox Friends,” President Donald Trump reacted to comments from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi over the weekend saying his administration has “done nothing. ” Trump called Pelosi “incompetent” and pointed to the current state of the Democratic Party as evidence. “Well, I’ve been watching Nancy’s statements, and I think she’s incompetent, actually,” Trump said. “You know if you look at what’s going on with the Democrats and the party, it’s getting smaller and smaller. You know, in a certain way I hate to see it because I like a system. And we’re soon going to have a system. I actually think a system is healthy and good. But she’s done a terrible job. ” “I don’t think she’s a good spokesman,” he added. “She’s certainly wrong. There are those who say I’ve done more than anybody in a hundred days. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 0 |
Posted on October 29, 2016 by Isaac Davis
“How is the government going to get people to pay their taxes if the government is not viewed as legitimate?” ~ Catherine Austin Fitts
The world economy is designed to fail through the mechanism of a banking system that requires all users of money to pay usury every time a transaction takes place. In this way, the financial systems of the world can be manipulated into a managed collapse, thereby causing global chaos so that the world’s nations and citizens can be tricked into demanding a global currency managed by a global elite.
Problem, reaction, solution. Economic hit man John Perkins wrote about this strategy as it was used in the 20th century to bring developing nations under the control of the international monetary fund and transnational profiteers, and at present this scheme is being globalized.
“If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire.” ~John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
For decades now, the dollar has been in a slow burn style of collapse, and while many journalists, primarily outside of the mainstream, have been warning the world about how and why this is happening, we’re quickly approaching a turning point, where the slow burn moves into something more severe. While at first glance this seems like a frightening potentiality, the truth is that an economic collapse may very well be our best chance at freeing ourselves from the rule of the Gods of Money . A Whistleblower Warns Us and Gives Us Hope
Speaking to Greg Hunter of USA Watchdog news , former Wall Street banker and former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Bush Administration , Catherine Austin Fitts explains why the slow burn is about to come to an end.
“The system has the capacity with monetary policy in one sense to keep going forever if the force and military capacity is there to do it, but at some point, you burn through the fat, you burn through the muscle and then you have to change institutions.” ~ Catherine Austin Fitts
During the financial crisis of 2008, the government was able to prevent an uncontrolled firestorm collapse of the system by colluding with the chiefs of the financial sector, giving them bailouts of extraordinary magnitude , then inflating the dollar by the Federal Reserve’s introduction of quantitative easing . Eight years later, this tactic has reached its limit, however it has given the public significant reason and time to understand why our economy functions the way it does, and people are losing faith in our leadership.
“It’s going to be extremely difficult to get people to continue to pay their taxes when they’re highly confident the money’s not being spent legally and it’s going to the advantage of small parties or things that they don’t understand. And so you can’t move further without institutional overhaul.” ~Catherine Austin Fitts
The thing that frightens her most is the fact that groups within the U.S., such as ALEC , are already calling for changes in the law and even a new constitutional convention to overhaul these institutions. The financial sector has already been operating outside of the law and beyond the constitution for some twenty plus years, and if we haven’t been using the constitution, she notes, then why do they wish to change it?
“If you want to enforce the Constitution or fix things, that’s what you do. The reason you get a Constitutional Convention is you want to tear it up because you’re worried, now that people realize the extent of the corruption, that they’re going to try and enforce.” ~Catherine Austin Fitts
Her warning is that as people continue to wake up to the corruption of our government and financial rulers, the entrenched elites who are fully invested in destroying the middle class will fight tooth and nail to prevent us from holding them accountable, by means of bringing more Draconian laws into place to protect themselves.
In this light, the economic war that is brewing isn’t completely technical, it is social as well, quickly becoming class warfare. The world’s financial elite are in grave danger of being held to the fire for their crimes, and surely they know they how quickly things can change in favor of the populous, as historical events like the French Revolution have shown. Prepare Now
As individuals stuck in the debt-slave matrix , there is very little we can do to challenge this sort of massive global scheme as it’s happening, however, preparing now for collapse is our best chance of chucking our burden of debt to these people, if they are even human , and of creating a future without such obvious criminal financial tyranny holding us back.
Working now to expose these criminals is imperative so that when the ball drops, ordinary people understand why, how and who is truly to blame, thereby making resisting to the takeover possible. Taking care of personal emergency preparations by gathering healthy storable foods , networking in your community, and having plans in place to survive are absolutely necessary at this stage, and once this is done, efforts to awaken others are critical.
View the full interview here : Read more articles by Isaac Davis .
Isaac Davis is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and OffgridOutpost.com Survival Tips blog. He is an outspoken advocate of liberty and of a voluntary society. He is an avid reader of history and passionate about becoming self-sufficient to break free of the control matrix. Follow him on Facebook, here . This article ( Financial Whistleblower Explains What’s About to Happen to the Economy ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Isaac Davis and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 1 |
Sally Yates, in former president Barack Obama’s justice department and now acting Attorney General until Jeff Sessions or another appointee is confirmed, ordered Justice Department lawyers not to defend President Trump’s temporary immigration ban. Mark Berman and Matt Zapotosky write at the Washington Post: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates has ordered Justice Department lawyers not to defend challenges to President Trump’s immigration order temporarily banning entry into the United States for citizens of seven countries and refugees from around the world, declaring in a memo Monday she is not convinced the order is lawful. Yates wrote that, as the leader of the Justice Department, she must ensure the department’s position is both “legally defensible” and “consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right. “At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the Executive Order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the Executive Order is lawful,” Yates wrote. She wrote that “for as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so. ” You can read the rest of the story here. | 0 |
Comments
Many people have been wondering whether or not a white man known for waving Confederate flags at black teenagers and just murdered two cops is a Trump supporter.
Grant Rodgers, a journalist for the Des Moines Register , did some investigating and found some pretty undeniable evidence that yes, Michael Greene Scott supported the Republican nominee for President.
The house is Greene’s last listed address, which he shares with his mother.
Greene turned himself into earlier today and is in custody after allegedly firing thirty or more shots into a parked patrol car, killing two police officers in Des Moines, Iowa. It is the second act of domestic terrorism to take place in the United States in the past day, coming just two hours after Trump supporters in Mississippi set a historically African-American church on fire and spray-painted “VOTE TRUMP” on it.
Donald Trump has begun a movement, indeed – a movement of hatred and violence that has now lead to multiple deaths, thousands of dollars in property damage, and unquantifiable emotional trauma across the nation as Latinos, blacks, Muslims, and sexual assault survivors are forced to bear the brunt of the gaslit firestorm that Trump ignites with his bullying and his dog-whistles.
As we draw closer to election day, these kinds of incidents are going to increase in frequency – and god only knows what will happen when he loses. | 0 |
University Of Iowa Triggered By Flyers Opposing Anti-White Propaganda University Of Iowa Triggered By Flyers Opposing Anti-White Propaganda By By Reinhard Wolff | redice.tv
Tired of anti-White propaganda in college? If so, you must be a terribly hateful human being. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Notice how these flyers were said to “target the Latino, Native American, African American and LGBTQ communities” – despite neglecting to mention them.
