text
stringlengths 1
134k
| label
int64 0
1
|
|---|---|
FLORIDA SHOCK: TRUMP OUTPERFORMS ROMNEY BY 130,000 IN EARLY VOTING! Mon Nov 07 2016 12:03:12 ET **World Exclusive** Data obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT shows presidential underdog Donald Trump outperforming Republican 2012 election results in Florida. Mitt Romney went into Election Day down 161,000 in absentee ballots and early voting. He ended up losing the state by 74,000. This time, in a dramatic surprise twist, Trump is only down 32,500! And Republicans tend to outvote Democrats on Election Day in Florida. | 0 |
By Amanda Froelich at trueactivist.com
During a standoff between riot police and peaceful protesters, a herd of buffalo appeared near the Standing Rock protest camp.
Yesterday, tensions between law enforcement workers and peaceful protestors with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe escalated. A series of standoffs resulted in “protectors” being maced, shot with rubber bullets, tasered, and even attacked with sound and concussion cannons. Ultimately, 117 people were arrested in the plight to stop the four-state Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) from being constructed.
After months of similar struggle to protect sacred burial grounds and the Missouri river, opposers of the DAPL were blessed today when a herd of buffalo appeared from nowhere. While mass arrests, macing, and beatings from batons took place, a stampede of bison appeared near the Standing Rock protest camp. Reportedly, a cry of joy erupted from the crowd, as protectors have been praying for help from the American bison (known as Tatanka Oyate) during their standoff with riot police and national guardsmen.
As UsUncut relays , the Native American culture honors the Tatanka Oyate as a symbol of sacrifice. Its appearance is reportedly being hailed as a gift from the Great Spirit.
Despite impressive attention being given to the protesting of the Dakota Access Pipeline by alternative media sites , activists on the frontlines, and even celebrities such as Mark Ruffalo and Shailene Woodley , little is being done in Washington D.C. The tribal leaders are calling on state and federal governments to respect the constitutional rights of water protectors and to stop the mistreatment of the indigenous who assert their ownership of the land due to a 1881 treaty. | 0 |
140228 Views November 12, 2016 KWN PLUS , TRENDING King World News
For those who would like to get more information about Maguire’s trading service and/or sign up CLICK HERE or email King World News FOR DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PLAY OR DOWNLOAD AUDIOS: CLICK HERE Andrew Maguire: Whistleblower, Independent London Metals Trader & Analyst – Andrew has 35 years trading experience, both as an institutional and independent trader. He is an accomplished veteran of the markets. In 2010 Andrew Maguire went public in an exclusive King World News interview and disclosed his notification to the United States regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) of fraud being committed and price manipulation in the international gold and silver markets. This put him at the center of a storm for exposing what could be the largest fraud in history involving countries, banks and government leaders. About Us – Andrew Maguire Gold Trading, is a trading name of Goldstar Global Ltd. – A service formed with the explicit purpose of the education of precious metals traders – A wholesale bullion trading company providing the most advanced solution for the trading and storing of precious metals
Andrew Maguire, Independent London Metals Trader and Analyst, internationally renowned for his unique ability to read the precious metals market with his specialist knowledge and experience gained over 35 years trading in financial and commodity markets is the expert in these highly complex and competitive fields. Andrew directly oversees all of Goldstar Global services.
Andrew sits on the advisory board of a global physical bullion exchange and is a consultant and advisor to many international hedge fund managers, bullion banks, directors and metal traders globally, all of whom rely on his highly recognised field of expert market analysis and incredibly accurate ability to forecast. He shares his expert knowledge through our services on this website.
In 2009, Andrew decided to go public and provided evidence to the United States regulators relating to fraud and price manipulation that was being committed globally in the international gold and silver markets. This put him at the epicentre of a storm for exposing what could be the largest fraud in history involving countries, banks and government leaders, which is still an on going investigation and does not deter him in his determination to see fair play for all on the trading fields.
Andrew is currently advising many other legal firms who are involved in bringing to justice criminal acts within the financial world and rely on his expert advice and Andrew is the only accredited whistleblower of market abuse to US regulators. Andrew is regularly featured in international media, international documentaries and is guest speaker at conferences. Andrew’s quotes are constantly used on numerous blog sites around the world and his whistleblower evidence and constant efforts and lobbying to bring market manipulation to the attention of the world’s media is the topic inside many financial publications and paperbacks.
Our Services – Andrew Maguire Gold Trading, is a trading name of Goldstar Global Ltd. – A service formed with the explicit purpose of the education of precious metals traders
We provide 2 levels of service to assist institutional money managers, investors and traders in making high probability trading decisions on short, medium and long term time frames.
MaguireLive is our premium service providing real time access to watch Andrew Maguire, a 35 year veteran of the gold and silver markets executing his own trading decisions using his vast experience, acute analysis and use of proprietary indicators to post his trades in real time allowing members to benefit from his insight into rapidly changing market dynamics. Andrew takes high probability low risk trades which come in two forms:
1. FastTrades – these are scalp trades, traded quickly with tight stops and are typically closed on the same day.
2. SwingTrades – these are longer in duration and seek larger returns that reflect Andrew’s core vaulted bullion positions.
MaguireLive also offers a comprehensive weekly full market analysis which includes:-
• Dissecting COT, BPR and other Government reports • Full Options analysis • An in depth summary of the prior Trading week and expectations of the upcoming week.
MaguireLive also includes full access to our London Calling service, where members are invited to join Andrew as he starts his trading day. This early morning strategy meeting, presented in video form, is where he shares his analysis and expectations for the upcoming trading day. For those who would like to get more information and/or sign up you can do so by CLICKING HERE or emailing King World News
London Calling will go live on February 1st-we are accepting subscriptions now.
London Calling is an early morning closed video presentation prioritising the key market and currency information relating to the upcoming trading day and represented on Andrew’s charts which he explains throughout his concise video.
Andrew analyses all relevant technical’s, chart patterns, pivots, trend lines, support and resistance levels and strips out all the unnecessary chart chatter so that the focus is on the most probable inflection pivots or trend lines for the up coming day which he presents in his London Calling video, saving you time by providing a clear, quick visual of gold and silver in all time frames.
This service is aimed at fund managers, investors and traders seeking to take control of their own port folios without the associated fees .
London Calling assists fund managers and professional traders to make educated, high probability low risk trading decisions for their portfolios, clients and trading accounts.
The objective for London Calling is for members to start their trading day, armed with information they would have obtained after attending a morning strategy meeting at a trading bank enabling them to focus on the most probable short, medium or long term opportunities.
London Calling includes:-
• Analysis of all relevant technicals, chart patterns, pivots, trend lines and support and resistance levels. • Stripping out all unnecessary chart chatter so that the focus is on the most probable inflection pivots or trend lines for the up coming day saving you time by providing a clear, quick visual of gold and silver in all time frames.
Plus information that you will not find anywhere else, by :-
• Netting out the currency crosses that influence gold and silver short term trends. • Providing insight into the physical markets support levels. • Identifying potential sovereign and central bank activity. • Providing feedback from global trading desks. • Analysing the probable impact that first, second and third tier news events are likely to have on the markets.
Andrew works toward having all of market information collated and ready to present in his video ahead of the Asian markets close and ahead of the London Open.
Join our meeting this morning.
This service is included in MaguireLive. For those who would like to get more information and/or sign up you can do so by CLICKING HERE or emailing King World News About author | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The speed of Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act has stunned health industry lobbyists, leaving representatives of insurance companies, hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical makers in disarray and struggling for a response to a legislative quick strike that would upend much of the American health care system. The Senate is expected to take the first step by Thursday morning, approving parliamentary language in a budget resolution that would a repeal bill that could not be filibustered in the Senate. House and Senate committees would have until Jan. 27 to report out repeal legislation. Health insurance and health care for millions of Americans are at risk. But far from reflecting the magnitude of the moment, the most prominent message from lobbyists that lawmakers saw in their first week back at work was a narrowly focused advertisement from the U. S. Chamber of Commerce demanding the repeal of “Obamacare taxes,” especially an annual fee imposed on health insurance companies to help pay for the expansion of coverage under the health law. “More than 20 million people could lose their health insurance, and states could lose billions of dollars in Medicaid money,” said Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association. But, he added, many health care executives “don’t want to get on the wrong side of the new administration or the Republican majority in Congress. ” Health care professionals are not totally silent, but industries that were integral to the creation of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 are keeping their voices down as Republicans rush to dismantle it. Some Republican lawmakers are openly fretting about their leaders’ repeal strategy, saying they must develop an Affordable Care Act replacement before they repeal it. Five Republican senators proposed on Monday to extend the deadline for drafting repeal legislation by five weeks, until March 3. One of the five, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, said the extra time would allow Congress and the Trump administration to “get the policy right” as they try to arrange a smooth transition to a new system of health coverage. But the naysayers are getting no cover from a major lobbying and advertisement blitz like the ones that blanketed the airwaves in 2009 and 2010. To block the repeal effort, said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, “we need two or three Republicans to join us. ” Doctors are telling Congress to proceed with caution, insisting that no one should lose coverage. The American College of Physicians, representing 148, 000 specialists in internal medicine, has sent letters to senators urging them to “vote no” this week on the budget resolution. Hospitals were expecting to receive tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue for treating people who were newly insured under the health law, and they are alarmed at the prospect that it may now be repealed. But, they say, if Congress goes ahead and rolls back the expansion of coverage, it must also restore tens of billions of dollars that the health law cut from Medicare payments to hospitals. Top executives from state hospital associations will fly to Washington this week to develop their strategy. Many also plan to visit offices on Capitol Hill, where they will warn of the potential damage if Congress repeals the health law without guaranteeing similar coverage for those who would lose it. A coalition of consumers and liberal advocacy groups is spending more than $2 million on television advertisements urging Congress to stop its attack on the law. The ads, by the Alliance for Healthcare Security, are aimed at a handful of Republican senators, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Dean Heller of Nevada, Lamar Alexander and Mr. Corker of Tennessee, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. But by Washington standards, that is a pittance. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry lobbying group, set aside $150 million in 2009 to support the law’s passage. Some lobbyists have tacitly accepted the likelihood that major provisions of the health law will be repealed, setting their sights instead on shaping its replacement. They fear that if they come out strongly in opposition to repealing the law, they will lose their seats at the table as congressional Republicans and the Trump administration negotiate a replacement. For now, passage of the budget resolution this week looks likely. The real fight is expected to come two to three weeks from now, when two House committees and two Senate committees produce legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act and must answer to Republicans who say a replacement measure must be ready at the same time. At least a Republican senators have expressed doubts about the Republican leadership strategy of using the budget resolution to legislation to repeal the law, with a delayed effective date to allow time to find a replacement in the future. “Repeal and replacement should take place simultaneously,” Mr. Corker said last week. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said on MSNBC, “It would not be the right path for us to repeal Obamacare without laying out a path forward. ” Members of the House Freedom Caucus are also pressing leaders to embrace a replacement bill before they eviscerate the existing law. And that concern is not confined to Congress. Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, a Republican, has also warned Congress against repealing the law without a replacement. What, he has asked, will happen to the 700, 000 people who have gained coverage under the expansion of Medicaid in Ohio? Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said that he spoke on Friday with Donald J. Trump, and that Mr. Trump agreed a replacement measure must be ready. “I think he consistently has said, and I think many people who look at this say, ‘Gosh, you’re going to repeal this huge, dramatic thing and not have a replacement on the same day? ’” Mr. Paul said on Monday. “I mean, doesn’t make a lot of sense to do that. ” Many of the lobbyists who might have slowed the process appear flummoxed, in part because they were expecting Hillary Clinton to win the election. Some companies, anxious about changes in health policy, said they were afraid to speak out because they feared that Mr. Trump would attack them on Twitter, as he has badgered Boeing, Ford, General Motors, Lockheed Martin and Toyota. Marilyn B. Tavenner, the chief executive of the leading lobby for insurers, America’s Health Insurance Plans, is in a particularly awkward position. As an Obama administration official from 2010 to 2015, she led work on the health law, issued rules to carry it out and often defended it on Capitol Hill. In December 2015, Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin pointed to her as an example of how federal officials passed through a revolving door to work for companies they once regulated. “If the insurance industry does not understand how Obamacare works, why not hire the person who ran it?” Mr. Ryan said in a gibe at Ms. Tavenner that drew laughter from his audience at the Library of Congress. Ms. Tavenner said the requirement for people to have insurance — the individual mandate — was likely to be eliminated. But, she said, to stabilize the market, Congress should maintain “subsidies for and individuals to purchase insurance and financial help for plans that enroll individuals, through at least Jan. 1, 2019. ” She is also asking Congress to kill the tax on insurers, which has already been suspended for 2017. Kaiser Permanente, the managed care company that serves more than 10 million people, declined to comment specifically on Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Instead, it offered a statement of general principles saying that people should have access to health care and that “we must continue to accommodate those who have conditions. ” George C. Halvorson, a former chief executive of Kaiser Permanente, said insurers were guarded in their comments because the current environment was “extremely politicized. ” He predicted they have more to say when Congress turns to the task of devising a replacement for the law. “You need to make your point when it will have optimal impact,” Mr. Halvorson said. Lobbyists for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association have been more active and outspoken. They support changes to the health care law because, they say, premiums and deductibles are too high and commercial insurers have been dropping out of the public insurance marketplaces. of counties in the United States have only one insurer offering coverage in the marketplace, they say, and in many cases, it is a Blue Cross plan. But Blue Cross lobbyists expressed alarm that Congress or a federal court might eliminate the subsidies that the government pays insurers to reduce costs for people. Without these payments, Blue Cross wrote in a primer delivered to congressional offices, consumers will see “significant premium increases in 2018, making coverage even more unaffordable for millions of working Americans. ” While defenders of the Affordable Care Act try to figure out a strategy, conservative groups are pressing hard for full repeal of the law as soon as possible. Among them are Heritage Action for America, an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation, and Freedom Partners, a conservative group backed by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch. | 1 |
President Donald Trump signed a deal with Saudi Arabia, kicking off nearly $110 billion worth of investments into military equipment. [“That was a tremendous day. Tremendous investments in the United States,” Trump said after the signing ceremony to reporters. “Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs. ” Trump and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman signed a joint strategic declaration, reassuring the relationship between the two countries, and financial agreements on defense, technology, and energy. According to the White House, the agreement will help Saudi Arabia face the threat of Iran and fight terrorism in the Middle East as well as support new jobs in the defense industry. The deal is expected to include $350 billion in investments over ten years, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the deal would create hundreds of thousands of jobs during a press conference with reporters. “Strong economic relationships are the foundation for security relationships as well,” he said, adding that the new deal “sends a strong message to our common enemies. ” Trump was welcomed warmly by the Saudi’s, who awarded him the highest medal of honor in the kingdom for his efforts to “strengthen the relationship between the two friendly countries” and continuing his effort “to enhance security and peace” in the world. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Paul D. Ryan, the reluctant House speaker, eager 2012 nominee and youthful answer to Hillary Clinton, should be sprinting toward the Republican convention, a bright, optimistic star poised to sell his party’s agenda. Instead, Mr. Ryan finds himself essentially slouching toward Cleveland, hampered in the House by restive Republicans and emboldened Democrats, and his spotlight taken by a nominee who has yet to fully earn his respect. Mr. Ryan’s fledgling speakership, which he once suggested would be one giant policy discussion, has instead been a series of extraordinary challenges. He has sought to be the voice of moral clarity for his party, even as Republicans fracture over the divisive candidacy of Donald J. Trump. He has tried to ground himself in Republican policy as the country’s political axis has shifted after terrorist attacks and gun violence, and has taken to more populist economic views. Mr. Ryan, the country’s Republican, seeks to maintain his stature in the party without alienating its Trumpian factions or its traditionalists. His most basic legislative agenda — getting a budget and spending bills passed — has failed, killed off by his right flank. He has been through a month of altercations with Democrats over gun legislation, and now is forced to punish them for their on the House floor. What would seem to be among his easier tasks — backing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — has become a bizarre ritual of alternately denouncing and then supporting Mr. Trump, on an almost weekly basis. An attempt to pass a modest bill aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring guns has been deeply resisted by many Republicans, even though their Senate counterparts want it. Instead of sitting around poring over policy with committee chairmen, Mr. Ryan, 46, spends much of his day dealing with minor member issues, like complaints that he did not return messages quickly enough. Mr. Ryan grudgingly agreed to his speakership — for which he was drafted under protest — to give his party a sense of unity and stability. He now finds himself in the most chaotic climate his party has seen in more than a generation. “Paul Ryan has stepped into an enormously complicated situation,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who is one of the moderate House Republicans who have distanced themselves from Mr. Trump. “The underlying dynamics that drove out John Boehner remain,” Mr. Dent said of the former speaker. “Now you have Donald Trump and all his rhetoric, and he knows most of his members want him to support Trump while others like me want to keep their distance. Then, not being able to pass a budget may be one of the greatest frustrations for the speaker. A lot of members don’t want anything to do with firearms or the budget. They want to cancel the session after the election. That is where we are. ” Unlike Mr. Boehner, who went sailing into private life after being deposed by conservatives, Mr. Ryan continues to cheerfully promote the House agenda. He makes frequent television appearances and attends local media events at home in Wisconsin. He will tell anyone who will listen about the conservative policy agenda he intends to pursue next year, in spite of the possibility that Mrs. Clinton might be in the White House. Further, Mr. Trump has shown little interest in his priorities so far. “When the speaker took the job, he did it to help steady the ship at a difficult moment,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr. Ryan. “He continues to try to be a stabilizing figure for the party and this place. ” Also, unlike Mr. Boehner, Mr. Ryan remains largely popular with his fellow House Republicans, who have appreciated his inclusive style. Even among supporters of Mr. Trump, there is respect for Mr. Ryan’s consistency on core party issues. It is particularly rankling for Mr. Ryan, a former chairman of the House Budget Committee, that he is unable to pass a budget. The most conservative House Republicans do not want to honor a deal struck by Mr. Boehner and the White House last year, which raised statutory budget caps to increase government spending. Many have made it clear they will not vote for a budget with that higher spending level. This has made the appropriations process equally charged. But that is where Mr. Ryan has other problems. Those bills have failed because of fights over an amendment to bar federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, fights over the use of the Confederate flag and other social issues. With Republicans likely to lose seats in November, narrowing their large majority in the House, the most conservative members are likely to make up a larger, not small percentage of his conference after November. Gerrymandered Republican House districts, which produce very conservative members, and the probable sweeping out of moderate members in a presidential year combine to make it so. Democrats, smelling blood but not well positioned to take back the House, have instead challenged Mr. Ryan. Two weeks ago, a rattled Mr. Ryan looked out on the House floor, where he has spent much of his adult life, and saw hundreds of Democrats, including many with whom he has served for years, shouting him down over gun control legislation. At 3 a. m. the heckles seemed to engulf the normally affable speaker as he struggled to call a vote on yet another bill that would go nowhere — this one helping to fight the Zika virus. Two weeks later, and the day after the death of five police officers in Dallas, Mr. Ryan stared out at those same colleagues and begged for conciliation in a moving speech on the floor. “There will be a temptation to let our anger harden our divisions,” Mr. Ryan said Friday. “Let’s not let that happen. Let’s defy those predictions. ” Democrats, who had planned another set of protests that day, stood down. Still, Mr. Ryan has vowed some form of punishment for their . What happened on the House floor over the past few weeks “illustrated just how he is caught in the currents within his own party,” said Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who served with Mr. Ryan on the Ways and Means Committee and is close to him. “I was surprised by his comments that our gun protests were a political stunt when he knew better,” Mr. Levin said. “He knew people like John Lewis and myself are not people. His comment was contrary to the way he usually conducts himself. ” | 1 |
A former contestant on “The Apprentice” who accused Donald J. Trump of sexual assault during the presidential race filed a lawsuit against him on Tuesday alleging that Mr. Trump defamed her when he claimed that she fabricated the assault. Summer Zervos and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Los Angeles, days before Mr. Trump is set to enter the White House. During the campaign, more than 10 women accused Mr. Trump of inappropriate sexual contact. Mr. Trump denied every allegation. When Ms. Zervos made her claim in October, saying that Mr. Trump had kissed and groped her without her consent during encounters at his office in New York and at a hotel in Los Angeles, Mr. Trump said he never met her “at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately,” and accused Ms. Zervos and other women of lying, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in New York State Supreme Court. “But it was Donald Trump who was lying when he falsely denied his predatory misconduct with Summer Zervos, and derided her for perpetrating a ‘hoax’ and making up a ‘phony’ story to get attention,” the lawsuit says. “Donald Trump lied again, and again, and again, and again. In doing so, he used his national and international bully pulpit to make false factual statements to denigrate and verbally attack Ms. Zervos and the other women. ” It went on to say that “Mr. Trump knew that his false, disparaging statements would be heard and read by people around the world, and that these women, including Summer Zervos, would be subjected to threats of violence, economic harm, and reputational damage. ” Ms. Allred sought to compare the lawsuit to the sexual harassment case brought by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, against President Bill Clinton in 1994. In that civil case, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a sitting president could be sued for actions that were said to have happened before his taking office. Ms. Allred pointed out that if the defamation case moves forward, Mr. Trump could be deposed or asked to testify, and that if he were to lie under oath, it would be grounds for Congress to impeach him, as happened with Mr. Clinton. If it got to a point where Mr. Trump did not testify truthfully under oath in this case, she said, “Then I think Congress will have a very important decision to make. ” Ms. Zervos kept her comments at the news conference brief, saying that Mr. Trump had left her with no choice but to take legal action and that she would press forward until he acknowledged that she told the truth. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, was quick to brush off the lawsuit, saying in an email that “there is no truth to this absurd story. ” “More of the same from Gloria Allred,” Ms. Hicks added. Ms. Allred has been involved in a variety of cases over the years in which women have accused men of sexual harassment, assault and other wrongdoing. When numerous women came forward last year to accuse Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct, Ms. Allred agreed to represent several of them, organizing news conferences where they could speak out. Ms. Allred said she had not had any communication with Mr. Trump or his lawyers about Ms. Zervos. Like other accusers, Ms. Zervos said she was inspired to share her story publicly after Mr. Trump was caught on tape bragging to the “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women, and then, in a presidential debate, denied ever engaging in such behavior. The lawsuit states that during the campaign, Mr. Trump described “Ms. Zervos’s experience, along with those of others, as ‘made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED’ ‘100% fabricated and charges’ ‘totally false’ ‘totally phoney [sic] stories, 100% made up by women (many already proven false).’ ‘made up stories and lies’ ‘[t]otally made up nonsense. ’” He also threatened to sue his accusers. “In his effort to win the Presidency and counter the damage to his election prospects caused by his own recorded words with Billy Bush,” the lawsuit says, “Mr. Trump knowingly, intentionally and maliciously threw each and every one of these women under the bus, with conscious disregard of the impact that repeatedly calling them liars would have upon their lives and reputations. ” The case alleges emotional harm and economic damage, but Ms. Allred said the purpose of the lawsuit was not financial. The goal, she said, was to get Mr. Trump to admit that he lied when he said Ms. Zervos fabricated her allegation. If Mr. Trump made such an admission, she said, Ms. Zervos would drop her case. Ms. Allred said Ms. Zervos had already submitted to a polygraph test that would help prove she was telling the truth. She also said that Ms. Zervos has not received any outside financial support for her case. When asked about the timing of lawsuit, Ms. Allred pointed out that it was being filed nearly two months after she and Ms. Zervos had first demanded that Mr. Trump retract his comments about her or face consequences. “We have given him two months,” she said. “Time’s up. ” “Why now?” she said. “My answer would be why not now?” | 1 |
This video shows you how to structure water inexpensively using magnets and a kid’s toy (for less than $10).
Hat tip, Minty! SF Source THE OLD LAB RAT Oct. 2016 Share this: | 0 |
Former Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has launched a fundraising page “to demand recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania– three... Nathan Wellman November 23, 2016
The rainbow colored Equality House, a gay rights resource center located across the road from hate group Westboro Baptist Church, has never... Nathan Wellman November 23, 2016
A Philadelphia man was hospitalized this morning after a piece of mail exploded in his face, and authorities are not ruling... Nathan Wellman November 23, 2016
Late senator Joseph McCarthy would be proud about a new list being circulated identifying professors espousing ‘anti-American’ values. The website ProfessorWatchlist.org seeks... Zach Cartwright November 22, 2016
Dennis Scranton, a 92-year-old WWII veteran, is being permitted to cast one of Donald Trump’s three electoral college votes in Montana... Nathan Wellman November 22, 2016
Columbia University just announced its plan to become a sanctuary for undocumented students under a Trump presidency. “The presidential election has... Nathan Wellman November 21, 2016
A restaurant in Washington DC has apologized to its customers after unwittingly hosting a Nazi-celebrating alt-right gathering last weekend, turning the... Nathan Wellman November 21, 2016
A few days after declining to increase water delivery to Flint, Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s attorneys and state educational officials... Nathan Wellman November 21, 2016
Greenpeace just released a press release revealing that DNB – the largest bank in Norway – just sold all of its... Nathan Wellman November 18, 2016 | 0 |
JERUSALEM — The huge billboard images appeared overnight in Tel Aviv: a menacing crowd of Palestinians making the V for victory sign and bearing a legend in Arabic, “Soon we will be the majority. ” One interpretation of that inevitability was explained in Hebrew for those who dialed the number on the billboard: If Israel does not act to separate itself from the Palestinians, it will be less secure, less democratic and less Jewish. The provocative — many said racist — campaign was kicked off last month by retired Israeli generals and senior officers to shake Israelis out of apathy. President Trump accomplished something similar over the course of just a few seconds on Wednesday, when, standing beside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, he declared that he was “looking at and ” formulas for resolving the conflict. “I like the one that both parties like,” he added, seemingly overturning decades of American policy centered on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Purposefully or not, Mr. Trump had suddenly implied that the solution of two states did not really matter. By Thursday, Israelis and Palestinians were feverishly debating what might come next, still confused about American policy after Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, reasserted that the administration “absolutely” supported two states. What were the viable options other than the solution? One state with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians? A dominant Israeli state alongside a defined Palestinian region with statelike but curtailed powers? Would either side ever settle for less than everything? Over decades, Palestinians have watched Jewish settlements spread over land they consider theirs for a future state and concluded that Israel did not intend to concede it. Many of them, particularly those in Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, still do not recognize Israel at all. Many Israelis believe that they have repeatedly made good offers that were refused, and that Palestinians are irrevocably split between the West Bank and Gaza, with no unified leadership to negotiate with. Good will, they say, has been met by rocket fire. Now, the Israeli political establishment, moving rightward, clearly believes it is the time to put its thumb on the scale. “I think what the president and prime minister were saying was any solution is possible and now we have to look at alternative solutions, and there are alternative solutions,” said Michael Oren, a deputy minister for diplomacy in Mr. Netanyahu’s office. These, Mr. Oren told reporters, could involve “interim measures and recognition of the fact that there may be a reality on the ground, which may not conform to what we know as a solution, but would enable the Palestinians to lead their lives in prosperity and security” — and also benefit Israel. Mr. Netanyahu, weakened by corruption investigations and under pressure from politicians who oppose a Palestinian state, has recently been evasive about his support for a solution. It depended, he said in Washington, on what the Palestinians had in mind: “What are we talking about? Are we talking about Costa Rica, or are we talking about another Iran?” Mostly, Mr. Netanyahu appears to want to solidify Israeli control over the occupied West Bank and manage the conflict. That basically means maintaining the current situation of Palestinian cantons divided by growing Israeli settlements and surrounded by Israeli forces. Mr. Netanyahu has referred to it as a “ ” — implying the Palestinians would get some statelike autonomy, and that would be enough. Critics call it a creeping reality, and certainly not the “ultimate deal” that Mr. Trump says he hopes to achieve. Some analysts chalk up Mr. Trump’s flippancy to a lack of knowledge, because one thing many Palestinians and Israelis do agree on is that a formula will not bring peace. “One state is not an option,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, noting that Israel, which was established to give Jews would never give all Palestinians the vote. “We are talking two states or no solution, a continuation of the status quo,” he said. Shaul Arieli, an Israeli expert on political geography who prepared maps for past negotiations with the Palestinians and is a member of Commanders for Israel’s Security, the group behind the billboard campaign, said “one state is impossible” for Israel. Demographically and economically, absorbing millions of comparatively poor Palestinians would destroy it, he said. Results of a survey of Israelis and Palestinians released on Thursday, put out jointly by Tel Aviv University and Israeli and Palestinian research centers, indicated that 55 percent of Israelis still support the notion of a solution, while support among the Palestinians dropped to 44 percent. But the numbers on both sides rose significantly when they were offered additional incentives like a broader regional peace between Israel and the Arab world. Among Palestinians, support rose for the ability to work freely in Israel even after the establishment of an independent state. The survey included a representative sample of 1, 270 Palestinians and 1, 207 Israelis. Israelis are increasingly fearful of the prospect of a Palestinian state at their doorstep. They see other areas of the Middle East in chaos. After Israel unilaterally left the Gaza Strip in 2005, they watched as the militant group Hamas, which rejects Israel’s existence, seized full control of the territory after winning legislative elections. And they know that without the West Bank, Israel is just nine miles wide at its narrowest point. There is also the emotional issue for those who identify the West Bank as the heart of the biblical Jewish homeland promised by God. The Israeli idea of Palestinian statehood never included all of the attributes of full sovereignty. Israel insists on a demilitarized state, and Mr. Netanyahu says the Israeli military has to keep overall security control. Together with other issues — like the fate of Jerusalem and of Palestinian refugees — many experts have long said that the maximum Israel can offer does not meet the minimum Palestinian requirements. Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, noted this week that the solution “represents a painful and historic Palestinian compromise of recognizing Israel over 78 percent of historic Palestine. ” President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, an interim government that has held sway in parts of the West Bank since the 1990s, is weakened by internal struggles and threatened by his rivals in Hamas. Mahmoud Zahar, a member of Hamas and one of its founders in Gaza, said of Mr. Abbas in an interview this week: “He is wasting his time. He is wasting our time and helping the Israelis expand settlements. He is a traitor. He is a spy. ” When the former United States secretary of state, John Kerry, came up with a proposed framework accord defining the principles of a comprehensive agreement after months of negotiations in 2014, Mr. Abbas did not respond. Since then, Israel has approved plans for thousands of new settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and has moved to retroactively legalize settler outposts that were built throughout the territory. The measures have further entrenched the occupation, now in its 50th year since Israel captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 war. A growing number of Israeli ministers, including from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, are pushing to annex the settlements that Israel intends to incorporate within its borders under any future deal. Israel has also invested heavily in roads and infrastructure connecting and serving the West Bank settlements, now home to some 400, 000 people. Yet supporters of the solution insist it still could be executed. Both sides have recognized that it would require adjustments along the 1967 lines. Mr. Arieli, the political geographer, said Israel could keep 80 percent of its West Bank settlers within its borders by swapping territory equal to about 4 percent of the West Bank. Many of the remaining 20 percent of settlers — roughly 30, 000 families — would most likely agree to move back into Israel for compensation, he said. The numbers can also be deceptive, and some experts insist that much of the change on the ground in recent years can be reversed. About 50 percent of the growth of the settler population has come in two large settlements, Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit. Both are considered swappable, being close to the 1967 line. Jews mostly went there for cheap housing, not ideology. Together, these two settlements have about 130, 000 residents — a third of the total settler population of the West Bank. In some more outlying settlements, Mr. Arieli said, the population was decreasing as Israelis were “voting with their feet” by not moving in, or moving out. Settlement leaders attribute the drop to pressure from the Obama administration that limited the construction of new homes. Mr. Khatib, of Birzeit University, agreed that a solution was still physically possible “with some creativity, like swapping. ” But, he said, “It won’t remain so for long. ” What is lacking is political will of the leaders on both sides. Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli columnist, wrote in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on Thursday that if Mr. Trump were “slightly more informed,” he might have realized that it was not an issue of one state or two states: “The two sides, in practice, have chosen a third option: not to agree. ” | 1 |
Is Trump winning? The future of America depends on a few states 09.11.2016 | Source: AP photo Republican Donald Trump has 95 percent of chances to become the next US president, The New York Times wrote on the basis of preliminary voting results. Donald Trump has surprisingly managed to win the support of 168 electors, while his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has succeeded to the votes of only 109 electors. Trump is projected to win the election in a number of "wavering" states, such as Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. To win the election, a candidate needs to enlist the support of 270 electors. The procedure for their formal vote will be held on December 19, while on January 6, 2017 Congress will approve its results. The inauguration is scheduled for January 20, when the US president-elect takes office. Pravda.Ru | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Wells Fargo, one of the nation’s biggest banks, will be fined $185 million for widespread illegal practices that targeted its own customers. Federal regulators said that employees opened fake accounts in clients’ names, issued credit cards without consent and charged people late fees on accounts they never even knew they had. Compensation policies that rewarded workers for drumming up new business may have prompted the fraud, officials said. _____ 2. “What is Aleppo?” was a question asked by Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, on an MSNBC morning show. His lack of knowledge about the Syrian city prompted a torrent of criticism and saw the question become a trending topic on Twitter. Also heavily criticized on Thursday: Matt Lauer, over his handling of a forum with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday. “He performed like a soldier sent on a mission without ammunition,” wrote our TV critic. _____ 3. Mrs. Clinton attacked Mr. Trump for his remarks at the forum, including his assertion that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was a better leader than President Obama. She spoke in front of her campaign plane before leaving New York on Thursday, and again at a rally in North Carolina to register voters. Mr. Trump was also criticized by lawmakers and military experts for defending his suggestion that the integration of women in the armed forces led to sexual assaults. On Thursday, he gave a speech about education in Ohio. _____ 4. Navy SEALs were unsuccessful in freeing an American and his Australian colleague from the Taliban in a raid in Afghanistan last month, officials said. Kevin King, an American university professor, and Timothy Weeks, the Australian, were taken at gunpoint on Aug. 7 from their vehicle near Darulaman Road in Kabul, above. President Obama personally authorized the raid, and officials said the SEALS are believed to have missed the men by hours. _____ 5. After lawsuits and complaints that Airbnb hosts can easily reject potential renters based on race, religion, gender, ethnicity, age or disability, the company announced several changes. It is instituting a new nondiscrimination policy, asking users to agree to a “community commitment” starting on Nov. 1, and planning to experiment with reducing the prominence of user photos. _____ 6. While states across the country have faced lawsuits over whether poor school districts are fairly funded, a judge’s decision in Connecticut went beyond the issue of money to essentially order an overhaul of the state’s education system. The current system “has left rich school districts to flourish and poor school districts to founder,” Judge Thomas Moukawsher said in the ruling. He has ordered the state to rethink nearly every major aspect of its public education. _____ 7. As the N. F. L. kicks off its season with a Super Bowl rematch between Denver and Carolina tonight (8:30 Eastern, NBC) players across the league are looking to rein in the power of its commissioner, Roger Goodell, above. He’s accused of being meddlesome and with discipline, sidelining some of the game’s top stars and affecting the quality of play. Goodell and his deputies are unapologetic. One former N. F. L. player, Tim Tebow, is trying a different sport: He signed a minor league contract to play baseball with the Mets. _____ 8. In tennis, Serena Williams lost to Karolina Pliskova, ending her bid for the singles title at the U. S. Open. Caroline Wozniacki is pitted against Angelique Kerber in the other women’s semifinal ( ESPN). The American swimmer Ryan Lochte continues to be haunted by the troubles he had in Rio. He was given a suspension for his drunken night out and the story that resulted. _____ 9. It is Day 2 of New York Fashion Week. The city will host 279 shows and presentations over the next week, and about 54 percent of the audience at each will be made up of editors and members of the news media (here are more statistics about NYFW). Here’s a rundown of Day 1: Our fashion critic wasn’t terribly impressed with Kanye West’s show, above a lot of showed up to Tom Ford’s first collection, and another designer made his debut with garbage. Yes, garbage. _____ 10. Hungry? It may be all in your head, or at least caused by it — and exercise might be the key to diminishing those cravings. Researchers think that strenuous mental activity makes the brain sense it will soon need more calories, so it asks for food. But in a new study, college students who were given pizza after tackling exam questions ate less of it if they had exercised just after finishing the test. _____ 11. Lastly, we’ve been busy launching some new endeavors. Two of our writers, Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, above, introduced a new culture podcast called “Still Processing. ” In the first episode, they talk about Colin Kaepernick, Leslie Jones and the repercussions of public patriotism and dissent. We also published a detailed guide on how to meditate and, each morning, we’re putting out a briefing on stories that matter to Californians — and anyone else interested in the state. Check it out or sign up to get it by email. _____ 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 |
MOSCOW — Aleksei A. Navalny, the most vocal critic of the Kremlin, announced on Tuesday his intention to run for president of Russia, though he is facing a court trial that could make him ineligible to participate in the campaign. “There have been no true elections in Russia since 1996, and this is one of the reasons of our plight,” Mr. Navalny said in a video statement, posted on his new campaign website. “I will participate in the election, and I will fight for victory. ” Apart from Mr. Navalny, only Grigory A. Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal party Yabloko, has declared his intention to run for the post. President Vladimir V. Putin has deflected questions about his own candidacy, saying it is too early to talk about it. But he is widely expected to run and, in light of his soaring approval ratings and control over the news media, is expected to win. The vote is scheduled to take place in March 2018. A lawyer by training, Mr. Navalny, 40, emerged as Russia’s most prominent opposition politician on the wave of public protests that followed parliamentary elections in 2011, seen by many as flawed. But as Mr. Navalny’s popularity was surging, Russian investigators got busy, filing a number of criminal cases that rights advocates have dismissed as politically motivated. In 2013, a court in the provincial Russian town of Kirov convicted Mr. Navalny on charges of embezzling timber worth $500, 000 from a company and sentenced him to five years in prison. A few months later, the sentence was suspended but the criminal conviction barred Mr. Navalny from running for office — the outcome that Mr. Navalny and others say was the government’s goal from the beginning. In the meantime, Mr. Navalny garnered more than 27 percent of the vote in a race for mayor of Moscow, a better result than any other open critic of the Kremlin in a major election since Mr. Putin assumed office in 1999. That Mr. Navalny was even allowed to run was seen as an attempt by the Kremlin to make the election look more legitimate. In November, Russia’s Supreme Court overturned Mr. Navalny’s criminal conviction after the European Court of Human Rights ruled in February that Russian courts had violated his right to a fair trial. While Mr. Navalny is free for the moment to campaign, the criminal case will be retried by a court in Kirov, which could reinstate the conviction and again bar him from office. Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told RBC, a Russian news website, that the Kremlin had no comment on Mr. Navalny’s announcement. Over the years, Mr. Navalny has repeatedly accused Mr. Putin and members of his inner circle of rampant corruption, and has been tolerated as long as he does not seem to pose a serious threat. In his statement, Mr. Navalny promised to raise the issue of official corruption during the campaign. “The Kremlin and the government are only worried about solving their own financial issues,” Mr. Navalny said in the video. “I will discuss what everybody is silent about, but what has to be said for a long time. ” | 0 |
Hillary Clinton’s campaign said on Monday that an image posted by Donald J. Trump on Twitter over the weekend that showed a photo of Mrs. Clinton against a backdrop of $100 bills and a Star of David was “blatantly . ” The post accused Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, of being the “most corrupt candidate ever. ” But critics seized on the episode as the latest example of a longtime pattern of racially charged remarks by Mr. Trump, saying the post was meant to exploit stereotypes against Jewish people. In a rebuke on Tuesday, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, said in a radio interview with Charlie Sykes on WTMJ in Milwaukee, according to The Hill website: “Look, images, they’ve got no place in a presidential campaign. Candidates should know that. ” Mr. Ryan added, “I really believe he’s got to clean up how his new media works. ” The backlash has been swift enough to cause Mr. Trump to do something relatively out of character: He deleted the original post, later sharing an image showing Mrs. Clinton next to a circle instead of the star. The news website Mic traced the first image, posted by Mr. Trump on Saturday, to a message board containing and imagery, and to Twitter accounts that circulated the images. Sarah Bard, the Clinton campaign’s director of Jewish outreach, said in a statement: “Donald Trump’s use of a blatantly image from racist websites to promote his campaign would be disturbing enough, but the fact that it’s a part of a pattern should give voters major cause for concern. Now, not only won’t he apologize for it, he’s peddling lies and blaming others. ” Though he replaced the image (one observer noted that the tips of the star were still visible in the new post) Mr. Trump took to Twitter on Monday to defend his original decision to post the image with a star. “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” he wrote. In a statement released on Monday night, Mr. Trump dismissed Mrs. Clinton’s campaign’s criticism as “false” and “ridiculous” and repeated his claim that the image was a “basic star often used by sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior. ” But some social media users have disputed Mr. Trump’s suggestion, with one person asking why would he delete a posting if he truly believed it was a sheriff’s star. Mr. Trump’s supporters have insisted that the image never contained a Star of David and that people were being too sensitive or politically correct. Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, appeared on Sunday on CNN and called the reaction “political correctness run amok. ” Other Trump supporters said on Twitter that the news media was exploiting a nonissue. They said they supported the theory that those accusing Mr. Trump of were creating a fictional subtext for the image. “The only reason the Trump sheriff star tweet is controversial is because CNN makes it that way,” wrote one supporter of Mr. Trump. But white nationalists, including the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, weighed in with praise for the tweet: The League has long condemned Mr. Trump’s remarks on immigrants as hate speech and stereotyping. It called on him in 2015 to stop “fomenting hatred. ” On Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s chief executive, said in an interview that Mr. Trump’s handling of the controversy over the posting did not pass muster. “The most appropriate response to the criticisms would be to address them to apologize, and to articulate firmly and forcefully that bigotry of any sort has no place in this campaign, and that hate has nothing to do with making America great again,” Mr. Greenblatt said. Mr. Trump seemed eager on Monday to move beyond the episode. He posted a flurry of messages about his potential choices for a running mate: “The only people who are not interested in being the V. P. pick are the people who have not been asked!” He then wrote a post that blamed radical Islam for terrorist attacks. | 1 |
Hollywood is on the verge of a massive boycott. And the Oscars may be the tipping point. [If you know where to look, you can see this sentiment building. After Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes tirade against President Trump, the #BoycottHollywood hashtag flooded Twitter feeds. A few weeks later, and just a day after the inauguration, Madonna shared her thoughts of “blowing up the White House” — effectively throwing kindling on the flame. At the SAG Awards, following a long procession of virtue signaling, David Harbour, star of the Netflix hit Stranger Things, vowed to “punch some people in the face. ” Calls to boycott Hollywood promptly peppered the comment sections of conservative news reports. Then, as rioters pummeled, sprayed, and set ablaze the campus of UC Berkeley in an attempt to cancel a provocative Trump supporter’s speech, calls for a boycott spiked as Debra Messing, Judd Apatow, and Sarah Silverman seemingly condoned the violent uprising. Silverman went as far as suggesting a military coup. Understandably, many were bracing for a lecture come Super Bowl halftime. But a collective sigh of relief could be heard across the country as Lady Gaga did the now unimaginable … she simply entertained. With the Oscars under two weeks away, Hollywood media is telegraphing a political tsunami. Owen Glieberman, chief film critic for Variety, the industry flagship with huge sway over a movie’s success, called on the Oscars to go political and inspire protest. United Talent Agency announced the cancellation of its annual awards party to make way for a rally supporting refugees. Powerhouse agency announced it would form a new political action committee (PAC). Even a toddler could predict its tone. These numerous and concentrated developments have ignited an already present #BoycottHollywood tribal trigger that film studio should heed. Tinseltown has survived past public resentments … but this time something is undeniably different. Film and TV viewers now have innumerable options — with some that completely bypass the industry’s tollbooth. Simply put, the public doesn’t need Hollywood anymore to be entertained. This shift has been brewing for well over a decade. From a peak of 1. 58 billion, annual U. S. ticket sales have declined 16% from its 2002 high … or just over a quarter of a billion seats per year. This decline occurred while the population, number of theaters, and number of movies made annually all increased. The slide also started before the proliferation of social media, cheap flat screens, streaming services, and the like. A large segment of the American public is finding other things to do — and political lectures won’t help buck that trend. These condescending lectures have also helped spark another, more nefarious behavior … theft. Evidence of this practice can be seen anecdotally in the comment threads of conservative entertainment media. But data also shows new genres of piracy taking hold. A 2016 report, written by this writer, revealed a renaissance in “stream ripping” — software that allows users to rip audio from streaming music videos. Thirty percent of Internet users report using stream ripping — an unauthorized downloading behavior riling an industry that has suffered a 60% revenue decline from its 2000 high. A similar software is impacting Tinseltown — a protocol called BitTorrent, with the most popular app being Popcorn Time. This software allows users to access newly released films and TV shows with a library that far exceeds any subscription streaming service, and at a much cheaper price … namely, zero. The eloquent user interface rivals Netflix, and is sending shudders down the spine of film underwriters. In 2015, the app was reportedly being downloaded an astonishing 100, 000 times per day. And remarkably, Popcorn Time has persistently evaded efforts. So before breaking ground on these new political endeavors, Hollywood should rethink its political posturing. The industry is teetering towards a boycott by an enormous, fully engaged segment of the population that clearly has other options. As the music industry has shown, behavior can forever change. And if this past election cycle has revealed anything, it’s that Tinseltown no longer holds a monopoly on shaping cultural mores. So why risk it with political lectures? Patrick Courrielche is a cultural commentator and of Inform Ventures. He can be followed on Twitter @courrielche. | 1 |
EXCLUSIVE – Jackie Mason: Hillary Clinton Too Untrustworthy To Serve As Bathroom Attendant – She’d Steal The Toilet Paper AP via GETTY by Aaron Klein 26 Oct 2016 0
26 Oct, 2016 26
During a radio interview, comic legend and political pundit Jackie Mason joked that the only time Hillary Clinton is not lying “is when her mouth is not moving.” “And even then, she is probably lying because she’s probably sitting there thinking of the next lie she is going to tell,” he added.