The message is clear: The very existence of unapologetic White people is an affront to these anti-White degenerates.
Props to whoever did this. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump lashed out at Democrats on Thursday over their efforts to preserve President Obama’s health care coverage law, insulting their top legislative leader and denouncing the measure as a “lie” as he called for a less expensive and more effective system. “The Democrats, lead by head clown Chuck Schumer, know how bad ObamaCare is and what a mess they are in,” Mr. Trump wrote in the first of three posts on Twitter. The posts arrived the day after Mr. Obama huddled with Democrats on Capitol Hill to strategize over protecting the Affordable Care Act and Vice Mike Pence met with Republicans about how to gut it. “Instead of working to fix it, they do the typical political thing and BLAME,” Mr. Trump continued on Twitter. “The fact is ObamaCare was a lie from the beginning. ‘Keep you doctor, keep your plan! ’” He said it was time for Republicans and Democrats to work together on a “plan that really works — much less expensive FAR BETTER!” The messages could be seen as Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to seize the narrative of the day and deflect attention from a story line less favorable to him. Senate Republicans convened a hearing on Thursday to examine intelligence that the Russians engaged in computer hacking to affect the outcome of the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump has disputed that the Russians were to blame, and he has criticized American intelligence agencies for their work. Mr. Trump also used the social media platform to push back against criticism he attracted on Wednesday for siding with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, over United States intelligence officials in rejecting Russian responsibility for the hacking. Mr. Trump’s latest Twitter salvo also appeared to be an attempt to mount a political defense of his bid to scrap the law that has provided health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans, as Democrats work to make that effort politically toxic. Mr. Schumer responded later Thursday, saying the was in a “difficult spot” on the issue. “Instead of calling names,” Mr. Schumer said at a news conference on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump “should roll up his sleeves and show us a replacement plan that will cover the 20 million Americans who gained coverage, that will cover students or students, 21 to 26, who want to stay on their parents’ plan, that will show how we cover people with conditions. ” On Wednesday, the appeared to acknowledge the challenges of doing so without being saddled by voters with a share of blame for the shortcomings of the measure. “Republicans must be careful in that the Dems own the failed ObamaCare disaster, with its poor coverage and massive premium increases,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, adding in a separate post: “Don’t let the Schumer clowns out of this web. ” His comments on Thursday came as Mr. Obama took a subtle swipe at the in a farewell letter, without naming him, writing that Americans never voted for rolling back the health care measure. “What won’t help is taking health care away from 30 million Americans, most of them white and working class denying overtime pay to workers, most of whom have more than earned it or privatizing Medicare and Social Security and letting Wall Street regulate itself again — none of which Americans voted for,” Mr. Obama said in the letter. As the debate unfolded in Washington, Mr. Trump on Thursday spent more than an hour sitting for a deposition in New York as part of his legal feud with the renowned chef José Andres, whom Mr. Trump is suing for pulling out of a plan to open a new restaurant in his luxury hotel near the White House. Mr. Andres, who is has said he canceled the project because of Mr. Trump’s disparaging rhetoric about Mexican immigrants during his presidential campaign. Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, called the case “fairly straightforward. ” “In short, the parties entered into a valid and enforceable lease, which the tenant clearly breached by walking out and failing to perform its obligations, thereby entitling the landlord to recover damages in the form of unpaid rent, cost of build out, lost profits and other expenses,” Mr. Garten said in a statement. | 1 |
License DMCA I would never vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, and therefore have no dog in this fight. That said, I am an interested spectator, and clearly see that Ms. Clinton is playing a very dangerous game by using the Russians as an election issue and blaming them for everything. When asked about her leaked e-mails in the last debate, she skillfully avoided the damaging content of the e-mails, and turned the table on the Russians, claiming they are the danger. She argued we should all be alarmed at the attempt by Russia to manipulate our election, a charge which is totally untrue, and without any evidence. The leaked DNC e-mails clearly show that she and the DNC, not Russia, were successful in manipulating the election to defraud Sanders. Ms. Clinton lied about US intelligence agencies. She lectured Trump, saying 17 intelligence agencies said the Russians were behind the Wikileaks release of DNC emails. That is a lie on several counts. First, 15 agencies never said a word about leaked e-mails. Only two said anything, and this is what they said: The hacks "are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow -- the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europa and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities." Read it again. That's a far cry from saying the Russians did it, and here is the proof. To this day no one knows who leaked the e-mails to Wikileaks. No one. Clinton's using Russia as a political scapegoat is very dangerous. At a time when there is bad blood between the two thermonuclear powers, it is irresponsible, and demonstrates a callous lack of judgement to falsely accuse Russia of such a deed without the slightest bit of proof for purely political reasons. Provoking the Russians for political reasons speaks volumes about Ms. Clinton. Perhaps the moderator should have asked Ms. Clinton: Has the US ever attempted to influence another nations election, or have you Ms. Clinton, in your capacity, ever tried to influence another nations election? Trump, not a quick thinker, should have attacked Clinton, asking: Are these the same intelligence agencies that lied about WMD in Iraq resulting in over one million useless deaths? Another well founded accusation against her candidacy is her eagerness to make war. She supported the illegal war on Iraq which killed millions of innocents. She pushed and continues to push for the 15-year war in Afghanistan. She supported "the surge" in Afghanistan, a total failure. She assisted the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Honduras by supporting the military and a dictator. - Advertisement - She was the one of the primary architects of the Libyan debacle, which led to the bombing and total disintegration of Libya. It is now the leading terrorist breeding ground in Africa. It was Clinton who took on Cabinet members who argued against military intervention in Libya. She had her way. Result; utter disaster! Ms. Clinton never saw a war she did not want to avoid. But now she is playing with fire. Russia has made it clear that they will not tolerate another Iraq in Syria. They will support the Assad regime and not allow the US to overthrow yet another Middle Eastern government. Russia insists the US is intentionally trying to promote anarchy in Syria by destroying the country, maintaining brutal sanctions that only harm innocents, and giving "moderates" heavy weapons to help bring down Assad. Russia has drawn a line in the sand, and Ms. Clinton is showing a severe lack of judgment in provoking and blaming them for all that ails the world. She has even compared Putin to Hitler, which historically, is tantamount to declaring war. Manuel Noriega was called Hitler, Saddam Hussein was called Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi was called Hitler. The pattern is clear. Vilify the enemy and attack. Ms. Clinton, we are told, is intelligent. Her actions indicate she is either stupid, or she has no sense of sane judgment, or both. She has called for a No-Fly Zone in Syria, which General Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, would mean war with Russia and Syria. As Secretary of State Ms. Clinton's job was to maintain peace, not start a war. She was not interested in peace as Secretary of State, but did start wars, and added fuel to the many we are currently fighting. She compared Putin to Hilter. No respectable Secretary of State, the nation's chief diplomat, would call another world leader Hitler. Nor does the Chief Diplomat look for and argue for war, by shouting down all who wished to avoid war in Libya. What is even more alarming is that mainstream media has followed their leader, Ms. Clinton, in demonizing Russia. The press has lost its way and is merely an echo chamber for Ms. Clinton and her neocon supporters who are vengeful, militaristic, and bombastic. - Advertisement - In conclusion, take note of those who have rallied to her cause. Numerous war mongers from the past. They smell war, and like the smell of death. They want to escalate the conflict with Russia. Over 50 of those who brought you the War in Iraq, have pledged their fealty to the Warrior Queen. Her past war record, combined with a complete lack of judgment, and surrounding herself with war crazy neocons, make a recipe for thermonuclear war. Of course, MSM has kept the public totally in the dark about the impending day of doom, and most don't even see it coming. As a spectator, and one who would like to avoid a nuclear confrontation with Russia, I now maintain Clinton is far more dangerous to the world's future than Trump, even though he is woefully unfit. Thankfully there is a sane alternative candidate. | 1 |
Discover Little Known Health Secrets and Useful Tips For Healthy Living! First Name Indian Man Mahashta Murasi Claims He’s 179 Years Old
A retired cobbler from northern India, Mahashta Mûrasi, claims he was born in January 1835, making him not only the oldest man on earth, but the oldest to have ever lived, according to the Guiness World Records. This would make him 179 years old. According to indian officials, the man was born at home in […] Man Diagnosed as ‘Comatose’ for 23 years Was Actually Fully Conscious
by Jonathan Benson | Natural News Imagine being stuck in your bed, conscious but unable to speak or move, for a quarter of your life, while everyone around you thought you were just a comatose “vegetable.” This is what happened to 50-year-old Rom Houben of Belgium, who back in 2006, and later reported in 2009, was […] Nestle CEO says You Shouldn’t Have the Right to Water
Get ready to feel infuriated: the CEO of Nestle, Peter Brabeck, has been caught on video saying he believes water should not be a public right, that instead it should be something only the wealthy have access to. By Matt Hall — Staff Writer As Nestle is the 27th largest company in the world and does […] Chia Seeds Health Benefits
by Kris Gunnars – Authority Nutrition Chia seeds are among the healthiest foods on the planet. They are loaded with nutrients that can have important benefits for your body and brain. Here are 11 health benefits of chia seeds that are supported by human studies. 1. Chia Seeds Deliver a Massive Amount of Nutrients With […] Nature’s Cancer Prevention – Vitamin B17
Have you ever heard of vitamin B17? Maybe you have heard of its other name, Laetrile. Article by Janet Hull Americans cannot access vitamin B17 because the FDA took it off the market in the 1970s, and removed it from the B-Complex vitamins. It is unlawful for any health practitioner to administer this vitamin to patients. […] Illustrations Show Exactly What It’s Like To Have A Panic Attack
Anxiety disorders are a quickly growing concern as over forty million Americans find themselves in a fight to cope. Panic attacks effect a varying percentage of those diagnosed with anxiety. It can creep up on a person and strike when they are waiting in line at the store, talking to their children’s teachers, playing basketball or any […] Best Sore Throat Home Remedies
Home remedies for sore throat. In this article we will explore some of the most effective home remedies for sore throat. A sore throat is a common condition that often accompanies a cold and can be caused by either a virus or bad bacteria living in the throat. Other causes of sore throats include dry heat, […] MMR vaccines called one of the ‘greatest scandals in medical history’
by J.D. Hayes – Natural News The former chief scientific officer for Britain’s Department of Health who was responsible for deciding if medicines and vaccines were safe for use among the general public says his former employer is guilty of “utterly inexplicable complacency” regarding the mumps, measles and rubella shot. The UK’s Daily Mail Online reports that […] Honey Cleansing: Wash face with honey for clear skin!
What’s my secret to having clear skin? It’s washing my face with honey! Washing your face with honey can really help you have clear skin and here’s how to do it! by Lauren – Empowered Sustenance Yes, I wash my face with honey! I’m washing my hair with honey… so it only makes sense that I would […] Turmeric Tea Golden Milk Recipe
by Katie – WellnessMama.com Turmeric is a root that has been used for thousands of years by many cultures for its potent anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Below is my recipe for the healing golden Turmeric Tea.I love it for cooking in foods like curries and as an herbal remedy. Especially this time of year, turmeric is a […] 8 Things People With Hidden Depression Do
Though public understanding of depression has improved somewhat over the years, we as a society still frequently misunderstand or overlook hidden depression and its symptoms. by JANE SCEARCE – LifeHack.org Because of the continuing stigma, we don’t always recognize when people in our lives are struggling with this illness. Worse, too many people go undiagnosed because of […] Holistic Tinnitus Remedy That Really Works!
Have you been suffering from tinnitus for some time now? If you have, you must know how painful and frustrating all those noises in the ear can be. They can strike anytime in the day, and can become worse in the night. You would probably give anything to get some relief. But that’s of course […] Cherries Help Fight Arthritis & Gout
by Arthritis Foundation Generations of people have reported that cherries help keep painful osteoarthritis (OA) and gout flares in check. Now, scientists are putting this popular folk remedy to the test, with promising results. Researchers have tested different amounts of several varieties of cherries in almost every form, from juice to pills. And though most […] Frankincense More Effective Than Chemotherapy in Killing Ovarian Cancer Cells, Study
By Stephen Adkins – University Herald Leicester University researchers have found a cure for ovarian cancer in an aromatic gum resin obtained from an African tree. Researchers say that AKBA (acetyl-11-keto-beta-boswellic acid), a chemical compound in the resin, has cancer-killing properties. It has the potential to destroy ovarian cancer cells. Frankincense (gum resin) is the resin […] Subscribe For Free! Discover Little Known Health Secrets and Useful Tips For Healthy Living! First Name | 1 |
Huge pyramid shaped structure found on the Moon # MarceloIrazusta 0
This new discovery impacts. The existence of a real structure of almost 5000 meters in a nearly flat section of the surface of the moon is really a great mystery. The structure can be seen from more than 70 kilometers away which shows the magnitude of it. Will it be a base of a pyramid? The truth is that the Argentine researcher Marcelo Irazusta, surprises us again with this kind of discovery that adds to many more researchers around the world are doing. In the description of the video you can see the coordinates of Google Moon so that everyone can check. Tags | 0 |