Mason claimed that Clinton is so untrustworthy that she likely couldn’t land a job as an “attendant in the ladies’ room because they would be afraid that she would steal the towels or the napkins. Even the toilet paper wouldn’t be safe from her.”
Mason was speaking during his regular segment on this reporter’s talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia.
Listen to the interview here:
He continued:
Do you think that if she went for any other job besides the presidency that anyone would hire her anywhere? If you saw her resume which is a resume of accomplishing nothing and running from the police three-quarters of her life. She is always either indicted or almost indicted or about to be indicted. Her whole life spent fleeing from the Justice Departments of different countries. Now, this yenta, do you think she would be able to get any other job? …
Would you think they would hire her as a chambermaid? Do you know what all those sheets and pillowcases are worth? Do you think they would trust her with it? After they found out the history of her life. Let’s be honest about it, if you went on a vacation would you let her watch your house while you went on vacation? Would you expect to come back and find anything still there?
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “ Aaron Klein Investigative Radio .” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Big Hollywood , Breitbart Jerusalem 2016 presidential campaigns , Aaron Klein Investigative Radio , Hillary Clinton 2016 , Jackie Mason | 0 |
This is tyranny not democracy, says party with single MP 03-11-16
UKIP has asserted that democracy can only be upheld if everyone does what they and their single MP demands.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, speaking because UKIP’s elected leader was forced to resign by people who did not agree with the result, said Britain risks having its future decided by an unelected group of ideologues.
He continued: “Democracy means something, and if it can be overridden by those who are unable to gain power legitimately it is no longer democracy but something much darker.
“I do not care who in the media elite supports these fanatics, who are determined Britain will bend to their will and tell whatever lies it takes to get their way.
“UKIP will certainly vote for hard Brexit in Parliament. Well, I hope we will. I’m not on speaking terms with our MP right now.”
Share: | 0 |
Actress and comedian Leslie Jones slammed President Donald Trump, scolded white women who support Black Lives Matter, and tackled her career Thursday night in a politically charged comedy set. [In what the New York Times called a “raucous, set,” Jones questioned the likelihood that she’ll ever find love in Trump’s America. “I want to be in love,” Jones said. “I want to do that, but it’s 2017, and we got a pig in office. The world is about to end. ” The Saturday Night Live star also chided white women who show up and march in Black Lives Matter protests. “If I see another white woman from Williamsburg saying ‘black lives matter,’ I’m going to punch you in the mouth,” Jones said while performing in front of a packed audience at Carolines comedy club in New York City. “Stop doing that. ” “Not one black woman out there,” she added. “Black woman at home watching Housewives of Atlanta. ” Later in her set, Jones joked that having her personal computer and iCloud account hacked and nude photos of her posted online was not as embarrassing as having to explain the situation to her elderly female family members. “Now I got to explain this to my aunties,” Jones said. “They old, and they from civil rights. They just now getting computers. ” The star also ripped dog lovers during her set. In a bit about rescue dogs and their sanctimonious owners who say things like “Did I rescue the dog, or did the dog rescue me?” Jones said, “How about both of y’all get caught in a fire, and neither one of y’all get rescued?” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson. | 0 |
500,000 People Sign Petition Asking Electoral College to Pick Clinton as President Instead of Trump The petition, launched on Wednesday after Donald Trump was elected President, calls for the Electoral College to “ignore their states’ votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton.” Although Trump won over the 270 necessary electoral votes to secure the Presidency, Clinton narrowly earned the nation’s popular vote. 11, 2016 A petition on Change.org calling for the Electoral College to elect Hillary Clinton as President has earned over half of the signatures needed for it to be sent to the governing body. EDITOR’S NOTE: As stupid as this seems on the surface, at this point, I am not taking anything for granted. Donald Trump voters across America need to be made aware of this, and even now be working against it. Remember that with the Clintons, it’s never over. Ever. And as Christopher Stevens and Vince Foster will tell you, these people will stop at nothing. And please be forewarned, while this petition strategy is far-fetched, it is not impossible. The petition , launched on Wednesday after Donald Trump was elected President, calls for the Electoral College to “ignore their states’ votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton.” Although Trump won over the 270 necessary electoral votes to secure the Presidency, Clinton narrowly earned the nation’s popular vote . The Electoral College – which was first introduced in 1804 – is comprised of 538 electors. Each state’s number of electors is decided by its number of members in Congress, which is dependent on the state’s population. So, when American citizens cast their ballots, they aren’t directly voting for president – they’re voting for electors. This year, Trump took 279, to Clinton’s 228. Petition circulates for Clinton presidency: Most states use a “winner-take-all” system when it comes to electoral votes, although there is no Constitutional provision or federal law that requires electors to vote a certain way. Twenty-six states and Washington, D.C., do, however, “bind” their electors to vote for the promised candidate on Dec. 19 – in this case, Trump. In many cases, “faithless electors” are forced to pay a fine if they vote against the popular choice. Understanding what a “Faithless Elector” is:
In order for Hillary’s supporters to be successful, they will need to sway a significant number of the Electoral College to become “faithless electors”. This video will make it clear what exactly that is and how the process works. Maine and Nebraska follow a different method , called the congressional district method, which allots two electoral votes to the popular vote winner, and additional votes for each congressional district won by the candidates. Crying Hillary Voters Compilation: Faithless electors have not ever reversed the presidency. The Change.org petition, which was at over 500,000 signatures on Thursday afternoon, said that Clinton supporters would be happy to pay any fees accrued by those who choose to be faithless electors. “Mr. Trump is unfit to serve,” the petition claimed. “His scapegoating of so many Americans, and his impulsivity, bullying, lying, admitted history of sexual assault, and utter lack of experience make him a danger to the Republic. Secretary Clinton WON THE POPULAR VOTE and should be President.” source | 0 |
09-11-16 DONALD Trump is bored of politics and wants to do something else now. The 70-year-old president-elect spent almost 20 minutes pretending to listen to a security briefing from the CIA, before telling the US Army to build a golf course on the moon. He said: “I get it, I’m the boss. Sure, Congress, whatever. But when do I get an eagle to perch on my arm? “Anyway, I want create the most beautiful golf course the moon has ever seen. Beautiful, just beautiful. You won’t believe it.” Drumming his fingers on his desk, he added: “Okay, what else? Can I pass a law today? Maybe annex some territory? “Hey, imagine how impressed Putin would be if I defeated Isis this afternoon. “Let’s do that. Yeah, we’re going to do that. We are going to do that.” | 0 |
SEOUL, South Korea — Some female college students received emails a few years ago that sounded like a phishing scam, offering a opportunity for free travel and a spot on South Korea’s Olympic women’s hockey team. The offers were sincere. Officials in South Korea had apparently scoured online rosters for North American college hockey programs, looking for women with last names that looked as if they might be Korean. They were on a shopping spree to assemble Olympic hockey teams from scratch for the 2018 Winter Games. As the host of the next Olympics, next February in Pyeongchang, South Korea has automatic berths in the men’s and women’s ice hockey competitions, which are premier events at any Winter Games. But hockey here is an afterthought, so the country had to get creative if it wanted to field teams that would not be humiliated. “I never dreamed this would happen,” said Danelle Im, who was born in Toronto to Korean parents and was attending Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario in 2012 when she received the curious email. She is now a forward on South Korea’s national team. Countries commonly take advantage of loose citizenship rules to import talent in all sports. South Korea’s hockey project is among the more aggressive and novel examples. For the men’s team, they recruited several North Americans playing on one of the three South teams in the Asia League. They offered naturalization to a handful of players from the United States and Canada — none of whom have any Korean ancestry. Mike Testwuide, a Colorado native, was approached by the national team coach, Jim Paek, a Stanley Cup champion with the Pittsburgh Penguins, during his second season with Anyang Halla of the Asia League. On a men’s squad that includes players with a wide range of abilities, Testwuide, a strapping center out of Colorado College, offers the big, physical presence in short supply here. The prospect of joining the Olympic fraternity thrilled the Testwuide. But it took him a week to agree to become the first men’s hockey player to become a dual citizen of the United States and the Republic of Korea. That was how long he needed to gauge his comfort level with two prospects: Could he hold his right hand over his heart during the playing of a national anthem that was not “The Banner” and not feel like an impostor — or a traitor? And how would one of the world’s most homogeneous cultures react to a towering, forward representing them on the world stage? “There’s a lot of negativity out there,” Testwuide said. “In the U. S. it was like, ‘Why would you want to play for another country? ’” He added, “And in Korea it’s like, ‘Why are we bringing you guys in? ’” The naturalization process took roughly a month, Testwuide said, and included memorizing the Korean national anthem. It took considerably longer for him to feel comfortable in his dual role as hockey ringer and proselytizer of puck. “You want to be as Korean as possible, but in your head you’re kind of fighting it and you’re questioning whether you’re doing the right thing,” Testwuide said, adding, “It’s a big responsibility, and it’s a ton of added pressure. ” Tyler Brickler, a Chicago native whose mother is from South Korea, is in the process of acquiring his citizenship. Brickler, 26, was invited to a national training camp in South Korea during his senior year at SUNY Geneseo and signed out of college with the Asia League, his interest whetted by the possibility of an Olympic berth. “It is a very weird situation for me, for sure,” Brickler said before a home game in February in the northern Seoul suburb of Goyang. “Playing in North America, I was sometimes considered the Asian player on the team, but when I came out here I’m considered the American. ” He added, “I might not look it fully or speak it, but no one can take away the fact that I have Korean blood from my mother. ” Marissa Brandt, who played at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn. will be a defenseman on the women’s team, whose roster is about 20 percent North American. She was born in South Korea and adopted by an American family. “When I was in the States, I didn’t want to be Korean, I wanted to be like everyone else,” she said. In the summer of 2015, she traveled to Korea for the first time since her adoption to attend a hockey camp and was transformed. “It was definitely an ” said Brandt, who now wears her Korean name, Yoon Jung Park, on her jersey. “Coming back, I am Korean. ” When Pyeongchang won the bid to host the 2018 Winter Games in 2011, South Korea had 1, 880 registered ice hockey players, according to statistics kept by the International Ice Hockey Federation. The United States in the same period had more than 500, 000. The defenseman Donku Lee, a member who plays with Testwuide on Anyang Halla, was blunt in his assessment of the challenge facing the South Koreans in Pyeongchang. “The other teams will be fighting with tanks and the Koreans will be using wooden sticks,” Lee said. There has been marked progress. The women’s team recently beat Thailand, in the Asian Winter Games and lost, to Japan — a respectable result after losing its previous six meetings to Japan by a combined score of according to local news reports. And at the Division I Group A World Championships last year, the men scored their first victory against Japan, a shutout. The sport still operates largely in a vacuum in a country that is crazy for speed skating and figure skating. At a coffee house two blocks from Anyang Halla’s rink, a longtime resident, huddled at a table with two friends, looked up from his hot drink with a confused expression when asked about the local hockey team. What hockey team? he asked. “There’s a lot of people in Korea who aren’t as educated about the game they don’t really know what we’re up against,” said Testwuide, who signed an contract with the Philadelphia Flyers and played for the Adirondack Phantoms and Abbotsford Heat of the American Hockey League before moving to Korea. “They think, ‘We brought you guys in here so we can compete with Canada,’ and that’s where it’s hard. I could barely make an N. H. L. lineup. The reality of it is one of Team Canada’s player salaries is probably the entire budget we have for players’ salaries and everything for the Olympic run. ” The Korea Ice Hockey Association has a $20 million plan to accelerate the development of its men’s and women’s national teams. The imports, as the North American men are commonly called, feel an urgency to make the national team more competitive on the world stage. It is a challenge complicated by cultural mores as foreign as the Korean alphabet to the North Americans, who recognize that Koreans do not like to lose, especially by lopsided scores that could cause chemyeon, or loss of face. That’s a particular concern to the men’s team, which opens preliminary play against defending champion Canada. “It’s such a young hockey country,” said Matt Dalton, the goaltender who plays for Anyang Halla. “Anything they can put their hat on, they try to use it to further momentum. Like when we beat Japan once and people were like, ‘We’re better now.’ When I hear something like that, my first instinct is, ‘Guys, let’s not get too high here. ’” The Goyang Ice Rink, where Brickler’s High 1 team plays some of its home games, had fewer than 300 fans in the arena before a recent game, held during the first major snowstorm of the winter. The crowd — and the noise — was bolstered by a group of 100 High 1 fans, mostly team employees who performed continuous card stunts. They tirelessly raised squares of colored paper to form messages like “We Will Win” while a man pounded on a drum. Across the ice, two women sat huddled against the cold, wearing Canada mittens and tracking the movements of the 2018 Korean Olympic team member Mike Swift, who was centering High 1’s top line. The women were Swift’s mother and aunt, visiting from rural Ontario, Canada, where Swift was reared. Swift’s mother, Darlene, was asked when her son last played a competitive game in front of so few people. “I don’t think he ever has,” she said. Swift, 29, is a center with a sting, quick to throw a check. His physical style of play has no translation in Korea, where hard hits remain a largely foreign concept. Even if the body is willing, Korean players said, the mind is inclined to think twice because of an team hierarchy that frowns on a younger player checking an elder. The North Americans have heard stories of a Korean forced to pay a postgame visit to the opponents’ dressing room to apologize for a crushing hit delivered to an older player. The hits are less likely to come from hips than sticks, which are sometimes wielded like swords. Swift said his body had not taken a beating in the Asia League, but his face had. He smiled to reveal a few missing front teeth. Sarah Murray, the women’s coach who won two national titles playing at the University of said communication posed her biggest challenge. “Sometimes players look scared when I talk to them,” said Murray, whose father, Andy, coached in the N. H. L. “There’s so much I want to say to them, and I do want to have a very personal relationship with my players. Sometimes it’s hard to say with someone else saying it for you. ” Murray confronted one cultural barrier that was easier to surmount. When she first arrived in Korea, she was taken aback to see that her players did not know how to hop over the boards from the bench onto the ice. “They always used the door,” she said. “They were literally running into each other coming off and going on. ” For the men and the women, progress has come slowly, yet expectations will be lofty. “I love being an underdog,” Murray said. “That’s what I want at the Olympics. Nobody knows what to expect. I would love to shock people. ” | 1 |
Comments
It is almost certain that the United States Office Of Special Counsel (OSC) has opened an investigation into FBI Director James Comey over his questionable decision to reignite the Hillary Clinton email scandal just a week before the election.
The OSC is a permanent independent federal investigative and prosecution agency that acts as an internal watchdog for federal employees. While the OSC refuses to confirm the truth, they always look in to inquiries.
“It’s OSC’s longstanding policy not to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation In general, OSC opens a case after receiving a complaint.” The complaint was made by Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer.
“The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election. Such acts could also be prohibited under the Hatch Act, which bars the use of an official position to influence an election. That is why the F.B.I. presumably would keep those aspects of an investigation confidential until after the election” he wrote in the New York Times.
If found guilty, OSC investigations usually lead to a rapid loss of employment.
Director Comey certainly deserves to lose his job after throwing a wrench into the election, bowing to pressure from House Republicans and releasing an unnecessary and extremely misleading “update” on the new emails discovered in Anthony Weiner’s cellphone that have nothing to do Hillary Clinton, her email server, or the election at large – all the while refusing to release the results of their likely inquiries into Republican nominee Donald Trump’s relationship with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. | 0 |
KASTAMONU, Turkey — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey warned Europeans on Wednesday that they would no longer be able to walk safely in the street if Western politicians continued with perceived provocations against Turkish leaders. Mr. Erdogan’s warning turned out to be awkwardly timed, coming hours before a deadly attack outside the British Parliament. In a Twitter post written in English, Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, quickly condemned the assault in London, noting that Turkey had “suffered similar attacks many times. ” Mr. Erdogan’s comments were a response to restrictions placed on his surrogates in European countries including Germany and the Netherlands, where they have been barred from holding political rallies in support of a referendum in which Turks will decide whether to expand their president’s powers. “If you go on behaving like that, tomorrow nowhere in the world, none of the Europeans, Westerners will be able to walk in the streets in peace, safely,” Mr. Erdogan said at a meeting in Ankara, the capital. The outburst was his latest attempt to rally nationalist voters before the tightly contested referendum. In Germany alone, 1. 4 million residents have the right to vote in the referendum on April 16. Amid fears he might lose, Mr. Erdogan and his allies have issued diatribes against European countries, a tactic that they hope will play well among swing voters. In previous days, he has frequently accused German and Dutch politicians of Nazism. He has also suggested that he might scrap the accord that restricted the passage of migrants through Turkey and send a new wave of migrants to Europe. Western news organizations have been quick to report on these provocations, which are then read and condemned by European leaders — creating a feedback loop that in turn gives Mr. Erdogan more excuses to criticize Europe and to begin the cycle afresh. The tactic appeals to some Turkish voters, including many of those who attended a rally on Wednesday in Kastamonu in northern Turkey, where Mr. Erdogan headed immediately after speaking in Ankara. “He defends our country against the whole world,” said Hasan Birgun, 59, a retired salesman in Kastamonu. “Until Erdogan, our leaders were just standing meekly in the outside world. ” Hopes that the dispute would ease were raised on Tuesday, after Mr. Erdogan’s party canceled plans to send more lawmakers to campaign in Germany. But the president’s inflammatory comments on Wednesday suggested those hopes were premature. In Turkey on Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the Norwegian ambassador after Norway granted refuge to four Turkish asylum seekers accused by Turkey of being involved in the coup attempt in July, Reuters reported. | 0 |
I Agree, William. However, Trump & the right-wings will continue to drag Clinton through the mud. Obama’s presidential pardon will put an end to things once and for all. It will finally be DONE & that needs to happen for the sake of the nation. | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The Trump administration ordered 46 holdover U. S. attorneys to quit, including the powerful Manhattan prosecutor Preet Bharara. The firings were a surprise — especially for Mr. Bharara, who has a reputation for prosecuting public corruption cases. He met with Mr. Trump in November and had expected to stay on. _____ 2. The president has been noticeably less accessible since his tweets last weekend accusing former President Obama of bugging Trump Tower. He and his team did hastily take to Twitter to celebrate the latest jobs report, which showed the U. S. economy added 235, 000 jobs in February. That sets the stage for the Fed to raise interest rates. As a candidate, Mr. Trump had dismissed the regular Labor Department reports as phony. In a televised briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that the report “may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now. ” _____ 3. Mr. Spicer also faced questions on the latest revelations about Michael T. Flynn, who was briefly Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. According to newly filed disclosure forms, Mr. Flynn earned more than $500, 000 representing the interests of Turkey’s government during the campaign. Mr. Flynn filed the papers retroactively to “eliminate any potential doubt” about the propriety of his actions, his lawyer wrote to the Justice Department. _____ 4. Customs and Border Protection says the number of people caught trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico fell in February to the lowest level in five years. The Trump administration called the sharp decline a sign that its promise to strengthen border security was discouraging people from trying to cross. But the dire economic and safety conditions that drive people from their homes have not changed. We met some of the migrants at shelters along the border. “I have nothing to go back to,” said a Honduran man who fled after he was attacked with a machete. “And I don’t know if there’s anything for me on the other side. ” _____ 5. Protests erupted in South Korea after the country’s Constitutional Court announced it was removing President Park from office. The ruling capped months of turmoil for a country that has been gripped by the corruption scandal that brought her down. Who will succeed Ms. Park? It may be the candidate of the liberal opposition, Moon who wants to reset relations with the North. _____ 6. In California, reservoirs are overflowing and dams are under siege after a surprisingly wet winter. But the state is still in a drought state of emergency. That will probably end in about six weeks, but this year may only be a wet outlier in a long dry spell. _____ 7. The Kremlin plans to sit out the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. There will be no national holiday on March 12, the date generally recognized as the start of the uprising. The official reason is that Russia remains too divided over the consequences of that fateful year. Some analysts say the more likely reason is that President Vladimir V. Putin loathes the very idea of revolution. _____ 8. Volkswagen pleaded guilty in a Detroit courtroom to federal charges stemming from a scheme to equip cars with software to cheat emissions tests. The plea, part of a settlement, was a big step toward resolving the automaker’s legal problems in the U. S. But in Europe, where there are far more diesel owners, its troubles may be just beginning. _____ 9. The owners of a popular Washington wine bar sued the president, claiming restaurants in his hotel in the Old Post Office enjoy an unfair business advantage. They claim their business has suffered as diplomats and politicians patronize Trump establishments to curry favor with the Oval Office. The suit doesn’t seek damages but says that to resolve the issue, the hotel could close, the Trump family could divest or the president could resign. The Trump Organization called it “a wild publicity stunt completely lacking in legal merit. ” _____ 10. We take you inside the eerie ghost towns around Fukushima, Japan, where an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at a nuclear plant six years ago. To this day, few have returned. Evidence of sudden flight is everywhere, under a caking of dust. _____ 11. Finally, if screen time’s on your weekend agenda, here are some ideas. After years in storage, the mighty ape with the big teeth and the thing for pale blondes has been dusted off and digitally turbocharged for “Kong: Skull Island,” our critic writes, adding that the film “deploys feints and frights capably amid its clichés. ” If you’re watching at home, here are our picks to stream. And in our daily roundup of the best of comedy, Jimmy Kimmel has a budget proposal: put video of Mr. Trump’s dinner with Ted Cruz on . Then there’s the video that it seemed everyone was watching today: Invasion of the Toddlers, in which young children crash a political scientist’s Skype interview with the BBC on South Korea. In that spirit, here are 11 great stories from around the internet that have nothing to do with politics. Have a great weekend. 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 |
Headlines from Siberia reveal an incident of uniformly spherical "ice boulders" suddenly washing up on the shores of Nyda, Russia. Are we to believe this is only an "act of nature" as "official sources" have told us? Photo credit: Ekaterina Chernykh
Why would the "ice boulders" occur with Arctic sea ice at record low levels? Why would perfectly spherical "ice balls" occur at all? 2012 was the previous record Arctic ice low for this time of year, 2016 has shattered that former record.
Why would such formations occur from the record warm Arctic Ocean? Sea temperatures in some zones of the Arctic Ocean are as much as 25 degrees above the 30 year average. This average was taken from 1981-2011, when the ocean temperatures were already warmer than the pre-industrial era.
Why are governments and media doing all they can to hide the reality of the record warm Arctic from the public? There are many reasons, none of them are benevolent. Temperatures in the polar regions are going completely off the charts as the "departure from normal temperature" map below makes clear.
Siberia is undergoing massive engineered cooling assaults , but the extremely rapid warming of the planet is undeniable and climate engineering is helping to fuel the overall fire . Are the climate engineers trying desperately to reduce the methane "blowouts" that are occurring in Siberia due to rapidly thawing methane permafrost deposits? Whatever the case, the short term engineered (and highly toxic) cool-downs come at the cost of a worsened overall warming . Photo credit: Andrey Naumenko
Again, the "experts" tell us that the "ice boulder" phenomenon is a "natural" occurrence. But if this is so, why is there no long term historical record (or photographs) of this phenomenon occurring? There is no such record because the ridiculously uniform "ice boulders" are absolutely not natural . The "experts" are simply lying, as they are paid to do. We are all swimming in a sea of lies and deception that is propagated by countless individuals in academia, media, and "official sources", who have completely betrayed humanity in exchange for a paycheck and a pension . When will the population reactivate their sense of sanity and reason? When will the population recognize that our geoengineered skies should not look like they do? When will the population face the fact that steel structure high-rise buildings (building 7 on 911) don't just fall down because of an office furniture fire on the lower floors? And why can't the masses discern that miles of shorelines covered with almost perfectly uniform and symmetrical "ice boulders" is completely unnatural?
Below is an article on chemical ice nucleation that I first posted in November of 2015. The information it contains is every bit as relevant now as it was almost exactly one year ago. The Engineered Winter Deception, Chemical Ice Nucleation
All around the globe, extreme, destructive, and unprecedented "frozen precipitation" events are occurring . A great many of these events begin at temperature ranges far above the freezing point (though temperatures on the ground can drop precipitously as the nucleation process unfolds). Why? Most have never heard of "chemical ice nucleation for weather modification", but patents exist for this process and the Chinese government has long since admitted to engineering frozen precipitation events . The 90 second video below is astounding, a 200 foot wide river of ice flowing through the Saudi desert on November 2nd, 2015.
Extreme hail events are happening with alarming frequency , often in the most unlikely locations where such storms have not historically occurred. "Ice storm" hits Saudi Arabia in Early November, 2015
When moisture laden storms are saturated with artificial/chemical ice nucleating elements (due to the destructive attempt by the climate engineers to temporarily cool-down ground temperatures on the ground), storms that would have been a deluge of rain become unprecedented onslaughts of frozen precipitation. Record hail storm in Quito, Ecuador, February 14, 2015
The damage being inflicted by the rapidly increasing hail storms is massive and growing. Record hail event, Bogata Columbia, February 22, 2015
Africa is also being subjected to unprecedented hail events. A record shattering 3 feet of hail is dumped on the East African nation of Eritrea, March 14, 2014
Below is a shocking photo of "ice balls" piled up on the shores of Lake Michigan. Why is there no long term historical record of such a profound phenomenon? Chemical ice nucleating materials form a central core of ice that builds up around itself. The motion of the waves then contribute to the spherical shape. "Ice balls" have formed and accumulated on Lake Michigan in the last few years, why? Such "ice balls" have even formed on lake water that was 40 degrees , how is this possible at temperatures far above the normal freezing point? Without chemical ice nucleation, it isn't possible.
What is occurring on the shores of distant seas? Yet more "ice balls" have appeared in recent years. "Ice balls" on the Baltic Coast in Northern Poland. "Official" sources say this recent unprecedented phenomenon is just "natural", are we to believe them?
Other European countries are noting the same phenomenon. Ice balls on the coast of Finland. The "official" explanation for this recent mysterious anomaly? Again, we are told it is a "natural" occurrence.
How natural do these "ice pancakes" look in the photo below? CNN news called these "ice pancakes" "mysterious". This phenomenon has also been observed on various lakes and rivers in recent years. It is the extreme uniformity of these formations that separates them from any natural phenomenon. Chemical nucleation materials are the core causal factor that produce the recent rash of profound ice formations .
"Freezing rain" has now become commonplace. Extreme "ice storms" are wreaking havoc all over the globe . Depending on atmospheric conditions and temperatures, precipitation from storms that have been sprayed with chemical ice nucleating materials can reach the ground before actually freezing. This vehicle photo was taken in Versoix, Switzerland. Formerly unprecedented ice storms have now become the norm as the geoengineers do their best to create temporary chemical cool-downs in a rapidly warming world .
Where can the most profound chemical ice nucleation examples be seen? The satellite photos below show completely unnatural ice formation structures on the Arctic ocean, September 15th, 2015. Arctic ocean temperatures have persisted at record high levels and the warming continues to worsen . Why would ice form in open water under such conditions, and in a manner that is completely different than the normal ice pack winter expansion? And all this during a year that has had record warmth and record ice melt in the Arctic ? Surface ice formation on record warm seas worsens the overall warming by trapping the heat below . Another satellite photo taken over the Arctic Ocean, September 15, 2015. Extremely anomalous sea surface ice formation is clearly evident.
Even into November, 2015, astoundingly high ocean temperatures have persisted and continue to shatter records . The map below clearly shows that sea surface temperatures were as much as 24.7 degrees ABOVE NORMAL in the Arctic ocean on November 7, 2015. Global ocean temperatures are skyrocketing so rapidly that scientists must keep updating charts to keep up .
The excerpt below was taken from a recently posted Article from "Arctic News", it should be read carefully. Arctic news describes the effects of atmospheric particulates (primarily from geoengineering which Arctic news refuses to admit to). They then state clearly the negative overall effects of these particulates (again, a result of geoengineering). And at the end of the article from which this excerpt was taken, Arctic News and the Arctic Methane Emergency Group calls for global geoengineering to be deployed immediately, as if it has not already been going on for over 6 decades in clear view and causing catastrophic effects. We must all diligently "sift the baby from the bathwater" so to speak. Though the front line data from Arctic news is accurate and verifiable from other sources, their constant call for geoegineering to commence is extremely alarming.
Aerosols Particulates , in particular sulfate, can provide short-term cooling of the sea surface . Large amounts of sulfate are emitted from industrial areas in the east of North America and in East Asia. On the Northern Hemisphere, the Coriolis effect makes that such emissions will typically reach areas over the nearby ocean to the east of such industrial areas, resulting in the sea surface there being cooled substantially, until the particulates have fallen out of the sky. Since the sulfate is emitted on an ongoing basis, the cooling effect continues without much interruption .
This sulfate has a cooling effect on areas of the sea surface where ocean currents are moving warm water toward the Arctic Ocean. Because the sea surface gets colder, there is less evaporation, and thus less heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere during the time it takes for the water to reach the Arctic Ocean. As a result, water below the sea surface remains warmer as it moves toward the Arctic Ocean .
Similarly, as illustrated by above image, sulfur dioxide emitted in industrial areas in North America and East Asia can extend over the oceans, cooling the surface water of currents that are moving water toward the Arctic Ocean.
So the overall conclusion from Arctic News is that the atmospheric particulates are making a bad situation worse, not better. Yet, they continue to call for geoengineering deployment as if that is not the source of "atmospheric pollution" they have just condemned.
Below is a recent satellite photo of the sea surface off the coast of Greenland. Again we see an extremely anomalous and unprecedented pattern of ice formations like those shown earlier in this article. The massive chemical ice nucleation efforts in the Arctic , by the geoengineers, is undeniable.
The AccuWeather "forecast" (scheduled weather) for November 16-20, 2015, shows snow with a daytime high of 59 degrees and a night time low of 40 degrees. Why?
In the next map, we see snow again called for on the 22nd with the same temperatures as the earlier forecast, yet, on the 25th only rain is called for with much colder low temperatures? Snow is now often reported at temperatures up to 50 degrees and even above, welcome to the world of chemical ice nucleation. As previously mentioned, there are patents for such processes , and again, the Chinese scientists have openly admitted their programs to create engineered snow storms .
What scenario are the geoengineers creating in the US with their chemical ice nucleated cool-downs? The exact antithesis of what has been the case in the US for the previous 3 winters . The extreme scenario shown in the most current NOAA map below is historically unprecedented, but in recent years has become the norm. The "scheduled" weather from the geoengineers is for temperatures to be up to 20 degrees below normal in the West, and 20 or more degrees above normal in the East.
Chemical ice nucleation of storms and precipitation does create a cold dense layer of air on the ground level that can drastically lower temperatures temporarily. But what is the overall cost? A decimated climate system, a worsened overall warming of the planet, and total contamination of the atmosphere and surface of our planet (due to the highly toxic fallout from the climate engineering programs). If you think your winter weather is natural, think again. Exposing the ongoing climate engineering insanity is challenge we must all face head on, make your voice heard in this battle . Forward solid information to all those that need to know and don't. Make every day count in this most critical fight. | 1 |
One Veteran’s War on Islamophobia Posted on Nov 2, 2016
By Nate Terani / TomDispatch JMacPherson / (CC-BY-2.0)
I’m not an immigrant, but my grandparents are. More than 50 years ago, they arrived in New York City from Iran. I grew up mainly in central New Jersey, an American kid playing little league for the Raritan Red Sox and soccer for the Raritan Rovers. In 1985, I travelled with my family to our ancestral land. I was only eight, but old enough to understand that the Iranians had lost their liberty and freedom. I saw the abject despair of a people who, in a desperate attempt to bring about change, had ushered in nationalist tyrants led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
What I witnessed during that year in Iran changed the course of my life. In 1996, at age 19, wanting to help preserve the blessings of liberty and freedom we enjoy in America, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Now, with the rise of Donald Trump and his nationalist alt-right movement, I’ve come to feel that the values I sought to protect are in jeopardy.
In Iran, theocratic fundmentalists sowed division and hatred of outsiders—of Westerners, Christians, and other religious minorities. Here in America, the right wing seems to have stolen passages directly from their playbook as it spreads hatred of immigrants, particularly Muslim ones. This form of nationalistic bigotry—Islamophobia—threatens the heart of our nation. When I chose to serve in the military, I did so to protect what I viewed as our sacred foundational values of liberty, equality, and democracy. Now, 20 years later, I’ve joined forces with fellow veterans to again fight for those sacred values, this time right here at home.
“Death to America!”
As a child, I sat in my class at the international school one sunny morning and heard in the distance the faint sounds of gunfire and rising chants of “Death to America!” That day would define the rest of my life.
It was Tehran, the capital of Iran, in 1985. I was attending a unique school for bilingual students who had been born in Western nations. It had become the last refuge in that city with any tolerance for Western teaching, but that also made it a target for military fundamentalists. As the gunfire drew closer, I heard boots pounding the marble tiles outside, marching into our building, and thundering down the corridor toward my classroom. As I heard voices chanting “Death to America!” I remember wondering if I would survive to see my parents again.
In a flash of green and black uniforms, those soldiers rushed into our classroom, grabbed us by our shirt collars, and yelled at us to get outside. We were then packed into the school’s courtyard where a soldier pointed his rifle at our group and commanded us to look up. Almost in unison, my classmates and I raised our eyes and saw the flags of our many nations being torn down and dangled from the balcony, then set ablaze and tossed, still burning, into the courtyard. As those flags floated to the ground in flames, the soldiers fired their guns in the air. Shouting, they ordered us—if we ever wanted to see our families again—to swear allegiance to the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini and trample on the remains of the burning symbols of our home countries. I scanned the smoke that was filling the courtyard for my friends and classmates and, horrified, watched them capitulate and begin to chant, “Death to America!” as they stomped on our sacred symbols.
I was so angry that, young as I was, I began to plead with them to come to their senses. No one paid the slightest attention to an eight year old and yet, for the first time in my life, I felt something like righteous indignation. I suspect that, born and raised in America, I was already imbued with such a sense of privilege that I just couldn’t fathom the immense danger I was in. Certainly, I was acting in ways no native Iranian would have found reasonable.
Across the smoke-filled courtyard, I saw a soldier coming at me and knew he meant to force me to submit. I spotted an American flag still burning, dropped to my knees, and grabbed the charred pieces from underneath a classmate’s feet. As the soldier closed in on me, I ducked and ran, still clutching my charred pieces of flag into a crowd of civilians who had gathered to witness the commotion. The events of that day would come to define all that I have ever stood for—or against.
“Camel Jockey,”“Ayatollah,” and “Gandhi”
My parents and I soon returned to the United States and I entered third grade. More than anything, I just wanted to be normal, to fit in and be accepted by my peers. Unfortunately, my first name, Nader (which I changed to Nate upon joining the Navy), and my swarthy Middle Eastern appearance, were little help on that score, eliciting regular jibes from my classmates. Even at that young age, they had already mastered a veritable thesaurus of ethnic defamation, including “camel jockey,”“sand-nigger,”“raghead,”“ayatollah,” and ironically, “Gandhi” (which I now take as a compliment). My classmates regularly sought to “other-ize” me in those years, as if I were a lesser American because of my faith and ethnicity.
Yet I remember that tingling in my chest when I first donned my Cub Scout uniform—all because of the American flag patch on its shoulder. Something felt so good about wearing it, a feeling I still had when I joined the military. It seems that the flag I tried to rescue in Tehran was stapled to my heart, or that’s how I felt anyway as I wore my country’s uniform.
When I took my oath of enlistment in the U.S. Navy, I gave my mom a camera and asked her to take some photos, but she was so overwhelmed with pride and joy that she cried throughout the ceremony and managed to snap only a few images of the carpet. She cried even harder when I was selected to serve as the first Muslim-American member of the U.S. Navy Presidential Ceremonial Honor Guard . On that day, I was proud, too, and all the taunts of those bullies of my childhood seemed finally silenced.