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Top strategists from the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton, interrupting each other and sometimes raising their voices, engaged in an angry debate on Thursday about how Mr. Trump pulled off his upset victory. Emotions were still raw at the campaign held at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, particularly over the influence of Stephen K. Bannon, who left Breitbart News — which he has called a “platform” for the white nationalist — to help run Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Bannon will serve as a senior aide to Mr. Trump. David Bossie, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign manager, called Mr. Bannon a “brilliant strategist. ” That provoked the Clinton campaign’s director of communications, Jennifer Palmieri, to respond, “If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am more proud to have lost. ” Mr. Bannon was scheduled to participate in the event but did not attend. That did not stop several hundred demonstrators from protesting him Wednesday evening outside Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where the was held as part of a conference. With campaign managers and pollsters talking over one another and a large crowd of campaign veterans from the news media looking on, Ms. Palmieri said her proudest moment from the campaign was a speech Mrs. Clinton gave in Nevada condemning the . “I would rather lose than win the way you guys did,” Ms. Palmieri said. Kellyanne Conway, who was Mr. Trump’s third and final campaign manager, asked, “How exactly did we win?” She answered her own question: by connecting with voters in places “where we were either ignored or mocked roundly by most of the people in this room. ” “Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?” Ms. Conway asked Ms. Palmieri. “You’re going to look me in the face and tell me that?” Ms. Conway went on, pointing out Mrs. Clinton’s failings. “Do you think you could have just had a decent message for the white voters?” she asked the Clinton advisers. “How about it’s Hillary Clinton, she doesn’t connect with people? How about they had nothing in common with her? How about you had no economic message?” Joel Benenson, Mrs. Clinton’s pollster, accused the Trump campaign of using “dog whistles” about immigrants and minorities to appeal to white voters in battleground states. Robby Mook, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, disputed the notion that Mr. Trump won primarily by appealing on economic issues, citing exit polls in Michigan and Wisconsin showing Mrs. Clinton carried more voters who ranked the economy as their top issue. The highly charged exchange was followed by a more restrained conversation between Ms. Conway and Mr. Mook, moderated by the CNN host Jake Tapper. CNN will broadcast the discussion on Sunday. But it was the more raucous session earlier in the day where the passions of the campaign still seemed at a barely contained boil. The participants, half a dozen from each campaign who faced each other while seated at two tables, argued about whether Mr. Trump had won a mandate. “You won the Electoral College don’t pretend you have a mandate,” Mr. Benenson said. “Two and a half million more Americans thought she was a better candidate. ” “Hey guys,” Ms. Conway replied. “We won. Why is there no mandate?” Mrs. Clinton’s advisers argued repeatedly that two public letters by James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, about Mrs. Clinton’s emails less than two weeks before Election Day pushed enough undecided voters away from her to swing the election. They also said that voters were seeking fundamental change in Washington, a strong headwind Mrs. Clinton could never overcome. In a rare point of agreement, both campaigns faulted the news media. They said leading newspapers and TV networks were so convinced Mr. Trump was unelectable that they never took him seriously. That led to “ ” on Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server, Mr. Mook said. “Mr. Trump had a unique ability to speak directly to the American people and go past the media, whether in 140 characters or making a statement somewhere,” Mr. Bossie said. The Trump strategists repeatedly said the Clinton campaign had tried to disqualify Mr. Trump based on his temperament and statements, while misunderstanding the appeal of his promise to keep Americans safe from terrorism at home and abroad. “They wanted to frame the race as, ‘Do you trust him to have his finger on the button? ’” said Tony Fabrizio, Mr. Trump’s pollster. “At the end of the day, what a lot of voters didn’t buy was that it was ever going to be a time where you have to worry about his finger on the button,” he said. “This wasn’t Barry Goldwater. ” Asked by Mr. Tapper whether Mr. Trump’s recent posting of misinformation on Twitter about millions of undocumented immigrants voting was presidential, Ms. Conway defended the message. “He’s the so that’s presidential behavior,” she said. At one point, Ms. Conway threw up her hands in frustration at the close scrutiny of the campaign. “Everybody wants to go back in a time machine and do things differently so this result that nobody saw coming won’t come somehow,” she said. | 1 |
Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia says he plans to vote for the Libertarian Party’s presidential ticket, becoming the first member of Congress to express support for Gary Johnson’s campaign. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Rigell, a Republican, said he had settled on Mr. Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, as the best option available. “I’ve always said I will not vote for Donald Trump and I will not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Rigell said. “I’m going to vote for the Libertarian candidate. ” Mr. Rigell is the second Republican member of Congress this week to back a candidate other than Mr. Trump in the presidential race the other, Representative Richard Hanna of New York, endorsed Mrs. Clinton. Both Mr. Rigell and Mr. Hanna are retiring from Congress at the end of their current terms. But Mr. Rigell’s support for the Libertarian ticket may be more portentous: Mr. Johnson and his running mate, former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts, have been seeking to woo disaffected Republicans who view Mr. Trump as unacceptable. Should additional Republican officeholders follow Mr. Rigell in backing the ticket, it could help Mr. Johnson gain credibility as an alternative choice. A former car dealer who represents a moderate district on the Virginia coast, Mr. Rigell said he expected more congressional Republicans and local Republican officials to break openly with the party’s presidential candidate as the election draws nearer. Many Republican candidates have asked him for advice, Mr. Rigell said, about separating themselves from Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Rigell has been saying since the winter that he could not support Mr. Trump. “When their own conscience is seared by some statement that Trump has made, I have encouraged them to be direct and also, in a timely manner, repudiate what he said,” Mr. Rigell said. “People will respect it if you have a reason and you put it out there. ” Mr. Rigell said he still considered himself a Republican. But that would change, he said, if the Republican Party were to become synonymous with Mr. Trump and his ideas in a lasting way. “Then I’m done,” Mr. Rigell said, “and I’ll be an independent. ” | 0 |
Pinterest
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has been proven right once again. This time it has to do with a prediction he made about Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.
On Friday, the FBI announced in a letter to Congress that they were reopening the Clinton email investigation in light of emails unearthed in their investigation of disgraced former New York Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner’s sexting an underage girl.
On Aug. 29, not long after top Clinton aide Huma Abedin announced that she and Weiner were separating, Trump released a statement. “Huma is making a very wise decision,” Trump said.
“I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information,” he added. “Who knows what he learned and who he told?” Trump, in July: "I don't like Huma going home at night and telling Anthony Weiner all of these secrets.” https://t.co/qICt22PfzM
— Ryan Teague Beckwith (@ryanbeckwith) October 28, 2016 And once again Trump was right months ago about Hillary compromising national security by having ties to Anthony Weiner #CantStumpTheTrump pic.twitter.com/5GIBJJ4a2m
— Jared Wyand 🇺🇸 (@JaredWyand) October 28, 2016 Trump on Weiner (back in July before Huma Abedin and Weiner separated) pic.twitter.com/GItJHH9hVr
— Ashley Killough (@KilloughCNN) October 28, 2016 #tbt the first time Trump attacked Weiner at a campaign event was August 2015 https://t.co/YwGn1YnZUu
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) October 28, 2016
The Washington Examiner reported :
After the bombshell report about the FBI’s reopened investigation first emerged Friday afternoon, the New York Times reported that the “new emails” that have led investigators to take a second look at the case were discovered on devices seized from Abedin and Weiner’s home during a separate investigation into Weiner’s alleged sexting with a minor.
Comey, in a letter to eight Republican congressional committee chairs, did not clarify what emails led him to revisit the Clinton case. He said only that investigators had recently briefed him on “the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”
“And I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information,” Comey wrote.
Trump told a crowd in New Hampshire on Friday he hopes the FBI will “right the ship” after the agency declined to indict Clinton in July, citing insufficient evidence of criminal intent.
Trump has been proven right to the point that the mainstream media even had to admit how right he was. That’s saying something.
It will be very interesting to see what the FBI has found/will find in their investigation. The FBI certainly could be reopening the investigation to somehow help Clinton — perhaps there’s an angle that makes this the better option — or maybe there is something so potentially damning that even they couldn’t figure out a good way to bury it. That seems fairly unlikely, but it’s hard to say.
Once again, Trump has been proven right and that’s largely because he gets it. Trump has called himself a “common sense conservative” and the many times he’s been proven right on the campaign trail, along with the many policy positions he’s taken that show that he is in touch with Americans and has common sense, prove this label correct. | 0 |
Picking the pain reliever that’s best for you can be a confusing task. Pharmacy and supermarket shelves are lined with a dizzying array of boxes, names and labels describing the symptoms the medications are intended to address. While they all share the same goal, making you feel better, their active ingredients vary, and all have potential drawbacks. Dr. Robert A. Duarte, director of the Pain Center at Northwell Health in Great Neck, N. Y. cautioned that consumers should not be lulled into thinking that pain relievers are free from potential harm just because they are available on store shelves. Sales of medications exceeded $30 billion in 2015, with pain relievers ranking near the top, according to industry statistics. Consumers need to be informed about what they are taking, and in what doses. A survey conducted in 2001 for the National Council on Patient Information and Education found that only of those polled could identify the active ingredient in their pain reliever. A similar fraction of consumers said they had taken more than the recommended dose of nonprescription medication because they believed it would increase its effectiveness. Dr. Sadiah Siddiqui, an anesthesiologist specializing in interventional pain medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in Manhattan, said consumers need to read the labels of the medications for their active ingredients. Those who take any kind of pain reliever around the clock for a week or more should see a specialist or their doctor, she added. Here are the major categories of nonprescription pain relievers and some of what you should know about them: Common brand name: Tylenol Recommended to treat: Headaches, pain and fever Potential side effects:The Food and Drug Administration recommends a maximum of 4, 000 milligrams per day. Exceeding that level can mean the liver has to work harder. Clinicians recommend a daily maximum dose of 3, 000 if it is taken for an extended period. What else you should know: Concerns about potential liver damage from taking acetaminophen have been clouded over time, Dr. Duarte said. The warnings surfaced because patients were taking Tylenol with other medications or prescriptions that also contained acetaminophen. For instance, the prescription painkiller Percocet and cold and flu remedies have Tylenol in them. When patients take those drugs as well as Tylenol, they can unwittingly get higher doses of acetaminophen than they should, he said. “You may not think you are taking that much Tylenol, but yes you are,” he said. Common brand names: Advil, Motrin Recommended to treat: Arthritic, joint and dental pain and headaches Potential side effects: Stomach bleeding and kidney problems are risks, particularly for patients who are 60 or older, Dr. Duarte said. What else you should know: Ibuprofen is an that combats prostaglandins, the chemicals associated with pain such as menstrual cramps, joint pain and headaches that are released in the body. Common brand names: Bayer and St. Joseph. It is also found in Excedrin. Recommended to treat: Headaches and pain from inflammation. It is also used to prevent strokes and promote heart health. Potential side effects: Gastric bleeding and kidney dysfunction children up to their years should not take aspirin because it is linked to Reye syndrome, which causes brain and liver damage. What else you should know: When it comes to Excedrin and Excedrin for migraines, opt for the less expensive basic product because they both have the same active ingredients, Dr. Duarte said, adding, “Don’t be fooled by packaging. ” In general, he said, regardless of what product you take, don’t think that if some is good, more is better. If you have an underlying history of headaches and you are regularly taking pain relievers, you can be at risk of a “rebound headache” caused by the drugs wearing off and the onset of another headache. Some natural products, such as magnesium (400 to 600 milligrams a day) or riboflavin (400 milligrams a day) or using aromatherapy with peppermint oil can help with migraines and muscle pain, he said. Patients should discuss all the medications they take with their doctor. “A simple in fact, has risks just the way a prescription does,” Dr. Duarte said. “A lot of the patients don’t take these medications seriously. ” | 1 |
In the months leading to the 2016 presidential election, Democratic voters had a consistent place to look for updates on Hillary Clinton’s campaign: her daughter’s Twitter feed. From reports on her campus visits to FaceTime sessions with supporters, Chelsea Clinton’s tweets were positive, inclusive and unfailingly on message. “Couldn’t be more proud of my mom and the campaign she’s run,” Ms. Clinton wrote on Election Day. “Let’s bring it home for her today. ” Things didn’t work out as planned, of course. And after Donald J. Trump, and not her mother, was sworn in as the country’s 45th president, another side of Chelsea Clinton seemed to emerge. In recent weeks, she has greeted the Trump era with a more sarcastic and feisty online personality, sharing with her 1. 6 million followers her fiercely held political beliefs and sparring with political adversaries in bursts. Ms. Clinton has accused a Trump adviser of spreading misinformation, admonished a Republican congressman for racist comments and pushed the president to speak out in the face of an increase in religiously motivated attacks. She has also seemed to step up the number of messages she is sending: According to TweetStats, a tool that tracks posting frequency, Ms. Clinton posted 142 tweets last November. In February, she posted over 300, an average of more than 10 a day. All of this has raised questions — and prompted criticism — about Ms. Clinton’s political ambitions. If it’s coming from a Clinton, both supporters and critics have wondered, can a tweet ever be just a tweet? Several people close to Ms. Clinton and her family say that yes, this is just tweeting, and no, she is not using it as a strategy to eventually run for office. Melanne Verveer, who served as Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff when she was first lady, has known Chelsea since she was a girl. Ms. Verveer didn’t understand the newfound interest in the youngest Clinton’s political motives, and thinks most observers are jumping to conclusions. “I think it’s probably natural in some ways for people to think, ‘Well, she’s the next in line’ in a political family,” Ms. Verveer said. “But I think that’s reading too much into tweets. ” (Since when has that ever satiated the internet’s thirst for content?) Liz Robbins, a Washington lobbyist and a close friend of the Clintons, said she was surprised that people just now seemed to notice that Ms. Clinton was jumping into the Twitter fray. “It’s like coming late to the movie,” Ms. Robbins said. She does have a point: Ms. Clinton has maintained a Twitter account since 2012 and has tweeted more than 5, 900 times. Many of those were messages of support for her mother on the campaign trail. And here is Jen Lee Koss, a friend of Ms. Clinton’s since the two were roommates at Oxford: “She’s literally just tweeting like a normal person would tweet. ” Fine. There is probably some truth to this “normal person” theory. People who use social media generally enjoy circulating information that aligns with their beliefs. People squabble. And people can certainly find themselves setting off heated discussions about things that don’t really matter, as the bedlam that arose from Ms. Clinton’s spinach pancake recipe may suggest. But Ms. Clinton is still a Clinton. She may be her own person — a mother of two, an activist — but she remains the only child of President Bill Clinton and Mrs. Clinton, the first female presidential candidate of a major political party. Ms. Lee Koss, who said she spoke to Ms. Clinton daily, said that she may be living up to the expectations that come with this particular political family. Or maybe that is just what her supporters want to see. “I think a lot of people maybe wonder where the Clinton voice is now,” Ms. Lee Koss