Being tormented because of my ethnicity and religion in those early years had another effect on me. It caused me to become unusually sensitive to the nature of other people. Somehow, I grasped that, if it weren’t for a fear of the unknown, there was an inherent goodness and frail humanity lurking in many of the kids who bullied and harassed me. Often, I discovered, those same bullies could be tremendously kind to their families, friends, or even strangers. I realized, then, that if, despite everything, I could lay myself bare and trust them enough to reach out in kindness, I might in turn gain their trust and they might then see me, too, and stop operating from such a place of fear and hate.
Through patience, humor, and understanding, I was able to offer myself as the embodiment of my people and somehow defang the “otherness” of so much that Americans found scary. To this day, I have friends from elementary school, middle school, high school, and the military who tell me that I am the only Muslim they have ever known and that, had they not met me, their perspective on Islam would have been wholly subject to the prevailing fear-based narrative that has poisoned this country since September 11, 2001.
In 1998, I became special assistant to the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy and then, in 1999, I was recruited to serve atthe Defense Intelligence Agency. In August 2000, I transferred to the Naval Reserve. | 1 |
The girl named Heaven lay curled up asleep next to her grandmother on the mattress they shared on the living room floor. The woman, Carmen Irizarry, had been the ’s legal guardian for years, a for the girl’s troubled mother. Now, Heaven’s protector was sick, breathing from an oxygen tank after a long hospital stay for acute lung disease. It was early in the morning of May 11, quiet in the in the apartment in the South Bronx. Just before 5 a. m. Henry Maldonado, Ms. Irizarry’s companion of 30 years, entered the room clutching a chef’s knife, the police said. In a fury, he thrust the knife at Heaven, then at Ms. Irizarry, back and forth, the blade cutting five times into Heaven’s torso and left leg. Her grandmother tried to block the blows. “Heaven,” she said, “go!” Those were Ms. Irizarry’s last words to her granddaughter, the girl told the police, and they very likely saved her from joining the grim tally of children killed by the people closest to them. In a city that has seen murder rates fall to historic lows, such deaths remain a stubborn strain of violence, one that too often has also exposed lapses in the child welfare system. In the most notorious of those cases, caseworkers missed persistent signs of physical abuse and children later died, inciting outrage and prompting reforms. The signs in Heaven Irizarry’s case were subtler in that her home was typical of many troubled households that child welfare workers encounter. She was loved, and had a solid guardian, but she was also surrounded by people addicted to drugs and entangled in the criminal justice system. Determining whether she was in danger was not a simple task. Two days after Heaven was born, her mother, Brenda Irizarry, handed the newborn over to her own mother. She had little choice: She was bound for prison on a parole violation, and child welfare officials were inquiring about the baby. That day in August 2006 was the first of three encounters New York City’s child welfare agency would have with the family. Each time, caseworkers either missed or discounted Mr. Maldonado’s history of domestic violence and drug abuse. Had she not escaped, Heaven might well have been the victim of the eighth murder recorded this year in the 40th Precinct, where The New York Times is reporting on every killing logged in 2016. Instead, it was her grandmother whose name was recorded that morning. Since then, the precinct has endured several more homicides, and it now has 14 for the year, more than all but one other precinct in the city. As her grandmother crumbled under the knife strikes, Heaven ran barefoot out the door, blood soaking her pink nightie. Up two flights of steps, she went to an apartment directly above her grandmother’s at 700 East 156th Street in the St. Mary’s Park Houses. Loretta Fleming opened the door and Heaven stumbled in, hysterical. “My grandfather went crazy,” the girl said. Ms. Fleming, who often babysat for Heaven, called 911. Below, she could hear Mr. Maldonado knocking things over, breaking glass. “You are going to die,” she heard him scream. Then she smelled smoke. Mr. Maldonado, 55, was putting a lighter to papers and clothes, the police said. He had plunged the knife into Ms. Irizarry more than two dozen times, breaking off the haft. Then he stabbed himself twice in the chest with a steak knife. Firefighters broke down the door and doused the flames. Officers used a stun gun to subdue Mr. Maldonado. When Sgt. Michael J. LoPuzzo, commander of the 40th Precinct detective squad, interviewed Mr. Maldonado eight days later in the burn unit at Jacobi Medical Center, he said all that he could remember was that he had tried to kill himself. Told that Ms. Irizarry had been hurt, Mr. Maldonado said he wanted a lawyer. Then he asked if Heaven was all right. “I said, ‘She’s fine, but you stabbed her five times,’” Sergeant LoPuzzo recalled. “So he goes, ‘What about my wife?’ I just shook my head. He goes, ‘What does that mean?’ I said, ‘She died and you killed her. ’” In hindsight, there were clues that despite Ms. Irizarry’s evident devotion to Heaven, the girl lived amid perilous instability, exposed to her mother’s lifestyle and Mr. Maldonado’s violent mood swings. “This defendant has a history of violence against the deceased,” a Bronx assistant district attorney, Felicity Lung, said at a court hearing in June after Mr. Maldonado was charged with murder in Ms. Irizarry’s death. A year before Heaven was born, Mr. Maldonado attacked Ms. Irizarry on two consecutive days, once with his fists and once with a machete. He barred the door and cut the phone line during the second rampage, according to court records and interviews with witnesses. He was arrested and pleaded guilty to assault. Two years later, in October 2007, child welfare workers determined that Ms. Irizarry’s home was safe for her granddaughter when they conducted a home study, after Ms. Irizarry had filed a petition for custody of Heaven. At the time, the agency could not readily examine criminal records. The court, relying on the caseworker’s report, appointed Ms. Irizarry the child’s legal guardian. Heaven’s father, who could not be located for comment, has not played a role in her life and never sought custody, several relatives said. Eight years later, the agency again investigated the family after Brenda Irizarry, Heaven’s mother, who lived in the apartment for long periods, assaulted a woman with a baseball bat as Heaven looked on. Ms. Irizarry pleaded guilty in September 2015 to attempted assault, but was not sentenced to serve any time. Again, caseworkers determined that Carmen Irizarry was a competent guardian, even though she sometimes left the child with her daughter, two people familiar with the case said. That time, the caseworkers raised questions with teachers at Public School 157. Why had Heaven missed more than 10 days of school in the second grade? Her attendance worsened the next year, when she missed 26 as her grandmother’s health failed yet her teachers had never alerted child welfare officials, the people familiar with the case said. The city’s Education Department, citing privacy laws, declined to comment on why Heaven’s absences had not prompted a call to the authorities. Friends said Susie Irizarry — as the grandmother was known to them — was a vigilant guardian who doted on Heaven, and city officials confirm that there was never a complaint that Heaven was physically abused. In practice, Ms. Irizarry was not the only one watching Heaven. She worked long hours as a counselor for disabled adults and came home late most nights, neighbors and relatives said. It was Mr. Maldonado, or Heaven’s mother, who often cared for the girl after school. And a couple of afternoons a week, Heaven would stay with Ms. Fleming, the neighbor to whom she would flee the night her grandmother was killed. Brenda Irizarry, 44, has been arrested nine times since 2013, on charges including prostitution, petty larceny and drug possession. Henry Maldonado has at least 15 arrests dating back to 1984, on assorted charges, including carrying a knife, drug possession and armed robbery. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to selling pills he had obtained with Medicaid benefits to a black market drug dealer. In addition, a man who lived with Ms. Fleming, and who occasionally accompanied Heaven and Brenda Irizarry on outings to the park or the beach, was a sex offender who had served 21 years in connection with the rape and robbery of a girl, law enforcement officials said. A year ago, the man, Morgan Shuler, 53, whose nickname was Moet, was arrested again, on charges that he had raped a woman in Heaven’s building. He pleaded not guilty. “Moet loved Heaven,” Ms. Fleming said. Since the murder, Heaven has been placed in the temporary custody of Mr. Maldonado’s estranged son, Henry Jr. who is seeking permanent custody, relatives said. The girl’s physical wounds have healed, and she is thriving in a new home and school in the North Bronx, law enforcement officials said. She attended a dance and gymnastics camp over the summer. The family took her rafting in Pennsylvania and on a Florida vacation. For the first time in her life, Heaven has her own bed. Henry Maldonado pleaded not guilty at his court arraignment in June. His lawyer, Martin Goldberg, has not yet indicated whether he intends to offer a psychiatric defense. Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, said state law precluded her from saying whether caseworkers had been aware of Mr. Maldonado’s previous attack on Ms. Irizarry or knew of the criminal backgrounds of other people in Heaven’s orbit. The agency does not ask the courts to put children in foster care solely because there are drug addicts or people with criminal records in a home, Ms. Carrión said. Indeed, many families the agency monitors in the South Bronx struggle with a combination of those problems. “We’d be removing many, many more children,” she said. Ms. Carrión said it was difficult for caseworkers to know about every person caring for a child. Investigations focus on the primary caregiver, in this case Carmen Irizarry, she said. The agency turns to foster care only as a last resort, usually in cases of physical abuse, molestation or extreme neglect, the commissioner said. “Our work is not an exact science,” she said. “There is no way to be able to predict 100 percent of the time what could happen, and when something could happen, and when is the right time to intervene. ” It is impossible to separate Mr. Maldonado from his daily landscape of methadone clinics, pill mills, drug purchases and furtive highs in parks, alleys and stairwells. He was well known on the commercial strip of 149th Street near Third Avenue, with his long, graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, his “Death Before Dishonor” patch, the heavy rings on every finger, a cane in one hand, a knife in his pocket. “Outlaw forever, forever outlaw” was how he described himself on Facebook. Heroin and opioid abuse have swept into suburban and rural areas of the country, but the scourge has long devastated the South Bronx, where Mr. Maldonado and Ms. Irizarry lived. More people die of heroin and opioid overdoses in the Bronx than anywhere else in the city the rate exceeds 22 per 100, 000 residents. Few areas have as many methadone clinics as the Mott Haven and Melrose neighborhoods in the 40th Precinct. Mr. Maldonado had been an addict for decades, and he went daily to a methadone clinic on East 138th Street. Methadone treatment is intended to curb the craving for heroin, but the clinics also tend to be gathering spots for less resolute addicts who often lead one another to backslide, addiction experts said. After taking his dose, Mr. Maldonado would typically spend days stalking his next high: pills, PCP, cocaine and, once in a while, heroin, relatives and fellow addicts said. “He had a very bad drug problem,” his daughter, Evita Maldonado, said. “He would take whatever he can get his hands on. ” His heavy drug use had started in the early 1980s, around the time he met Ms. Irizarry in a salsa club near Bristow and Jennings Streets. Her name in those days was Carmen Rodriguez. She had been briefly married in the 1970s to Brenda’s father, Harry Irizarry, and kept his surname. Ms. Irizarry loved to dance, many of her friends recalled. Mr. Maldonado, who then went by the nickname Dee Jay, ran with young men who called themselves the Cool Brothers and provided security for clubs. Their relationship was tempestuous and revolved around drinking, drugs and nightclubs, friends said. “Henry was kind of a wild man,” said Jimmy Soriano, a friend from those days. “They used to get high like there was a shortage of drugs or something. ” Mr. Maldonado had a melodramatic streak and was quick to take offense, friends said. During one argument with Ms. Irizarry, while he was high on PCP, he lay in the street and asked someone to drive a car over him. Ms. Irizarry, too, fought addictions, to alcohol and crack cocaine. While she eventually won the struggle in the early 1990s, after the birth of her two younger daughters, Mr. Maldonado fell back into drug use again and again, storming out of meetings. “He was like a stick of dynamite,” said Claude Hernandez, one of his counselors. In the early 1990s, Mr. Maldonado tried to jump off a roof and was hospitalized at Harlem Hospital, his lawyer, Mr. Goldberg, said. Another time, he tried to hang himself at St. Barnabas Hospital while undergoing detoxification. He never found the strength to quit, fellow addicts say. And when he was high, neighbors said, he often fought with Ms. Irizarry. “They were always arguing,” said Joy T. Madison, who lived below the couple for 15 years. “He was always drinking and drugging. Then he’d come home and pick a fight with her. ” The criminal justice system did little to help. Most of his offenses were reduced to misdemeanors, and Mr. Maldonado spent no time in state prison and only a few days in jail. Judges sometimes sentenced him to anger counseling or community service, but he was never compelled to enter drug treatment as part of a plea deal, court records show. In addition to using illegal drugs, he spent many days visiting doctors at three clinics. A psychiatrist at one prescribed him and tranquilizers for bipolar disorder, said Mr. Goldberg, his lawyer. He was also seeing an anesthesiologist for back and knee pain. The treatment for those, Mr. Goldberg said, was more drugs: opioid pills and injections. Still, several of Mr. Maldonado’s friends said they could never have predicted that he would attack Ms. Irizarry and Heaven. He was often seen hugging and kissing Ms. Irizarry. He also seemed to revel in his role as grandfather, doting on Heaven and walking her to school. “To do what he did, he must have been in another world,” a close friend and fellow addict, Carlos Nuñez, said. “I still, to this day, cannot see it happening. ” Yet several friends said there were clear signs that Mr. Maldonado was falling apart in April, amid Ms. Irizarry’s illness. After a lifetime of smoking, she collapsed last November with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Five months later, she stopped breathing for a time and spent weeks at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center. While she lay in intensive care, Mr. Maldonado stepped up his use of illicit drugs and stopped taking medication, friends and relatives said. He was smoking PCP and spoke of suicide. “He was bugging out,” Mr. Nuñez recalled. His grief proved violent. A neighbor who tried to visit Heaven’s mother, Brenda, in April said Mr. Maldonado punched him and chased him away with a sword. The same month, Mr. Maldonado attacked his daughter Evita with a cane after she confronted him about his drug use, she said in an interview. He also complained bitterly about Brenda’s presence in the apartment, blaming her for Ms. Irizarry’s condition and threatening to kill her, friends said. In late April Ms. Irizarry left the hospital, weak and unable to work. She asked Brenda to move out. “She said that things were going to change,” one of her closest friends, Nilsa Rivera, said. “She was not going to deal with anyone’s negativity or addictions. ” Mr. Maldonado, who did odd jobs for cash and recently started receiving disability benefits, had to divert more of his income toward their bills. Heaven, in a conversation with Detective Javier Cordero, said Mr. Maldonado screamed, “No more bills,” as he attacked her and her grandmother. The night before that attack, a neighbor said, he was agitated and in the hall outside Ms. Irizarry’s apartment. “You could see the stress on his face,” the neighbor, Steven Ocasio, said. “He said, ‘My demons is out tonight. ’” Mr. Goldberg, the defense lawyer, said Mr. Maldonado denied that he smoked PCP that evening. But he said that in the hours, Mr. Maldonado had taken prescription drugs, among them Seroquel, Xanax, Ambien and OxyContin. “This was a suicide attempt,” Mr. Goldberg said. In the end, however, it was not Mr. Maldonado who died, but Ms. Irizarry. In a sense, she was a victim of her faith in him, the couple’s youngest daughter, Angelica Rosado, said. “She never gave up on him. ” | 1 |
License DMCA
A Story from Far Away
The holiday season is upon us, and I have a beautiful story to share with you. I told this story to a customer of mine, and, when I'd finished, she told me this in response:
"I was a manager of a business," the customer related, "and every Christmas I would leave a gift on each of the employees' desks around four o'clock in the morning. I never told them the gift was from me, but I noticed how each recipient would react to it with a sense of "wonder," which seemed to last through the following year. When I quit my job, I told the owner that I was the one who had left those gifts for everyone. I told him I had been doing that for the past ten years, and asked him to promise me that, as the owner of the business, he would continue the tradition after I left."
What could I say to this customer, except that she had obviously understood the story I had told her and that she had in effect recapitulated it in spirit in her own life. It still feels good to me to tell that story, and the fact that it spurred my customer to mention its connection to her own good deeds at Christmas makes me want to tell it to you now". - Advertisement -
" A LONG TIME AGO before there were microscopes, it was not uncommon for a man to lose his whole family to a virus. Medical people only had suspicions about what could be causing those illnesses, and they used terms like "unfilterable substances" to describe what we now identify as viruses.
"A man who lived in Turkey many years ago experienced such illness at first hand, losing his entire family to it in one fell swoop. He walked the streets every day, thinking about nothing except how much he missed his family. In his heartbreak, he heard people around him arguing about money in front of their children. How were they going to pay the rent, or buy food? Feeling, in spite of his own sorrow, great compassion for the troubles of others, this Turkish man listened through each window, or cracked door, or hollow wall in the houses of his neighbors to try to determine whom they owed money to or which groceries they were lacking.
"With the information he garnered, this great man did what he could to help his neighbors. He never told anyone that he was the one who delivered the needed groceries, but simply left them at the door and sneaked away. For him, bereft of his family, it must have been a relief to feel needed and make his existence meaningful again. Later, he would walk by the same homes in the area and see how much happier his neighbors were. He also sensed the relief the children themselves must have felt. Yet, even when he paid his neighbors' bills, he did so in a manner that would not leave a trail leading to him. I tell you this, because the kind Turkish man kept up his charitable works for over ten years, and yet not a soul ever discovered who it was that mysteriously left the loving gifts.
"Life is filled with wonder, and one day it comes to an end. After the good Turk died, the whole town kept asking, "Where are the gifts?" "Who was doing this?" Finally, putting two and two together, they figured it out. I am proud to say that, in this case, humanity took care of one of its own. They dug up the old man's bones and built a small walkway to the museum where he now rests. By this Samaritan's example, they taught the children how a great man should act and encouraged them to do him the honor of visiting him in the museum. I can only imagine the anxiety felt by the townspeople in trying to live up to the greatness with which they had been confronted!
"Since the great man did his deeds, every succeeding generation has willingly retold his story with ever a bit more embellishment. But the imagination they display in doing so can never surpass or even compare to what one man did in helping others while not ever seeking either recognition or praise." - Advertisement - | 1 |
PARIS — A police captain was fatally stabbed and his companion was also killed at their home in a small town northwest of Paris on Monday evening, and within hours the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the murders. The police captain, who was not otherwise identified, was outside his home in Magnanville when he was stabbed by an unidentified assailant, who appeared to have then entered the house and took the captain’s companion and son hostage, according to a statement on the website of the French Interior Ministry and a statement from President François Hollande. Members of an elite French police unit arrived and raided the home. They fatally shot the attacker, found the woman dead and rescued the boy. The statement added that the woman was an employee of the Interior Ministry. A statement issued in Arabic by the Amaq News Agency, which is linked to the Islamic State, said: “Islamic State fighter kills deputy chief of the police station in the city of Les Mureaux and his wife with blade weapons,” according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist websites. It is the second attack during Ramadan this year that has been tied to the Islamic State. The first was the shooting on Sunday in Orlando, Fla. in which 49 died, making it the worst mass shooting in American history. Before he was killed by the police, the gunman, Omar Mateen, pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State. Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims dedicated to fasting and prayer, has historically been a time when both Al Qaeda and now the Islamic State have escalated attacks. In his annual speech, an Islamic State spokesman, Abu Muhammad — who had not issued a statement in approximately seven months — to call on the group’s followers to carry out assaults in Europe and America. “The smallest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the largest action by us,” Mr. Adnani declared in the audio speech, which was uploaded to Telegram and Twitter on May 21. Mr. Hollande called the attack “a cowardly murder” in a statement issued late Monday, saying he would be briefed on the case early Tuesday and that the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, would travel on Tuesday morning to the area where the killings took place. Magnanville is about 35 miles from central Paris. With the Euro 2016 soccer tournament underway in France and multiple warnings of the possibility of terrorist attacks during the monthlong event, the authorities have been on alert for possible attacks. Extraordinary measures have been put in place to ensure that the crowds of visitors at the soccer matches will be safe. Much of the public focus has been on avoiding a repeat of the sort of attacks that killed 130 people in and near Paris on Nov. 13. In that case, a network of former Islamic State fighters from Belgium and France staged the attacks along with a few people who expressed loyalty to the extremist group but had not traveled abroad to fight. However, perhaps the risk that is harder to protect against are the attacks encouraged by the Islamic State. Such jihadists are harder for the authorities to detect. A similar case arose in June 2015 when an employee at a small trucking company beheaded his boss and attempted to set off an explosion at an chemical and gas factory near Lyon. The man, Yassine Salhi, appears to have had a friend who had gone to Syria to join the Islamic State, and Mr. Salhi sent him pictures of the beheading. Mr. Salhi killed himself in prison in December while awaiting trial. The beheading, like the stabbing on Monday evening, took place during Ramadan. | 0 |
18087936) (tried to allocate 552480 255 | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Florida announced on Thursday that, for the first time, mosquitoes in Miami Beach had tested positive for the Zika virus, a disappointing confirmation that the virus is still active in the area. The Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads Zika is famously difficult to fight, and experts often say that testing the bugs to find the virus is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The three samples that tested positive all came from a 1. area in Miami Beach where locally acquired cases of Zika had been confirmed. The significance of the results depends on where the mosquitoes were collected, said Scott C. Weaver, the director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch. If they are from in or around the houses of people with active infections, the chances of the bugs’ being infected are higher. If the virus was found in mosquitoes in a more distant location, that could point to a bigger infection area than thought. A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said state law prevented the disclosure of the traps’ location. The department said in a statement that since May, it had tested more than 2, 470 mosquito samples, consisting of more than 40, 000 mosquitoes. The three samples that the department announced on Thursday were the first to test positive. Zika causes mild symptoms — rashes and joint pain — for most people, but it can cause severe brain damage in the fetuses of pregnant women who are infected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking more than 1, 500 pregnant women who have been infected with Zika. So far, at least 16 babies have been born with birth defects. Florida is the only place in the continental United States where Zika is actively circulating, but the virus is spreading. The first cluster of cases was in a Miami neighborhood called Wynwood. The outbreak in that area seems to have subsided, but health officials discovered a new cluster in Miami Beach on Aug. 18, and the C. D. C. warned pregnant women not to travel there. Zika is not expected to spread explosively in the United States as it has in Latin America and the Caribbean, because Americans live in less crowded conditions and usually have window screens and air conditioning, which block infected mosquitoes from spreading the virus. In all, Florida has more than 45 homegrown cases, nearly all in County. The first were announced in July. “The good news is the weekly number of new cases isn’t changing much,” Dr. Weaver said. “If we were seeing at first five cases a week, then 10, then 20 and then 100, we’d be very concerned. ” Even so, the mosquito has proved a stubborn foe, particularly in Miami Beach. Aerial spraying, which has been effective in Wynwood, has not happened in Miami Beach, in part because its high buildings make spraying complicated, but also because some residents oppose it. But experts say aerial spraying there is possible, and on Thursday, Gov. Rick Scott said the C. D. C. had recommended that Miami Beach be sprayed using helicopters. He said the state had made funds available “to immediately conduct aerial spraying in Miami Beach. ” But it was not clear when that might happen. When asked about aerial spraying in a telephone interview, Michael Grieco, a Miami Beach city commissioner, said: “No determination has been made. It’s not really practical with all the geography. ” | 0 |
Republicans continue to clash over Obamacare taxes as Congress plans to draft a repeal package. [Conservatives worry that a tax credit included in the Ryan plan would cost too much and might create an expensive new entitlement program. Congressman Mark Walker ( ) chairman of the Republican Study Committee says, “I want to make sure that we’re not getting to a place where we’re providing this benefit that enables people. ” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows ( ) said refundable tax credits could be a “new entitlement program. ” He doubts that House leaders possess the votes necessary to pass refundable tax credits. Other conservatives object to taxing health insurance plans. Rep. Pete Session ( ) chairman of the House Rules Committee, told reporters that this would amount to “a Republican tax on Cadillac plans. ” Committees will meet in early March to draft Obamacare’s repeal, although House Republicans remain disunified on the details. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady ( ) assured his fellow Republicans, arguing that a tax credit offers immediate help. Brady said, “It covers more people, because it applies to those who don’t have a tax liability, and it’s advanceable, so it’s available today. ” Some Republicans want to keep Obamacare’s taxes to provide revenue for Obamacare’s replacement. Brady, as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has significant power to draft Obamacare’ replacement. He argued that Obamacare’s taxes are bad for economic growth. He said, “I’ll just tell you, I don’t want Americans to suffer under the Obamacare taxes. They’re they drive the prices of healthcare up I just think they’re bad all around. ” Republicans continue to battle over Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. states expanded Medicaid, and Congress continues to debate over how to scale back Medicaid expansion. The conservative House Freedom Caucus, along with Senator Rand Paul ( ) unveiled their Obamacare repeal bill that repeals Medicaid expansion entirely. The Ryan plan lowers the federal government’s match rate for Medicaid spending back its traditional level. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn ( ) told Breitbart News, “There is wide agreement amongst the governors, Republicans and Democrat alike, that they would like us to send Medicaid to the states. ” Blackburn believes that Medicaid to the states will, “get rid of some of the constraints from the federal government and offer a better product at a more affordable cost and help more people. ” Chairman Brady remarked that tax breaks in Obamacare’s replacement would benefit all Americans, not just the few. He said, “I’m not interested in raising taxes anywhere else, and so I think unlocking and redesigning the current tax break so not just a few Americans can use it, but all Americans can use it, I think that’s where we ought to focus our thought, make sure we design it right and get it right. ” | 0 |
November 3, 2016
I can’t understand why everyone’s getting interested in these old murder mysteries again,’ a baffled Prince Philip is understood to have said to aides at Buckingham Palace. ‘Aren’t they all a bit old hat? Or in Mrs Philip’s case, old crown? All I’ve heard is Miss Markle this, Miss Markle that, and quite a lot of Miss Markle the other,’ he told one footman, sending him out for some hearing aid batteries and a Twix. It’s understood Buckingham Palace insiders have been warned not to explain the true identity of ‘Miss Markle’ to the Duke of Edinburgh.
‘Why Prince Harry is suddenly interested in whodunnits – well it beats me. Didn’t we have that Belgian detective to dinner once? You know, the one that wrote ‘Ten Little… Ten little… bugger me it’s gone. Anyway, there was ten of the little blighters, whatever they were, and then there were none. Ten Green Bottles? No, that’s not it.’
‘That reminds me! Do you remember when Charlie got a thing for that pop group, Chicken Supreme? No that’s not it. Edmundo Ros and the Supremes? No. Wait, it’ll come…..That reminds me. Has anyone seen my book of Negro Spirituals? I mean if we’re going to get nostalgic with games of Cluedo, why not a bit of singing? ‘Way Down upon the Swanee Whistle…’
‘The Three Degrees! I knew it would come to me. Lovely lovely African American women! Charles was really smitten! There were three of them, and I could see what was going through the lad’s mind. ‘Eeny meeny miney mo, catch a..catch a…something by his toe. Or her toe. He’d have done alright there, instead of that thin woman and the one who smells of tobacco! Anyway, let’s hope Harry keeps up his interest in Miss Markle. And reading in general. Wait a minute. Isn’t it Miss Marple? Where are those batteries?’ Share this story...
Posted: Nov 3rd, 2016 by nickb Click for more article by nickb .. More Stories about: UK News 0 | 0 |
Update: A representative for Pepsi provided the following statement to Breitbart News late Tuesday night: “This is a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony, and we think that’s an important message to convey. “[Original story below: Kendall Jenner and soda giant Pepsi came under harsh criticism on social media Tuesday for a new commercial that appears to use the backdrop of protests to hawk more soda. In the nearly ad — titled “Live for Now Moments Anthem” — Jenner is pictured on a modeling shoot in New York City when a sizable crowd of protesters streams past holding signs and demonstrating in the streets. Soon, Jenner takes off her blonde wig and joins the protesters, who appear to be styled after Trump “resistance” demonstrators. The model steps through the crowd holding a can of Pepsi, which she then hands to one of the police officers watching the protest the officer accepts the can, to the loud cheers of everyone in the streets. The spurred a widespread backlash online, particularly among progressives and social justice activists, with hundreds of social media users weighing in with mostly negative feedback as “Pepsi” began trending on Twitter Tuesday afternoon. Some critics took aim at the ad’s apparent suggestion that sharing a soda with a police officer could end racial discrimination, while others — including comedian Patton Oswalt — joked about the soda’s mythical qualities. Below is a sampling of social media reaction to the ad. A representative for Pepsi did not immediately return a request for comment. Idk how appropriation of today’s protesting can be thought of as a good idea, yea just hand the cops a Pepsi and racial profiling will end! — Rory Fitzpatrick♛ (@StopRory) April 4, 2017, J. Edgar Hoover takes aim from the grassy knoll. The motorcade approaches. He fires. JFK raises a #Pepsi to his lips, blocks the bullet. — Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 5, 2017, ”Now just wait one second officers. I have a Pepsi.” pic. twitter. — Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) April 5, 2017, The very real struggle of the marganilized to survive under Trump is not an opportunity for @KendallJenner and @Pepsi to market themselves. — Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) April 5, 2017, @_TARYNitUP @lisabenjamin The closest Kendall has been to a protest is Coachella. Of all the young celebrities who are activists on a daily basis @pepsi choices her? — Nichelle Lee (@NickiLee123) April 5, 2017, This comercial made me sick. #KendallJenner #kendall #PEPSI, — Cali (@cali07109) April 5, 2017, @kendrick38 @pepsi @PepsiCo Ur for real pathetic with this bogus ”protest” ad. Talk about #TheResistance. We’re not amused or impressed. — Kincaid (@kincaid323) April 5, 2017, Why would anyone thinkThat giving a cop a drinkWould bring about change? We still think you’re strange. Pls dump that Pepsi down the sink. — Paige Lyons (@waterrwithlemon) April 5, 2017, @pepsi does this look familiar? ♂️ Good job guys 👍. You guys are killing it 🙄😒. #wokejusttomakeabuck pic. twitter. — AR$ (@Oramihigh) April 5, 2017, A white girl calming the tensions at a by giving the officers some soda? … . .Yea. .Pepsi didn’t think that one through. — #TrustTheProcess (@KENNotBeStopped) April 5, 2017, Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
Get short URL 0 3 0 0 Buddy Blackwell asked his wife Glenda, 57, to pick him up two Powerball tickets over the weekend. Annoyed with her husband wasting money, she bought a $10 Carolina Millions scratch ticket for herself, just to prove that nobody ever wins. © Photo: Pixabay "I was going to be ugly and buy a scratch off to show him they didn’t hit," Blackwell told WLOS . "Sometimes I get aggravated with him, so I tell him, 'You're just wasting your money.'"
But her plan to teach him a lesson backfired when — she won a million dollars.
"I had to eat my words, but they were worth eating," Blackwell said while laughing. "So, I was very happy."
The Blackwells traveled to Raleigh to collect their check, opting to take a lump sum of $415,000 after taxes. Their other option would have been 20 yearly payments of $50,000, but Glenda was concerned that she would not live that long, due to health issues. "We've struggled a lot, so now we can buy our own home and our own land. It'll be paid for and I don't have to worry about that no more," Glenda Blackwell said. "So, that's what I plan to do with some of the money and the other part I plan to help my daughter and to put money up for my two granddaughters for college."
Glenda said that she and her husband will not purchase any more lottery tickets. ... | 0 |
NEAR CANNON BALL, N. D. — Horseback riders, their faces streaked in yellow and black paint, led the procession out of their camp. Two hundred people followed, making their daily walk a mile up a rural highway to a patch of prairie grass and excavated dirt that has become a new kind of battlefield, between a pipeline and American Indians who say it will threaten water supplies and sacred lands. The company building the Dakota Access pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, calls the project a major step toward the United States’ weaning itself off foreign oil. The company says the nearly buried pipeline will infuse millions of dollars into local economies and is safer than trucks and train cars that can topple and spill and crash and burn. But the people who stood at the gates of a construction site where crews had been building an access road toward the pipeline viewed the project as a wounding intrusion onto lands where generations of their ancestors hunted bison, gathered water and were born and buried, long before treaties and fences stamped a different order onto the Plains. People have been gathering since April, but as hundreds more poured in over the past two weeks, confrontations began rising among protesters, sheriff’s officers and construction workers with the pipeline company. Local officials are struggling to handle hundreds of demonstrators filling the roads to protest and camp out in grassland about an hour south of Bismarck, the state capital. More than 20 people have been arrested on charges including disorderly conduct and trespassing onto the construction site. The pipeline company says it was forced to shut down construction this month after protesters threatened its workers and threw bottles and rocks at contractors’ vehicles. Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier of Morton County, who has led the law enforcement response, said at a news conference that he had received reports of weapons and gunshots around the demonstration, and that protesters were getting ready to throw pipe bombs at a line of officers standing between a rally and the construction site. Leaders from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose reservation lies just south of the pipeline’s path, say the protests are peaceful. Weapons, drugs and alcohol are prohibited from the protest camp. Children march in the daily demonstrations. The leaders believed the reports of pipe bombs were a misinterpretation of their calls for demonstrators to get out their wooden chanupa pipes — which have deep spiritual importance — and pass them through the crowd. The conflict may reach a crucial moment on Wednesday in a federal court hearing. The tribe has sued to block the pipeline and plans to ask a judge in Washington to effectively halt construction. The pipeline runs overwhelmingly along private land, but where it crosses bodies of water, federal rules come into play and federal approvals are required. The tribe says the pipeline’s route under the Missouri River near here could threaten its water supplies if the pipeline leaks or breaks, and it says the United States Army Corps of Engineers failed to do proper cultural and historical reviews before granting federal approvals for the pipeline. “This is our homeland,” said Phyllis Young, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux. “We are Dakota. Dakota means friend or ally. Dakota Access has taken our name. ” In legal filings, the corps rejects those claims. It says it consulted extensively with tribes, including the Standing Rock Sioux, and it says that tribe has failed to describe specific cultural sites that would be damaged by the pipeline. Energy Transfer Partners says it has the necessary state and federal permits and hopes to finish construction by the end of the year. The pipeline’s route starts in the Bakken oil fields of western North Dakota and ends in Illinois. With the fate of the land here and this $3. 7 billion project in the air, people here have decided to take action. They are occupying the prairie. Echoing protests against the Keystone XL pipeline, environmental activists and other tribes from the Dakotas, the rest of the Great Plains and the Pacific Northwest have been arriving to camp in the open fields and protest near the parcel where the pipeline company has secured an agreement with the landowner to build. The protesters sleep in tents and tepees, cook food in kitchens and share stories and strategies around evening campfires. There is even a day care. At morning meetings, speakers warn parents to keep their children away from the Missouri River at sunset, and remind one another they are camped out in prayer. “It’s a major movement in Indian country,” said CJ Clifford, a member of the Oglala Lakota, who drove up from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He saw the protests as part of a historical continuum reaching to Little Bighorn. This battle, he said, was being waged peacefully. For many, the effort was about reclaiming a stake in ancestral lands that had been whittled down since the 1800s, treaty by broken treaty. “Lands were constantly getting reduced, shaken up,” said Dave Archambault II, the tribal chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux. “I could give you a list of every wrongdoing this government did to our people. All of that is frustration pent up, and it’s being recognized. ” He added, “It’s a tipping point for our nations. ” This month, a line of sheriff’s officers retreated in the face of riders on horseback circling and yipping through the grass. (Tribal members said that the display was a Lakota gesture of introduction, and that they have no quarrel with law enforcement.) There have been no moves so far to disband the camp or keep people from demonstrating. But Sheriff Kirchmeier told reporters that the demonstration had become an “unlawful protest,” and Gov. Jack Dalrymple, citing “public safety risks,” declared a state of emergency on Friday. Local law enforcement officers set up a barricade on the main road leading to the pipeline site, and officials here in Morton County called a special meeting on Monday to talk about the traffic and how to handle a protest that could linger for weeks or months. At the sprawling campsite down the road from the protest site, there had been portable toilets, tanks of drinking water and an trailer with medical supplies provided by the state. But late Monday night, people at the camp said the medical trailer and water tanks had been removed, leaving them to scramble for a new water source for hundreds of people. After a prayer ceremony at the construction site one recent afternoon, a few young men on horseback opened the gate and rode onto the land. A few days earlier they might have been arrested and accused of trespassing, but that day there were no officers to stop them. The pipeline company said that it temporarily stopped work here this month while “law enforcement works to contain the unlawful protests,” but that construction was continuing elsewhere. Energy Transfer Partners has sued Mr. Archambault and six other people over the protests. In a federal lawsuit filed last week, the company accused them and other protesters of blocking access to the construction site, threatening workers and trespassing onto private land. Jon Eagle Sr. the historic preservation officer for the Standing Rock Sioux, watched from the side of the road as the young men rode into the grassy field, toward a construction floodlight and heaps of excavated dirt. He did not want the pipeline to breach this land. But he did not seem to approve of this either. “They need to stay out,” he said. “They don’t know where the burials are. They don’t know where the sacred sites are. I’m trying my best to keep the peace. ” | 1 |
Revelation Unleashed: Unlocking The Mysteries Of The Bible’s Most Mysterious Book On this episode of Rightly Dividing, join us as we drop some pins and create an easy to understand roadmap to the amazing, awesome, and very much knowable book of Revelation! Join us as we apply Paul’s command found in 2 Timothy 2:15 to ‘rightly divide’ our Bible and put everything in it’s proper perspective and place.
“ And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.” Revelation 5:5 (KJV)
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE when the show starts Sunday night at 9:00PM EST!
For centuries, the Catholic Church had locked up the Bible and kept it out of reach of the common man. As a result, when the Protestant Reformation ended the Dark Ages and removed the Bible from its Vatican shackles, it was a book that remained quite a mystery to most people. Out of all of its 66 books, the most misunderstood, most debated over and most feared book is, ironically and undoubtedly, the book of Revelation.
On this episode of Rightly Dividing , we apply Paul’s command to “rightly divide” to the book of Revelation, and in the process of doing so remove much of the mystery in the process. God didn’t write any part of the Bible to be out of reach of anyone who, by faith, wanted to plumb its depths and unlock its mysteries. Join us as we drop some pins and create an easy to understand roadmap to the amazing, awesome, and very much knowable book of Revelation!
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE when the show starts Sunday night at 9:00PM EST! | 0 |
TORONTO (AP) — Canadian social worker Christine Archibald is being remembered as a “bright light” for her profession as those who loved her launch an online campaign of compassionate acts after she was struck by a van of terrorists on London Bridge and died in her fiance’s arms. [The from Calgary, Alberta, had recently moved to the Netherlands to be with her fiance Tyler Ferguson, his sister Cassie Ferguson Rowe said. The couple was engaged three months ago. Ferguson had been walking a few steps ahead of his fiancee on the bridge, and then held her as she died, said Ferguson Rowe. “My baby brother lost the love of his life on the London bridge. In a split second, his entire life was ripped away from him,” Ferguson Rowe said. Born and raised in Castlegar, British Columbia, Archibald had later lived in Calgary, where she worked at a homeless shelter before moving to Europe to be with Ferguson. Her family in Castlegar said in a statement that Archibald “would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death. ” “She had room in her heart for everyone and believed strongly that every person was to be valued and respected,” the family statement said. Kathy Christiansen, executive director of Alpha House in Calgary, said Archibald had worked at the shelter for homeless people addicted to drugs and alcohol until recently. She called Archibald a talented social worker and exceptional human being who inspired all who worked with her. “Chrissy was a bright light,” she said. Before that, Archibald was an social work student from Calgary’s Mount Royal University. Peter Choate, an assistant professor of social work, said his former student “fit the profession. ” “She was very caring but at the same time very professional. She understood that she wasn’t in charge of the lives of her clients. She was able to offer her clients opportunities to do things with their lives,” Choate said. “She got it. The family should be very proud of the young woman, the social worker that she was. As a profession for us it is a loss. ” The Archibald family asked that people honor her memory by making the community a better place. “Volunteer your time and labor or donate to a homeless shelter,” the statement said. “Tell them Chrissy sent you. ” The hashtag #Chrissysentme was being used on Twitter to express sadness for the family’s loss. Inspired by the call for meaningful action, some people pledged to make donations to shelters, soup kitchens and other community groups. Ferguson Rowe said she hoped the use of the hashtag would “urge people to not let her death be in vain, to do good in their community. ” “It’s what she would have wanted,” Ferguson Rowe said. | 0 |
Thursday, 10 November 2016 President Elect Donald Trump This Morning at the White House
WASHINGTON DC - Taking questions from the media this morning before his meeting with President Barack Obama - President Elect Donald Trump was asked about the YesCalifornia Independence Campaign. YesCalifornia or #Calexit is a referendum for California Independence from the United States of America. In the Spring of 2019, Californians will go to the polls in a historic vote to decide by referendum if California should exit the Union.
"I think it is a great idea" President Elect Trump answered, "I've met a lot of fantastic wonderful people in California and not all of them agree with me. The most incredible thing about this great and wonderful fantastic country we live in is we have the ability to choose our own path and vote on it as a wonderful collection of great and incredible people.