said. “Maybe people want to hear from her and are clinging to that. ” Mattie Bekink, a friend from Ms. Clinton’s days at Stanford, said Ms. Clinton’s behavior hadn’t changed much since the election, even if the political world thinks otherwise. These messages now come from a member of the party that lost lest Ms. Clinton forget, people like Kellyanne Conway are willing to remind her, in their own tweets. “Chelsea hasn’t changed,” Ms. Bekink wrote in an email. “The norms of political and social discourse have. ” Referring to a message sent by Representative Steve King of Iowa, the Republican congressman whom Ms. Clinton criticized, Ms. Bekink added: “Even a year ago, I doubt a sitting member of Congress would dare to tweet something blatantly racist and then stand by it. ” (Part of a tweet by Mr. King had read: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies. ”) When asked to provide a response to speculation over her tweets, Ms. Clinton relayed the following over email: “Twitter helps us share what we think is important helps us raise our voices against efforts to take us back years, decades … or centuries. ” None of the five Clinton friends interviewed for this article thought that any of this necessarily adds up to another Clinton running for office. Ms. Clinton, several pointed out, has, for years, swatted down rumors over her political aspirations. But one Clinton ally did hint that Ms. Clinton could have a desire to be a voice for Democratic causes. The ally, Jay S. Jacobs, a prominent New York Democrat, said Ms. Clinton was perhaps simply keeping her family’s name in the national conversation while her parents took time off from politics. “If that’s your mother,” Mr. Jacobs said, “and you’ve shared these interests and passions for these things, then there’s no secret motivation that has to necessarily be behind your desire to get out in front and carry on. ” Mr. Jacobs added, “That’s what Clintons do, by the way. ” Of course, others would prefer that the Clintons refrain from speaking out. The headlines can be blunt — “God Help Us if Chelsea Clinton Runs for Office,” The New York Post shouted in February. Meghan McCain, a daughter of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, (and herself no stranger to the political media glare) was just as unvarnished about the prospect. “What fresh hell am I living in where I am going to have to sit through Chelsea Clinton running for office?” Ms. McCain said recently on Fox News. “The media gives this grown woman with two children a pass. Every step of the way. ” Ms. Lee Koss, Ms. Clinton’s friend from college, doesn’t understand the intense criticism over a few hundred innocent tweets. “To the naysayers: It’s Twitter,” Ms. Lee Koss said. “Just unfollow. ” | 1 |
It was nearly 18 months ago, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, when a reporter for National Public Radio, Mara Liasson, observed at a White House press briefing that President Obama and his aides had “bent over backwards” to avoid using the phrase “radical Islam. ” The press secretary, Josh Earnest, said this was because “these terrorists are individuals who would like to cloak themselves in the veil of a particular religion,” opening a debate over the phrase that has taken on new rancor amid the massacre in Orlando. “In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words ‘Radical Islam,’ ” Donald J. Trump said in a statement within hours of when Omar Mateen killed 49 people at a gay nightclub and invoked the Islamic State in a 911 call. “For that reason alone, he should step down. ” The next day, Mr. Obama called the focus on phrasing “a political distraction. ” “What exactly would using this label accomplish?” the president asked. “Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. ” What does “radical Islam” even mean and why has it become so controversial? Is this argument just semantics, or does it go deeper? Let’s start with the words. “Islam” is a religion whose 1. 6 billion followers worldwide observe a spectrum of customs and traditions. “Radical” can mean something very different or against tradition, or be defined as extreme views, practices and policies. The words, absent political context, could be read as trying to distinguish fringe interpretations of Islam, including justifications for violence, from the mainstream majority view, which is peaceful. But that context — including who shouts the phrase and who studiously avoids uttering it — has ladened it with pernicious meaning in particular quarters. Shadi Hamid, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that before the controversy began, he did not use the phrase “radical Islam” much, but neither did he find it overly objectionable. After two years of politicization, though, Mr. Hamid and other analysts say the phrase has worrisome connotations, potentially maligning all Muslims or Islam itself. “Why would you feel such a need to use this particular combination of words, when the vast majority of us agree that this is terrorism and that it should be stopped or countered?” he asked. “These terms are being used as dog whistles. ” Will McCants, another Brookings scholar, told The Washington Post in December 2015 that “every bit of that phrase is analytically unhelpful” because of its lack of specificity. “Is this the Islam of the poets?” he asked. “The court Islam of the caliph? What kind of Islam are you even talking about?” Republicans who invoke “radical Islam” seem to be trying to telegraph certain arguments about Muslims, political correctness, and the United States’ failure to stop the march of extremist groups across the Middle East. At the same time, Democrats who reject it are also making a political statement, one touching on Islamophobia and inclusiveness. If it seems unlikely that a single phrase with no fixed definition could contain all that information, the fight over “radical Islam” becomes easier to understand when examined in its initial context: as a way to make sense of the rise of the Islamic State. Throughout late 2014, as the group, also known as ISIS and ISIL, conquered much of Iraq in a campaign of shocking violence, Americans struggled to discern what role, if any, religion played in its ideology. Because only 38 percent of Americans personally know someone who is Muslim, according to a 2014 Pew poll, most have little firsthand knowledge to go on. Mr. Obama, then and now, has tried to separate the terrorists from Islam, urging tolerance of Muslims in the United States and abroad. “And all of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam, because that is a falsehood that embraces the terrorist narrative,” he said in February 2015. Republicans slammed him for either ignorance or a misplaced sense of political correctness. In part because the president refused to use it, the phrase “radical Islam” became a shorthand for everything he would not say about ISIS, and therefore, a way to accuse him of privileging sensitivity over forthrightness when discussing the threat the group posed. In its simplicity, the phrase reframes the daunting, confusing litany of problems that contribute to terrorism — faraway failed states, complex ideologies, a prevalence of guns — as something much easier to understand. “We are at war with radical Islam,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, then a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said after the attacks in Paris last November. He likened Mr. Obama’s avoidance of the phrase to “saying we weren’t at war with Nazis, because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren’t violent themselves. ” Over time, the phrase morphed into a way for critics to explain why the Obama administration had failed to anticipate or stop the rise of the Islamic State. “You cannot fight and win a war on radical Islamic terrorism if you’re unwilling to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ ” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, said in January, back when he, too, was clamoring for the White House. Over time, “radical Islam” has taken on darker connotations. Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Hamid of Brookings, “invested these words with new meaning. ” As his campaign of policy proposals and speech gained traction, Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals sought to match him. Mr. Cruz, for example, urged refusing Syrian refugees if they are Muslim. Ben Carson suggested Muslims should be barred from the presidency. They often invoked “radical Islam” at the same time. The phrase does not explicitly say there is an intrinsic link between terrorism and Islam. But it suggests religion is the core issue, and by using the vague modifier “radical,” there is an implication that any adherent can be suspect on grounds that are unclear and open to interpretation. “To term something ‘radical Islamic violence’ condemns a religion,” Steven Cook, a Middle East scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in December, “and leaves one with the erroneous impression that the competing modern interpretations of Islam that specifically refute violent Islamism’s worldview do not exist. ” Mr. Obama and others say that condemning “radical Islam” does not make clear who is being condemned. That, they argue, risks exacerbating sentiment in the United States, which has already grown violent. It also risks alienating Muslims abroad. Washington has long battled a perception in the Muslim world that it is at war with Islam, a perception that can feed sentiment and politics. At the same time, labeling ISIS “radical Islam,” in some eyes, legitimizes the group’s claims to represent an entire religion, when in fact most of its victims and enemies are themselves Muslim. “If we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with the broad brush, and imply that we’re at war with an entire religion, then we’re doing the terrorists’ work for them,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday. Even before Mr. Trump took up the phrase as a mantra, Mr. Obama and others resisted it as part of a larger hesitation to discuss the Islamic State’s use of religion as anything but false and cynical. But it is impossible to understand the Islamic State’s ideology and recruiting power without acknowledging the role of religious beliefs that, while rejected by the overwhelming majority of Muslims, are often earnestly held. “I’ve always been of the view that ISIS does have something to do with Islam,” Mr. Hamid said. “We just have to talk about what that something is and do so in a nuanced, constructive way. ” He called it “problematic” that many Americans, including the president, do not seem “comfortable speaking about religion as a motivating force or how it inspires violence or extremism, or that religion has a certain kind of power in everyday life in the Middle East. ” Hillary Clinton, perhaps in tacit acknowledgment of these concerns, has this week tried to take a middle path. She described the Orlando attack as “radical Islamism” — a small but meaningful distinction Islam is a religion, whereas Islamism a political ideology calling for Islamic government. She also declared, “It matters what we do, not what we say. ” When I asked Mr. Hamid this, he countered with a different question. Given how many labels already exist to describe terrorists that draw on Islam, why insist on this one? He listed several — “radical jihadists, Salafis, Islamist extremists, jihadis, ” — none of which, he said, carry the baggage of “radical Islam. ” But if it’s that baggage that repels scholars, it may also be what draws others. “Radical Islam” has come to imply certain things about issues that are closer to home than abstract terrorist ideology: political correctness, migration, and the question of who belongs. Those same issues have animated debates over terrorism and terminology in other societies. In Germany, “multiculturalism” has become shorthand for larger questions of how to absorb migrants and whether there is a degree of minimum assimilation. There is endless sparring over “British values,” and what sort of burden this puts on migrants before they will be welcomed into society. France has had its own parsing of “radical Islam,” though the fight over “secularism” is even fiercer. Even majority Muslim societies have had versions of this same argument, Mr. Hamid pointed out. In Egypt, he said, the struggle over terms is, in part, a way of litigating whether parties like the Muslim Brotherhood are ideologically akin to terror groups — and therefore whether they should be allowed to participate in society. What these debates have in common is that arguing about how to define terrorism becomes a way to push and pull the contours of national identity, determining who is invited in to that identity and who is kept out. In every case, the debate is framed as one of pluralism versus security. Pinning terrorism on “multiculturalism” or or foreign values or “radical Islam” all portray inclusiveness as somehow threatening and exclusiveness as safer. The question of whether pluralism and security are indeed in tension, or whether pluralism in fact enhances security, is one that people around the world have long grappled with. But it’s hard to discuss because it is so core to national identity. Debating semantics is much easier. | 1 |
Humor Home Leftist Corruption Lady Gaga’s Twitter Attack On Melania Trump Lands Her In Handcuffs When The Two Meet Face To Face Lady Gaga’s Twitter Attack On Melania Trump Lands Her In Handcuffs When The Two Meet Face To Face Stryker Leftist Corruption , Liberals Behaving Like Liberals , Social Justice Warriors 4
After Melania Trump’s brilliant speech about cyberbullying went viral, leftist elites immediately began attacking her. It seems they consider her husband, the next President of the United States, to be a cyber bully himself because he likes to tell the truth on Twitter.
One of those leftists, Lady Gaga, Tweeted an insult at Mrs. Trump that probably deserved some kind of snarky, rude response, but the future First Lady has far too much class for that. She proved it yet again Sunday night when the two came face to face in New York City. Gaga, or GooGoo as she should be called, proved yet again that she has no class, shouting “whore” and “go back to YOUR country” at Melania from across a sidewalk being cleared by the Secret Service.
Mrs. Trump, class act that she is, simply smiled at the overrated pop star, which seemed to enrage the little ball of hate even more. Witnesses say that they saw GooGoo throw something at Mrs. Trump, which is where the Secret Service stepped in.
The New York Post tried to reach out to the NYPD after it was reported that GooGoo was taken away in a black Yukon in handcuffs, but as of yet there’s no record of an arrest. You can rest assured if this incident isn’t prosecuted by the corrupt liberals in the city government that the less-than-lady will be staring down the barrel of a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Join The Resistance And Share This Article Now! 67.9k | 0 |
A New York State assemblyman from the Bronx has filed a formal complaint against the police, claiming he was roughly handled by an officer after asking about police activity in his district. The assemblyman, Michael Blake, said that while he was attending a family event at the Gouverneur Morris Houses at East 169th Street and Washington Avenue, he saw a woman in handcuffs and approached the officers involved to discuss the situation. Moments later, Mr. Blake said, an argument broke out behind him. In a phone interview on Sunday, Mr. Blake said that as he rushed toward the confrontation a uniformed officer him, lifted him off the ground and “slammed” him against a gate outside the housing complex. “It was not a pleasant interaction,” said Mr. Blake, 33, a freshman Democrat who represents part of the South Bronx. The Police Department confirmed that a sergeant and an officer were responding to an argument between neighbors shortly after 3:30 p. m. on Saturday. The police said that the assemblyman approached the sergeant from behind, without identifying himself, and “grabbed” his shoulder. A police spokeswoman said the officer, perceiving “a possible threat to the sergeant,” moved Mr. Blake about five feet and put him against a fence. Then, a captain from the Police Service Area patrolling the complex intervened after recognizing Mr. Blake as an elected official, the police said. In a statement issued on Sunday, the Police Department said that it “has been made aware of Mr. Blake’s allegations and will be conducting a review of the incident. ” Mr. Blake said he did not have time to identify himself as an elected official before he was grabbed, but confirmed that more senior officers intervened immediately and told the officer to let him go. The officer released him and was urged to apologize by superiors, the assemblyman said. And while the officer did offer an apology, Mr. Blake said, it fell short of an acknowledgment of fault. Mr. Blake said the officer claimed to be in “a protective mode” over his partner and added that “if the situation presented itself, he would do the same thing again. ” The assemblyman said that he did not recall touching the sergeant but that even if he had done so, “in the heat of the second, that didn’t justify what happened. ” Mr. Blake filed a formal notice Saturday night with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, claiming excessive force, something he thought may have been related to his race. “I can appreciate from the officer’s perspective that if they perceive someone is a threat to their fellow officer, regardless of race, they would act out in some way,” Mr. Blake said. “But I do believe that the level of response was far heightened because I’m a black man — no question. ” The use of excessive force by the police, particularly in relation to has been a pressing local and national issue, highlighted by a series of episodes across the country. Mr. Blake, said that he chose to make the complaint public because, “too often, people are quiet when these things happen” and “leaders have a responsibility to communicate to the community about how to take positive action. ” “I know that the only way that this is going to get better is if we are transparent and we talk about what we experience and what we learn, and how changes need to occur on all sides,” Mr. Blake said. | 0 |