"I honestly do not want to keep anyone in this country that does not want to be in this country. My primary job as president will to be fix the economy. If the incredible wonderful fantastic people of California want to operate as an independent sovereign nation, I would love to help these wonderful people. Getting rid of California will help the economy greatly.
"I have talked with advisers and we are checking the constitution. I have a transition team talking with incredible clerks in the Supreme Court to see if I can fast track the process. As long as I am constitutionally able to do so, I will sign an executive order to remove the State of California from the United States. I know they are having trouble with their economy and water, but they obviously have plans on how to fix this as an independent nation.
"I will also take request from any other wonderful beautiful states who want to follow the same course. My aim is to make America great again. Removing the chaff from the wheat will help us in obtaining this goal.
When President Elect Trump was asked about the future fifty-five electoral votes the state has he responded, "oh I never thought about that. I guess that would [suck] for Democrats."
He also was jokingly asked if Russian President Vladimir Putin was invited to the morning presidential briefings President Elect Trump is now part of, Trump replied, "Of course not, but I'll update him on Twitter." Make TreStBeefton's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!) | 0 |
The Washington Post dealt a blow to a liberal pipe dream Sunday when the outlet’s editorial board highlighted the problems with health care — arguing that it would be “astonishingly” expensive unless doctors are paid less and Americans are prepared to “accept different standards of access and comfort. ”[The piece, called “ health care would have an astonishingly high price tag” comes days after California’s Senate approved a system for the state earlier this week, without having specified how it will pay for the estimated $400 billion price tag. health care systems, such as those seen in Europe and Canada, have always been popular with the liberal wing of American politics, with top liberal Sens. Bernie Sanders ( ) and Elizabeth Warren ( ) calling for such systems in America. President Barack Obama also publicly supported when he was a senator. The Post editorial is certainly sympathetic to those aspirations, arguing that such models are simpler for patients and employers. However, it says “the government’s price tag would be astonishing. ” When Sen. Bernie Sanders ( .) proposed a “Medicare for all” health plan in his presidential campaign, the nonpartisan Urban Institute figured that it would raise government spending by $32 trillion over 10 years, requiring a tax increase so huge that even the democratic socialist Mr. Sanders did not propose anything close to it. Countering the argument of advocates that systems tend to be more than the American system, the Post says the reason for that is political, blaming Republicans for framing ObamaCare’s Medicare cuts as attacks on the program instead of reform. The Post argues that a system would face the same political barriers and that consequently, the only way to make such a plan affordable would be to get medical employees to be paid less, and to get Americans to accept lower quality of care: A system would face all of these political barriers to reform and more. To realize the dream of coverage for all and big savings, medical industry players, including doctors, would likely have to get paid less and patients would have to accept different standards of access and comfort. There is little evidence most Americans are willing to accept such tradeoffs. The Post reiterates that “the goal must be universal coverage and cost restraint” but that liberals should be directing their energy to goals other than a complete government takeover of America’s healthcare system. There are many options short of a disruptive takeover: the government can change how care is delivered, determine which treatments should be covered, control quality at hospitals, drive down drug costs and discourage plans even while making the Obamacare system better at filling coverage gaps. Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY | 0 |
“The Art of War”
Crystal Clear Agreements: Enduring subordination by Manlio Dinucci Voltaire Network | Rome (Italy) | 27 October 2016 français italiano First, President Obama called upon the Italians to vote “yes” in the referendum, thus interfering in our national politics with the silent complicity of the parliamentary opposition. Then he went on to confirm to his “good friend Matteo” that the US has “clear agreements, long friendship” with Italy.
Noone would question that these agreements were crystal clear, especially the Atlantic Treaty that places Italy in a position of subordination to the U.S.A. The US President always appoints the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and all the other key commands are in US hands.
When the disintegration of the USSR brought the Cold War to an end, Washington declared the “fundamental importance of preserving Nato as a channel of influence and US participation in European Affairs so as to prevent the creation of exclusively European structures that would threaten the Alliance’s chain of command”, that is the US command. An idea reiterated by the NATO Secretary Stoltenberg during the recent round table on the “Big Idea for Europe”:
“We must ensure that building up Europe’s defense does not duplicate Nato’s defence and [Europe] does not become another Nato”.
Stoltenberg’s idea is guaranteed by the fact that 22 of the 28 EU member states (21 of 27 following Great Britain’s departure) are part of the US-led Nato, which is recognized by the European Union as “the foundation of collective defense”.
Thus the EU foreign and military policy is fundamentally subordinated to the US strategy and the European powers have aligned themselves to it. Their conflicting interests are ironed out when their fundamental interest is at stake: maintaining Western predominance, increasingly faltering when confronted by the emergence of new state and non-state subjects. All we need to do is to recall to our minds that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, created through a strategic China-Russia agreement, pools resources that makes it the biggest integrated economic area in the world.
In the context of the US/Nato strategy – reports the White House – Italy stands out as a “steadfast and active ally of the United States”. This is demonstrated by the fact that “Italy hosts more than 30,000 soldiers and civil officers of the US Defence Department in military establishments positioned all over the country”.
At the same time, Italy is “a US partner for global security”, supplying military forces and funding for a wide range of “challenges”: in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Baltic and elsewhere, that is, wherever the USA/Nato war machine has been and is deployed.
A final fact to confirm the nature of the US-Italian relationship – scheduled to arrive at the Amendola base (Puglia), probably on 8 November, are the first two of the 90 fighter planes supplied by Lockheed Martin (a US company), that Italy has undertaken to purchase.
The cost of Italy’s participation in the F-35 programme as a second-tier partner is officially calculated in the Stability Law of 2016: 12 billion 356 million euro of public money, plus additional costs for the continual updates to the fighter plane that still is not fully operative and will require constant modernization. Despite this – confirms Analisi Difesa – Italy will have “limited sovereignty” over the F-35 planes that form part of its own Air Force. A US law prohibits that “mission information” (software for managing the fighting systems of the fighter planes) is communicated to others. Thus the US will control the Italian F-35 which have been fitted out to use the new nuclear bombs B61-12 that the Pentagon will deploy against Russia, substituting them for the existing B-61, on our “national” territory.
Manlio Dinucci Translation
Anoosha Boralessa
Source
Il Manifesto (Italy) | 0 |
The Trump administration has begun the detail work of stiffening the country’s immigration infrastructure, according to an internal memo from the Department of Homeland Security, moving to speed the hiring of border agents, to find space to detain thousands more immigrants and to hasten deportation cases. Even as the federal courts trip up President Trump’s ban on travelers from several predominantly Muslim countries and Congress signals it is in no rush to pay for a border wall, the administration is pushing the vast border enforcement network to begin choking off illegal immigration. Homeland Security’s plan to greatly expand its Border Patrol has been known for some time and includes adding about 5, 000 agents, in part by allowing some applicants to skip the polygraph test that is required for all prospective hires. That proposal has been praised by Border Patrol agents, who say the polygraph is excessively difficult, and questioned by some experts, who say the test is needed to screen out drug cartel members and other problematic hires. The memo, which was first reported by The Washington Post, outlined several other ways in which the administration is considering relaxing hiring standards and stepping up recruitment. Beyond removing the polygraph hurdle, the memo discusses eliminating a part of the entrance exam that tests the Spanish language skills of prospective hires, explaining that “few applicants fail the entrance exam solely because of these tests. ” New agents will still have to obtain “the appropriate level of proficiency in Spanish” to graduate from the academy, the memo says. All applicants must now pass two physical fitness tests, but the memo suggests that only one of the tests will count toward deciding whether to hire a Customs and Border Protection officer or a Border Patrol agent. Those who do not meet physical fitness standards at the academy, the document says, will “receive additional training. ” The memo is only a “draft that hasn’t made it to the front office yet,” said David Lapan, a spokesman for the department. “Anything in it is subject to change. ” James Tomsheck, a former assistant commissioner for internal affairs at Customs and Border Protection, said any attempt to speed hiring by lowering standards leaves the agency vulnerable to corrupt or compromised agents. “I can’t see how this makes the border any more secure,” he said, calling the polygraph change “preposterous. ” Even if more applicants qualify, the agency lacks the capacity or the money to process them quickly. By March, it took an average of about 300 days to hire a border agent, according to the memo, though that was an improvement over the average in January 2016. The administration has already asked Congress to appropriate more than $60 million to help speed hiring, including money to encourage agents to move to less desirable regions along the border and expand recruiting efforts. Some of the money will help extend Customs and Border Protection’s outreach efforts at high schools and colleges and amplify its social media presence in order “to reach the millennial generation,” the memo says. Though the number of people apprehended at the border has fallen sharply in recent months and some detention beds are now empty, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has found 27 private and government facilities with 21, 000 more potential beds for detention, according to the document. But it notes that the agency does not have the money to pay for them. The administration also wants Mexico to agree to hold immigrants while their cases go through American immigration courts. To speed those hearings, the administration is considering holding them by videoconference or sending more immigration judges to the border. The memo also says that more than 50 police departments are interested in partnering with the federal agency to help enforce immigration laws, a program known as 287( g) that the Obama administration dropped amid concerns that it encouraged racial profiling and other abuses. The agency is already in the process of signing on 26 other jurisdictions. | 1 |
Sliding into theaters on a river of slime and an endless supply of good vibes, the new, cheerfully silly “Ghostbusters” is that rarest of offerings — a movie that is a lot of enjoyable, disposable fun. And enjoy it while you can because this doesn’t happen often, even in summer, which is supposed to be our season of collective moviegoing happiness. The season when everyone jumps onboard (whee!) and agrees that, yes, this great goof is exactly what you were thinking when you wondered why they didn’t make summer movies like they used to. Oh, wait, because whatever else you can say about the new “Ghostbusters,” it’s a lot like the old “Ghostbusters,” except that it stars four funny women instead of, you know, four funny men. In other words, it doesn’t have a lot of XY chromosomes and basso profondo voices, though its token hottie, played by a game, nimbly funny Chris Hemsworth, pulls his weight on both those counts. Otherwise, the redo is pretty much what you might expect from Paul Feig, one of the best things to happen to American comedy since Harold Ramis. Mr. Ramis helped write the old “Ghostbusters” and played one of its “professional paranormal eliminators” — as Larry King describes them in the movie — alongside Dan Aykroyd (the ) Ernie Hudson and Bill Murray. A triumph of casting and timing, the first “Ghostbusters” remains memorable for Ray Parker Jr. ’s inane, dementedly catchy theme song (“Who you gonna call? ”) and for Mr. Murray, who dominates it even more than its Marshmallow Man monster does. It’s peak Bill Murray with a minimalism that exerts a powerful gravitational force and a deadpan that recast Mad Magazine’s grin with the laughter of National Lampoon. No one performance dominates the new “Ghostbusters,” which is for the most part democratically comic (a Paul Feig signature) although Kate McKinnon’s magnificent, eccentric turn comes close. She plays Holtzmann, the who whips up the hardware (proton packs included) with a crazy leer and page after script page of gobbledygook. Ms. McKinnon makes for a sublime nerd goddess (she brings a dash of the young Jerry Lewis to the role with a glint of Amy Poehler) and, in an earlier age, would probably have been sidelined as a sexy, ditsy secretary. Here, she embodies the new “Ghostbusters” at its best: Girls rule, women are funny, get over it. Written by Mr. Feig and Katie Dippold, the redo follows much of the original’s shambling arc and even revs up with a boo, except that this time the scares happen in a mansion, not a library. After the usual narrative table setting, Holtzmann and her partner in Abby (Melissa McCarthy) join forces first with another scientist, Erin (Kristen Wiig) and then a transit worker, Patty (Leslie Jones). Voilà, the new Ghostbusters are in business, complete with a vintage Cadillac, some funky digs and a cute secretary, Kevin (Mr. Hemsworth). Ghosts and mayhem ensue along with turns from the likes of Cecily Strong, Andy Garcia and Matt Walsh. It’s at once satisfyingly familiar and satisfyingly different, kind of like a new production of “Macbeth” or a Christopher Nolan rethink of Batman. As it turns out, the original “Ghostbusters” is one of those durable pop entertainments that can support the weight of not only a lesser (the 1989 sequel “Ghostbusters II”) but also a gender redo. That the new movie stars four women is a kind of gimmick, of course, but it’s one that the filmmakers and the excellent cast deepen with real comedy chemistry and emotionally performances, particularly from Ms. McCarthy and Ms. Wiig, who are playing foes who need to work some stuff out. They do, which means that “Ghostbusters” is also a movie, but without the usual genre pro forma tears, jealousies and boyfriends. Friendship here, even at its testiest, is a given, which means that Mr. Feig doesn’t have to worry it and can get on with bringing the funny with his stars and toys, his ghosts and laughs. As is often the case with flicks, it grows progressively louder and bigger, climaxing in an overlong battle, though not before Mr. Feig has offered up some unexpected touches, including a cavalcade of beautifully designed ghosts and a genuinely creepy bathroom scene that adds a few shivers. Part of what makes “Ghostbusters” enjoyable is that it allows women to be as simply and uncomplicatedly funny as men, though it would have been nice if Ms. Jones had been given more to do. (If this were a radical reboot, she would have played a scientist.) In the end, these are Ghostbusters, not Ghostbusting suffragists, even if there’s plenty of feminism onscreen and off. It’s hard to know if the movie started off being as meta as it now plays, but when these Ghostbusters are labeled frauds — or crack jokes about ugly online comments or take on a fan boy from hell — it sure feels as if Mr. Feig and his team are blowing gleeful raspberries at the project’s early sexist attackers. Big hits are like ghosts: They haunt studio executives. It’s no surprise then that Sony Pictures wanted to resurrect the “Ghostbusters” franchise in some form, just as it’s no surprise that it took someone like Mr. Feig to figure out how to make it work, mostly, by not really messing with it. Even so, what he’s doing onscreen — by helping to redefine who gets to be funny in movies — is what makes him a thoughtful successor to Mr. Ramis, who made a series of memorable, soulful comedies about what it means to be a man (“Groundhog Day,” “Multiplicity”). Now, if we could just get women and men to be funny together, that would be revolutionary. “Ghostbusters” is rated (Parents strongly cautioned). Ghost and violence. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. | 1 |
10 Shares
8 1 0 1
According to Rai al-Youm newspaper , a Bedouin Jordanian poet has expressed his willingness to marry the daughter of Donald Trump , the US president-elect.
Falih Al-Jabour wrote in a poem that Jordanian officials are on their way to the white house to ask for the hand of Tiffany Trump, the president’s youngest daughter. He hoped the offer wouldn’t be turned down.
Al-Jabour proposed to Tiffany in his strange and humorous poem and even offered to pay a substantial price for the bride including 50 camels, 200 thoroughbred horses and a 15.5-acre field.
This Jordanian poet published his poem in social networks and asked the bride’s family not to reject him.
Falih Al-Jabour’s only condition for the marriage is that after marrying him and going to his home land, the bride has to wear burka, because she’s “so beautiful”, otherwise there will be a chaos in the tribe.
Recommended For You Saudi Arabia Warns Trump on Blocking Oil Imports and the Risks for US Economy Saudi Arabia has warned Donald Trump that the incoming US president will risk the health of his country’s economy if he acts o...
By AHT Staff China Warns Trump against Abandoning Climate Change Deal, Increases Climate Change Aid to Developing Countries to $ 3.1b China has warned Donald Trump that he will be defying the wishes of the entire planet if he acts on his vow to back away from t...
By AHT Staff The Unethicality of the Sore Loser During live US presidential election coverage on RT, after it became clear that Donald Trump was going to secure the required number of el...
By Kim Petersen | 0 |
Back on the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump argued that the United States faced a threat — radical Islamic terrorism — on par with fascism, Nazism and communism. He declared to a cheering crowd in Youngstown, Ohio, that “those who do not believe in our Constitution or who support bigotry and hatred will not be allowed into our country. ” Now that view is not the stuff of stump speeches. It’s America’s foreign policy. As the White House puts in place a sweeping immigration ban focused on countries, one of the top investigative reporters at The New York Times, Scott Shane, has been seeking an answer to one big question. He wants to know where the president’s views on Islam came from. We talk with him on the show about what he’s found. If you are on your phone and don’t see an audio player on this page, follow the instructions below. On your iPhone or iPad: Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. If you’re reading this from your phone, tap this link, which will take you straight there. (You can also use the magnifying glass icon to search just type “The Daily. ”) Once on the series page, you can tap on the episode title to play the episode (make sure you have an internet connection) and tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. Or if you have another preferred podcast player, you can find “The Daily” there. (Here’s the RSS feed.) On your Android phone or tablet: Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. If you’re reading this from your phone, tap this link, which will take you straight there. (You can also use the magnifying glass icon to search just type “The Daily. ”) Once on the series page, you can tap on the episode title to play the episode (make sure you have an internet connection) and tap on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone free. Or if you have another preferred podcast player, you can find “The Daily” there. (Here’s the RSS feed.) From a desktop or laptop: Click the “play” button above to start the show. Make sure to keep that window open on your browser if you’re doing other things, or else the audio will stop. You can always find the latest episode at nytimes. . On Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Tap: Open your Alexa app. From the navigation panel on the left, select “Settings,” then select “Flash Briefing,” then select “Get more Flash Briefing Content. ” Look for “The New York Times” and select “Enable Skill. ” Now you can say, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?” and you will hear “The Daily. ” On Google Home: You can say “Okay, Google, play New York Times news” to listen to that day’s audio report. | 0 |
0 38
Did Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, actually read the full text of the UNESCO resolution on Palestine and Israel, before he raved with anger?
“I think this is a mistaken, inconceivable resolution,” he said.
“It is not possible to continue with these resolutions at the UN and UNESCO that aim to attack Israel. It is shocking and I have ordered that we stop taking this position (his country’s abstention) even if it means diverging from the position taken by the rest of Europe,” he added.
Renzi, who became Prime Minister in 2014 at the relatively young age of 39 knows exactly how the game is played. In order to win favor with Washington, he must first please Tel Aviv.
His country has abstained from the October 12 vote on a resolution that condemns Israel’s violations of the cultural and legal status of Occupied East Jerusalem. This decision has ignited the ire of Israeli Ambassador to Rome, Ofer Zaks , who riled up the Jewish community in Italy to protest the abstention. Renzi, in turn, was converted into a champion of the ‘Temple Mount’, the name Israel uses to describe the Palestinian Muslim holy site.
Renzi cravenly went on damage control mode without truly understanding the nature of the resolution, which merely condemned Israel’s obvious violations of international law, and only calls for Israel to respect the status of Palestinian culture in the occupied city.
None of procedures that led to the vote on the UNESCO’s resolution – voted… | 0 |
MONOPOLY: Banks, Then Media, Now Voting Machine Companies – With One Company Supplying Over 50% Of Us Voting Machines. by IWB · October 27, 2016 Tweet
We’ve all seen what happened when the banks became too big to fail, too big to jail after Bill Clinton’s administration began a wave of bank consolidations. Now internet providers and content providers are proposing to consolidate in a way that will result in even more information control & privacy concerns. And under the radar, the electronic voting machine companies are rapidly consolidating as well, with one company supplying over 50% of US voting machines. And all the players pay the Clintons to play.
Alex Jones gives you the reasons why the global monopolies and mafias are pushing back against Donald Trump so hard. | 0 |
Edward Albee, widely considered the foremost American playwright of his generation, whose psychologically astute and piercing dramas explored the contentiousness of intimacy, the gap between and truth and the roiling desperation beneath the facade of contemporary life, died on Friday at his home in Montauk, N. Y. He was 88. His personal assistant, Jakob Holder, confirmed the death. Mr. Holder said he had died after a short illness. Mr. Albee’s career began after the death of Eugene O’Neill and after Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams had produced most of their plays. From them he inherited the torch of American drama, carrying it through the era of Tony Kushner and “Angels in America” August Wilson and his Pittsburgh cycle and into the 21st century. He introduced himself suddenly and with a bang, in 1959, when his first produced play, “The Zoo Story,” opened in Berlin on a double bill with Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape. ” A that unfolds in real time, “The Zoo Story” zeroed in on the existential terror at the heart of complacency, presenting the increasingly menacing intrusion of a probing, querying stranger on a man reading on a Central Park bench. When the play came to the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village the next year, it helped propel the blossoming theater movement that became known as Off Broadway. Mr. Albee’s Broadway debut, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” the famously scabrous portrait of a withered marriage, won a Tony Award in 1963 for best play, ran for more than a year and half and enthralled and shocked theatergoers with its depiction of stifling academia and of a couple whose relationship has been corroded by dashed hopes, wounding recriminations and drink. The 1966 film adaptation, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, turned the play into Mr. Albee’s most famous work it had, he wrote three decades later, “hung about my neck like a shining medal of some sort — really nice but a trifle onerous. ” But it stands as representative, too, an early example of the heightened naturalism he often ventured into, an expression of the viewpoint that is a universal, urgent, irresistible and poisonous agent in modern life — “There’s nobody doesn’t want something,” as one of his characters said — that Mr. Albee would illustrate again and again with characteristically pointed eloquence. A later, Mr. Albee’s audacious drama about a love affair between man and beast, “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” won another Tony, ran for nearly a year and staved off the critical despair, however briefly, that the commercial theater could no longer support serious drama. In between, Mr. Albee (his name is pronounced ) turned out a parade of works, 30 or so in all, generally focused on exposing the darkest secrets of relatively people, with lacerating portrayals of familial relations, social intercourse and individual . As Ben Brantley of The New York Times once wrote, “Mr. Albee has unsparingly considered subjects outside the average theatergoer’s comfort zone: the capacity for sadism and violence within American society the fluidness of human identity the dangerous irrationality of sexual attraction and, always, the irrefutable presence of death. ” His work could be difficult to absorb, not only but elliptical or opaque, and his relationships with who only intermittently made his plays into hits, and critics, who were disdainful as often as they were laudatory, ran hot and cold. In 1965, after “Tiny Alice,” his drama about Christian faith, money and the ethics of worship opened on Broadway, causing much consternation and even outrage among critics who had failed to discern meaning in its murky symbols and suggestions of mysticism, Mr. Albee attended anews conference ostensibly to discuss the play but ended up lecturing on the subject of criticism. “It is not enough for a critic to tell his audience how well a play succeeds in its intention,” he said “he must also judge that intention by the absolute standards of the theater as an art form. ” He added that when critics perform only the first function, they leave the impression that less ambitious plays are better ones because they come closer to achieving their ambitions. “Well, perhaps they are better plays to their audience,” he said, “but they are not better plays for their audience. And since the critic fashions the audience taste, whether he intends to or not, he succeeds each season in merely lowering it. ” Several of his plays opened abroad before they did in the United States, and his work was often more enthusiastically welcomed in Europe than it was at home even some of his most critically admired plays never found the wider audiences that only a Broadway imprimatur can attract. “Maybe I’m a European playwright and I don’t know it,” he said in an interview with The Times in 1991, adding: “Just look at the playwrights who are not performed on Broadway now: Sophocles, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Molière, Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, Genet. Not a one of them. ” A clever speaker in interviews with a vivid sense of mischief and the presumption of an artist, Mr. Albee was wont to confront slights rather than dismiss them, wielding his smooth, sardonic wit as a verbal . “If Attila the Hun were alive today, he’d be a drama critic,” he said in 1988. Referring to the “hysterical, ” of critics after his 1983 play “The Man Who Had Three Arms” opened (and quickly closed) on Broadway, he said: “You’d have thought it was women seeing mice climb up their legs. ” And yet he was among the most honored of American dramatists. Beyond his Tonys — including one for lifetime achievement — he won three Pulitzer Prizes. His major works included “A Delicate Balance,” a darkly unsettling comedy about an affluent family whose members reveal their deep unhappiness in shrewd and stinging verbal combat “All Over” (1971) directed on Broadway by John Gielgud and starring Colleen Dewhurst, about a family (and a mistress) awaiting the deathbed expiration of an unseen, wealthy man “Seascape” (1975) another Pulitzer winner, a creepily comic, slightly ominous meditation on monogamy, evolution and mortality that develops from an oceanside discussion involving an elderly human couple and a pair of anthropomorphic lizards and “Three Tall Women,” a strikingly personal work drawn from memories of his adoptive mother, scrutinizing, in its various stages, the life of a dying woman. The play had its 1991 premiere in Vienna but earned Mr. Albee a third Pulitzer after it appeared Off Broadway in 1994. A subsequent work, “The Play About the Baby,” opened in London in 1998 and in Houston in 2000 before finding its way the next year to Off Broadway in New York. In it Mr. Albee revisited, in a more abstract form of harrowing comedy, notable rudiments of “Virginia Woolf,” namely an older couple initiating a younger couple into the grim realities of later life and a child whose existence becomes a matter of ardent and discourse. “Albee is not a fan of mankind,” the critic John Lahr wrote in The New Yorker in 2012. “The friendships he stages are loose affiliations that serve mostly as a bulwark against meaninglessness. ” Mr. Albee explained himself as a kind of herald, perhaps a modern Cassandra warning the theatergoer of inevitable personal calamity. “All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done,” he said in the 1991 Times interview. “I find most people spend too much time living as if they’re never going to die. ” He wrote, he said, with a sense of responsibility “All plays, if they’re any good, are constructed as correctives,” he told The Guardian in 2004. “That’s the job of the writer. Holding that mirror up to people. We’re not merely decorative, pleasant and safe. ” Mr. Albee was born somewhere in Virginia on March 12, 1928. Little is known about his father. His mother’s name was Louise Harvey she called him Edward. In the 1999 biography, “Edward Albee: A Singular Journey,” the author, Mel Gussow, a former reporter and critic for The Times, cited adoption papers — filed in Washington within days of his birth — that said the father “had deserted and abandoned both the mother and the child and had in no way contributed to the support of the child. ” Sent to an adoption nursery in Manhattan before he was three weeks old, baby Edward was placed with Reed Albee, an heir to the chain of vaudeville theaters, and his wife, Frances, who lived in Larchmont, N. Y. The couple had no children and formally adopted Edward 10 months later, naming him Edward Franklin Albee III after two of his adoptive father’s ancestors. Patrician and distant, the Albees were unsuited to dealing with a child of artistic temperament, and in later years Mr. Albee would often recall an childhood in which he felt like an interloper in their home. In a 2011 interview at the Arena Stage in Washington with the director Molly Smith, he said that his mother had thrown out his first play — he described it as “a sex farce” — which he wrote at age 14. “I think they wanted somebody who would be a corporate thug of some sort, or perhaps a doctor or lawyer or something respectable,” he told the television interviewer Charlie Rose. “They didn’t want a writer on their hands. Good God, no. ” In interviews he said he knew he was gay by the time he was 8, that he began writing poetry at 9, that he had his first homosexual experience at 12 and that he wrote a pair of novels in his teens — “the worst novels that could ever be written by an American teenager. ” His education was a hopscotch tour of the middle Atlantic: He attended Rye Country Day School in Westchester County, N. Y. the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania and finally the Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Connecticut, from which he graduated. He attended Trinity College in Hartford but never finished, reportedly because he refused to go to chapel and was expelled. Then, in 1949, he moved to Greenwich Village, where his artistic life began in earnest. His circle, made up of painters, writers and musicians, included the playwright William Inge and the composers David Diamond, Aaron Copland and William Flanagan, who became his lover. The Off Broadway theater was nascent, and he began attending plays in the Village — “You could go to the theater for a dollar!” he recalled — seeing the works of Beckett, Ionesco, Pirandello and Brecht and supporting himself with menial jobs. His own writing was less than successful — he tried short stories and gave them up — and though he published a handful of poems, he gave that up, too, when he was 26, because, as he put it to Ms. Smith, “I remember thinking, ‘Edward, you’re getting better as a poet, but the problem is you don’t really feel like a poet, do you? You feel like someone who is writing poetry. ” He added: “I knew I was a writer and had failed basically at all other branches of writing, but I was still a writer. So I did the only thing I had not done. I wrote a play. It was called ‘The Zoo Story.’ ” It was a month before his 30th birthday, Mr. Gussow wrote in his biography, that Mr. Albee sat down at a typewriter borrowed from the Western Union office where he worked as a messenger, and completed “The Zoo Story” in two and a half weeks. “I’ve been to the zoo,” the character Jerry says, in the opening line, approaching Peter, who is sitting on a bench reading. “I said I’ve been to the zoo. Mister, I’ve been to the zoo!” Mr. Diamond helped arrange the Berlin production — in German translation (“Die ”) — and it was . But in New York the play was rejected several times before the Actors Studio agreed to stage a single performance afterward, Norman Mailer, who was in the audience, declared it “the best play I’ve ever seen. ” When “The Zoo Story” opened for a commercial run at the Provincetown Playhouse in January 1960, reviews were mixed. (The Times’s Brooks Atkinson called it “consistently interesting and illuminating — odd and pithy,” though he concluded that “nothing of enduring value is said. ”) Even so, the play made enough of a splash that Mr. Albee became known as an exemplar of a new, strain of playwriting. In an article in The Times with the headline “Dramatists Deny Nihilistic Trend,” Mr. Albee espoused the view that would become his credo: that theatergoers should be challenged to confront situations and ideas that lie outside their comfort zones. “I want the audience to run out of the theater — but to come back and see the play again,” he said. His next three plays, also were also successes Off Broadway: “The Sandbox” and “The American Dream” were portraits of family dynamics etched in acid, and “The Death of Bessie Smith,” which bordered on uncharacteristic agitprop, was about an incident (later revealed to be untrue) in which the great blues singer of the title, who died after an auto accident, had been turned away from a hospital. Then came “Virginia Woolf. ” Focusing on George and Martha, an embittered academic couple — he’s a history professor, she’s the college president’s daughter — it presents a boozy encounter between them and two campus newcomers, Nick and Honey, a young biology teacher and his wife, which devolves into a series of horrifying, macabre psychological games, cruel challenges and spilled secrets. The reactions were virulent and disparate. Some critics were appalled: “A sick play for sick people,” The Daily Mirror declared. “Three and a half hours long, four characters wide and a cesspool deep,” said The Daily News. But others were mesmerized and dazzled. A jury awarded it the Pulitzer Prize, but the Pulitzer advisory board rejected the recommendation, choosing not to give an award for drama that year the jurors resigned in protest. In the years since, as the play has grown to become a classic of modern drama and been revived on Broadway three times, most recently in 2012 with Tracy Letts and Amy Morton as George and Martha, it has continued to incite controversy. Some critics and directors interpreted the play as being about four homosexual men, a suggestion that distressed Mr. Albee enough to seek legal remedies to shut down productions of the play with casts. As for the title, another item of speculation, Mr. Albee explained its origin in an interview in The Paris Review in 1966: “There was a saloon — it’s changed its name now — on Tenth Street, between Greenwich Avenue and Waverly Place, that was called something at one time, now called something else, and they had a big mirror on the downstairs bar in this saloon where people used to scrawl graffiti. At one point back in about 1953 … 1954, I think it was — long before any of us started doing much of anything — I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, who’s … afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical university, intellectual joke. ” Mr. Albee’s other plays include adaptations of the Carson McCullers novella “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” of “Malcolm,” a novel by James Purdy, and of Vladimir Nabokov’s great novel of sexual obsession, “Lolita. ” He was also involved in one of the great flops in Broadway history, becoming a script doctor for the producer David Merrick’s 1966 staging of the musical adaptation of Truman Capote’s novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” which starred Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain and closed on Broadway before it opened, after its fourth preview. Mr. Albee was especially productive through the 1960s and early ’70s, when he was working as a team with the producers Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder. But following his early successes, ending with “Seascape” in 1975, he went into a decline, partly owing to struggles with alcohol, and for nearly 20 years he did not write a commercially successful play. “The Lady from Dubuque” (1980) a drama concerned with the nature of identity and shadowed by the specter of death — it opens with a game of 20 questions, one of whose participants is terminally ill — was savaged by the critics and closed after 12 performances on Broadway. A similar fate befell “The Man Who Had Three Arms” (1983) a bilious discourse on the wages of evanescent celebrity. Mr. Albee lived for several decades in a TriBeCa loft filled with African sculptures and contemporary paintings by the likes of Vuillard, Milton Avery and Kandinsky. His partner of 35 years, Jonathan Thomas, a sculptor, died in 2005. Mr. Albee leaves no immediate survivors. It was “Three Tall Women” in the early 1990s that returned Mr. Albee to prominence, and for the next 20 years he continued to be productive, turning out provocative work, including “The Goat” and “The Play About the Baby,” and witnessing (or directing himself) revivals of earlier plays on Broadway and in regional theaters. He was riding this sunset success — and continuing to write — when he spoke to Ms. Smith in front of an audience at the Arena Stage in Washington, which was then presenting a festival of his work that included readings and performances of more than 20 plays. He recalled the feeling he had at the very beginning of his career, after he had finished writing “The Zoo Story. ” “For the first time in my life when I wrote that play, I realized I had written something that wasn’t bad,” he said. “‘You know, Edward, this is pretty good. This is talented. Maybe you’re a playwright.’ So I thought, ‘Let’s find out what happens.’ ” | 1 |
Activists within the student government at the University of recently passed legislation which calls for “community control” of the campus police. [In an effort to counter supposed “implicit bias” within the university police system, activists within the student government at the University of have demanded “community control” of campus police activity. The student activists claim there are “many incidents where students of color and historically marginalized communities are treated differently by police officers. ” They cite the Black Lives Matter platform as the blueprint for their draft of the legislation: “The Black Lives Matter platform calls on [sic] community control of the police because current policing practices … demonstrate a lack of voices for communities of color. ” The resolution, entitled“UWPD Accountability and Community Control of the Police,” passed by a unanimous vote in the student council and will now be passed on to the faculty senate for confirmation. The resolution argues that “the treatment and characterization of people of color by UWPD raises questions about their implicit bias and discriminatory policing procedures. ” In response to the allegations of discrimination, the resolution demands that UWM “implement a community accountability board to review the policies and procedures that discriminate against people of color. ” The University of Wisconsin Police Department claims that the resolution is “irrelevant” to the department’s goal of carrying out their job in a way that maintains order and safety for all students on campus. The UWPD recently added a “Use of Force Coordinator” who is responsible for documenting all incidents in which an officer uses force. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 0 |
Print Side-by-side of Bill Clinton and Danney Williams
NEW YORK –YouTube on Wednesday suspended the account of Danney Williams, the 30-year-old who has claimed since the 1990s to be the black son of former President Bill Clinton.
YouTube, citing “repeated or severe violations of our Terms of Use and/or Community Guidelines,” declared the account “cannot be restored.”
The YouTube decision blocked the nine-minute feature “BANISHED – The Untold Story of Danney Williams,” which had received 1.2 million views since Williams posted it last week. Produced by filmmaker Joel Gilbert, it drew nearly 100,000 views per day and more than 1,000 viewer comments, with the overwhelming majority expressing support for Williams and outrage at the Clintons for not being willing to allow a DNA test to determine paternity.
Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.
“My YouTube account has been deleted, but the same video appears in 50 other places on YouTube alone,” Williams said on his Facebook page after being notified of YouTube’s decision. “[YouTube] can’t handle the truth! Please share #BillClintonSon.”
Twitter also continues to allow Williams to post the “Banished” video on Danney Williams’ page , but the Twitter link to YouTube displays the message : “This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated. Sorry about that.”
The video is still running on Danney Williams-Clinton’s Facebook page , as well as on the YouTube channel operated by Gilbert.
Attempt to silence Danney Williams?
Gilbert told WND he helped Williams file an online appeal form on YouTube asking why the account was suspended and demanding it be immediately reinstated.
“The behavior of YouTube/Google in suspending Danney’s account is outrageous! There have been absolutely zero violations of any kind let alone a severe one of any YouTube terms or guidelines,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert was outspoken in charging YouTube with partisan political motives for the suspension.
“The only possible explanation is that the Clinton campaign requested YouTube/Google to silence Danney, ‘to run him off the plantation’ as Danney said Hillary Clinton did to him and his aunt when he was a small child and they were chased off the grounds of the Arkansas governor’s mansion in 1990,” Gilbert said.
“Danney cannot be silenced any longer,” he continued. “Hillary may try to sweep Danney Williams under the rug, but it’s not going to work this time. His story is out there, and every day more and more people understand Bill and Hillary Clinton banished this young man from their family because of the color of his skin.”
See the Danney Williams video feature:
WND reported Oct. 19 that in the hours before the third and final presidential debate, attorneys for Williams were in Las Vegas to announce their intention to file a paternity suit demanding DNA evidence from the former president.
Accompanying the dramatic announcement was a rap music video celebrating Williams that went viral on the Internet.
No definitive DNA test
WND reported that no DNA test was conducted in 1999, despite media reports to the contrary when Williams’ claim first surfaced.
Clinton defenders since 1999 have contended the tabloid Star Magazine conducted a “DNA showdown” proving Bill Clinton was not Williams’ father, citing Star Magazine editor Phil Bunton saying at the time, “There was no match, nothing even close.”
But in an interview, Bunton told WND that no blood sample was obtained from Clinton and Star Magazine never published a story documenting a laboratory test.
“I don’t remember ever seeing any laboratory test that was done on Clinton’s DNA,” Bunton told WND.
Bunton is now the owner of the Rivertown Magazine in Haverstraw, New York.
He affirmed to WND that the tabloid relied on the DNA evidence for Clinton published by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, extracted from the infamous Monica Lewinsky blue dress.
“We got a lot of phone calls from several people in the media, including the New York Times, wanting to know when we were going to get the DNA back,” Bunton recalled to WND. “We thought it was going to turn out to be his son, but when the DNA came back there was no story there even to write.”
The DNA test released by Kenneth Starr was the second of two DNA laboratory tests the FBI had run on Clinton, but the public record leaves no doubt that Starr withheld the more robust test conducted by the FBI.
‘Twitter rules’
Many other figures who have challenged the Democratic Party or the left-leaning media narrative also have run into trouble with social media outlets, including James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas, which has exposed Clinton campaign voter fraud and agitation in a series of hidden-camera videos. Just as O’Keefe was preparing to release new revelations of voter fraud Oct. 13, Twitter shut down his account , claiming violations of “Twitter Rules.” The notice said he “must delete the tweets that are in violation of our rules, which prohibit: harassing other users, threatening other users, disclosing other users’ private information” or violating “other rules.” In a statement, O’Keefe said he relies on social media to “bypass the media and directly reach the public.” On Monday, O’Keefe wrote in a tweet Project Veritas was unable to upload its third video in the series to YouTube, calling the apparent block “bizarre.” Earlier this month, O’Keefe was forced to delete a tweet critical of a Hillary Clinton staffer to regain use of his account after it was suspended for a day. His account was suspended in the hours before a release of a new hidden-camera video that exposed a Clinton ally saying she could use executive action on guns, the Daily Caller reported . Project Veritas posted an undercover video Oct. 17 proving Hillary Clinton supporters were inciting violence at Donald Trump rallies to gain negative media coverage. Millions of viewers watched the video in just a few hours, but it didn’t show up on Google’s “trending” list on YouTube, which Google owns, noted SilenceisConsent.net . It did, however, trend on Twitter, which Google does not own. Breitbart blogger Milo Yiannopoulos was suspended permanently by Twitter minutes before his “Gays for Trump” party at the Republican National Convention. For some 11 months, the makers of the new movie “I’m Not Ashamed,” about the first victim of the Columbine killers in Colorado in 1999, were unable to promote their movie through YouTube. The trailer was taken down late in 2015, and the movie’s entire channel was suspended .
Among the conservatives censored by Facebook : Conservative activist and Trump supporter Lauren Southern received a 30-day ban from Facebook because she complained about a friend’s account being censored. Facebook locked a 12-year-old black middle schooler’s account for posting a video supporting Rudy Giuliani’s comment that Obama “doesn’t love America.” The admin of a pro-Trump group was banned for saying Trump is not anti-Muslim, but anti-ISIS. | 1 |
Russia stops shipping Soyuz space rockets to France 28.10.2016 | Source: AP photo French newspaper Les Echos reported that Russia's state-run corporation Roscosmos will would not deliver Soyuz rockets to Arianespace of France. First off, Russia demands the receipt of the funds blocked in connection with the Yukos case. A statement from Roscosmos says that the Russian company will not work for free. "No money - no products," Les Echos quoted a message from the corporation. It goes about 300 million euros, which Arianespace was supposed to pay to Roscosmos, but the funds were frozen by the Court of Arbitration in The Hague in the case of former Yukos shareholders . Previously, Roscosmos had won a case in France about the arrest of accounts of the state corporation in the Yukos case. "They acknowledged that our arguments were correct, but we will continue defending our interests," director of communications at Roscosmos, Igor Burenkov said. On April 11, France arrested $700 million of Roskosmos and Space Communications money in connection with a judicial decision on the case of Yukos. Interestingly, NASA plans to purchase seats for its astronauts on board the Soyuz spaceship as Boeing and SpaceX seem to be unable to prepare their spaceships on time. US-based commercial companies Boeing and SpaceX are developing their own manned spacecraft - Starliner and Dragon. The deadline is near, so Houston has decided to consider a possibility to buy extra seats on board Russia's Soyuz. NASA hopes that at least one of the private spaceships will be able to perform operational tasks by the end of 2017 or early 2018. For the time being, one of the six necessary seats on the Soyuz spaceship costs the US nearly $82 million. By 2019, the price will increase. Pravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru | 0 |
Rep. Ron DeSantis ( ) talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam regarding Susan Rice and the Gorsuch nomination on Wednesday. [Said DeSantis on Rice, “She was effectively a White House staffer as the National Security Adviser, she did not run any agency. So, for her to unmask some of this information, that was not done in terms of furthering any investigation because she was not conducting the investigation. ” He went on to cite several reasons for suspicion around her involvement in unmasking members of Team Trump. “She needs to come in and answer questions,” said the congressman, citing what he called a “poorly done” interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, in which she “dodged” the question of testifying before Congress. DeSantis said, “She may be in a situation where she wouldn’t want to answer questions and potentially would invoke privilege against ” adding, “I think we need to make her make that decision. And I think the intelligence committee should absolutely subpoena her, bring her in and ask her questions. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 0 |
Email
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
It’s always an embarrassing moment when a high-powered executive suffers a scandal that forces him or her to resign, but it looks like yet another head honcho is about to step into that humiliating spotlight: After nearly a decade on the job, the CEO of beans has officially stepped down following reports that there cannot be a CEO of beans.
Yikes. Talk about a fall from grace.
Patrick Buckley was an ambitious leader as the CEO of beans, often telling people that he was in charge of every single bean that came out of the dirt, and even going so far as to print up business cards with “CEO of beans” listed right on the front. With beans being such a common staple of diets worldwide, a man in Mr. Buckley’s position may have seemed poised to become one of the most powerful people in the food industry. But in the blink of an eye, everything the executive had been working for came crashing down before him, as reports began to circulate late last week that while bean manufacturers may have CEOs, it’s impossible for beans in general to have a CEO of their own.
“After a wonderful career at the helm of beans, it has become apparent that there is no such thing as my job,” the scandalized CEO wrote in a brief statement to the press. “In light of this news that my position, and my former role as director of garbanzo, do not exist, it seems prudent that I step down immediately. I am proud of the work I have done for beans during my tenure, and I look forward to continuing to prepare and eat beans in the future.”
As of this morning, the board of directors of beans has accepted Mr. Buckley’s resignation, and then the members promptly stepped down themselves amidst reports that beans cannot have a board of directors, either.
Making matters worse, the entire corporate structure of beans now finds itself crumbling from the top all the way down, as an onslaught of new allegations indicate that beans, as a relatively loose category of foods, has never been and cannot be a staffable organization.
Wow. It’s hard to imagine how Mr. Buckley will ever bounce back from such a disgrace, but hopefully he learns an important lesson from all this. CEOs, take note: Your mistakes will always come back to haunt you. | 0 |
United States and its Western allies are to blame for failure of latest ceasefire By President al-Assad:
SANA " - Damascus, SANA President Bashar al-Assad asserted that the United States and its Western allies are to blame for the failure of latest ceasefire, because terrorism and terrorists are for them a card they want to play on the Syrian arena.
In an interview given to the Serbian newspaper Politika, President al-Assad said that Russia is very serious and very determined to continue fighting the terrorists, while the Americans base their politics on a different value as they use the terrorists as a card to play the political game to serve their own interests at the expense of the interests of other countries in the world.
President al-Assad pointed out that Western countries wanted to use the humanitarian mask in order to have an excuse to intervene more in Syria, either militarily or by supporting the terrorists.
Following is the full text of the interview:
Question 1: Mr. President, why has the latest Syria ceasefire failed? Who is to blame for that?
President Assad: Actually, the West, mainly the United States, has made that pressure regarding the ceasefire, and they always ask for ceasefire only when the terrorists are in a bad situation, not for the civilians. And they try to use those ceasefires in order to support the terrorists, bring them logistic support, armament, money, everything, in order to re-attack and to become stronger again. When it didnt work, they ask the terrorists to make it fail or to start attacking again. So, whos to blame? Its the United States and its allies, the Western countries, because for them, terrorists and terrorism are a card they want to play on the Syrian arena, its not a value, theyre not against terrorists. For them, supporting the terrorists is a war of attrition against Syria, against Iran, against Russia, thats how they look at it. Thats why not only this ceasefire; every attempt regarding ceasefire or political moving or political initiative, every failure of these things, the United States was to be blamed.
Question 2: But which country is supporting terrorism? Saudi Arabia? Qatar?
President Assad: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey
Journalist: Turkey?
President Assad: Because they came through Turkey with the support of the government, direct support from the government.
Journalist: Directly?
President Assad: Direct support from the government, of course.
Journalist: With money or with armament?
President Assad: Lets say, the endorsement, the greenlight, first. Second, the American coalition, which is called international coalition, which is an American. They could see ISIS using our oil fields and carrying the oil through the barrel trucks to Turkey under their drones
Journalist: This is the Syrian oil?
President Assad: In Syria, from Syria to Turkey, under the supervision of their satellites and drones, without doing anything, till the Russians intervened and started attacking ISIS convoys and ISIS positions and strongholds. This is where ISIS started to shrink. So, the West gave the greenlight to those countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and actually those countries, those governments are puppets; puppets to the West, puppets to the United States, they work as puppets, and the terrorists in Syria are their proxy, the proxy of those countries and proxy of the West and the United States.
Question 3: But money for marketing this oil, who has the money? Turkey?
President Assad: In partnership between ISIS and Turkey. Part of the money goes to ISIS because this is how they can make recruitment and pay salaries to their fighters. Thats why ISIS was growing before the Russian intervention, it was expanding in Syria and in Iraq. And part of the money is going to the Turkish government officials, mainly Erdogan himself and his family.
Journalist: Erdogan himself?
President Assad: Of course, of course. They were directly involved in this trade with ISIS.
Question 4: Mr. President, do you believe the Russians and Americans can ever agree over Syria? Can Russia and the USA be partners in the war against terrorists in Syria?
President Assad: We hope, but in reality, no, for a simple reason: because the Russians based their politics on values, beside their interest. The values are that they adopt the international law, they fight terrorism, and the interest that if you have terrorists prevailing in our region, that will affect not only our region but Europe, Russia, and the rest of the world. So, the Russians are very serious and very determined to continue fighting the terrorists, while the Americans based their politics on a different value, completely different value, their value is that we can use the terrorists. I mean the Americans, they wanted to use the terrorists as a card to play the political game to serve their own interests at the expense of the interests of other countries in the world.
Question 5: The situation about bombing the Syrian Army near the airport in Deir Ezzor How did the American air attack on the Syrian Army happen? Was it a coincidence or not?
President Assad: It was premeditated attack by the American forces, because ISIS was shrinking because of the Syrian and Russian and Iranian cooperation against ISIS, and because al-Nusra which is Al Qaeda-affiliated group had been defeated in many areas in Syria, so the Americans wanted to undermine the position of the Syrian Army; they attacked our army in Deir Ezzor. It wasnt by coincidence because the raid continued more than one hour, and they came many times.
Journalist: One hour?
President Assad: More than one hour. There were many raids by the Americans and their allies against the Syrian position. At the same time, they attacked a very big area; they didnt attack a building to say we made a mistake. They attacked three big hills, not other groups neighboring these hills, and only ISIS existed in Deir Ezzor. There is no what they called it moderate opposition. So, it was a premeditated attack in order to allow ISIS to take that position, and ISIS attacked those hills, and took those hills right away in less than one hour after the attack.
Journalist: ISIS attacking Syrian position after American ?
President Assad: Less than one hour, in less than one hour, ISIS attacked those hills. It means that ISIS gathered their forces to attack those hills. How did ISIS know that the Americans would attack that Syrian position? It means they were ready, they were prepared. This is an explicit and stark proof that the Americans are supporting ISIS and using it as a card to change the balance according to their political agenda.
Journalist: And after that, America said sorry, huh?
President Assad: They said they regret, they didnt say sorry. [laughs]
Question 6: Mr. President, who is responsible for the attack on the Red Cross convoy near Aleppo, and what weapons were used for the destruction of the Red Cross convoy?
President Assad: Definitely the terrorist groups in Aleppo, because those are the ones who had an interest. When we announced the truce in Aleppo, they refused it. They said no, we dont want a truce. They refused to have any convoys coming to eastern Aleppo, and that was public, its not our propaganda, its not our announcement, they announced it. And there was a demonstration by those militants to refuse that convoy. So, they have interest in attacking that convoy, we dont have. It wasnt in an area where you have Syrian troops, and at the same time there were no Syrian or Russian airplanes flying in that area anyway. But it was used as part of the propaganda, as part of the narrative against Syria in the West; that we attacked this humanitarian convoy, because the whole war now in Syria, according to the Western propaganda, is taking the shape of humanitarian war. This is the Western mask now; they wanted to use the humanitarian mask in order to have an excuse to intervene more in Syria, and when I say intervene it means militarily or by supporting the terrorists.
Journalist: This is like the situation in former Yugoslavia, in the war in Yugoslavia, also in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the war in Kosovo, humanitarian problems.
President Assad: Its a different era, maybe, a different shape, but the same core, what happened in your country, and whats happening now in our country.
Question 7: And the Western propaganda spoke about the problem of using the chemical weapons and the barrel bombs.
President Assad: The same, to show that you have a black-and-white picture; very very bad guy against very very good guy. Its like the narrative of George W. Bush during the war on Iraq and on Afghanistan. So, they wanted to use those headlines or those terms in their narrative in order to provoke the emotions of the public opinion in their countries. This is where the public opinion would support them if they wanted to interfere, either directly through military attacks, or through supporting their proxies that are the terrorists in our region.
Question 8: I see the news in the last days, the Amnesty International condemned a terrorist group for using the chlorine, the chemical weapons in Aleppo.
President Assad: In Aleppo, exactly, that happened a few days ago, and actually, regardless of these chemical attacks, we announced yesterday that the terrorists killed during the last three days more than 80 innocent civilians in Aleppo, and wounded more than 300. You dont read anything about them in the Western mainstream media. You dont see it, you dont hear about it, theres nothing about them. They only single out some pictures and some incidents in the area under the control of the terrorists just to use them for their political agenda in order to condemn and to blame the Syrian government, not because they are worried about the Syrians; they dont care about our children, or about innocents, and about civilization, about infrastructure. They dont care about it; they are destroying it. But actually, they only care about using everything that would serve their vested interests.
Question 9: And now, your army you are the supreme commander of Syrian military forces. Your army now has not any chemical weapons?
President Assad: No, we dont. Since 2013, we gave up our arsenals. Now, no we dont have. But before that, we have never used it. I mean, when you talk about chemical weapons used by the government, it means you are talking about thousands of casualties in one place in a very short time. We never had this kind of incidents; just allegations in the Western media.
Question 10: Mr. President, when do you think the Syrian war will end?
President Assad: When? I always say less than one year is enough for you to solve your internal problem, because it is not very complicated internally. Its becoming more complex only when you have more interfering by foreign powers. When those foreign powers leave Syria alone, we can solve it as Syrians in a few months, in less than one year. Thats very simple, we can, but providing that theres no outside interference. Of course, that looks not realistic, because everybody knows that the United States wanted to undermine the position of Russia as a great power in the world, including in Syria. Saudi Arabia has been looking how to destroy Iran for years now, and Syria could be one of the places where they can achieve that, according to their way of thinking. But if we say that we could achieve that situation where all those foreign powers leave Syria alone, we dont have a problem in solving our problem.
How? First of all, by stopping the support of the terrorists by external countries like the regional ones like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and by the West, of course, mainly the United States. When you stop supporting terrorists in Syria, it wont be difficult at all to solve our problem.
Question 11: Mr. President, is it true that Syria is the last socialistic country in the Arab world?
President Assad: Today, yes. I dont know about the future, how is it going to be. We are socialist, but of course not the closed type.
Journalist: Humane socialism, because your government is supporting the education with the subvention, like the Swedish-type socialism.
President Assad: I dont know a lot about the Swedish-type, but lets say that in Syria, we have an open economy, but at the same time we have a strong public sector, and that public sector played a very important role in the resilience of the Syrian society and the government during the war. Without that public sector, the situation would have been much more difficult. So, were still socialist, and I think the war proved that the socialism system is very important for any country, taking into consideration that Im talking about the open socialism, that could allow the freedom of the public sector to play a vital role in building the country.
Question 12: And your big companies this is the state companies or private companies?
President Assad: We have both. But usually in such a situation, the public sector always plays the most important part. As you know, the private sector could feel the danger more and could suffer more and in some areas could quit the whole arena, the economic arena, because of the insecurity. So, thats why you have to depend in such a situation more on the public sector, but still the private sector in Syria plays a very important part beside the public.
Question 13: And you have very very tolerance atmosphere with other churches, Christians, Muslims, and
President Assad: Its not tolerance, actually; they are part of this society. Without all different colors of the society Christians, Muslims, and the different sects and ethnicities you wont have Syria. So, every Syrian citizen should feel fully free in practicing his rituals, his traditions, his beliefs. He should be free in order to have a stable country. Otherwise you wont have Syria as a stable country. But I wouldnt call it tolerance. Tolerance means like we accept something against our will; no, Muslims and Christians lived together for centuries in Syria, and they integrate in their life on daily basis, they dont live in ghettos.
Question 14: No separate schools for Muslims, for Christians, young people, no?
President Assad: No, no. You have some schools that belong to the church, but they are full of Muslims and vice versa. So, you dont have, no. We dont allow any segregation of religions and ethnicities in Syria, that would be very dangerous, but naturally, without the interference of the government, people would like to live with each other in every school, in every place, in every NGO, in the government, that is the natural Thats why Syria is secular by nature, not by the government. The Syrian society has been secular throughout history.
Question 15: And, Mr. President, its been one year since Russian air forces took part in the Syrian war, how much has Russia helped you?
President Assad: Lets talk about the reality. Before the Russian interference, ISIS was expanding, as I said. When they started interfering, ISIS and al-Nusra and the other Al Qaeda affiliated groups started shrinking. So, this is the reality. Why? Of course, because its a great power and they have great army and they have great firepower that could support the Syrian Army in its war. The other side of the same story is that when a great country, a great power, like Russia, intervene against the terrorists, in coordination with the troops on the ground, and in our case, its the Syrian Army, of course youre going to achieve concrete results, while if you talk about the American alliance, which is not serious anyway, but at the same time they dont have allies on the ground, they cannot achieve anything. So, the Russian power was very important beside their political weight on the international arena, in both ways they could change the situation, and they were very important for Syria in defeating the terrorists in different areas on the Syrian arena or battlefield.
Question 16: Is the Syrian society divided by the war today?
President Assad: Actually, its more homogenous than before the war. That could be surprising for many observers because the war is a very deep and important lesson for every Syrian. Many Syrians before the war didnt tell the difference between being fanatic and being extremist, between being extremist and being terrorist. Those borders werent clear for many, because of the war, because of the destruction, because of the heavy price that affected every Syrian, many Syrians learned the lesson and now they know that the only way to protect the country and to preserve the country is to be homogenous, to live with each other, to integrate, to accept, to love each other. Thats why I think the effect of the war, in spite of all the bad aspects of any war like this war, but this aspect was positive for the Syrian society. So, Im not worried about the structure of the Syrian society after the war. I think its going to be healthier.
Question 17: And a question about the American presidential elections; who would you like to win in USA presidential elections, Trump or Hillary?
President Assad: I think in most of the world, the debate about this election is whos better, Clinton is better or Trump. In Syria, the discussion is whos worse, not whos better. So, no one of them, I think, would be good for us, lets say, this is first. Second, from our experience with the American officials and politicians in general, dont take them at their word, theyre not honest. Whatever they say, dont believe them. If they say good word or bad word, if they were very aggressive or very peaceful, dont believe them. It depends on the lobbies, on the influence of different political movements in their country, after the election thats what is going to define their policy at that time. So, we dont have to waste our time listening to their rhetoric now. Its just rubbish. Wait for their policies and see, but we dont see any good signs that the United States is going to change dramatically its policy toward whats happening in the world, lets say, to be fair, or to obey the international law, or to care about the United Nations Charter. Theres no sign that we are going to see that in the near future. So, its not about whos going to be President; the difference will be very minimal, each one of them is going to be allowed to leave his own fingerprint, just personal fingerprint, but doesnt mean change of policies. Thats why we dont pin our hopes, we dont waste our time with it.
Question 18: Mr. President, the last question: The relation between Serbia and Syria, do you have any message for people in Serbia?
President Assad: I think we didnt do what we have to do on both sides in order to make this relation in a better position, before the war. Of course, the war will leave its effects on the relation between every two countries, that would be understandable, but we have to plan for the next time because your country suffered from external aggression that led to the division of Yugoslavia and I think the people are still paying the price of that war. Second, the war in your country has been portrayed in the same way; as a humanitarian war where the West wanted to intervene in order to protect a certain community against the aggressors form the other community. So, many people in the world believe that story, the same in Syria; they use the same mask, the humanitarian mask.
Actually, the West doesnt care about your people, they dont care about our people, they dont care about anyone in this world, they only care about their own vested interest. So, I think we have the same lessons, may be a different area, we are talking about two decades difference, maybe different headlines, but actually the content is the same. Thats why I think we need to build more relations in every aspect; cultural, economy, politics, in order to strengthen our position, each country in his region.
Question 19: But Syrian government, you and Syrias state, supporting Serbia in the problem of the Kosovo?
President Assad: We did, we did, although the Turks wanted to use their influence for Kosovo, in Kosovos favor, but we refused. That was before the war, that was seven or eight years ago, and we refused, in spite of the good relation with Turkey at that time. We supported Serbia.
Journalist: Mr. President, thank you for the interview, thank you for your time.
President Assad: Not at all. Thank you for coming to Damascus. | 1 |
With every car rental transaction comes the slightly uncomfortable moment when the agent behind the counter tries to foist the company’s insurance on you. When this happened to me at Hertz at the Hilo International Airport in Hawaii a few weeks ago, I did what I always do: I firmly and politely said no, thank you. It’s been ingrained in me that buying into the rental company’s insurance is a waste of money. In my case, it would have nearly doubled the price of my rental. I have personal auto insurance and was vaguely confident the credit card I used to rent the car, a Chase Sapphire Preferred card, offered some kind of coverage. Besides, I thought, nothing had ever gone wrong. And then something went wrong. One minute I was on my way to an afternoon tasting on a Kona coffee farm, the next I was on a rocky shoulder with two flat tires in an area with no cellphone service and few houses, trying to find some way to call for help. In the ensuing hours and days, I learned some valuable lessons about what happens when you damage your rental car. Of the umbrella of insurances Hertz tries to sell you, the one you need to pay attention to is the loss damage waiver, which covers damage to the vehicle. If you don’t buy it through Hertz, it doesn’t matter if you were saving orphans from a burning building — if any part of the car is damaged, you are responsible, regardless of how it happened. In my case, two flat tires was a “ ” incident that involved no other drivers. No matter: I was on the hook. Hertz would demand remuneration, be it out of my pocket or through personal auto, credit card or other insurance. Before you rent, find out what your card and personal auto insurance offer, and then supplement what they don’t through the rental agency. If you have personal car insurance with comprehensive and liability, it most likely will cover your rental car. Call your insurance company to verify. Filing a hefty claim with your insurance, keep in mind, will probably raise your premium. Credit card rental car insurance can be primary or secondary. Primary means it’s a first line of defense. Secondary means it’s, well, secondary. “Many people incorrectly assume that all credit card rental protection is the same,” said Mark Orlowski, Marketplace Morning Report travel contributor. “If it’s secondary coverage, you’ll be forced to involve your primary personal auto insurance company and file a claim before you can get anything from your credit card company. ” The coverage offered by my Chase Sapphire Preferred card is primary, and offers reimbursement up to the value of the car if the car is damaged or stolen. It does not cover personal liability — that is, if you or someone else gets hurt. Some cards, like the American Express Platinum Card, offer limited personal liability. Car rental companies offer supplemental liability insurance, typically increasing the coverage amount to $1 million. Do you need that much coverage? Probably not. Are there times when it makes sense? Sure, especially if you have a high deductible. Instead of using Hertz roadside assistance to tow my car (which would have cost hundreds of dollars) I used my own AAA Plus membership, which provides up to four free tows per year, up to 100 miles each. The AAA Plus membership has other benefits too, like flat tire service — provided you have only one flat tire. In my case, with two flat tires, they would only tow my car. Note that this applies within the 50 states — overseas it becomes trickier. There are international auto clubs, some of which offer reciprocal services. When I got back to Hertz, I filled out an incident report, signed off on a vehicle inspection form that noted two tires were damaged, and paid $148 for the two tires right at the desk. I returned home, smarting from the additional cost but happy little else was damaged but my pride. Then, nine days after the incident, I received an email with a lengthy attachment from a collections specialist at Hertz informing me that, upon further review, two wheels on my rental were scraped and needed to be replaced. The bill? $1, 475. 88. (Weeks later, I still haven’t resolved this.) In the event your credit card claim is denied, you may find yourself calling your personal insurance provider months after the fact. And when that happens, they’ll probably ask why you didn’t call them sooner to report the incident. Even though I was using my credit card as primary insurance, I called Geico to let them know what happened with my rental. They then filed their own report without starting an actual claim. That way, I will have the option of opening a claim later in the event the credit card insurance doesn’t come through. Word of warning: Don’t call your insurance company with hypotheticals like “Hey, what if, say, my tires blew out on a rental car and I wasn’t sure if I should report it to you?” They’ve already started a report before you even finished the sentence. I was directed by Chase to a site, eclaimsline. com, to file my claim. Upon filing, you’ll need copies of things you didn’t even know existed, let alone were in your possession. You’ll occasionally get the feeling that benefits administrators are making you jump through hoops to wear you down, knowing that many people will give up on their claims if the process is difficult enough. Some of these items can be comically difficult, or impossible, to obtain. I was bounced around for hours on the phone before getting my “proof of service” from AAA. Itemizations can also be tricky: Card Benefit Services told me they required an “itemization” — not just a bill, or receipt — for the $148 I paid for the two tires. When I wrote to the specialist at Hertz asking for this itemization, she informed me that such a thing did not exist. You shouldn’t only take pictures in the event of an accident: It never hurts to get before and after pictures as I did. Mr. Orlowski, the Marketplace Morning Report contributor, referring to his own experience, said doing that “saved me many hours of headache when Avis billed me $518 six months after the rental was over for a sized hole in the front bumper. I sent them the photo I had taken showing the bumper damage at pickup and the issue was quickly resolved. ” When you rent a car through Hertz, you are, whether you like it or not, agreeing to private arbitration in the event of a dispute — an arbitration process that, among other things, does not allow for meaningful appeals and is heavily weighted in favor of the corporation. With Hertz, the arbitration provision is buried deep in the fourth page of the rental agreement. Fortunately, you can opt out of forced arbitration with Hertz if you email them within 30 days of renting, saying you reject the provision. | 1 |
Tuesday on his radio show, Mark Levin said it was time for President Donald Trump to “build the damn wall” on the U. S. border, even if that meant the Republicans had to go up against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( ). Levin said, “The president is having a tough time with Congress, a Republican Congress. I want you to listen to me. There’s no excuse for this. There’s no excuse for it whatsoever. There is no excuse for what Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are doing or not doing. There’s no excuse for the fact that the President doesn’t yank them into the Oval Office and read the riot act. I’m not talking about infrastructure, which they will all support. I’m not talking about Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer trade deals, which they will all support. I am talking about the budget. I’m talking about the priorities he ran on and the priorities that matter to us. Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, their predecessors and their successors do not have permanent control of the treasury of the United States to reward their favorite constituent groups and donors and redistribute wealth. ” Levin continued, “And the only way to address this is the way that was addressed during the presidency of President Ronald Reagan. And yes, be prepared to have a showdown. Be prepared to have a showdown and the competencies and the articulation as a Republican party that controls all that damn elected branches in Washington D. C. Time to make that case to the American people. That it is the despicable snake oil salesman Chuck Schumer and the despicable failure Nancy Pelosi who are destroying this economy, who are driving up the debt. And we have a president who wants to do something about both. We have a president who was elected to fund border security. It was always preposterous when he said that Mexico was going to do it. And I told you that. And I don’t care about that. Build the damn wall. You got the House. You got the Senate. You got the presidency. You got the bureaucracy. The art of the deal, screw the art of the deal. It should be the art of victory. The art of victory. It’s time to roll Schumer. It’s time the roll that Democrats. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
For 15 months, even as Donald J. Trump vacillated on many other issues, he stuck to a simple, position on immigration: If elected president, he would form a “deportation force,” round up people who are in the United States illegally and send them back where they came from. Yet even that promise, so central to his appeal to conservatives, now appears open to negotiation. Mr. Trump faced anger, confusion and disgust from across the political spectrum on Thursday after indicating that he was open to letting some undocumented immigrants remain in the country legally provided that they paid “back taxes. ” The comments, made at a event broadcast the night before on Fox News, were strikingly similar to the views of former Gov. Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, fellow Republicans whom Mr. Trump vanquished in the primaries with slashing attacks that they were soft on immigration. His newest formulation also bore a close resemblance to President Obama’s approach to an immigration overhaul, which similarly calls for paying taxes as part of a program to live legally in the United States. For Mr. Trump, the new, more tempered talk on immigration could help convince some voters, particularly whites, that he has more compassion for Hispanics and other minorities than his harsher earlier positions would suggest. “He finally figured out that you can’t win a national election with just white voters,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who worked for Mr. Rubio’s campaign. But whatever the possible gains, Mr. Trump risks offending millions of conservatives who were drawn to his as an unwavering opponent of illegal immigration. He vowed to build a wall on the Mexican border, called Mexicans “rapists” in his kickoff speech and said every immigrant in the country illegally would be detained and forced out. “If Trump should pivot on immigration or try to redefine amnesty, he will begin to lose support from his original core base,” warned Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, one of the most conservative voices on immigration in the House. In the Fox News interview, Mr. Trump appeared to suggest that he would be open to some kind of path to legal status, if not citizenship, for undocumented immigrants. “No citizenship,” Mr. Trump said. “They’ll pay back taxes. They have to pay taxes,” he added. “There’s no amnesty, but we will work with them. ” Mr. Trump said that while his supporters wanted to “get the bad ones out,” he also had heard from voters. “They’ve said, ‘Mr. Trump, I love you, but to take a person that has been here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and the family out, it’s so tough, Mr. Trump,’” he said. Several times, Mr. Trump turned to the audience in what he told his host, Sean Hannity, was “like a poll. ” “No. 1, we’ll say throw out. No. 2, we work with them,” Mr. Trump said. Liberals who support an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws expressed horror at the spectacle of polling the audience for responses on deportations. “It’s not a small issue. It’s 11 million people,” said Angie Kelley, the executive director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “He’s reducing a serious policy discussion to a vote and cheering the loudest for your team. It’s insulting. It’s dangerous. It’s unprecedented. ” Mr. Trump has frequently dangled vague phrases suggestive of policy shifts, only to accuse the news media of having wrongly interpreted them. His remarks in the Fox News town hall were no exception: Aides insisted afterward that there had been no change in his position. On Thursday, Mr. Trump reverted to his more severe language on the subject, departing from his prepared text at a rally in New Hampshire to again promise a border wall — a line he has said he uses when he senses his audience losing energy. And in an interview on CNN taped Thursday, Mr. Trump, pressed to clarify his intentions, only muddled them, insisting he was not endorsing a path for immigrants to live legally in the United States unless they left the country first. Republicans, regardless of their views on immigration, seized on Mr. Trump’s newest pronouncements on the subject as evidence of worrisome confusion or worse. Mr. Bush, in a radio interview, called Mr. Trump’s shifting speech “abhorrent” and baffling. “I don’t know what to believe about a guy who doesn’t believe in things,” Mr. Bush said on WABC. Among immigration Ann Coulter, a conservative author — who is promoting a new book titled “In Trump We Trust” — seemed almost apoplectic during Mr. Trump’s event on Fox News. In her book, Ms. Coulter writes that the only unforgivable sin Mr. Trump could commit would be to shift on immigration. Watching on Wednesday night as Mr. Trump appeared to do just that, Ms. Coulter erupted in a series of Twitter messages: “It’s not ‘amnesty.’ It’s ‘comprehensive immigration reform’! !!! Trump: ‘they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty,’” she wrote in one post. A Trump spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, insisted on CNN that Mr. Trump was merely changing the “words” he was using, not the proposals themselves. Democrats and advocates, in fact, made the same point. “Details matter, and we have seen no actual policy shift to date,” said Todd Schulte, the president of FWD. us, an immigration overhaul group backed by the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that has been sharply critical of Mr. Trump. Several Republican strategists said Mr. Trump had waited too long to try to woo nonwhite voters, if that was his aim. But Mr. Ayres, the pollster, suggested that Mr. Trump could gain ground with white Republican moderates repelled by the idea of voting for someone who is often accused of running a racist campaign — or, given his statements questioning the impartiality of a federal judge who is of being a racist himself. Still, some Republicans privately questioned why, instead of shifting the discussion of immigration to economic concerns, which polls show is a dominant issue in the election, Mr. Trump has continued to draw attention to his detractors’ claims that he is a bigot. “When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument: ‘You’re racist. You’re racist. You’re racist,’” Mr. Trump said in his New Hampshire speech on Thursday. “They keep saying it: ‘You’re racist.’ It’s a tired, disgusting argument, and it’s so totally predictable. ” Mr. Trump has struggled to hit on a successful message on immigration for the November election, in which he will face voters far less receptive to his uncompromising proposals than those in the primary season. A poll by the Pew Research Center, conducted Aug. 9 through 16, found that while 91 percent of strong Trump supporters advocate building the wall, 61 percent of Americans are against it. Mr. Trump’s aides have said he will give a speech on immigration next week in Arizona — an address originally set for this week but delayed as he grappled with precisely what he would say. Mr. Trump’s suggestion that he would deport only “the bad ones” while letting undocumented immigrants stay is quite similar to the approach announced by Mr. Obama in November 2014, when he directed the Department of Homeland Security to prioritize its immigration enforcement on violent criminals and people who have crossed the border illegally multiple times. His statement about payment of “back taxes” is also very similar to the president’s “deferred action” proposals, which would have required millions of immigrants in the country illegally to pay taxes, among other things, in exchange for legal protections. At the White House, officials who have spent years trying to find ways to overhaul the nation’s immigration system declined to be drawn into an examination of Mr. Trump’s latest comments. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Thursday that the challenge for American voters as they considered the immigration positions of the two presidential candidates “is to listen carefully to the promises, agenda and priorities, as articulated by the two candidates. ” Mr. Earnest declined to say which of Mr. Trump’s immigration positions he believed voters should consider. “That’s what makes that question more difficult than it otherwise would be,” Mr. Earnest said. | 1 |
Hafiz Saeed and Geelani to dress up as mime artists on Ravish Kumar’s show in solidarity with NDTV Posted on Tweet
Notwithstanding the I&B ministry’s decision to stay its decision to black out NDTV for a day for revealing sensitive information during counter-terror operations in Pathankot (and Kargil and 26/11), fans of NDTV continue to emerge in support of the channel.
Following journalist Ravish Kumar creative show featuring mime artists, presumably representing a silent protest against the government’s decision, NDTV found two unlikely but perhaps not so unlikely allies in Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Hafiz Saeed. The separatist and the terrorist have announced their decision to participate in Ravish Kumar’s show as mime artists.
“Nobody has done more for the Kashmir freedom struggle than Barkha Dutt ji,” raved Geelani to our correspondent. “I know that I am recognized as the leader of Kashmiri freedom, but truth be told, my commitment to the cause pales in comparison to Barkha ji’s. She used her brilliance and blamed terrorism in the valley on the rise of hindutva in India! She has highlighted a plan of blaming the burning of schools on Diwali crackers. She is a true Kashmiri patriot. Just as Jinnah is the Father of the Nation in Pakistan, we hope to make Barkha ji the Mother of the Nation when we’ll get our freedom. The least I can do is show solidarity with NDTV. I will dress as a mime artist on Ravish’s next show,” said Geelani before excusing himself to practice miming for the show.
Hafiz Saeed was harder to track down. But our stringers in Pakistan reported that the 26/11 mastermind had been inconsolable ever since the government announced its decision to ban NDTV for a day and had spent an entire day binge watching ‘The Buck Stops Here’ with teary eyes. When the tears dried up, he sprang to his feet, yelled “Yeh sab RAW ne kiya hai!” and decided to join the battle for Freedom Of Expression by joining Ravish’s show as a mime artist.
In other news, Arun Jaitley was spotted creating several Bot accounts on Twitter and retweeting Barkha Dutt’s tweets.
(Reported by Citizen Satirist Natasha ) | 0 |
“Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it.” Comment on this Article Via Your Facebook Account Comment on this Article Via Your Disqus Account Follow Us on Facebook! | 0 |
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has reached a financial accomplishment that no other GOP candidate has before.
He has amassed the largest small-donor fundraising pack that has ever been seen in the Republican Party.
Zac Moffatt, an online fundraising expert, said that only those most committed to the candidate will typically donate.
Related Stories Newt Gingrich Defends Donald Trump Against ‘Sexual Predator’ Accusations Donald Trump’s Star On Hollywood Walk Of Fame Vandalized Independent Voters Push Trump To The Front In Florida And Ohio “The people who donate are your core believers,” said Moffatt, who was digital director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign.
Romney and Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, each raised more overall in their respective campaigns than Trump has in total contributions.
However, Trump’s campaign has topped both of the former nominees in small individual contributions, defined as $200 or less.
In this category, Trump has raised more than $78.6 million thus far, based on data from the Federal Election Commission.
In comparison, McCain raised $65.5 million and Romney raised $44.8 million by this point in their election races.
While McCain and Romney had significant income contributions from other sources, Trump’s small-donor income makes up 58 percent of his overall funds.
According to OpenSecrets.org, small donations are a key category because for those below $200 mark the campaigns aren’t legally required to register personal information on the donor, whereas if the donation exceeds $200 the campaign must give the donor’s name, occupation, employer and ZIP code.
Trending Stories Frustrated With Media Bias, Trump Campaign Takes Its Case Directly To Voters With Nightly Show On Facebook Independent Voters Push Trump To The Front In Florida And Ohio RNC Official Takes CNN Host To Task For Claiming There Is No Media Bias “You could make an argument that he is the best candidate to refresh the RNC’s online fundraising database because of the different kind of donor that he’s gotten,” said Vincent Harris, a GOP digital strategist who did private digital work for Trump’s campaign.
As of Oct. 19, the Trump campaign ceased all events meant to raise money for the party’s get-out-the-vote effort, electing instead to have Trump focus on getting across his final message to voters.
“We’ve kind of wound down,” said Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s national finance chairman. “But the online fundraising continues to be strong.”
“We have minimized his fundraising schedule over the last month to emphasize his focus on political [events],” Mnuchin continued. “Unlike [Democratic nominee] Hillary [Clinton], who has been fundraising and not out and about, he has constantly been out and about.”
This decision has been questioned by some given that Clinton’s campaign has raised $445.4 million, according to OpenSecrets, which is $226.6 million more than the $218.8 million Trump has raised.
Clinton has 41 events lined up before Nov. 4.
What do you think? | 0 |
The European Union on Tuesday ordered Ireland to collect $14. 5 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple, a record penalty that worsened tensions with the United States over the bloc’s crackdown on sweetheart deals with global multinationals. Europe’s competition enforcer said that Apple’s illegal deals with the Irish government allowed the technology giant to pay virtually nothing on its European business in some years. The arrangements enabled Apple to funnel profit from two Irish subsidiaries to a “head office” with “no employees, no premises, no real activities,” the commission said. By doing so, Apple paid only 50 euros in taxes for every million euros in profit during 2014. As part of its ruling, Europe demanded that Ireland recoup 10 years’ worth of back taxes, some 13 billion euros, or about $14. 5 billion, plus interest. The amount is a drop in the bucket for Apple, which has a total cash pile of more than $230 billion. Even so, the company described the order as a “devastating blow” to the rule of law. The United States Treasury Department said it jeopardized “the important spirit of economic partnership between the U. S. and the E. U. ” Since taking over as competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has made tax avoidance a central focus, a campaign that has also ensnared Starbucks in the Netherlands, Amazon in Luxembourg and InBev in Belgium. The United States Treasury, one of the most vocal critics of these moves, has said that Europe is overstepping its power, unfairly targeting American companies and hurting global efforts to curtail tax avoidance. The United States government is an unlikely advocate. Politicians have berated Apple for paying too little by setting up complex and opaque tax structures. Officials have hit back against corporate mergers that allowed companies to move their headquarters to places like Ireland to take advantage of lower tax rates. But the positioning in the Apple case reflects a political tug of war over big profitable companies, their potential tax bounty and the rights to regulate them. “U. S. companies are the grandmasters of tax avoidance,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, professor at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California and a former chief of staff to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. “Nevertheless, because of the nature of U. S. politics,” he said, the Apple case “will be framed by the U. S. as Europe overreaching and discriminating against ‘our team. ’” Since early this year, Ms. Vestager and Jacob J. Lew, the United States Treasury secretary, and their teams have met regularly to discuss Europe’s tax investigations. Mr. Lew visited Brussels in July to put forward the American perspective. Last week, the Treasury Department released a report criticizing any moves to recoup back taxes from American companies. Politicians also chimed in after the Apple decision. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, called it a “cheap money grab” by the European Commission, “targeting U. S. businesses and the U. S. tax base. ” The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Orrin G. Hatch, said that the decision “encroaches on U. S. tax jurisdiction. ” Apple and Ireland had similar defenses. Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of the technology company, said that Europe’s ruling had “no basis in fact or in law,” and called it an effort to “rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process. ” The company called the effective tax rate “a completely number. ” The Finance Ministry of Ireland said that the commission’s decision would undermine a continuing global tax overhaul and create business uncertainty. The ministry said that taxes were a “fundamental matter of sovereignty. ” Ireland and Apple both said they intended to fight Europe’s decision, even though any appeals process could take years. The commission said the amount due in Ireland could be reduced if the American authorities decided that Apple should have paid more tax in the United States. Other countries in the European Union could also potentially take a share. “The ultimate goal should of course be that all companies, big or small, pay tax where they generate their profits,” the competition commissioner, Ms. Vestager, said at a news conference in Brussels on Tuesday. “We need a change in corporate philosophies and the right legislation to address loopholes and ensure transparency. ” Although the United States appears to side with Apple and Ireland in this specific fight, the overall view is a bit more complicated. A United States Senate committee said in 2013 that Apple had negotiated a special corporate tax rate of 2 percent or less in Ireland. While the committee did not accuse Apple of breaking any laws, lawmakers criticized the “gimmicks,” “schemes” and complex corporate structures that allowed the company to sidestep taxes. The public scrutiny and the emergence of previously confidential information about Apple’s tax arrangements, in part, helped spark Europe’s own investigation into the issue. Apple and other companies have also faced criticism for keeping large reserves of cash overseas. The money is not taxed at home until it is brought back to the parent company in the United States. Nonfinancial American companies hold a combined $1. 7 trillion in cash overseas, according to the credit rating agency Moody’s. Just the international piece of Apple’s stash amounts to nearly $215 billion. Ireland has faced broad scrutiny for its tax appeal. In a matter separate from the Apple case, the United States Treasury has taken aggressive steps to curtail inversions, a tax move that has significantly benefited Ireland. Under those merger deals, an American company would buy an overseas counterpart and shift its headquarters overseas to lower its taxes. Ireland, with its low corporate tax rate, has been an especially big winner with inversions. Such financial maneuvers helped plump up the country’s economy, which grew at a breakneck 26. 3 percent last year. Ireland’s corporate tax rate, at 12. 5 percent, is one of the lowest in the developed world. Other incentives and breaks allow companies to cut their bills even further. While it is phasing out some of the more contested loopholes, Ireland has just introduced a new break for profit on intellectual property, a potentially huge benefit to large technology companies with troves of patents. “Many member states are not unhappy about the European Commission’s investigations,” said Philipp Werner, a competition lawyer at Jones Day in Brussels. “They may help to close down tax havens. ” | 1 |
November 7, 2016
‘We must have sent him four emails asking for a review, but he just ignored them,’ said an Amazon spokesman today. ‘He hadn’t marked the product as a gift, so there was no reason to not provide a review,’ he added.
Judge Roberts commented when sentencing Billy Askew (24) from Winsford to three months in gaol that: ‘it was every on-line shopper’s civic duty to provide a review, even if it’s clearly horseshit’. Billy was clearly shaken by the sentence: ‘it was just a set of toe-nail clippers,’ he pointed out as he was escorted from the dock. ‘They cut my toe-nails, what more is there to say?’ he asked, narrowly avoiding having his fingers trapped in the cell door.