Most of the estimated 230 protesters who were arrested on Inauguration Day will face felony rioting charges, according to federal prosecutors. [Most of those arrested will be released without having to post bail on the condition that they return to court in February, CBS News reports. If charged, the protesters could face a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250, 000, according to the U. S. Attorney’s Office. Interim D. C. police chief Peter Newsham said Friday that 217 people were being charged with rioting. The arrests took place in a stretch around downtown Washington while President Trump was being sworn in. Protesters burned waste canisters, threw the embers at police, and broke windows of businesses downtown. Police used pepper spray and “sting balls” against the crowd. Six police officers suffered minor injuries due to the protests, with three of the officers hit in the head with flying objects, WUSA reports. | 0 |
Mark Cuban has made no secret of his dislike for Trump and his love for Crooked Hillary. Watch him tell FOX News’ Neil Cavuto (at 5:38 mark), “If Donald wins, I have no doubt the market tanks!” Well, that’s not exactly what happened now is it Cuban? So here’s what really happened:
Market Watch – U.S. stocks rallied Wednesday, with the Dow industrials jumping 257 points, led by a surge in financial, health-care and industrial stocks, as investors bet on the infrastructure spending policy promised by President-elect Donald Trump.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.40% gained as much as 316 points, briefly surpassing the all-time closing high set in August. The index closed 256.95 points, or 1.4%, higher at 18,589.69, its highest level since Aug. 18. Pfizer Inc. PFE, +7.07% and Caterpillar Inc CAT, +7.70% led the gains, rallying more than 7%. Way to go Cuban…you just reminded us of how little you know about economics or choosing the right candidate for President… Hope that loss didn’t cost you too much Cuban…Cheers! 46.4K shares | 0 |
by Yves Smith
Be sure to vote today if you haven’t already! Even if you dislike the Presidential choices, downticket races are important.
And an overdue note: Thanks SO much to those of you who came out to meet me in Dallas last week. We had a group of 30-35 attend, including someone from Iowa and a libertarian who declared that NC was one of only three non-libertarian sites that he reads. We have a lively discussion and I think everyone had a good time.
The organizer of the evening, Steve in Dallas, circulated a list for people who wanted to be on a Dallas Meetup listserv. Some participants had already left by then, so if you missed the opportunity to sign up and would like to be included or missed this meetup but want to be kept in the loop, please ping me at yves_at_nakedcapitalism.com and I’ll send your coordinates to Steve. Please put “Dallas Meetup” in the subject line.
At the end of the evening, Steve raised an important issue: he’s tried getting friends and family members to read NC and other independent media, with much less success than he’d like. I volunteered that most people don’t want to question authority, and that going outside the mainstream media was tantamount to admitting that the traditional press was wrong, or doing a superficial job.
This chart might help get traditional media loyalists to consider that reporting isn’t what it used to be
If readers have other approaches that have worked, please share them in comments. Thanks! | 0 |
Should The Royal Monarchy Be Abolished? UK Taxpayers Think So Nov 20, 2016 1 0
The first few questions we should ask ourselves is “what point is there to even having a monarchy?” Additionally, “what good do they provide for the people of the UK and world? What is their purpose?”
United Kingdom taxpayers are asking themselves these questions and more amid fresh calls for the monarchy to be dissolved. Personal wealth estimated at over £300m, yet they want taxpayers to pay for the building?
The Independent reports that Buckingham Palace is in need of repair, which is projected to be a 10 year project and will cost around £400 million-all from taxpayer money. The British government agreed to the increase in taxpayer funding, which is set to increase by 66%.
Those fighting for the abolishment of the monarchy are upset that the Royal Crown wants the public to pay for the renovation, all the while the Crown has an estimated worth of over £300 million, and owning land around the world estimated at a worth of over £7 billion.
Graham Smith, who is the chief executive of the Anti-Monarch Group Republic said:
This is an absolute disgrace. An indictment of the Queen’s scandalous mismanagement of royal finances over six decades. MPs have repeatedly called on the Palace to fund repairs by opening up to tourists all year round and they’ve refused. If the royals can’t look after the buildings and raise their own revenue to fund maintenance, it’s time to give them up.
The royals cost the taxpayer over £334 million per year and that keeps going up. We need independent inquiry and full disclosure of their spending. The monarchy’s costs need to be stripped right back, put the institution on a proper budgetary footing and allow parliament to approve the budget each year.”
Smith is right. Why is the cost to fund the royal family going up each year when they are worth over billions of pounds already? Additionally, we must ask why the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Keeper of the Privy Purse continue to agree to this increase in funding.
Again, this is yet another example of how governments and the people who really run them, do not have any interest in bettering the world for all, but only for themselves.
Furthermore, it is well known throughout the world how the Crown still owns the United States and that the IRS is nothing but a royal corporation, where U.S. taxpayer money conveniently works it way back to the top.
The world also knows about the massive, pedophilia ring that the elites in London have been and continue to be involved in, thanks to 60 Minutes Australia (a mainstream source that did an incredible job investigating the still unsolved story).
Lastly, we must all continue to declare our sovereignty from such oppressive, cunning and secretive cults. We are living human beings and no longer need rulers, especially those who continue to rule with such a dark agenda.
While this story is still developing and the Crown will likely not go quietly into the night, humanity is waking up quickly and we can expect more people throughout the UK, as well as the world, to reclaim financial and social freedom. Perhaps Brexit was just the beginning. | 0 |
0 Add Comment
A NEGLECTED wooden pallet is said to be suffering from severe self esteem issues after it failed to be selected for a nearby bonfire by local youths, WWN understands.
The pallet, left unattended for weeks behind a Lidl was not one of 70 pallets chosen to form part of a structurally suspect bonfire pile on a field in the Waterford area of Europe, prompting the pallet to spiral into an existential spiral which saw it question its own self worth.
“I don’t know what I did wrong, but… I’m obviously hideous,” the pallet shared, which until last month had a family of 400 cans of Polish beer living on top of it.
“You see the lads coming, pulling shapes and you think finally, I’ll feel special, feel wanted, but they never chose me. I just wanted to be doused in petrol and consumed by a raging hot fire, like any other of my kind,” added the pallet, who admitted at least a third of him was moderately soggy after being discarded in a puddle.
“Ugh, what’s the point anymore, it’s going to rain so much between now and next Halloween, I’ll be rotten and unlovable by then,” the pallet concluded, full of anguish.
There is some hope for the pallet, however, as a local hipster restaurant which has just opened in the city needs something to serve its food on that isn’t a plate. | 0 |
Subsets and Splits