The Amazon spokesman defended referring Billy to the authorities: ‘Everybody provides reviews these days, even HMRC gave our tax return a review. One star, a bit harsh,’ he added, while confirming that if Billy had been an Amazon Prime member. ‘We’d probably have written the review for him’.
Billy has clearly seen the error of his ways, as he posted a review of his cell on TripAdvisor. ‘Smaller than advertised, has an all pervading smell of wee and can you believe it – no spare keys!’ Share this story...
Posted: Nov 7th, 2016 by throngsman Click for more article by throngsman .. More Stories about: From The Archives 0 | 0 |
Biological dentistry - Solving disease symptoms holistically
Thursday, October 27, 2016 by: Jonathan Landsman Tags: biological dentistry , mercury amalgam , Griffin Cole (NaturalNews) When it comes to repairing cavities, amalgam - or "silver" - fillings have been the method of choice for most conventionally-trained dentists, accounting for 75 to 80 percent of all fillings. The problem is: amalgam fillings contain mercury - one of the most toxic substances on the planet. Of course, the American Dental Association (ADA) continues to insist mercury fillings are "safe," – even as biological dentistry warns the public about its link to neurological problems, cardiovascular disease and birth defects.Fortunately, non-toxic alternatives - such as those utilized by Dr. Griffin Cole, a leading expert in biological dentistry - do exist. Discover the healing benefits of biological dentistry and how to REVERSE disease symptoms naturally . On the next NaturalNews Talk Hour, Jonathan and Griffin Cole, DDS, NMD will explore the link between poor oral health and chronic disease. Find out how mercury-based fillings, root canal treated teeth, cavitations - plus much more - can threaten your health! To hear this FREE show – visit http://www.naturalhealth365.com/free-shows and enter your email address for show details plus some great gifts! Biological dentistry offers a solution to outdated and dangerous dental procedures Dr. Cole points out that the dangers are mercury are so acute that certain products - such as thermometers and mercurochrome – have been completely redesigned to rid them of the heavy metal. Yet dentists across the nation continue to use mercury fillings for their patients - on a daily basis. Although the ADA insists combining mercury with other metals in the fillings renders it 'harmless,' Dr. Cole maintains that this is not true - mercury heats up on contact with warm foods and beverages in the mouth, releasing vapors which are then inhaled by the lungs.An increasing number of dentists bill themselves as "mercury-free" and "mercury-safe." Although both oppose the use of mercury, they are not interchangeable. While mercury-free dentists choose not to use mercury-containing amalgams under any circumstances, mercury-safe dentists go a step farther - they are trained to remove existing mercury amalgams by using a specialized protocol advised by the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology.This mercury removal protocol is designed to protect patients, staff and the environment; involves the use of specialized tools, as well as precautions to ensure that mercury doesn't end up in wastewater.Join us for the next NaturalNews Talk Hour and discover what you need to know BEFORE your next visit to the dentist. To hear this FREE show – visit http://www.naturalhealth365.com/free-shows and enter your email address for show details plus some great gifts! Safe, chemical-free ozone destroys disease-producing bacteria and inflammation Non-toxic composites aren't the only advancement in biological and holistic dentistry . Ozone therapy is gaining ground as a natural, chemical-free way of attacking infections, gum disease and other health-threatening dental problems.Gum disease, also called periodontal disease, affects a shocking 50 percent of all Americans. (many experts say that number is much higher) It not only affects the stability of teeth, but can lead to a chronic inflammatory state that depletes the body's store of antioxidants and increases the risk of diabetes and heart problems. In fact, scientists have found that the bacteria responsible for gum disease , Streptococcus sanguis, can move through the bloodstream to the heart, causing inflammation and setting the stage for heart disease and stroke.By the way, antibiotics have little effect, Cole reports, as bacteria have shown they are able to mutate and quickly become resistant.In addition, traditionally-performed root canals create their share of infections, as well. According to Dr. Cole, conventional root canals fail because the dentinal tubules can't be effectively cleaned, causing ongoing infection beneath the surface - even after tooth has been restored and looks intact.Join us for a great show about how Dr. Cole uses ozone therapy to kill infections plus many other ways to properly take care of your oral health to avoid disease. This week's guest : Griffin Cole, DDS, NMD – a leading expert in biological dentistry and natural medicine Find out how biological dentistry can help YOU eliminate disease symptoms naturally - Sun. Oct. 30Griffin Cole, DDS, NMD earned his dental degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Dental School and has been practicing dentistry for over 20 years. Dr. Cole is a member of the American Dental Association, the Academy of General Dentistry, the Texas Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, the Integrative Biologic Dental Medicine Specialty (IBDM), and the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology – where Dr. Cole earned his fellowship and has served as President of this esteemed organization.In addition, Dr. Cole has Naturopathic Medical Doctor Board Certification, along with a degree in Integrative Biologic Dental Medicine. As the leader in mercury-safe dentistry, Dr. Cole participates in continuing education on a regular basis, and is well aware of new and improved technology and dental advancements which help him to provide his patients with the best, up-to-date techniques available. To hear this FREE show – visit http://www.naturalhealth365.com/free-shows and enter your email address for show details plus some great gifts! | 1 |
blob.jpg 640x352 66.1 KB | 0 |
BORDER FLOOD BEFORE VOTE… 275,000 Born to Illegals — In One Year; 7% OF ALL USA BIRTHS… Agent: Admin Treats Crossings ‘Like Traffic Ticket’ Tweet Spike In Immigrants Illegally Crossing Into US Ahead Of Election
There has been a surge of immigrants illegally crossing into the United States leading up to next month’s presidential election.
CBS News reports dozens of immigrants have been streaming through the streets of McAllen, Texas, on a daily basis. They have been taken to a migrant center at Sacred Heart Catholic Church where they were released by Border Patrol, with ankle monitors, while they file for asylum.
Moms in the United States illegally gave birth to 275,000 babies in 2014, enough birthright U.S. citizens to fill a city the size of Orlando, Florida, according to an analysis of data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
The data showed that newborns to illegals accounted for 7 percent of all births in 2014, according to the analysis from the Pew Research Center. Feds: 275,000 born to illegals in one year, would fill city the size of Orlando
“In 2014, about 275,000 babies were born to unauthorized-immigrant parents in the U.S., accounting for about 7 percent of all U.S. births, and 32 percent of all U.S. births to foreign-born mothers,” said Pew’s newly released report. Border Patrol Agent: Admin Treats Illegal Crossings ‘Like a Traffic Ticket’ Chris Cabrera says the administration is actively trying to ‘circumvent their own laws’
U.S. Border Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera said that the federal government is “trying to circumvent their own laws” by preventing the agents from securing the border and curbing illegal immigration during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
During an interview with CBS News Tuesday, Cabrera said the impending presidential election was one of the main causes of recent “mass spikes” in illegal crossings. Saying that the immigrants have been told that if Hillary Clinton is elected there will be “some sort of amnesty,” Cabrera added that they’ve been told if Donald Trump is elected, “there’s going to be some magical wall that pops up overnight and once that wall gets up, nobody will ever get in again.”
Cabrera told Ingraham the federal government is impeding the agents’ efforts to contain the rush on the border.
“And you know, we’re just doing what the law says and what our job is,” Cabrera told Ingraham. “Apparently, they’re trying to circumvent their own laws, and we just want to do our jobs the way we know how to do it and the way we were trained to do it.” | 0 |
Email
Global warming/climate change is one of the most potent agents of political and economic change in history. Its impact is like Atilla the Hun in modern times, who back in the day struck terror into the hearts of the Roman Empire.
As of recent, Europe has been inundated with refugees from Middle Eastern wars as well as refugees from ecosystem collapse all across the southern Mediterranean region. The refugee impact is felt far and wide, including Brexit and a concomitant rise of xenophobia throughout the West whilst altering politics towards antagonism, hatred, and malevolence. The world is turning mad, and madness turns to madman leaders, like Attila the Hun. In point of fact, world history is filled with examples of madmen leading countries, ultimately to demise. They prey upon foreign threats of change to lifestyle and work to motivate people. Climate change is providing plenty of material to work with by displacing millions.
Yet, the massive European immigrant problem of today is only a small taste of what the future holds as millions upon millions of people become climate refugees. It’s an open question whether politics turn evermore ugly hate-filled as the world boils over with too much heat, too much sea, too much desertification, too much drought, too much friction.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development committed to America’s first ever grant for climate refugees, allocating $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles in southeastern Louisiana out of total grants of $1 billion for 13 states to build levees, dams, and drainage systems to fight back against anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change.
Isle de Jean Charles is the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community of climate refugees. In the 1950s the isle was 11 miles long by 5 miles wide. Today, it is a quarter/mile wide by 2 miles long. The community must move to higher ground.
According to Marine Franck of the UN’s refugee agency, “One person is displaced every second by a natural disaster. The numbers are huge,” (Amy Lieberman, Where Will the Climate Refugees Go? Aljazeera, Dec. 22, 2015).
Climate refugees are becoming a worldwide phenomenon of epic proportions, e.g., 200,000 Bangladeshis become homeless every year due to erosion. Globally, “desertification—climate change-triggered degradation of land ecosystems—might, in a decade, create 50 million refugees, the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD), a global initiative led by 30 different research groups, warned in a new study….” (Avaneesh Pandey, Land Degradation, Desertification Might Create 50 Million Climate Refuges Within A Decade, International Business Times, Sept. 15, 2015).
The operative question is: Where will 50 million refugees go over the next 10 years? Will they roam the countryside, similar to bands of medieval wanderers that raided castle fortifications? Back in the day, they learned to scale walls, which only serve to entice outsiders, knowing something of value must be stored inside.
Rampant drought is believed to have played a role in Syria’s civil war. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims unprecedented drought in Syria between 2007-2010 triggered an exodus of 1.5 million farmers to cities in search of food and work, a contributing factor to the civil war as these restless able-bodied met a mean-spirited, heartless fate.
“Climatologists say Syria is a grim preview of what could be in store for the larger Middle East, the Mediterranean and other parts of the world… The Fertile Crescent—the birthplace of agriculture some 12,000 years ago— is drying out” (John Wendle, The Ominous Story of Syria’s Climate Refugees, Scientific American, Dec. 17, 2015). When interviewed, Syrian refugees in a Turkish camp spoke of the horrendous drought conditions that fueled social turmoil leading to civil war.
According to Dr. James Hansen (Columbia University), heat waves and drought conditions worldwide are more than three standard deviations outside of the norm, or looked at another way, 50 years ago such anomalies only covered 0.02% of land area. Now, because of global warming, the anomalies cover 10% or an increase of 50 times in 50 years. This exponential growth will ultimately serve to pressure massive movements of climate refugees, likely fostering pockets of war zones spreading like infectious diseases.
In China, which is now 20% desert, spreading at the rate of 1,300 square miles annually, three deserts are merging into one vast sea of sand. Recently, because of creeping desertification, the Chinese government relocated 30,000 people referred to as “ecological migrants,” (Josh Haner, et al, Living in China’s Expanding Deserts, New York Times, October 23, 2016).
In America, climate refugees are on the move, but they are not yet smack dab in the public eye. In Newtok, Alaska, the highest point in town, the school building, will be under water in 2017. Climate change is not just hotter temperatures for the residents of Alaska, it is happening under their feet as shoreline erosion is forcing the entire community to move inland. “In Alaska alone, climate change flooding and shoreline erosion already affects more than 180 villages,” (Victoria Herrmann, America’s Climate Refugee Crisis Has Already Begun, The LA Times, January 25, 2016).
In the years to come, thousands upon thousands from along America’s most fragile shorelines will embark on a great migration inland. In the Chesapeake Bay, Tangier Island’s shoreline recedes by 14 feet per year. On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Quinault Nation relies upon a 2,000-foot seawall to hold water until they move uphill. In North Carolina’s Outer Bank with its 50,000 permanent residents, portions of the island complex are down to 25% original width. Miami Beach is physically raising roadways because of persistent high water.
As it happens, America’s climate refugee problem is only starting, but it is very real and likely a political tinderbox as Americans register sourpuss displeasure with any kind of migrant behavior evidenced by support for political candidates like Donald Trump, who uses the hopelessness of the forlorn as political fodder, eerily similar to Attila the Hun’s rise to power. On a purely political basis, immigrant finger-pointing pays off in votes for candidates who offer solutions to the invasion of “others” that threaten constituent jobs and lifestyle.
Germany provides a window to how migrant issues influence politics. “A year after German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s doors to tens of thousands of refugees… she’s fighting for her political life. Her popularity has sunk to a five-year low. The far right is ascendant,” (Paul Hockenos, The Political Price of Merkel’s Migrant Policy, The Atlantic, Sept. 14, 2016).
Meanwhile, Austria militarized its borders.
People Up In Arms is how migrants are met at some foreign shores. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he will tour European capitals to recruit allies for his “war against Brussels” and the Union’s pro-migrant policies as “people in Brussels are ‘plotting to move and settle these aliens among us as soon as possible,” (Viktor Orbán’s Speech: War Against the World, Hungarian Spectrum.org, March 16, 2016).
“Where will 50 million climate refugees go over the next 10 years” is a fair question to ponder, but what if the scientists that predict rising seas and devastating droughts are too conservative, and what if global warming is already way ahead of the science, as some scientists believe true, will 200 or 500 million climate refugees seek shelter and food, or how about one billion?
The politics surrounding the climate refugee issues too often come to surface dressed in warriors’ garb. “When the Pentagon begins to think about what might happen, that’s a clear indication that we have to start taking something seriously,” is the forewarning mentioned in the award-winning documentary Climate Refugees (2010) ( watch the trailer here ).
Never before in American political history has an election carried as much weight for the prospects for the climate as the current presidential election in America. The issue of climate change front and center is a non-issue, a dead issue. However, Trump will reverse any and all progress made by the federal government, including disruption of the Paris Agreement of 2015, if at all possible. That message would be a devastating blow to worldwide efforts to control climate change.
Meanwhile, the climate refugee conundrum will turn very ugly much more quickly. | 1 |
Páginas Libres
Perú: Migraciones denunciada por violación de derechos humanos Socios | 27 de octubre de 2016 Migraciones denunciada por violación de derechos humanos Solicitamos: Disponer Investigación contra Funcionarios Públicos por delitos de Violación de Derechos Humanos y contra la Libertad Personal de mi Hija Menor de Edad
Señor Dr. PABLO SÁNCHEZ VELARDE
Fiscal de la Nación
JOANNA PACHWICEWICZ, de nacionalidad POLACA, con Pasaporte N° AU0731483, con residencia actual en 13 Olive Tree Court,1 Cranbrook Mews, E17 7EQ Londres, Reino Unido, en representación de mi hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ; fijando domicilio procesal en Casilla Nº 3891 del Ilustre Colegio de Abogados de Lima (Palacio de Justicia 4to. Piso); correo electrónico: [email protected] ; a Usted respetuosamente me presento y digo:
I. DENUNCIA Haciendo uso de nuestro derecho constitucional de petición y en conformidad con el Artículo 203° numeral 2) de la Constitución Política del Estado, acorde con el Artículo 66º numeral 1) de la Ley Orgánica del Ministerio Público, en su calidad de defensor de la legalidad y de los intereses públicos tutelados por el derecho, en conformidad con el Artículo III, Principio de Respeto a los Derechos Fundamentales y Artículo 8°, Reconocimiento de Derechos Fundamentales al Extranjero previsto en el Decreto Legislativo N° 1236, así como en el derogado Artículo 55° del Decreto Legislativo N° 703 -Ley de Extranjería- vigente en el momento que ocurrieron los hechos que violaron los derechos humanos y a la libertad de mi familia y especialmente la libertad personal de mi hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, que fue retenida ilegal y arbitrariamente en territorio peruano, sistemáticamente por funcionarios de la SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES DEL MINISTERIO DEL INTERIOR, durante aproximadamente once (11) meses, presumiblemente para favorecer por amistad al señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE padre de mi menor hija; así como, por funcionarios del Ministerio De la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables – MIMP, accionar doloso que deberá ser materia de investigación y que se circunscribe a la vulneración de su derecho fundamental a la libertad, por restringir su derecho a transitar por el territorio nacional, a salir y entrar en él, previsto en el Artículo 2º numeral 11) de la carta Magna, accionar delictivo previsto y sancionado por el Artículo 152º del Código Penal, en la modalidad de secuestro agravado por tratarse de una menor de edad: SOLICITAMOS se sirva disponer una investigación rigurosa de los hechos contra los funcionarios y personal de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones (SNM) y del Ministerio De la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables, que actuó como Autoridad Central para la aplicación de la CONVENCIÓN DE LA HAYA SOBRE LOS ASPECTOS CIVILES DE LA SUSTRACCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENORES DE 1980, que también están involucrados en la comisión de los presuntos delitos que afectaron la vida de mi menor hija de 11 años de edad, al haber actuado dolosamente por no haber verificado que el CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Nº 03898/2009/IN/1601, de mi hija AYMARA había sido modificado; y, que el ACTA DE AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES Nº 007176 de fecha 19 de Diciembre del 2007 otorgado por el Notario – Abogado CARLOS CABALLERO BURGOS no estaba fechada o visada por MIGRACIONES, es decir, con la fecha en que supuestamente salió del Perú, documentos que sirvieron de sustento al señor MERINO ALPISTE para solicitar la sustracción y/o la retención ilegal en aplicación del Convenio. Esta situación delictiva ha afectado nuestra salud física, mental y psicológica, actuar de los funcionarios al parecer con el premeditado propósito de favorecer al señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, haciendo tabla rasa del Convenio Internacional del cual el Perú es miembro ratificado desde 2001, que en toda su extensión establece como punto central es EL INTERÉS SUPERIOR DEL NIÑO, que fue grave y dolosamente vulnerado. Los funcionarios de MIGRACIONES, SIN JUSTIFICACIÓN ALGUNA, vulneraron flagrantemente nuestra condición de ciudadanas POLACAS y nuestra condición de TURISTAS, por ende, la Constitución Política del Estado y Leyes Especiales.
II. FUNDAMENTOS FÁCTICOS DE LA DENUNCIA II.1. SOBRE LA PARTICIPACIÓN DE LOS FUNCIONARIOS DE LA SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES – SNM
1. En España conocí al peruano LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE y producto de nuestras relaciones sentimentales el 28 de febrero de 2005 nació en Lima nuestra hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, que goza de doble nacionalidad (peruano – polaca) legalmente reconocida.
2. El 24 de Diciembre del 2007, con el consentimiento de LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, decidimos salir del Perú por la frontera del Ecuador, viaje que realizamos vía terrestre conjuntamente con LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE en companía de mis hijos ROBERTO MANUEL SARIEGO PACHWICEWICZ y AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ y otra pareja de amigos de Trujillo (WILMA HERNÁNDEZ y ADOLFO COSTILLA). Se deberá solicitar oportunamente que el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE presente SU PASAPORTE, así como solicitar su MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO, en la que se registra su salida del Perú en la referida fecha.
3. Es menester precisar, que nuestra salida se efectuó en el PUESTO DE CONTROL FRONTERIZO HUAQUILLAS, obviamente al momento de salir del territorio peruano, mi hija AYMARA no necesitaba Autorización de Viaje de Menores, porque estaba acompañada por sus dos padres. La salida fue registrada en su pasaporte polaco donde registra los sellos de salida del Perú y de entrada a Ecuador con fecha 24 de Diciembre del 2007; así como, el sello de salida de la ciudad de Guayaquil a Inglaterra con fecha 25 de Diciembre del 2007. También entregamos nuestras TARJETA ANDINA DE MIGRACIÓN – TAM, conforme requerimientos para el control migratorio de extranjeros.
4. El 25 de Diciembre del 2007 viajamos desde Ecuador, ciudad de Guayaquil saliendo por el Aeropuerto “José Joaquín de Olmedo” hasta Inglaterra, mi hija AYMARA no necesitó otra vez ningún permiso de viaje para menores, porque cuando ingresamos a Ecuador lo hicimos en compañía de su padre y con pasaporte polaco en calidad de turistas, como reiteramos, dejando nuestras TAM en el Puesto de Control Migratorio de Huaquillas en el Perú e ingresando a Ecuador en condición de turistas, país nos otorgaba noventa (90) días de estadía permitida. LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE nos despidió en el Aeropuerto de Guayaquil, así como la pareja de amigos que nos acompañaron, los que regresaron al Perú.
5. Inesperadamente, en el mes de Abril del 2009, la Directora de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes del Ministerio de la Mujer y Desarrollo Social, MARÍA DEL CARMEN SANTIAGO BAILETTI, mediante OFICIO N° 444-2009-MINDES/DGFC/DINNA de fecha 14 de Abril del 2009, a mérito de la solicitud formulada por LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, a la referida Autoridad Central Peruana, para la aplicación de la CONVENCIÓN DE LA HAYA SOBRE LOS ASPECTOS CIVILES DE LA SUSTRACCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENORES DE 1980, en adelante “La Convención”, sobre restitución internacional de menor, cursa pedido de restitución de nuestra hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, en el primer caso, supuestamente sustraída por la recurrente, EXHORTA al Abogado Oficial de la Unidad de Sustracción de Menores y Fiduciario Público (THE CHILD ABDUCTION UNIT OFFICIAL SOLICITOR AND PUBLIC TRUSTEE) del Reino Unido, Autoridad Central de Inglaterra, para que en aplicación del Artículo 7° de la Convención, localice por medio de la policía en la dirección proporcionada por el padre de la menor, proceda al retiro de mis documentos de viaje y me imponga arresto domiciliario mientras dure el referido procedimiento legal en cumplimiento del Convenio.
6. Iniciado el proceso, mi Abogada me informó, que conforme a los procedimientos, en sesenta (60) días mi hija AYMARA sería retornada al Perú a un albergue del INABIF por mientras iba a durar proceso por su custodia en Perú, ello se produciría si es que no mediaba un acuerdo voluntario con el padre, quien como padre afectado podía otorgarme permiso para quedarme con nuestra hija AYMARA en Inglaterra. En esas circunstancias tuve que resignarme a su chantaje del señor MERINO ALPISTE, comprometiéndome a transferirle el departamento de mi propiedad en Pimentel (Lambayeque) por el cual el padre de mi hija aceptó que nos quedáramos en Inglaterra y la niña lo visitara dos veces al año en Perú.
7. Antes de iniciar, el proceso la Autoridad Central Inglesa verificó que el trámite no cumplía con el Artículo 3° de la Convención, es decir, que con arreglo al derecho vigente del Perú se acredite que AYMARA tenía su residencia habitual antes de la supuesta sustracción en la misma dirección con su padre, porque con el señor MERINO ALPISTE no éramos casados ni convivientes y la niña siempre vivió conmigo, mi estadía en el Perú fue siempre en calidad de TURISTA; no obstante ello, para evitar en esas circunstancias mayores riesgos de una decisión arbitraria de parte de justicia peruana en un posible proceso por la custodia de la niña, “llegamos a una solución amigable” ante el Juez Inglés a cargo del proceso de restitución, estableciendo también que cualquier problema futuro relacionado con la niña va a ser ventilado en las cortes de Inglaterra y Gales.
8. Fue así, que en la Sala de Familia de la Corte Superior de Justicia del Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda del Norte (High Court of Justice – Family Division), el 11 de noviembre 2009, suscribimos una conciliación con el padre de mi hija AYMARA, sobre Tenencia y Custodia, Alimentos y Régimen de Visitas, bajo condiciones establecidas en el Anexo 1, que se plasmó en la sentencia, asumiendo la recurrente el compromiso de llevar AYMARA al Perú dos veces por año para que tenga contacto directo con su progenitor, bajo la condición de que su padre, el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, asuma parcialmente los gastos de alojamiento en Londres, transfiriéndome para tal efecto la suma mensual equivalente a USD $ 700.00 (Setecientos y 00/100 Dólares Americanos) el primer día de cada mes calendario en calidad de concepto de pensión alimenticia. Debo precisar, que conforme a lo acordado, el padre de AYMARA se comprometió a retornarla al cuidado y control de la recurrente, el que además facilitaría nuestra salida del Perú para regresar a nuestra residencia en Inglaterra, una vez terminado el periodo de contacto directo o régimen de visitas.
9. Así fue que desde el mes de Diciembre del 2009 empezamos con AYMARA a viajar al Perú, siempre ingresábamos con nuestros pasaportes polacos y en calidad de turistas, no habiendo tenido ningún problema en MIGRACIONES. Desde el primer viaje establecido bajo régimen de visitas, me presentaba a la Defensoría Pública referida por el Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables – MIMP, para hacer trámite de homologación de la sentencia inglesa que contenía la conciliación con el padre de AYMARA, lo que también desde principio se convirtió en un marasmo legal ya que “nadie” sabía qué tipo de trámite se debía realizar, convirtiendo la homologación de una sentencia dictada bajo El Convenio, en un Proceso frustrado por cinco (5) años iniciado increíblemente como Suspensión de Tenencia, después VÍA EXEQUATUR que fue archivado dos veces y en el tercer trámite indebidamente apelado a la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la República, que finalmente reconoció en Julio del 2015 la sentencia como nacional hecha en el marco de “El Convenio”.
10. El señor MERINO ALPISTE a pesar de no cumplir con el pago de alimentos establecido en la sentencia, bajo súplicas y promesas de regularizarlo apenas vea a su hija en el territorio peruano, el 04 de Junio del 2014, ingresamos con AYMARA al Perú siempre con la finalidad de cumplir el régimen de visitas establecido y no dar razones a la autoridad inglesa de considerarme rebelde por no cumplir con la conciliación contenida en la sentencia, preocupada también por concluir el procedimiento de EXEQUÁTUR, que se había prolongado extrañamente desde el 2009, que se tramitaba esta vez por ante la Segunda Sala Especializada de Familia de la Corte Superior de Justicia de Lima. Debo precisar que mi hija AYMARA ingresó al Perú como de costumbre con su único documento de viaje- PASAPORTE POLACO y con sello de entrada como TURISTA, con 183 días de estadía permitida.
11. Cuando el 05 de Noviembre del 2014, me disponía a salir del Perú en compañía de mis menores hijos BASIL LEON PACHWICEWICZ y AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ y abordar el vuelo comercial con destino a Madrid de la línea aérea IBERIA, personal de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones me notificaron el impedimento de embarque de mi hija AYMARA, a mérito de la ALERTA ROJA por procesos judiciales por la custodia de mi hija, emitida por la Sub Gerencia de Movimientos Migratorios -NOTIFICACIÓN 2206-2014-IN-MIGRACIONES-PCM-AIJCH de fecha 05 de Noviembre del 2014, comunicándose con sus superiores en la oficina principal de Breña y negándose ni siquiera ver la decisión judicial dada bajo el Convenio, NO PERMITIENDO LA SALIDA DE AYMARA, alegando que pretendía llevármela sin autorización del padre, lo que ocasionó que perdiera mi vuelo aéreo a nuestro lugar de residencia habitual en Londres.
12. Al día siguiente presenté a la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones un escrito suscrito por mi Abogado con la copia de la sentencia que contenía la conciliación bajo el Convenio de La Haya, exigiendo levantamiento de la alerta en respuesta a cuál recibí una carta firmada por DIANA CHIRINOS TERRAZAS, afirmando para que AYMARA pudiera dejar el Perú, que como no existía ningún convenio, se necesitaba la autorización de viaje del padre o el proceso de EXEQUATUR concluido.
13. Por segunda vez el 04 de Diciembre del 2014, pretendimos con AYMARA salir del Perú, las autoridades de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones lo impidieron alegando en esa ocasión que continuaba una ALERTA PREVENTIVA DE IMPEDIMENTO DE SALIDA DEL PAIS en el Sistema de Migraciones a solicitud del padre de la menor y autorizada por RONALD RIOS ADRIANZEN, mediante la NOTIFICACIÓN N° 2961-2014-MIGRACIONES /SM /MM/PCMAIJCH de fecha 04 de Diciembre del 2014.
14. Pocos días después, el 07 de Diciembre del 2014 tuve que viajar a Inglaterra solo en compañía de mi hijo BASIL LEON PACHWICEWICZ para evitar ser deportada del Perú por estadía ilegal, ya que mi visa de 183 días estaba a punto de vencer, dejando a mi hija AYMARA escondida en Perú.
15. En Inglaterra inmediatamente reclamé a la Autoridad Central Inglesa el cumplimiento del Convenio, solicitando a la Autoridad Central Peruana (MIMP) la restitución de mi hija; sin embargo, el trámite quedó suspendido por no haberse firmado el poder de representación a la Autoridad Central Peruana, precisamente además porque no cumplían con sus compromisos contenidos en el Convenio, porque en el caso de AYMARA debían haber intervenido exigiendo respeto al convenio por parte de MIGRACIONES.
16. Retorné al Perú el 29 de Diciembre del 2014 para reunirme con mi hija y buscar manera de liberarla de la ilegal retención y regresarla a su casa y su colegio en Londres, optando por recurrir a la Defensoría del Pueblo quien por medio de PERCY CASTILLO TORRES y GUISELA VIGNOLO HUAMANÍ empezaron las gestiones en MIGRACIONES, sugiriendo a la Autoridad Central Peruana (MIMP) a la Jueza de enlace de La Haya que exijan la aplicación del Convenio, pero ninguna de las instituciones mencionadas hizo nada.
17. A partir de la fecha que retorné al Perú, los siguientes meses de mi estadía legal terminaban y tuve obligada por las circunstancias que viajar nuevamente a Inglaterra para no ser deportada del Perú, dejando de nuevo escondida a mi hija.
18. El 16 de Junio del 2015 regresé desde Inglaterra al Perú, apenas llegando me enteré por mi Abogado encargado de Exequatur que la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones había levantado la ALERTA ROJA que desde el 24 de Octubre del 2014 impedía la salida de mi hija AYMARA del territorio peruano, en base a la Resolución de Superintendencia N° 185; Carta de Notificación N° 367-2015-MIGRACIONES y Resolución Sub Gerencial N° 2-2015, estas últimas sustentan Orden de Salida Nº 195 AUTORIZACIÓN DE SALIDA, que había sido emitida el 19 de Junio del 2015 por el señor YURI EDUARDO VILLANES VEGA, Gerente de Servicios Migratorios de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones, visada por la señora MARJORIE MARZIA SORIA VALDEZ, Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio Gerencia de Servicios Migratorios MIGRACIONES, con fecha límite de salida 23 de Julio del 2015 e inclusive en la Resolución de Superintendencia a cargo del Abogado BORIS POTOZEN BRACO, extrañamente se había consignado “La presente orden no tiene efectos sobre requisitorias pendientes”. Nota: Aplicar Artículo 1 de la Resolución de Superintendencia. Inexplicable.
19. El 11 de Julio del 2015, antes de la fecha límite de salida, decidí viajar a LOJA - ECUADOR para cumplir con la orden de salida, una vez presentes en el Puesto de Control Fronterizo proceden a sellar el pasaporte de mi hija AYMARA; sin embargo, inesperadamente el técnico de Migraciones me informa de una nueva alerta a solicitud del señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE contra mí menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ ante posibles acciones que la recurrente pueda efectuar a fin de sacarla del país, comunicada mediante OFICIO MÚLTIPLE Nº 025-2015-MIGRACIONES-SN-MM de fecha 07 de Julio del 2015, suscrita increíblemente por la Abogada ROSARIO CARRILLO VEGA -Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio Gerencia de Servicios Migratorios MIGRACIONES-, la misma que había suscrito la autorización de levantamiento de la Alerta Roja con la RESOLUCIÓN SUB GERENCIAL Nº 2-2015-MIGRACIONES de fecha 12 de Junio del mismo año, ordenando a los técnicos o inspectores de los Puestos de Control Migratorio y Fronterizo a nivel nacional, la verificación de la documentación que corresponda por ley, es decir, la autorización de viaje firmada por el padre, entre otros, creando después una denuncia en mi contra por salida y reingreso clandestino de territorio peruano. A medianoche en la frontera terrestre nos bajaron del autobús haciéndonos perder el transporte que nos conducía a Loja, dejándonos por tercera vez en abandono moral y económico, agenciándome después más préstamos para subsistir y comprar los pasajes de retorno a la ciudad de Chiclayo para formular la denuncia y queja respectivas.
20. El 16 de Julio del 2015 cansada por decir lo menos de estos abusos, arbitrariedades y persecución inexplicable contra mi familia que me estaban causando perjuicios morales y económicos, FORMULÉ DENUNCIA PENAL ANTE LA FISCALÍA PENAL ESPECIALIZADA EN CORRUPCIÓN DE FUNCIONARIOS DE CHICLAYO contra los que resulten responsables de los delitos de Abuso de Autoridad y Omisión, Rehusamiento o Retardo de Actos Funcionales en agravio de mi familia y del Estado Peruano –Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones, generando la CARPETA FISCAL Nº 180-2015 cuyo Fiscal Responsable fue el Dr. JOSÉ DEL CARMEN DE LA CRUZ RODRÍGUEZ del Tercer Despacho de la Segunda Fiscalía Provincial Penal Corporativa de Chiclayo del Distrito Judicial de Lambayeque, increíblemente mediante DISPOSICIÓN Nº DOS de fecha 21 de Octubre del 2015, suscrita por el Fiscal Provincial Adjunto, declaró que NO PROCEDE FORMALIZAR NI CONTINUAR CON LA INVESTIGACIÓN PREPARATORIA por la presunta comisión de los delitos de ABUSO DE AUTORIDAD Y OMISIÓN REHUSAMIENTO O RETARDO DE ACTOS FUNCIONALES en agravio de EL ESTADO PERUANO – SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES, disponiendo el archivamiento de lo actuado, que consideramos prevaricadora conforme lo expondremos y fundamentaremos oportunamente. No interpuse la queja porque carecía de recursos económicos para sufragar los gastos del Abogado y además ya me resultaba completamente obvia la actitud delictiva tomada en contra de mi persona y de mis hijos.
21. Es menester precisar, que ante esta inexplicable persecución contra mi familia por las autoridades y funcionarios de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones, formulé denuncia ante la COMISIÓN INTERAMERICANA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS de la Organización de Estados Americanos, entidad que con fecha 03 de Noviembre del 2015 mediante la funcionaria MARÍA CLAUDIA PULIDO por autorización del Secretario Ejecutivo me remiten una carta solicitándome información adicional para contar con elementos de juicio necesarios para adoptar una decisión, que hemos subsanado.
22. Asimismo, ante esta ilegal y arbitraria situación generada por autoridades y funcionarios de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones (SNM), la Embajada de la República de Polonia en Lima, ante mi pedido de intervención confirma lo investigado por la Defensoría del Pueblo, quienes mediante Oficio Nº 099-2015-DP/ADHPD de fecha 14 de Mayo del 2015, dirigido al Cónsul de Polonia señor KONRAD KIERDZYNSKI, advierten que la SNM informó a la recurrente que el levantamiento de la alerta sobre su hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, sólo resultaría posible cuando sea reconocido mediante un procedimiento de EXEQUATUR el acuerdo judicial suscrito en el Reino Unido, desconociendo la existencia del Convenio, haciendo referencia a la NOTIFICACIÓN Nº 2206-2014-IN-MIGRACIONES-PCM-AIJCH, destacando que a la fecha de expedida alerta no existía orden judicial alguna que impidiera el viaje de la menor (ni pudo haber existido por efecto de la sentencia inglesa, que le otorga al Juez de Inglaterra la potestad de realizar cualquier modificación o cambio relacionado con la custodia de mi hija) llamando la atención a la SNM, que la decisión adoptada evidenciaba el hecho de que las autoridades peruanas no tenían un criterio uniforme sobre los alcances del “Convenio sobre los Aspectos Civiles sobre la sustracción Internacional de Menores”, respecto a la validez internacional de las resoluciones judiciales emitidas en ese marco y que no deberían cerrar la posibilidad de valorar la expresión de voluntad contenida en el acuerdo judicial suscrito en Londres como una autorización de viaje emitida válidamente por el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE; de la misma forma, reitera el hecho que en el certificado de movimiento migratorio correspondiente a la menor AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ no se haya consignado su salida del país –hacia Ecuador- el 24 de diciembre del 2007.
23. En este orden de ideas, se generaron dos resultados de las acciones formuladas respecto de la situación en el Perú de mi hija AYMARA:
23.1. LA SUB DIRECCION DE ASISTENCIA AL NACIONAL DEL MINISTERIO DE RELACIONES EXTERIORES a cargo del señor JORGE ZAMORA MAZA, atendiendo mi CONSULTA, el 11 de Setiembre del 2015, me envía un correo electrónico, informándome que la Gerencia de servicios Migratorios le ha comunicado oficiosamente a la Cancillería que la recurrente y mi hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ no cuentan con ningún impedimento de salida, encontrándonos habilitadas para realizar cualquier viaje, lo que se ha informado mediante OFICIO MÚLTIPLE Nº 064-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM a las Jefaturas y Puestos de Control Fronterizos para que brinden las facilidades a la ciudadana polaca y su menor hija para su tránsito libre por el control migratorio, debiendo hacer la verificación de la documentación con la que la menor efectuará su control migratorio de salida del país, puede presentar su documento de viaje peruano (nunca se expidió pasaporte peruano para mi hija) deberá contar con la autorización de viaje notarial o judicial debidamente firmada (que no procedía en virtud del Convenio de La Haya); y, de ser el caso que realice su salida con pasaporte polaco, se deberá proceder con brindar las facilidades a fin de que la menor y su madre realicen su viaje de acuerdo a los protocolos correspondientes.
23.2. LA JEFATURA DE LA OFICINA DE FORTALECIMIENTO ÉTICO Y LUCHA CONTRA LA CORRUPCIÓN – MIGRACIONES a cargo del señor MIRKO SERVIGÓN DEJO con fecha 10 de julio del 2015, me envía un correo electrónico expresando “su solidaridad” con mi caso, señalando que el 27 de Mayo último por instrucción directa del señor BORIS POTOZEN BRACO, quien recientemente ha asumido el cargo de Superintendente Nacional de Migraciones ha ordenado una investigación preliminar para determinar los motivos “exactos” que dieron origen al impedimento de salida del Perú de mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ y verificar si habían existido irregularidades en el control migratorio de salida, a raíz de la emisión de una supuesta alerta roja por proceso judicial de la menor, razón por la cual, el 08 de Junio del 2015, se emitió el INFORME Nº 23F-2015-MIGRACIONES-FELCC concluyendo que los servidores ZUÑIGA GUISADO, GARCÍA PALOMINO, PERALTA AGUIRRE y el ex servidor HUERTA RIVAS infringieron el Artículo 39º literal a) Obligaciones de los servidores civiles y literal g) del Artículo 156º del Reglamento del Código de Ética de la función pública lo que constituye una falta de carácter disciplinario, previsto en los Artículos 85º y 92º de la Ley Nº 30057 – Ley del Servicio Civil y su Reglamento, expediente administrativo que según precisaron fue derivado a la Secretaría Técnica de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones para que se adopten las acciones a que hubiere lugar, RATIFICANDO que la recurrente y mi hija no contamos con ningún impedimento de salida, de manera que podíamos viajar a cualquier parte del mundo, acotando que las acciones no fueron adoptadas durante su gestión, expresando “las satisfacciones del caso”.
24. El 14 de setiembre del 2015, en nuestro cuarto intento de salir del territorio peruano, compré pasajes aéreos de Chiclayo a Lima y de allí a la ciudad colombiana de Bogotá, para ello coordinamos con el señor PERCY CECILIO CASTILLO TORRES, funcionario de la Defensoría del Pueblo, quien comprometió su presencia en el Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Chávez, no concurrió; contrariamente a ello, sorpresivamente apareció el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE con dos efectivos de la Policía Nacional, quienes empezaron a jalonearme para impedir nuestra salida y la de mi hija AYMARA que estuvo retenida arbitrariamente por más de un año en territorio peruano, sin asistir al colegio aislada de toda relación social. Los efectivos policiales insistían en señalarme que no iba a viajar y que tenía que acompañarlos, sin considerar el llanto de mi bebe que se encontraba en su cochecito, les requerí la orden de impedimento de salida, alegando además que el señor MERINO tenía orden de alejamiento dictada por la Fiscal de Chiclayo, de esta forma continuaba mi avance hacia el Control de Tarjetas de Embarque, que logré cruzar terminando al borde de colapso nervioso, mi hija arañada y mi bebe traumado, con la ayuda de la gente y del personal del Aeropuerto logramos viajar y llegar con mis hijos por fin a nuestra residencia en la ciudad de Londres.
II.2. SOBRE LA PARTICIPACIÓN DE FUNCIONARIOS DEL MINISTERIO DE LA MUJER Y POBLACIONES VULNERABLES – MIMP EN CALIDAD DE AUTORIDAD CENTRAL PERUANA EN EL PROCEDIMIENTO DE APLICACIÓN DE LA CONVENCIÓN DE LA HAYA SOBRE LOS ASPECTOS CIVILES DE LA SUSTRACCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENORES DE 1980
25. Durante mi permanencia en el Perú, solicité la documentación a la Dirección de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes del Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables - MIMP, que actuó como Autoridad Central Peruana, que sustentó la solicitud de restitución internacional formulada por LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, en el Procedimiento de Sustracción Internacional de Menor.
26. Al llegar a Inglaterra y contrastar los documentos recibidos por la Autoridad Central Peruana con lo actuado en el proceso de restitución internacional a solicitud del señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, GRANDE FUE MI SORPRESA al verificar que se había utilizado a la vez dos (2) documentos para sustentar dos (2) solicitudes a la vez:
26.1. SUSTRACCION ILEGAL: El CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Nº 03898/2009/IN/1601 de fecha 17 de Febrero del 2009, en la que adrede NO SE REGISTRA LA SALIDA DE MI MENOR HIJA EL 24 DE DICIEMBRE DEL 2007 por el Control Migratorio Peruano de Huaquillas; y,
26.2. RETENCIÓN ILEGAL: El ACTA DE AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES de fecha 19 de Diciembre del 2007 supuestamente otorgada por ante el Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS ante el que comparecen LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE y JOANNA PACHWICEWICZ (la recurrente), en el que se me confiere autorización para viajar con mi menor hija a Europa, España, Polonia, Inglaterra desde el 24 de Diciembre del 2007 al mes de Junio del 2008, sin sello de MIGRACIONES con la fecha de la salida del país, en concordancia con la fecha que aparece en el pasaporte peruano de mi hija AYMARA (24/12/2007).
27. Debo hacer presente que en ningún momento he comparecido ante el citado Notario y menos suscribí el referido documento, siendo consciente que nunca iba a hacer falta citado documento por no haber solicitado nunca pasaporte peruano para mi hija, además, porque el 24 de Diciembre del 2007, nuestra hija salió del PERÚ en compañía de los dos padres.
28. Debemos reiterar, que el documento presentado en el proceso de restitución internacional para sustentar la solicitud de SUSTRACCION ILEGAL fue el CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Nº 03898/2009/IN/1601 de fecha 17 de Febrero del 2009, otorgado por el Sub Director de la Unidad de Certificaciones y Archivo de la Dirección General de Migraciones y Naturalización a solicitud del señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE de nuestra menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, en el que se consigna “QUE NO REGISTRA MOVIMIENTOS MIGRATORIOS”, cuando contrariamente en el pasaporte polaco de mi hija AYMARA registra los sellos de salida del Perú y de entrada a Ecuador con fecha 24 de Diciembre del 2007; así como, el sello de salida de la ciudad de Guayaquil a Inglaterra con fecha 25 de Diciembre del 2007.
29. NO ES POSIBLE QUE EN APLICACIÓN DEL CONVENIO, la Dirección de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes del Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables - MIMP, que actuó como Autoridad Central Peruana, HAYA ADMITIDO A LA VEZ, DOS SOLICITUDES DE DISTINTA NATURALEZA, que resultan incompatibles, teniendo en cuenta que se trataba de una solicitud de restitución internacional de menor y la aplicación de la Convención De La Haya sobre los Aspectos Civiles de la Sustracción Internacional de Menores del año 1980.
30. No obstante la IMPOSIBILIDAD LEGAL de la solicitud, es por decirlo sospechoso que no haya corroborado la autenticidad y validez de la documentación presentada por el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, como fueron el ACTA DE AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES de fecha 19 de Diciembre del 2007 otorgada por ante el Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS y el CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Nº 03898/2009/IN/1601 de fecha 17 de Febrero del 2009, otorgado por el Sub Director de la Unidad de Certificaciones y Archivo de la Dirección General de Migraciones y Naturalización, que NO CONTABA CON EL SELLO O VISACIÓN del control de MIGRACIONES, que obviamente han resultado falsos y/o adulterados, lo más grave ha sido que fueron utilizados para la aplicación de una CONVENCIÓN INTERNACIONAL y dolosamente para perjudicarnos, afectando los derechos de mi hija AYMARA, una menor de edad.
III. ASPECTOS ESPECÍFICOS Y PRECISIONES RELACIONADOS CON LA DENUNCIA III.1. SOBRE EL PROCESO DE RESTITUCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENOR
31. Cuando en el mes de Abril del 2009, a mérito de la solicitud de restitución internacional formulada por LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, respecto de nuestra hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, en aplicación del Artículo 7° de la Convención De La Haya sobre los Aspectos Civiles de la Sustracción Internacional de Menores del año 1980, la Autoridad Central del Perú -MINISTERIO DE LA MUJER Y DESARROLLO SOCIAL- mediante la Dirección de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes, realizó el requerimiento de restitución internacional de menor a la Autoridad Central de Inglaterra -ABOGADO OFICIAL DE LA UNIDAD DE SUSTRACCIÓN DE MENORES Y FIDUCIARIO PÚBLICO DEL REINO UNIDO (THE CHILD ABDUCTION UNIT OFFICIAL SOLICITOR AND PUBLIC TRUSTEE) mediante OFICIO N° 444-2009-MINDES/DGFC/DINNA de fecha 14 de Abril del 2009, fue irregular y dolosamente realizada de la siguiente forma:
31.1. RESTITUCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENOR POR SUSTRACCIÓN ILEGAL.
Con el referido objetivo el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE presentó el CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Nº 03898/2009/IN/1601 de fecha 17 de Febrero del 2009, otorgado por el Sub Director de la Unidad de Certificaciones y Archivo de la Dirección General de Migraciones y Naturalización de nuestra menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, en el que se consigna “QUE NO REGISTRA MOVIMIENTOS MIGRATORIOS”, cuando contrariamente en el pasaporte de mi hija AYMARA registraba los sellos de salida del Perú y de entrada a Ecuador con fecha 24 de Diciembre del 2007; así como, el sello de salida de la ciudad de Guayaquil a Inglaterra con fecha 25 de Diciembre del 2007.
31.2. RESTITUCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENOR POR RETENCIÓN ILÍCITA
Con tal de poder aplicar a la restitución por retención ilícita, ya que por sustracción no procedía por haber concurrido 1 año desde la salida de mi hija del territorio peruano, el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE presentó un ACTA DE AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES de fecha 19 de Diciembre del 2007 otorgada por ante el Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS ante el que comparecen LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE y LA RECURRENTE, en el que se me confiere autorización para viajar con mi menor hija a Europa, España, Polonia, Inglaterra desde el 24 de Diciembre del 2007 hasta Julio del 2008 para alargar fraudulentamente el periodo de la estadía legal de la niña y alegar retención por incumplimiento de la autorización de viaje.
32. Es menester precisar, que la SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES DEL MINISTERIO DE INTERIOR, ha dado respuesta a los requerimientos efectuados por la Defensoría del Pueblo, mediante Oficio N° 155-2015-DP/ADHPD de fecha 23 de Julio del 2015 suscrita por la señora GISELLA VIGNOLO HUAMANÍ funcionaria Adjunta para los Derechos Humanos dirigido al señor YURI VILLANES VEGA, Gerente de Servicios Migratorios de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones; y, del MINISTERIO DE RELACIONES EXTERIORES mediante OF. RE (ASN-SSN) Nº 2.10.E/702 de fecha 16 de Junio del 2016 suscrita por el Ministro Consejero ALEJANDRO PEDRO UGARTE VELARDE, a cargo de la Subdirección de Asistencia al Nacional, para que proporcionen información relativa al movimiento migratorio de mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ respecto de su salida el 24 de Diciembre del 2007 y de la copia “fechada” de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones de la Autorización para Viaje de Menores otorgada ante el Notario Carlos Alberto Caballero Burgos en la ciudad de Chiclayo el 19 de Diciembre del 2007 con la cual mi menor hija habría salido del Perú.
33. Resulta increíble que la funcionaria que emite los informes sea la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio, involucrada en las decisiones que han impedido la salida del Perú de mi menor hija AYMARA.
III.2. SOBRE LAS INSÓLITAS RESPUESTAS DADAS POR LA SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES A LOS REQUERIMIENTOS EFECTUADOS POR LA DEFENSORIA DEL PUEBLO Y AL MINISTERIO DE RELACIONES EXTERIORES RESPECTO DE SU MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Y DE LA AUTORIZACION PARA VIAJE DE MENORES
III.2.1. RESPUESTA A LA DEFENSORÍA DEL PUEBLO sobre CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Nº 03898/2009/IN/1601 de fecha 17 de Febrero del 2009
34. Mediante OFICIO N° 4660-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 20 de Agosto del 2015 suscrito por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio de la SNM, dirigida a la señora GISELLA VIGNOLO HUAMANÍ funcionaria Adjunta (e) para los Derechos Humanos y las Personas con Discapacidad de la Defensoría del Pueblo sobre el MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO de mi hija AYMARA en cuyo Pasaporte N° YA7254723, se observa el estampado del sello de Control Migratorio de salida el día 24 de Diciembre del 2007 con código y siglas 347EBM “admiten” que debió ser registrado en el Puesto de Control Fronterizo de Tumbes y que a fin de procurar “atender lo solicitado” por el usuario, a pesar de que NO CUENTA CON TODOS LOS REQUISITOS que se encuentran establecidos en la denominación del Servicio N° 8 del TUPA, se “ha logrado incluir” dicho movimiento migratorio en el Sistema Integral de Migraciones.
AL RESPECTO, debemos precisar que en ningún momento he solicitado “LA INCLUSIÓN” del Movimiento Migratorio de Salida de fecha 24 de Diciembre del 2007, TODO LO CONTRARIO, he solicitado que se investigue, porque en varios certificados de movimientos migratorios de mi hija incluido el CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO N° 03898/2009/IN/1601 expedido el 17 de Febrero del 2009, el documento adulterado fue usado dolosamente por el señor MERINO ALPISTE para sustentar la solicitud de restitución internacional de mi menor hija AYMARA, en el que “NO REGISTRA MOVIMIENTOS MIGRATORIOS”, NOS PREGUNTAMOS ¿Cuál fue el poder del señor MERINO ALPISTE en el interior de la SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES?
III.2.2. RESPUESTA AL MINISTERIO DE RELACIONES EXTERIORES sobre el ACTA DE AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES de fecha 19 de Diciembre del 2007
35. Mediante OFICIO N° 4387-2016-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 22 de Agosto del 2016 suscrito por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio de la SNM, dirigido al Ministro Consejero ALEJANDRO PEDRO UGARTE VELARDE Sub Director de Asistencia al Nacional del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores sobre la copia “fechada” de la AUTORIZACIÓN DE VIAJE DE MENORES al extranjero otorgada ante el Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS en la ciudad de Chiclayo el 19 de Diciembre del 2007 con la cual mi menor hija habría salido del Perú, ha expresado que se requirió mediante oficio dicha documentación a la Jefatura Zonal de Tumbes el 05 de Julio del 2016 habiendo informado que las autorizaciones notariales correspondientes a dicha fecha NO OBRAN EN EL ARCHIVO sólo se han encontrado archivos a partir del año 2013, no se arriesga a afirmar que no existe, indicando además, que en virtud de lo establecido en el Artículo 10° del Decreto Ley N° 19414, menciona que “los documentos administrativos de los archivos de las reparticiones y organismos del Sector Público Nacional, cuya conservación sea innecesaria podrán ser eliminados o incinerados PREVIO INVENTARIO, EVALUACIÓN Y AUTORIZACIÓN DEL ARCHIVO GENERAL DE LA NACIÓN con opinión favorable del Consejo Técnico de Archivos.
AL RESPECTO, debemos expresar que si bien los documentos cuya conservación sea innecesaria pueden ser eliminados o incinerados, también lo es, que lo informado por la Abogada involucrada en los delitos denunciados, DEVIENE INSUBSISTENTE, porque no ha indicado si atendiendo a lo previsto en el Artículo 10° del Decreto Ley N° 19414, la AUTORIZACIÓN DE VIAJE DE MENORES al extranjero otorgada ante el Notario Carlos Alberto Caballero Burgos en la ciudad de Chiclayo el 19 de Diciembre del 2007, fue eliminada o incinerada contando con opinión favorable del Consejo Técnico de Archivos. Es menester precisar, que el referido documento fraudulento sustentó la solicitud del señor MERINO ALPISTE sobre RESTITUCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENOR POR RETENCIÓN ILÍCITA, al amparo de la Convención De La Haya sobre los Aspectos Civiles de la Sustracción Internacional de Menores del año 1980.
IV. SOBRE EL INCUMPLIMIENTO POR LA SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES DE LA CONVENCIÓN DE LA HAYA SOBRE LOS ASPECTOS CIVILES DE LA SUSTRACCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENORES DEL AÑO 1980 36. LA SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES DEL MINISTERIO DE INTERIOR, a través de sus funcionarios y servidores sistemáticamente en tres oportunidades y durante aproximadamente once (11) meses, a pesar de conocer perfectamente la sentencia emitida por la Sala de Familia de la Corte Superior de Justicia del Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda del Norte (High Court of Justice – Family Division), bajo los alcances de la Convención de la Haya, que contiene el Acuerdo suscrito con el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, padre de mi hija AYMARA, sobre Tenencia y Custodia, Alimentos y Régimen de Visitas, bajo condiciones establecidas en el Anexo, NO PERMITIERON que mi menor hija saliera del territorio peruano al concluir periodo de visita establecida vulnerando las normas jurídicas migratorias peruanas y de la Convención de la Haya de la siguiente forma:
36.1. DESCONOCIMIENTO DOLOSO de los Artículos 11º literal j), 19º y 33º del Decreto Legislativo Nº 703 - Ley de Extranjería y sus modificatorias, ya que el ingreso de mi hija AYMARA al Perú en el mes de Junio del 2014, se realizó con Pasaporte Polaco y en calidad de TURISTA, que nos permitía una estadía de 183 días en territorio peruano y en virtud del Convenio de La Haya, nos encontrábamos legalmente y a la fecha del primer intento de salida dentro del plazo otorgado por el técnico en el Aeropuerto Jorge Chávez al controlar nuestra entrada al Perú.
36.2. DESCONOCIMIENTO DOLOSO de la Convención De La Haya sobre los Aspectos Civiles de la Sustracción Internacional de Menores del año 1980, los principios y Artículos 1º literal b), 2º, 3º literal a), 4º, 5º, 17º, 18º y 29º, que establece como PRINCIPIO RECTOR la protección del menor en el plano internacional de los efectos perjudiciales que podría ocasionarle un traslado o una retención ilícitos y como finalidad velar por que los derechos de custodia y de visita vigentes en uno de los Estados contratantes se respeten en los demás Estados contratantes, además al establecer que el derecho de custodia resulta una atribución de pleno derecho en el Estado en que el menor tenía su residencia habitual inmediatamente antes de su traslado o retención, definiendo que el derecho de custodia” y el “derecho de visita” y que el sólo hecho de que se haya dictado una decisión relativa a la custodia del menor o que esa decisión pueda ser reconocida en el Estado requerido no podrá justificar la negativa para restituir un menor conforme a lo dispuesto en el Convenio.
37. Los hechos dolosos en referencia ESTÁN DEBIDAMENTE ACREDITADOS con lo expresado en los siguientes documentos:
37.1. Oficio Nº 099-2015-DP/ADHPD de fecha 14 de Mayo del 2015 de la DEFENSORÍA DEL PUEBLO dirigido al Embajador de Polonia señor KONRAD KIERDZYNSKI, en la que advierten que la SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES, expresa que informó a la recurrente que el levantamiento de la alerta sobre su hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, sólo resultaría posible cuando sea reconocido mediante un procedimiento de EXEQUATUR el acuerdo judicial suscrito en el Reino Unido.
37.2. CORREO ELECTRÓNICO de fecha 11 de Setiembre del 2015, enviado a mi dirección electrónica por LA SUB DIRECCION DE ASISTENCIA AL NACIONAL DEL MINISTERIO DE RELACIONES EXTERIORES a cargo del señor JORGE ZAMORA MAZA, en atención a mi CONSULTA, me informa que LA GERENCIA DE SERVICIOS MIGRATORIOS DE LA SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES, comunicó a la Cancillería que la recurrente y mi hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ no contábamos con ningún impedimento de salida, encontrándonos habilitadas para realizar cualquier viaje, lo que fue informado mediante OFICIO MÚLTIPLE Nº 064-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM a las Jefaturas y Puestos de Control Fronterizos para que brinden las facilidades a la ciudadana polaca y su menor hija para su tránsito libre por el control migratorio, debiendo hacer la verificación de la documentación con la que la menor efectuará su control migratorio de salida del país, de ser el caso, que realice su salida con pasaporte polaco, se deberá proceder con brindar las facilidades a fin de que la menor y su madre realicen su viaje de acuerdo a los protocolos correspondientes, es decir, esta vez respetando mi calidad de turista conforme a ley.
37.3. RESOLUCIÓN SUB GERENCIAL Nº 2-2015-MIGRACIONES de fecha 12 de Junio del 2015, en cuyo tercer párrafo del CONSIDERANDO, se ha establecido lo siguiente:
“(…) Que, conforme se ha determinado en la investigación preliminar efectuada por la Oficina de Fortalecimiento Ético y Lucha contra la Corrupción, todos los movimientos migratorios de la menor han sido efectuados con su nacionalidad polaca, utilizando única y exclusivamente sus pasaportes polacos N° AU5740848 y N° EG8136222, siendo su último ingreso al Perú el día 04 de Junio del 2014, con la calidad migratoria de turista, no habiendo necesitado ni en dicho momento ni a futuro, una autorización notarial y/o judicial por parte de su padre de nacionalidad peruana para salir de territorio nacional de acuerdo a lo establecido en la Directiva N° 02-2013-MIGRACIONES de fecha 26 de Noviembre del 201, sobre Procedimientos y Requisitos para el control migratorio de salida del país de menores extranjeros residentes y turistas. (…)”
El correcto razonamiento expresado en el párrafo citado, es contradictorio, con lo que se argumenta en los párrafos subsiguientes, al señalar que el 29 de Octubre del 2014 se procedió a registrar la alerta solicitada por el ciudadano peruano LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, argumentando que la madre de la menor pretendería sacar sin su autorización y que se consignó erróneamente como “motivo” la existencia de un “proceso judicial”, porque ninguna autoridad peruana había ordenado ni pudo ordenar el impedimento de salida de la menor.
37.4. OFICIO N° 4660-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 20 de Agosto del 2015 suscrito por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio dirigida a la señora GISELLA VIGNOLO HUAMANÍ funcionaria Adjunta (e) para los Derechos Humanos y las Personas con Discapacidad sobre el MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO de mi hija AYMARA en cuyo Pasaporte N° YA7254723 se observa el estampado del sello de Control Migratorio de salida el día 24 de Diciembre del 2007 con código y siglas 347EBM “ADMITEN” que debió ser registrado en el Puesto de control Fronterizo de Tumbes.
37.5. RESOLUCIÓN DE SUPERINTENDENCIA Nº 185-2015-MIGRACIONES a cargo del señor BORIS POTOZEN BRACO, cuyo quinto párrafo del CONSIDERANDO, sólo corrobora lo expresado en la RESOLUCIÓN SUB GERENCIAL Nº 2-2015-MIGRACIONES de fecha 12 de Junio del 2015, que mi menor hija AYMARA no necesitaba de autorización y/o judicial por parte del padre de nacionalidad peruana para salir del territorio nacional.
37.6. Oficio Nº 4387-2016-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 22 de Agosto del 2016, dirigido al Ministro Consejero ALEJANDRO PEDRO UGARTE VELARDE Sub Director de Asistencia al Nacional del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, suscrita “coincidentemente” por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, respuesta al OF. RE. (ASN-SSN) Nº 2.10-E/702 HT. 20160491729, respecto de la remisión de copia “fechada” de la AUTORIZACIÓN DE VIAJE DE MENORES al extranjero otorgada ante el Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS en la ciudad de Chiclayo el 19 de Diciembre del 2007, expresando simplemente que las autorizaciones notariales correspondientes a dicha fecha no obran en el archivo, sólo se han encontrado los archivos a partir del 2013, sin embargo, no niegan su existencia. PODRA VERIFICAR que la copia del indicado documento se encuentra como anexo en las piezas procesales que estamos adjuntando sobre APLICACIÓN DE LA CONVENCIÓN, que no consigna NINGUNA DATA NI SELLO.
37.7. Oficio Nº 4575-2016-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 01 de Setiembre del 2016, dirigido al Gerente de Gerencia de Usuarios JUAN ANTONIO HUERTA VALVERDE de la SNM, suscrita “coincidentemente” por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, respuesta al Oficio Nº 739-2016-MIGRACIONES-U del 11.08.2016 (H.T. Nº 20160662893), Asunto: Absolución de comunicación presentada por la ciudadana polaca JOANNA PACHWICEWICZ, que da cuenta increíblemente que “ se comunica que en relación al movimiento migratorio de salida de fecha 24 de diciembre de 2007, en cuyas observaciones se ha consignado que se regulariza de oficio en vista de sello en pasaporte y TAM que por efecto de lluvias están deterioradas, dicho movimiento fue repuesto por el entonces Jefe Zonal de Migraciones Tumbes, JOSÉ ESQUIVEL OLIVOS, en mérito a la solicitud que efectuó la señora JOANNA PACHWICEWICZ a través de la Defensoría del Pueblo”. ES EVIDENTE que la Abogada CARRILLO VEGA hace un festín de trámites, ¡claro!, su cargo se lo permite, porque en el OFICIO N° 4660-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 20 de Agosto del 2015, ha informado de una forma distinta, precisando que a pesar de no cumplir con los requisitos del TUPA se logró atender favorablemente la inclusión de dicho movimiento migratorio, desnaturalizando mi solicitud en el que exigí la investigación.
Por otro lado, COMO SE EXPLICA ENTONCES, que la funcionaria Abogada ROSARIO CARRILLO VEGA Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio haya expedido la RESOLUCIÓN SUB GERENCIAL Nº 2-2015-MIGRACIONES de fecha 12 de Junio del 2015 y después el 07 de Julio del mismo año emita el OFICIO MÚLTIPLE Nº 025-2015-MIGRACIONES-SN-MM de fecha 07 de Julio del 2015, suscrita por la Abogada ROSARIO CARRILLO VEGA -Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio Gerencia de Servicios Migratorios MIGRACIONES-, constituye una actuación DOLOSA, porque primero señaló que por la calidad migratoria de AYMARA en su condición de TURISTA su salida no está condicionada a autorización notarial y/o judicial alguna del padre; y, por otro lado, después precise que ante las posibles acciones que pueda efectuar para sacar del país a mi hija AYMARA se debe presentar autorización de viaje debidamente firmada. EXISTEN DISTINTAS VERSIONES DE LA MISMA FUNCIONARIA CARRILLO VEGA ADECUADA A LAS CIRCUNSTANCIAS.
V. SOBRE LA DENUNCIA FORMULADA ANTE LA SEGUNDA FISCALIA PROVINCIAL PENAL CORPORATIVA DE CHICLAYO CONTRA LOS QUE RESULTEN RESPONSABLES POR LOS DELITOS DE ABUSO DE AUTORIDAD Y OMISIÓN REHUSAMIENTO O RETARDO DE ACTOS FUNCIONALES EN AGRAVIO DE LA RECURRENTE Y DEL ESTADO PERUANO 38. LA SEGUNDA FISCALÍA PROVINCIAL PENAL CORPORATIVA DE CHICLAYO del Distrito Judicial de Lambayeque, en la CARPETA FISCAL Nº 180-2015, respecto de la denuncia formulada mediante la DISPOSICIÓN Nº DOS de fecha 21 de Octubre del 2015, suscrita por el Fiscal Provincial Adjunto del Tercer Despacho, siendo el Fiscal Responsable el Dr. JOSÉ DEL CARMEN DE LA CRUZ RODRÍGUEZ declaró que NO PROCEDE FORMALIZAR NI CONTINUAR CON LA INVESTIGACIÓN PREPARATORIA, mediante argumentos manipulados y recortados plasmados en el punto III. ANÁLISIS DEL CASO, que detallamos a continuación:
38.1. No se ha tomado en cuenta que TODOS LOS MOVIMIENTOS MIGRATORIOS de mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ HAN SIDO EFECTUADOS CON SU NACIONALIDAD POLACA, utilizando única y exclusivamente sus pasaportes polacos N° AU5740848 y N° EG8136222, siendo su último ingreso al Perú el día 04 de Junio del 2014, con la CALIDAD MIGRATORIA DE TURISTA, no habiendo necesitado ni en dicho momento ni a futuro, una autorización notarial y/o judicial por parte de su padre de nacionalidad peruana para salir de territorio nacional de acuerdo a lo establecido en la Directiva N° 02-2013-MIGRACIONES de fecha 26 de Noviembre del 2013, sobre Procedimientos y Requisitos para el control migratorio de salida del país de menores extranjeros residentes y turistas.
38.2. No se realizó análisis alguno respecto de los hechos ocurridos el 05 de Noviembre y 04 de Diciembre del 2014, sobre las ALERTA ROJA registradas por la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones en el Sistema Migratorio, que se realizó sin existir orden judicial alguna, que impedían la salida de mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ del territorio peruano, al margen de no haber considerado su ingreso con pasaporte polaco y en calidad de TURISTA, violando la Ley de Extranjería.
38.3. A pesar del DOLOSO DESCONOCIMIENTO DE LA LEY por parte de altos funcionarios de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones, como ha sido la actuación de RONALD RIOS ADRIANZEN y la Abogada ROSARIO CARRILLO VEGA, desconociendo su calidad migratoria de TURISTA de mi menor hija y después introduciendo ilegalmente en el Registro Migratorio ALERTAS ROJAS “erróneas” como fueron la NOTIFICACIÓN N° 2206-2014-IN-MIGRACIONES-PCM-AUCH de fecha 05 de Noviembre del 2014 y el OFICIO MÚLTIPLE Nº 025-2015-MIGRACIONES-SN-MM de fecha 07 de Julio del 2015, actos administrativos dolosos e ilegales, QUE NO PERMITIERON que mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ salga de territorio peruano por un lapso de once (11) meses atentando contra sus derechos humanos y fundamentales.
39. Las conclusiones del Fiscal, a pesar de que está acreditado que funcionarios de Migraciones vulneraron la Constitución y la ley, al no haber considerado la calidad migratoria de TURISTA de mi menor hija AYMARA, cuya salida del Perú sólo estaba condicionada a los plazos de permanencia en el país previsto en el artículo 33º de la Ley de Extranjería – Decreto Legislativo Nº 703 modificada por el Decreto Legislativo Nº 1043, habiendo calificado la actuación de los funcionarios BORIS POTOZEN BRACO, RONALD RIOS ADRIANZEN, ROSARIO CARRILLO VEGA y DIANA CHIRINOS TERRAZAS y del personal de segundo nivel, conforme a sus atribuciones y funciones, que los hechos ocurridos en perjuicio de mi hija AYMARA fue por “confusión” y “error”; y, contradictoriamente por otro lado, precisa que los funcionarios y técnicos de Migraciones actuaron de una manera incorrecta por un entendimiento erróneo de la notificación a simple solicitud del padre de la menor. Para el Fiscal la violación de la Ley de Extranjería al haber dolosamente los funcionarios ignorado la condición de TURISTA de mi hija AYMARA y por ende vulnerado sus derechos humanos y fundamentales sólo constituye error y negligencia por lo que no son justiciables penalmente.
VI. EL SEÑOR LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE DESDE EL AÑO 2009 HASTA EL DÍA DE HOY NO ME HA PAGADO LA SUMA ESTABLECIDA POR CONCEPTO DE PENSIÓN ALIMENTICIA 40. Estamos plenamente convencidos que otro de los móviles que han motivado al señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE para quitarme por la fuerza o de cualquier forma a mi menor hija AYMARA, es el hecho de no haber pagado desde la fecha que la Sala de Familia de la Corte Superior de Justicia del Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda del Norte (High Court of Justice – Family Division) estableció mediante sentencia de fecha 11 de Noviembre del 2009, que el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, asuma con los gastos de alojamiento en Londres, transfiriéndome para tal efecto la suma mensual equivalente a US $ 700.00 (Setecientos y 00/100 Dólares Americanos) el primer día de cada mes calendario como concepto de pensión alimenticia. El monto aproximado asciende a U.S. $ 51,000.00 (Cincuentiun Mil y 00/100 Dólares Americanos), proceso de Alimentos que he iniciado en Octubre del 2015 y cuál fue paseado entre varios juzgados de Piura hasta forzar que yo misma desista de su continuación en vía de Ejecución de Sentencia, QUE RECIÉN TRAMITAREMOS EN LA CIUDAD DE LIMA.
VII. ACTUACION DOLOSA DE FUNCIONARIOS PÚBLICOS PARA FAVORECER ILICITAMENTE AL SEÑOR LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE PRESUMO HA SIDO POR VÍNCULOS DE AMISTAD 41. ES POR DEMÁS DOLOSA LA ACTUACIÓN DE LOS FUNCIONARIOS PÚBLICOS, para ello se debe determinar el móvil para haber actuado al margen de la ley y vulnerando derechos humanos y fundamentales con la firme creencia de que una disculpa formal lo resuelve todo, existen responsabilidades administrativas, civiles y penales por el que deberán oportunamente responder.
42. CREEMOS QUE EL MÓVIL es la AMISTAD que une a determinados funcionarios de Migraciones con el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE.
43. El señor GONZALO POTOZEN BRACO, hermano del Superintendente es amigo del señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, se conocieron cuando trabajaba en el Proyecto Especial de Titulación de Tierras de Chiclayo – PETT CHICLAYO, el hermano del Superintendente sigue viviendo en Chiclayo.
44. El señor EMILIO SOSA MENDOZA, actual funcionario de Migraciones es gran amigo de la hermana del señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE y trabajó con la funcionaria de Migraciones ROSARIO CARRILLO VEGA y RONALD RIOS ADRIANZEN.
VIII. CONCLUSIONES 1. Desde el mes de Diciembre del 2009 la recurrente ha viajado desde Inglaterra a la ciudad de Lima para dar cumplimiento al régimen de visitas establecido en la sentencia, tal como podrá verificar de nuestros movimientos migratorios, desde fines del año 2009 hasta el 04 de junio del 2014, siempre ingresamos con nuestros pasaportes polacos en calidad de TURISTAS, amparado en la Ley de Extranjería, durante ese lapso de tiempo nunca tuvimos ningún problema con Migraciones respecto de nuestros ingresos y salidas del Perú.
2. Creemos que el problema se suscita desde que reinicio el procedimiento de reconocimiento de sentencias extranjeras VÍA EXEQUATUR la culminación del trámite judicial nos concede la posibilidad de iniciar en proceso de ejecución el pago de alimentos a favor de mi hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ contra el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, que nos adeuda aproximadamente U.S. $51,000.00 (Cincuentiun Mil y 00/100 Dólares Americanos) sin intereses.
3. El uso del CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Nº 03898/2009/IN/1601 de fecha 17 de Febrero del 2009 de mi hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ respecto de la salida del Perú el día 24 de Diciembre del 2007, que no aparece registrada, no sólo fue un “error administrativo”, fue borrado del Sistema Migratorio con el premeditado propósito de sustentar la solicitud de RESTITUCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENOR POR SUSTRACCIÓN ILEGAL, bajo los alcances de la Convención De La Haya sobre los Aspectos Civiles de la Sustracción Internacional de Menores del año 1980.
4. El uso del ACTA DE AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES de fecha 19 de Diciembre del 2007 otorgada por ante el Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS suscrito supuestamente por LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE y LA RECURRENTE, sin sello obligatorio de Migraciones que es donde radica su validez, que al parecer ha sido eliminado o incinerado, fue utilizado como “segunda opción” para sustentar y finalmente realizar la solicitud de RESTITUCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENOR POR RETENCIÓN ILÍCITA, bajo los alcances de la Convención De La Haya sobre los Aspectos Civiles de la Sustracción Internacional de Menores del año 1980, cuya firma y huella digital no me pertenecen.
5. INFORME Nº 279-2014-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 20 de Noviembre del 2014, de la Abogada DIANA CHIRINOS TERRAZAS – Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio al Abogado RONALD RIOS ADRIANZEN – Gerente de Servicios Migratorios, que contiene un informe PARCIAL y ARBITRARIO, burlándose de la ley, efectuándose una interpretación ANTOJADIZA y MENDAZ, “ignorando” la Convención De La Haya de 1980 tantas veces mencionado y por ende la sentencia dictada por la Autoridad Central Inglesa respecto de la Tenencia, Régimen de Visitas y Alimentos; así como, nuestra situación de ciudadanas POLACAS y condición migratoria de TURISTA; en el colmo de toda esta ABERRACIÓN JURÍDICA se recomienda una “DIRECTIVA INTERNA” y “RESOLUCIÓN DE SUPERINTENDENCIA” que regule y/o determine las directrices a seguir respecto de la salida y entrada del país de menores de edad con doble o múltiples nacionalidades, que sólo confirman su ignorancia en materia de interpretación sistemática de las normas jurídicas, ya que sólo debió aplicarse la Ley de Extranjería, respetando su nacionalidad POLACA y condición migratoria de TURISTA. Este informe fue avalado por el Gerente de Servicios Migratorios el Abogado RIOS ADRIANZEN.
6. La actuación DOLOSA de los funcionarios públicos relacionado con el impedimento de salida de mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, desconociendo su nacionalidad POLACA y su calidad de TURISTA, generando documentos al margen de la Constitución Política del Estado y de la Ley, se circunscribe en la vulneración de sus Derechos Humanos y Fundamentales, conducta dolosa prevista y sancionada por el Artículo 152º del Código Penal.
IX. MEDIOS PROBATORIOS DE LA DENUNCIA PRESENTAMOS documentos ordenados en forma cronológica al que hemos hecho referencia en los fundamentos de la denuncia, que acreditan nuestras afirmaciones, es decir, la actuación dolosa del señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE y de los funcionarios de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones; así como, por los funcionarios del Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables – MIMP, que actúo como Autoridad Central para la aplicación del Convenio de La Haya 1980, en perjuicio de mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, que han atentado contra sus derechos humanos y fundamentales previstos en la constitución Política del Estado y en la Ley.
IX.1. Piezas Procesales del Expediente sobre aplicación de la CONVENCIÓN DE LA HAYA SOBRE LOS ASPECTOS CIVILES DE LA SUSTRACCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENORES DE 1980. Contiene los siguientes documentos:
IX.1.1. OFICIO N° 444-2009-MINDES/DGFC/DINNA de fecha 14 de Abril del 2009, mediante el cual, la autoridad Central Peruana EXHORTA al Abogado Oficial de la Unidad de Sustracción de Menores y Fiduciario Público (THE CHILD ABDUCTION UNIT OFFICIAL SOLICITOR AND PUBLIC TRUSTEE) del Reino Unido, Autoridad Central de Inglaterra, la aplicación del Artículo 7º de La Convención.
IX.1.2. Solicitud formulada por LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE, el mes de Abril del 2009, por ante la Directora de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes del Ministerio de la Mujer y Desarrollo Social, MARÍA DEL CARMEN SANTIAGO BAILETTI, Autoridad Central Peruana, iniciando el Proceso de Restitución Internacional de Menor.
IX.1.3. FORMULARIO DE DENUNCIA del Ministerio de la Mujer y Desarrollo Social, AUTORIDAD CENTRAL PARA LA APLICACIÓN DE LA CONVENCIÓN DE LA HAYA SOBRE LOS ASPECTOS CIVILES DE LA SUSTRACCIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE MENORES DE EDAD (1980), que sustentan los factores de hecho y de derecho que justifican la solicitud de restitución – SUSTRACCIÓN ILEGAL DE MENOR y los documentos que se anexan, como son ACTA DE AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES y CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO N° 03898/2009/IN/1601, indica que, “La menor tenía el consentimiento del padre para salir del país por cuatro meses.”
IX.1.4. El CERTIFICADO DE MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO Nº 03898/2009/IN/1601 de fecha 17 de Febrero del 2009, en la que adrede NO SE REGISTRA LA SALIDA DE MI MENOR HIJA EL 24 DE DICIEMBRE DEL 2007 por el CONTROL MIGRATORIO PERUANO DE HUAQUILLAS y que ratifica “Cualquier enmendatura o adición posterior a esta línea o en el texto inhabilita el presente documentos.”
IX.1.5. El ACTA DE AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES N° 007176 de fecha 19 de Diciembre del 2007 supuestamente otorgada por ante el Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS ante el que comparecen LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE y JOANNA PACHWICEWICZ (la recurrente), en el que FALSAMENTE se me confiere autorización para viajar con mi menor hija a Europa, España, Polonia, Inglaterra desde el 24 de Diciembre del 2007 al mes de Junio del 2008, sin sello de MIGRACIONES con la fecha de la salida del país, en concordancia con la fecha que aparece en el pasaporte peruano de mi hija AYMARA (24/12/2007).
IX.1.6. TRADUCCIÓN OFICIAL de la sentencia de la Corte Superior de Justicia – Sala de Familia del Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda del Norte del Expediente N° FD09P01132 de fecha 11 de Noviembre del 2009, que contiene la “solución amigable” de mutuo acuerdo con el señor LUIS GERARDO MERINO ALPISTE sobre tenencia, régimen de visitas y alimentos.
IX.2. NOTIFICACIÓN N° 2206-2014-IN-MIGRACIONES-PCM-AUCH de fecha 05 de Noviembre del 2014 dirigido a la recurrente, señalando que mi hija AYMARA no podrá embarcarse en el vuelo IB 6551 con destino a MADRID. 5. POR ALERTA ROJA por PROCESO JUDICIAL de la menor MERINO PACHWICEWICZ AYMARA.
IX.3. NOTIFICACIÓN N° 2961-2014-MIGRACIONES / SM / MM / PCMAIJCH de fecha 04 de Diciembre del 2014, las autoridades de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones impidieron a mi hija AYMARA salir del Perú, alegando en esa ocasión que continuaba una ALERTA PREVENTIVA DE IMPEDIMENTO DE SALIDA DEL PAIS en el Sistema de Migraciones anotada a solicitud del padre de la menor.
IX.4. SENTENCIA DE LA SEGUNDA SALA ESPECIALIZADA DE FAMILIA DE LIMA de fecha 09 de Diciembre del 2014, Expediente N° 545-2014 sobre EXEQUATUR que declara FUNDADA la solicitud y reconocen que la sentencia de la Corte Superior de Justicia – Sala de Familia del Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda del Norte del Expediente N° FD09P01132 de fecha 11 de Noviembre del 2009 tiene la fuerza de una sentencia nacional.
IX.5. Oficio Nº 099-2015-DP/ADHPD de fecha 14 de Mayo del 2015 de la DEFENSORÍA DEL PUEBLO dirigido al Embajador de Polonia señor KONRAD KIERDZYNSKI, en la que advierten que la SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES, expresa que informó a la recurrente que el levantamiento de la alerta sobre su hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ, sólo resultaría posible cuando sea reconocido mediante un procedimiento de EXEQUATUR el acuerdo judicial suscrito en el Reino Unido.
IX.6. OF. RE (ASN-SSN) Nº 2.10.E/702 de fecha 16 de Junio del 2016 del MINISTERIO DE RELACIONES EXTERIORES suscrita por el Ministro Consejero ALEJANDRO PEDRO UGARTE VELARDE, a cargo de la Subdirección de Asistencia al Nacional, dirigida al Superintendente Nacional de Migraciones BORIS POTOZEN BRACO, para que proporcionen información relativa al movimiento migratorio de mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ respecto de su salida el 24 de Diciembre del 2007 y de la copia “fechada” de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones de la Autorización para Viaje de Menores.
IX.7. Orden de Salida Nº 195 AUTORIZACIÓN DE SALIDA, que había sido emitida el 19 de Junio del 2015 por el señor YURI EDUARDO VILLANES VEGA, Gerente de Servicios Migratorios de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones, visada por la señora MARJORIE MARZIA SORIA VALDEZ, Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio Gerencia de Servicios Migratorios MIGRACIONES, con fecha límite de salida 23 de Julio del 2015.
IX.8. DENUNCIA realizada el 20 de Julio del 2015 ante el Superintendente Nacional de Migraciones BORIS POTOZEN BRACO sobre el maltrato recibido por los funcionarios de MIGRACIONES.
IX.9. DISPOSICIÓN Nº DOS de fecha 21 de Octubre del 2015, CARPETA FISCAL Nº 180-2015, suscrita por el Fiscal Provincial Adjunto sobre DENUNCIA PENAL ANTE LA FISCALÍA PENAL ESPECIALIZADA EN CORRUPCIÓN DE FUNCIONARIOS DE CHICLAYO, contra los que resulten responsables de los delitos de Abuso de Autoridad y Omisión, Rehusamiento o Retardo de Actos Funcionales en agravio de mi familia y del Estado Peruano –Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones, declaró que NO PROCEDE FORMALIZAR NI CONTINUAR CON LA INVESTIGACIÓN PREPARATORIA por la presunta comisión de los delitos de ABUSO DE AUTORIDAD Y OMISIÓN REHUSAMIENTO O RETARDO DE ACTOS FUNCIONALES en agravio de EL ESTADO PERUANO – SUPERINTENDENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONES.
IX.10. ACTA DE ENTREGA de fecha 02 de Setiembre de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones suscrito por la Abogada ROSARIO CARRILLO que entrega a la recurrente copia de los siguientes documentos:
IX.10.1. Oficio Nº 4660-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 20 de Agosto del 2015 (14 folios).
Documento suscrito por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio dirigida a la señora GISELLA VIGNOLO HUAMANÍ funcionaria Adjunta (e) para los Derechos Humanos y las Personas con Discapacidad sobre el MOVIMIENTO MIGRATORIO de mi hija AYMARA.
IX.10.2. Oficio Nº 4387-201-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 22 de Agosto del 2016 (12 folios).
Documento dirigido al Ministro Consejero ALEJANDRO PEDRO UGARTE VELARDE Sub Director de Asistencia al Nacional del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, suscrita “coincidentemente” por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, respuesta al OF. RE. (ASN-SSN) Nº 2.10-E/702 HT. 20160491729, respecto de la remisión de copia “fechada” de la AUTORIZACIÓN DE VIAJE DE MENORES al extranjero otorgada ante el Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS en la ciudad de Chiclayo el 19 de Diciembre del 2007.
IX.10.3. Oficio Nº 4575-2016-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 01 de Setiembre del 2016 (27 folios).
Documento dirigido al Gerente de Gerencia de Usuarios JUAN ANTONIO HUERTA VALVERDE de la SNM, suscrita “coincidentemente” por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, respuesta al Oficio Nº 739-2016-MIGRACIONES-U del 11.08.2016 (H.T. Nº 20160662893), Asunto: Absolución de comunicación presentada por la ciudadana polaca JOANNA PACHWICEWICZ.
IX.10.4. INFORME Nº 004-2016-MIGRACIONES-JZTUMBES-DMSH de fecha 01 de Agosto del 2016, de I.M. DENNIS MOISES SUCLUPE HERRERA, Área de Archivo a la Lic. ISELLA DEL SOCORRO PINGO NIMA, Jefe Zonal de Migraciones Tumbes, que delata el desorden y negligencia de la entidad, señalando que sólo existe documentación a partir del 2013.
IX.10.5. Oficio Nº 2991-2016-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 05 de Julio del 2016 de la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio dirigida a la Licenciada Administrativa ISELLA PINGO NIMA, Jefe (e) Zonal de Migraciones Tumbes SNM, que solicita copia fedateadas de la AUTORIZACIÓN PARA VIAJE DE MENORES OTORGADA POR EL Notario CARLOS ALBERTO CABALLERO BURGOS en la ciudad de Chiclayo a solicitud del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, en la que extrañamente “hace la salvedad” que salió del país en calidad migratoria de TURISTA. Está probador que la referida AUTORIZACIÓN DE VIAJE nunca ingresó, porque de acuerdo con el Movimiento Migratorio de AYMARA, en ningún momento salió del Perú.
IX.10.6. Oficio Nº 1501-2015-MIGRACIONES-JZTUM de fecha 20 de Agosto del 2015 del Ecom. BARTOLOMÉ JOSÉ ESQUIVES OLIVOS, Jefe Zonal de Migraciones Tumbes al Abogado YURI EDUARDO VILLANES VEGA, Gerente de Servicios Migratorios de la SNM informándole el registro del movimiento migratorio de salida del país de fecha 24 de Diciembre del 2007 de mi hija AYMARA realizada el 20 de Agosto del 2015. Acredita que el movimiento fue borrado con el evidente propósito de favorecer al señor MERINO ALPISTE en la aplicación del Convenio De La Haya 1980.
IX.10.7. INFORME Nº 005-2015-MIGRACIONES-JZTUM-CEBAF/ECU-EBM de fecha 13 de Agosto del 2015, suscrito por EVER JAVIER BENAVIDES MEDINA, Técnico de Migraciones a Eco. BARTOLOMÉ JOSÉ ESQUIVES OLIVOS, Jefe Zonal de Migraciones Tumbes sobre el control migratorio de salida del país de mi menor hija AYMARA, confirmando que no registra ingreso al país.
IX.10.8. MEMORANDUM Nº 165-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM de fecha 10 de Agosto del 2015, suscrito por el Abogado YURI EDUARDO VILLANES VEGA sospechosamente ordenando al Eco. BARTOLOMÉ JOSÉ ESQUIVES OLIVOS, Jefe Zonal de Migraciones Tumbes a registrar el movimiento migratorio de salida de mi hija AYMARA el 24 de Diciembre del 2007.
IX.10.9. OFICIO Nº 135-2015-DP/ADHPD de fecha 23 de Julio del 2015 suscrito por la Defensora Adjunta para los Derechos Humanos y las Personas con discapacidad de la Defensoría del Pueblo dirigida al Gerente de Servicios Migratorios YURI VILLANES VEGA solicitando información sobre el movimiento migratorio de mi menor hija AYMARA el 27 de diciembre del 2007.
IX.10.10. PASAPORTE POLACO DE MI MENOR HIJA AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ que registra la salida por el Puesto de control Migratorio de Tumbes el 24 de Diciembre del 2007 y que dolosamente fue borrado del sistema migratorio para favorecer al señor MERINO ALPISTE.
IX.10.11. ACTA DE OCURRENCIA POLICIAL de fecha 11 de Julio del 2015, que da cuenta del OFICIO MULTIPLE Nº 025-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 07 de Julio del 2015 sobre ALERTA DE IMPEDIMENTO DE SALIDA DE MI MENOR HIJA AYMARA en la que el Técnico de Migraciones JHONY AVILA GUERRERO consulta a su Jefa DIANA CHIRINOS TERRAZAS, Jefa de Migraciones Piura, quien luego de realizar las coordinaciones determinó que existió “error” por parte de la Central Lima (¿?) respecto del correo institucional, restricción que había sido levantada el mes de Junio del 2015 contradiciendo su INFORME Nº 279-2014-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 20 de Noviembre del 2014.
IX.10.12. RESOLUCIÓN DE SUPERINTENDENCIA Nº 185-2015-MIGRACIONES a cargo del señor BORIS POTOZEN BRACO, cuyo quinto párrafo del CONSIDERANDO, sólo corrobora lo expresado en la RESOLUCIÓN SUB GERENCIAL Nº 2-2015-MIGRACIONES de fecha 12 de Junio del 2015, que mi menor hija AYMARA no necesitaba de autorización y/o judicial por parte del padre de nacionalidad peruana para salir del territorio nacional. NINGUN PERUANO MENOS UN FUNCIONARIO PÚBLICO PUEDE ALEGAR DESCONOCIMIENTO DE LA LEY Y CALIFICAR SU ACCIONAR COMO “ERRORES”.
IX.10.13. CARTA DE NOTIFICACIÓN Nº 367-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 12 de Junio del 2015 suscrita por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA que notifica al Abogado con la RESOLUCIÓN SUB GERENCIAL Nº 2-2015-MIGRACIONES de fecha 12 de Junio del 2015, que ratifican la comisión de los “sistemáticos” errores incurridos por los funcionarios públicos de la Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones, indicando que por su calidad migratoria de TURISTA y por ende ciudadana POLACA, no necesitaba de autorización notarial y/o judicial por parte de su padre para salir del territorio nacional. Después de 07 meses de haber negado ilegalmente la salida de mi hija AYMARA, a la que mantuve escondida y alejada de la sociedad y de sus estudios en su residencia de Inglaterra, vulnerando la ley y desconociendo un tratado internacional.
IX.10.14. RESOLUCIÓN SUB GERENCIAL Nº 2-2015-MIGRACIONES de fecha 12 de Junio del 2015, suscrita por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, que da cuenta de los errores incurridos por los funcionarios de MIGRACIONES.
IX.10.15. CARTA Nº 032-2015-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 02 de Marzo del 2015, suscrito por la Abogada ROSARIO L. CARRILLO VEGA, en calidad de Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio, que acredita haber hecho caso omiso a la sentencia dictada por el Juez de la Corte Inglesa en base al Convenio de La Haya sobre Tenencia, Régimen de Visitas y Alimentos de mi menor hija AYMARA, exigiéndome que presente la resolución consentida o ejecutoriada del proceso de EXEQUATUR, cuando el Convenio no obliga.
IX.10.16. INFORME Nº 279-2014-MIGRACIONES-SM-MM de fecha 20 de Noviembre del 2014, de la Abogada DIANA CHIRINOS TERRAZAS – Sub Gerente de Movimiento Migratorio al Abogado RONALD RIOS ADRIANZEN – Gerente de Servicios Migratorios.
POR TANTO:
A Usted señor Fiscal de la Nación por la gravedad de las acciones dolosas en contra de una menor de edad que involucran a su padre y a funcionarios públicos de diferentes Instituciones Públicas peruanas, es que se sirva disponer la investigación de los hechos expresados en la denuncia para determinar la responsabilidad de sus autores y la sanción correspondiente.
ANEXOS
1 A PASAPORTE DE LA RECURRENTE que acredita la representación de mi menor hija AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ.
1 B PASAPORTE DE MI MENOR HIJA AYMARA MERINO PACHWICEWICZ que acredita el vínculo familiar.
DOCUMENTOS PRESENTADOS COMO MEDIOS PROBATORIOS del IX.1 al IX.10.16. | 1 |
CHICAGO — A man who says J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, molested him decades ago when the man was 14 filed a lawsuit against Mr. Hastert on Monday, saying he was owed $1. 8 million of the money he had been promised as compensation for the abuse. The suit, for breach of contract, says that Mr. Hastert promised to pay him $3. 5 million for the pain and suffering that the abuse had caused, but failed to pay the full amount after being charged last year with federal crimes. The name of the man was not made public in the lawsuit. The suit was filed in Kendall County, Ill. on the edge of Chicago’s suburbs, where Mr. Hastert worked as a high school wrestling coach in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, and where at least four members of the wrestling team have said he sexually abused them. The suit adds to a mounting set of legal problems for Mr. Hastert, 74, who is expected to be sentenced on Wednesday in federal court here after pleading guilty to a banking violation tied to the abuse. The man who sued on Monday — known in his own lawsuit as James Doe and in the federal case against Mr. Hastert as Individual A — was molested when Mr. Hastert asked him to stay alone with him in a motel room during a wrestling camp trip, his lawsuit says. “For many years to follow, Plaintiff suffered severe panic attacks which led to periods of unemployment, career changes, bouts of depression, hospitalization and psychiatric treatment,” the suit says, noting that the plaintiff’s family had known and trusted Mr. Hastert for years. In 2008, the lawsuit says, the plaintiff learned that Mr. Hastert had abused someone else as well and met with Mr. Hastert to confront him. “During their discussions, Hastert acknowledged the lifelong pain and suffering he caused Plaintiff,” the lawsuit says. A lawyer for Mr. Hastert declined to comment on the suit on Monday. It was the large payments from Mr. Hastert to Individual A starting around 2010 that led the authorities to begin investigating Mr. Hastert. As they investigated the sums and whether they violated bank reporting requirements, the claims of abuse emerged. At one point, a lawyer for Mr. Hastert told the authorities that his client was being extorted by Individual A over a false claim of abuse, a court filing by prosecutors says. Eventually, after recording conversations between Mr. Hastert and Individual A, the investigators dismissed the notion that it was a case of extortion, or that it was a false claim. Mr. Hastert was not charged with sexual abuse in the episodes, for which the statutes of limitation have passed. He pleaded guilty in October to illegally structuring bank withdrawals, and prosecutors said he had been using the funds to pay “hush money” for misconduct from years past. The lawsuit filed on Monday said the plaintiff was still owed $1. 8 million of the “settlement agreement,” plus interest. Individual A is not expected to testify at Mr. Hastert’s sentencing hearing on Wednesday, though another victim is expected to, as is the sister of a man, now deceased, who told her he had been abused by Mr. Hastert. Prosecutors have said they believe Mr. Hastert should face as little as no prison time or as much as six months in prison, as suggested under federal guidelines. Defense lawyers have requested probation for Mr. Hastert, who has had a stroke and other medical problems in recent months. Dozens of people have sent letters to the court on behalf of Mr. Hastert, including his wife, children and brother. | 0 |
In a report this week, CNN en Español catches up with a Venezuelan embassy whistleblower who revealed a scheme to sell official Venezuelan identification documents to Middle Eastern citizens, including many suspected of ties to Hezbollah. [The revelations in CNN’s report are not new, though the whistleblower’s consistency in repeating his story is notable, and CNN received denials (and threats to have their journalists expelled from the country) from Venezuelan officials. In November 2015, Misael López Soto fled the Venezuelan embassy in Baghdad and posted a video to YouTube detailing how his officials requested he participate in a scheme to sell authentic documents to Mideast nationals. “I have made public how, under the complacent eye of diplomats in the mission [in Baghdad] local employees delivered visas, passports, birth certificates, and other types of Venezuelan documentation to citizens of Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and, in some cases, Pakistan,” he said in the video. López added that those who benefitted from the project could very well have ties to international terrorist organizations. “In many cases, they were tied to terrorist groups, most of the Shiite variety,” he said at the time, and placed the average price of such a document at up to $15, 000. López also alleged that Venezuelan nationals would receive Iraqi identities for the right price, leading to individuals with criminal pasts resorting to bribing socialist Venezuelan officials to leave the country. López — now living in Toledo, Spain — has not changed his story. In an interview with CNN en Español this week, he reiterated that he believed many of those buying government documents from the Venezuelan embassy in Baghdad did so as part of their involvement in terrorist activity. Ambassador Jonathan Velasco, López says, “gave me an envelope full of visas and passports and told me ‘take care of this, you have a million dollars in your hands. ” “He later explained to me that, in Iraq, people paid a lot of money for a visa or a passport. I thought it was a joke,” he continued. López vividly recalls one incident in which a colleague at the embassy attempted to sell visas to Venezuela to thirteen Syrians for $10, 000 apiece. “Her excuse was that they wanted to go to the World Cup in Brazil in 2014,” he told CNN. “I suspected they were terrorists so I completely refused. ” CNN traced López’s claims back to 2013 and found evidence that up to 173 Middle Eastern nationals received authentic Venezuelan documents, including passports, between 2008 and 2013. CNN concluded some these individuals had ties to the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which has long boasted ties to the socialist government in Caracas. The relationship between Hezbollah and the government of late dictator Hugo Chávez traces back to 2007, according to the Spanish book Boomerang Chávez. Spanish journalist Emili Blasco, who wrote the book, alleged that Chávez sent his Affairs Minister Nicolás Maduro to Damascus, Syria. There, Maduro met with, among others, Syria’s head of state Bashar and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. At least 300 Hezbollah members subsequently received Venezuelan identification documents, according to subsequent reports. The Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) a think tank, published a report in 2014 revealing that the Venezuelan government had issued an estimated 173 passports, visas, and permits to Middle Eastern nationals between 2008 and 2012, matching the timeline in the book Boomerang Chávez. SFS also accused Cuba of funding the scheme to provide these documents. Cuba’s role in the scheme surfaced once again in documents released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in early 2016. The “Panama Papers” revealed that law firm Mossack Fonseca played a role in transferring Cuban funds into a shell corporation later used by Venezuela to buy advanced passport printing equipment. The plan to purchase new printing equipment traced back to 2005, according to the documents ICIJ made public. Multiple Venezuelan government officials denied these allegations to CNN journalists in investigations spanning the past year and published this week. In one case, Venezuelan officials threatened to expel a CNN journalist after attempting to ask Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez about López’s claims. | 1 |
Topics: Hillary Clinton , Donald Trump , Madonna , 2016 Presidential Election , Voting irregularities Wednesday, 26 October 2016
ONLY IN AMERICA - NBC News reported yesterday: "...that as Florida's early voting gets underway, several organizations including a labor union found a unique way to get Miami residents to the polls.""Many of them Latino, were greeted out front with taco trucks and a free shuttle bus to help them get to the polls downtown." Back on October 19, just before the last presidential debate, NBC News also reported a "wall" of taco food trucks lined up against Trump. Actually, it was more like three taco trucks whose owners were just trying to capitalize on feeding the attending crowds. But, it sounded believable and compelling. Obviously, NBC's reporters have a thing for Mexican food.
No, I'm not making any of this up. In fact, it took the collaboration of three NBC reporters Craig Stanley, Natalie Valdes, and Brian Latimer to write the less than 300 hundred word Florida taco truck story and create the dumb 48 second video.
I've warned readers that during this crazy, unpredictable election season - it is virtually impossible to distinguish between outrageous stories found on this site - compared to political reality and the main stream media's stories.
Yvanna Cancela, the political director of the Culinary Workers Union local 226 who helped organize the Florida event said: "Our taco truck drivers drove all night and day to get from Las Vegas to Florida.""Some of the taco meat is getting a little gamey because of the hot weather in the Nevada desert, but by adding enough hot chilies and Mexican spices voters won't be able to taste the difference."
When Yvanna was asked about whether the Clinton's Blow Jobs for Votes™ campaign would compete for voters she said: "Everyone knows that the way to a man's vote is through his stomach!""As you know, Latino men are known for their machismo and legendary sex drive.""So men won't be lured away by an offer of free sex for their vote, we added saltpeter to our tacos." Saltpeter, containing potassium nitrate, is a chemical compound known to aid in food preservation and diminish a man's sex drive.
The Clinton's Blow Jobs for Votes™ campaign manager, Lucy Lewd, was outraged after hearing about the saltpeter laced tacos and obvious competing strategy to lure away male voters. Lucy said: "Yvanna can talk all she wants about a way to a man's vote is through his stomach, we know differently and aim lower."
Lucy Lewd went on to say: "In face of this new stiff competition, the Blow Jobs for Votes™ campaign will be doubling its efforts to win over male voters.""After Madonna's offer to give men blow jobs for votes, late voting registration has gone through the roof.""Our efforts to hire enough Madonna segregate poll workers has been difficult." Lucy lamented: "Young women who normally would be anxious at the chance to be involved in Hillary's campaign, such as girls enthralled with the "Material Girl's" sexual allure, intrigued by "role models" Paris Hilton's and Kim Kardashian's sex tapes, buy Kylie Jenner lip kits, and purchase all their clothes at "Sluts R Us", now hate men after all the Donald Trump woman hater stories." Lucy added: "The women who have come out against Trump are so convincing and endearing, many of these young women have become lesbians."
Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, who has been the target for weeks for all his revealing Wikileaked emails said: "This election isn't about tacos, blow jobs or lesbians, it's about American's number one enemy the Russians - who are meddling in our elections. "The Clinton campaign has already donated $100 million to upgrade the nation's voting machines to protect against Russian intervention." Smartmatic, a company controlled by billionaire businessman George Soros and who is a Clinton supporter, donating over $8 million to her campaign, has been rumored to be supplying all the new voting machines.
A computer technician, who did not want to be identified, described some of the anomalies he observed after installing the new voting machines at various precincts in Florida where early voting as already started. He said: "These new machines are really state-of-the-art, 12 inch color screens, a mouse-like pointing device, face recognition, and full audio capability."
He confessed: "The only problem is when the voter points to any of the Republican candidates, their names disappear - pointing to any democrat candidate - the machine lights up and starts playing "Happy Times Are Here Again." He added: "The presidential choices also seem a little biased." With the machine's face recognition software, it can determine if the voter is a man or woman or even determine race, such as Latino.""Any voter who tries to select Donald Trump for president is automatically given an electrical shock.""Hovering over Hillary Clinton for president, if it's a male Latino, a mouth watering plate of tacos appear on the machine's screen and the machine starts playing 'Cielito Lindo' - for other men, a video of Madonna in sexy lingerie sucking on a microphone is displayed along with the "I'm A Virgin" song track." Make JennyNorthStar's | 1 |
Posted on October 27, 2016 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai in News , US // 0 Comments
FBI bosses are deliberately choosing to ignore the contents of the ‘missing’ 33,000 Clinton emails after officials were told their location.
Investigative journalist Paul Sperry says that newly released FBI documents prove that federal agents know the whereabouts of the missing emails – claiming that they exist in several locations and can be easily recovered.
Breitbart.com reports:
The emails were created during Clinton’s use of a home-built and largely unprotected email system for her personal and government emails, and also for her management of the scandal-wracked, foreign-funded foundation while she was working as Secretary of State.
Clinton insists she’s handed over all of the government emails — which actually belong to the taxpayer — and insists she didn’t break the law by mixing personal and government business or by storing and swapping classified information on her own email network. The hidden 33,000 emails are just emails about her personal life, she says.
Top Democrats have quietly slammed Clinton for her recklessness and ethical short-cuts, but the FBI leadership decided that she should not be charged with crimes in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Since that decision was announced, there’s been growing evidence that the FBI and the Department of Justice handcuffed the FBI investigators and granted favorable treatment to Clinton’s staff.
Now Sperry shows how Justice Department and FBI officials have also declined multiple opportunities to find copies of the missing 33,000 emails that would provide more evidence about whether Clinton was obeying or violating many federal laws: In a May interview with FBI agents, an executive with the Denver contractor that maintained Clinton’s private server revealed that an underling didn’t bleach-clean all her subpoenaed emails, just ones he stored in a data file he used to transfer the emails from the server to Clinton’s aides, who in turn sorted them for delivery to Congress. The Platte River Networks executive, whose name was redacted from the interview report, said PRN tech Paul Combetta “created a ‘vehicle’ to transfer email files from the live mailboxes of [Clinton Executive Services Corp.] email accounts [and] then later used BleachBit software to shred the ‘vehicle,’ but the email content still existed in the live email accounts.” Unless one of Clinton’s aides had the capability to log in to the PRN server as an administrator and remove a mailbox, her archived mailboxes more than likely still reside somewhere in that system. And they may also materialize on an internal “shared drive” that PRN created to control access to the Clinton email accounts among PRN employees. PRN has been under FBI order to preserve all emails and other evidence since the start of its investigation last year. Clinton’s missing “personal” emails may also be captured on a Google server. According to FBI notes, Combetta “transferred all of the Clinton email content to a personal Google email address he created.” Only the FBI never subpoenaed Google to find out. The FBI documents also reveal that Hillary’s server was mirrored on a cloud server in Pennsylvania maintained by Datto Inc., a tech firm that performs cloud-to-cloud data protection. When PRN contracted with Datto, it requested that Hillary’s server be backed up locally and privately. But the techs forgot to order the private node, and they sent the server backup data “remotely to Datto’s secure cloud and not to a local private node.” The FBI never subpoenaed Datto’s server, either.
Read it all here . | 0 |
RT October 26, 2016
Around 300 civilians were killed in eleven airstrikes conducted by the US-led coalition in Syria, which Amnesty International investigated for its latest report. Amnesty says the US must come clean about the civilian toll of its fight against Islamic State.
Amnesty suspects that US Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs coalition airstrikes in Syria, “may have… carried out unlawful attacks” in Syria, failing to take necessary measures to prevent civilian killings.
“We fear the US-led coalition is significantly underestimating the harm caused to civilians in its operations in Syria,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s Beirut regional office.
“It’s high time the US authorities came clean about the full extent of the civilian damage caused by coalition attacks in Syria. Independent and impartial investigations must be carried out into any potential violations of international humanitarian law and the findings should be made public.”
Amnesty investigated evidence, including eyewitness accounts, reports by human rights organizations and the media, photographs and video footage as well as satellite imagery, related to 11 suspected coalition attacks in Syria. The group estimates that the attacks have claimed as many as 300 civilian lives. So far none of these deaths has been acknowledged by CENTCOM.
The report published on Wednesday added that the total civilian death toll from coalition action “could be as high as 600 or more than 1,000” since the operation against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL) started in Syria in 2014.
One of the strikes investigated by Amnesty took place in the early hours of December 7, 2015. The attacks hit two houses in the village of Ayn al-Khan, near al-Hawl in al-Hasakah governorate in northern Syria, killing 40 civilians, including 19 children, and injuring at least 30 others, the report said. A d v e r t i s e m e n t
According to an eyewitness account, an initial night strike was followed by a second attack from a helicopter gunship, which hit first responders trying to dig out survivors.
“At this point I had a two-month-old baby boy in my arms whom I had rescued. The hit caused me to fall and drop him… I fell into the hole made by the air strike. That was what saved me… My mother, aunt, wife and children – a daughter who was four years old and a son who was two and a half were all killed. The woman and her son who I’d rescued were killed. Everyone but me was killed,” the survivor said.
The strike is believed to have targeted IS fighters. But local Kurdish militia reportedly warned the coalition that there were civilians in the area.
Amnesty said CENTCOM’s failure to acknowledge civilian deaths in Syria, as well as the poor record of investigating such incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq, poses grave concerns over the toll which the civilian population of Mosul, Iraq is likely to face from the ongoing operation to take the city from IS. The US-led coalition is providing air support for the offensive.
“Given the likely increase in air strikes by the US-led Coalition as part of the Iraqi offensive to recapture Mosul, it is even more pressing that CENTCOM be fully transparent about the impact of their military actions on civilians. And it is crucial that they adhere scrupulously to international humanitarian law, including by taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians and to minimize harm to civilian homes and infrastructure,” said Maalouf.
A similar operation to capture Manbij, Syria, which is far smaller than Mosul, killed more than 200 civilians, Amnesty estimated.
Last week, Amnesty International blasted Russia for civilian deaths in Aleppo. The Syrian city is divided between government forces and various armed groups, including the Al-Qaeda offshoot Al-Nusra Front. Russia says that the militants use civilians as human shields and would not allow them to leave the city, derailing several attempts by Russia to open humanitarian corridors out of the city. This article was posted: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 6:20 am Share this article | 1 |
Even as the Labor Department awaits confirmation of a new secretary, officials say enforcement actions are moving forward against companies accused of violating workplace safety rules. There is just one issue: The public isn’t likely to know much about them. In a sharp break with the past, the department has stopped publicizing fines against companies. As of Monday, seven weeks after the inauguration of President Trump, the department had yet to post a single news release about an enforcement fine. By contrast, the Obama administration saw the announcements — essentially publicly shaming companies — as a major tool in its workplace safety enforcement. It issued an average of about 460 news releases annually about fines and other enforcement actions, said Eric Conn, a lawyer in Washington who tracks such cases. “The reason you do news releases is to influence other employers” to clean up their acts, said David Michaels, who was an administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency within the Labor Department that oversees workplace safety, during much of the Obama administration. As Mr. Trump vows to roll back regulations across the federal government, the early experience in the Labor Department shows that there are many ways to signal the administration’s new direction. Concern among labor unions and advocates of workplace safety is so high that some unions raced to court last month to intervene in a lawsuit seeking to undo a new rule that prevents companies from retaliating against employees who report workplace hazards. Jillian Rogers, a spokeswoman for the Labor Department, declined to comment when asked why OSHA had not issued any such releases. But she said that the agency’s enforcement efforts were unchanged and that such efforts were “reflected across various media channels,” like newsletters and social media. “The Department of Labor is continuing to operate business as usual, including enforcement operations,” Ms. Rogers said. In addition to the rule on worker retaliation, several other OSHA regulations or standards, on issues like practices and use of a mineral linked to a deadly lung disease, face delay or elimination. Last week, the Senate passed a measure to repeal an rule that required companies seeking significant federal contracts to disclose violations of labor standards, like safety and rules, or instances when they were accused of such violations. The blacklisting rule was intended to prevent companies that violated workplace regulations from getting federal money. Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president for the Professional Services Council, a trade association that represents federal contractors, hailed the measure, which Mr. Trump may now sign into law. He said the rule was onerous and unfair, because companies had to report unproved accusations. “The regulatory scheme was overly burdensome,” Mr. Chvotkin said. “We applaud the change. ” As an agency, OSHA has long struggled to have an impact. Its procedures are arduous, and changes can take years or even decades to enact. Last year, to help the agency flex its muscles, Congress passed a law doubling the fines companies faced for safety violations. The agency also took aim at certain industries it considered repeat offenders. Among other things, it levied fines last year as high as $317, 000 against several poultry producers like Tyson Foods, Koch Foods and Birdsboro Kosher Farms. It also assessed a $2. 5 million fine against Ajin USA, a company in Alabama that supplies auto parts for South Korean carmakers like Kia and Hyundai, after a woman was killed when a factory robot malfunctioned. Still, the Trump administration and lawmakers seem to be making good on commitments to roll back regulations on businesses, and OSHA appears to be a prime target. Industry groups are pushing back against an regulation meant to exert pressure on companies to better comply with rules. A provision of that rule, which was supposed to take effect last month, would require companies to electronically submit accident data to OSHA so the agency could post the information on a public website. As recently as early January, OSHA said on its website that it expected the site to be live in February. But in recent weeks, the agency changed the wording so that it now states, “OSHA is not accepting electronic submissions at this time. ” “That was not an accident,” said Mr. Conn, the lawyer. “That was a big signal to employers that even if they report the data, it will not be published online. ” Ms. Rogers, the department spokeswoman, did not comment on the wording change. In addition, OSHA’s ability to charge companies with failures to properly record workplace injuries may be severely curtailed. For years, the agency had taken the position that it had up to five and a half years after an alleged violation to issue a citation to a company. But a court in 2012 found that OSHA’s interpretation was inconsistent with what the court called the “clear” wording of the law, which gave the agency only six months to bring charges. In December, the Obama administration issued a rule aimed at circumventing the court decision and restoring the period. But the House recently repealed that rule, and the Senate is expected to follow suit. Arthur G. Sapper, senior counsel at Ogletree Deakins and the lawyer who successfully argued against the agency in the 2012 court case, said the new OSHA rule deserved repeal. “They could have gone to that or another court or to Congress, but instead they tried to evade the law by changing their regulations,” Mr. Sapper said. But Mr. Michaels, the former head of OSHA, said that if the rule died, safety recording would effectively become voluntary because finding violations and bringing charges within six months was nearly impossible. “Responsible companies will keep good records, but the companies won’t, and that will put responsible companies at a disadvantage,” said Mr. Michaels, an epidemiologist who is now a professor at George Washington University. In addition, the agency said recently that it was delaying a rule intended to sharply lower occupational exposure to beryllium, a widely used mineral linked to a deadly lung disease. The rule, which was set to go into effect this month, will be delayed until at least May. The action is the latest twist in a effort by safety advocates to tighten beryllium exposure limits. Those advocates say they are optimistic that the new exposure standard will go into effect with only minor changes, but they added that any long delays or major revisions could jeopardize worker health. Michael Wright, director of health, safety and environment for the United Steelworkers, said that if the rule was delayed or overhauled, “then we will have a big problem, and we’ll be fighting that with every resource we have. ” | 1 |
Attack Was Meant to 'Defend' US Troops Under Fire by Jason Ditz, November 03, 2016 Share This
Two US soldiers and four Afghan special forces were killed, and three other US soldiers wounded in heavy fighting with the Taliban this morning, as the Taliban attempted to surge into an area around the northern city of Kunduz. As they usually do, the troops called in airstrikes to “break the siege.”
Instead of breaking the siege, the US warplanes pounded the village of Bouz Kandahari, destroying a number of houses and killing at least 30 civilians . 25 further civilians were wounded in the attack, fueling protests outside the governor’s office in Kunduz.
NATO conceded immediately that the coalition was behind the airstrikes, but appeared relatively unrepentant about it, insisting all the civilian deaths were because the Taliban were using the houses for “cover,” which of course is not a legal justification for bombing the houses.
US commander Gen. John Nicholson issued a statement after the incidents, offering condolences to the families of the two US soldiers who were slain. Defense Secretary Ash Carter also said he was “saddened” by the deaths of the US troops, but neither offered much of anything in comments on the dozens of dead civilians. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
At every school in New Rochelle, just north of the Bronx, in Westchester, there is a locked medicine cabinet in the nurse’s office, stocked with things like EpiPens for allergic reactions, inhalers for asthma, Tylenol for aches and pains. Now, those cabinets also include naloxone, an antidote for people who are overdosing on opioids like heroin. Given as an injection or a nasal spray, naloxone can quickly revive someone who is not breathing. The city keeps it in every nurse’s office, including in its elementary schools. “We have it the same way we have defibrillators and EpiPens, the way we have oxygen in our schools,” said Dr. Adrienne the school district’s medical director. “Rarely do we pull a defibrillator off the wall, but it’s there if we need it, and that’s how we approach this opportunity to have naloxone. ” There is no comprehensive data on how often students overdose while at school, but it happens. Renee Rider, assistant commissioner at the New York State Education Department, said the department has heard anecdotally of two schools where a student overdosed and was saved by E. M. S. workers using naloxone. But the numbers of young people dying from overdoses around the country is striking. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2015, opioids killed 7, 163 people between the ages of 15 and 29, more than 20 percent of total deaths. And as communities across the country face this swell of death from heroin and pills, schools see the epidemic lapping at their doorsteps — killing friends, neighbors, recent graduates. Educators are increasingly deciding that they should have naloxone on hand. In New Jersey, Assemblyman Vincent Mazzeo, a Democrat, sponsored a bill in the fall that would require all high schools to stock naloxone. In talking to parents and students in his district, Mr. Mazzeo said, “It came out that kids were coming into school on opiates, perhaps on heroin. ” Without the antidote, “If a kid comes into school and he overdoses, they don’t have the proper tools. They’d have to wait for E. M. S. first responders to come. ” Now, in Massachusetts and Kentucky, Connecticut and New Mexico, schools have the drug for emergency use. New York State has a program that provides it free to schools, with 64 districts participating so far. In Pennsylvania, nearly 250 public and charter schools have received a free supply. In Rhode Island, every middle school, junior high and high school is required to have naloxone on the premises. And scattered around the country, there are schools and districts that have bought the medication on their own. “It is absolutely a sad sign of the times,” said Roy Reese, superintendent of Washingtonville Central School District in Orange County, N. Y. “I say this not reluctantly, but sadly: it is only a matter of time. ” Naloxone has been available for more than 40 years, and for much of that time, it was largely found in hospitals. But it has become increasingly common outside of them as the opioid epidemic has spread, and is now often found at the fingertips of law enforcement officers. In recent years, laws have changed to allow schools to keep it on hand and administer it to whoever needs it. In New York, for example, public health law was amended in 2015 to authorize school employees to administer naloxone. Through the state’s program, New York schools can now receive two doses of generic intranasal naloxone in a little nylon bag the kits cost about $66, the State Health Department said, though schools get them for free. The drug is also available under the brand name Narcan, which is a nasal spray, and Evzio, which is an like an EpiPen. Evzio is the most expensive, with a list price of $4, 100, according to Kaléo, the company that makes it. New York City schools are not stocking it because, officials said, they “have not seen the need. ” Many schools have chosen to stock Narcan because they can get it for free. A partnership between Narcan’s producer, Adapt Pharma, and the Clinton Foundation, offers any high school in the country two free doses of Narcan. Adapt Pharma covers the cost of the medication, and the Clinton Foundation does outreach to schools and districts. In an indication of the reach of the epidemic, President Bill Clinton said last year that three of his friends had lost children to opioid overdoses. An Adapt Pharma spokesman said about 1, 300 units have been distributed so far to schools in 15 states, including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Delaware and New Hampshire. After the free supply runs out, schools can buy more for $75 a carton, which contains two doses. The list price for that amount is $125, Adapt said. “I don’t see this as a big for market share,” said Daniel Raymond the deputy director of policy and planning at the Harm Reduction Coalition, which provides trainings on health issues related to drug use. ”Ultimately, schools are going to be a niche market compared to other purchasers of naloxone. ” Kathleen Neelon, the nursing coordinator for the Wallingford, Conn. schools, said that in recent years, there has been an alarming numbers of overdoses among young adults in the area, so the district decided to stock Narcan for its high schools. They keep it in an emergency kit, which is filled with things like gauze and a blood pressure cuff. “We instituted it in December, and I hope we never have to use it” Ms. Neelon said. The school sent out a notice about the decision, and there were stories on the local news, she said, but she knew of no pushback from the community. “Most people said, it’s a sad statement, but it’s better to be prepared than not. ” Some observers wonder if the reaction would be different if schools were stocking an antidote to a different drug, like crack cocaine. The crack epidemic was particularly acute among black people, while the opioid epidemic has hit white people especially hard. Much has been written about how race has impacted the nation’s reaction to the opioid epidemic. “If there was an antidote to crack, the argument would be we should just kick these people out of school, rather than trying to deal with them in the school system,” said Mr. Raymond of the Harm Reduction Coalition. “It would be about getting tough, cracking down, kicking them off of sports teams and expelling them. ” In many school districts, educators say the severity of opioid problem has overwhelmed any concerns they might have about the optics of naloxone. Mark Marrone, superintendent of Mainland Regional High School in southern New Jersey, said he knows of several Mainland graduates who overdosed and died in their 20s, and one who overdosed and survived after being given naloxone. If the worst happens at his school, he said, he plans to be prepared. “Some people worry that this says, ‘Oh, there are drugs in the schools,’” Mr. Marrone said. “No, there are drugs everywhere. We want to teach kids the right way to respond. ” And maybe, he continued, “you’ll save a life. ” | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. A federal appeals court refused to reinstate President Trump’s targeted travel ban, delivering a stinging judicial rebuke to his administration. The ruling focused on the narrow question of whether the ban should be blocked while courts consider its lawfulness, and is likely to be quickly appealed to the Supreme Court. The executive order suspended travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries and limited the nation’s refugee program. Above, families were reunited in Chicago this week. _____ 2. An “unusually fast and intense” snowstorm shut down cities across the Northeast. Up to 14 inches fell across the New York area, and parts of New England could get up to 18 inches. Some places got a rare “thundersnow,” which is … exactly what it sounds like. _____ 3. Concerns over conflicts of interest pushed the White House to “counsel” a top Trump adviser. Kellyanne Conway may have violated federal ethics rules by urging people to buy Ivanka Trump’s fashion products during a television appearance. That came just a day after Mr. Trump lashed out at Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s line of clothes, jewelry and accessories. On today’s episode of our podcast, The Daily, we get an influential investor’s take on the postelection market euphoria and discuss how the Republicans empowered Senator Elizabeth Warren. Listen here if you’re on a computer, here if you have an iOS device or here for an Android device. _____ 4. A Arizona woman who illegally crossed the border from Mexico when she was 14 was deported amid protests and tears. The immigration officials she met with regularly for years declined to carry out a deportation order — until the Trump administration broadened the definition of “criminal alien,” which may affect the majority of unauthorized immigrants. “The only crime my mother committed was to go to work to give a better life for her children,” her daughter said. _____ 5. Friday is the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that established the Islamic Republic of Iran, but some Iranians don’t want to join in the tradition, cherished among of burning American flags. Many Iranians were heartened by the backlash to Mr. Trump’s travel ban, which targeted Iran and six other nations. “Look at the kindness Iranians received at U. S. airports by those protesting Trump,” said one. “We insult those people when we burn their flag. ” _____ 6. Mr. Trump and his advisers appear to be curtailing their provocative moves as they develop a strategy on the conflict that enlists Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to break years of gridlock. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is set to visit the United States next week, has been focused on trying to counter the rise of Iran with the same regional allies. _____ 7. Mystery assassinations in eastern Ukraine: Half a dozen commanders in the separatist army have been killed far from the front lines since 2015. Ukrainian officials deny any involvement, and say the deaths could be infighting — or efforts by Russia to consolidate control by eliminating erratic, if popular, local commanders on their own side. _____ 8. They don’t talk about it much, but almost half of all Americans in their early 20s get parental help to pay the rent. Those in the art and design fields get the most help, an average of $3, 600 a year. It’s a new example of how economic advantages continue well into the opening chapters of adulthood, giving young people from wealthier families more time to develop skills that can lead to higher incomes. _____ 9. Bob Costas is ending his run as NBC’s Olympics host. When the network goes to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, next year, the baton will be passed to Mike Tirico, who recently joined NBC from ESPN. Mr. Costas will also scale back his other work at NBC, and focus on offering commentary and features for major events. _____ 10. Finally, what makes a good dancer? Researchers asked 200 people to rate 39 avatars based on female dancers, an experiment in what they call “social cognition” — how bits of perceptual information feed large inferences. The conclusion: It’s all about the hips. One of the study’s authors helpfully suggested that “there is no harm in trying to throw different moves at the disco. ” _____ 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 |
Friday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh dismissed the notion that Donald Trump’s inauguration would be interfered with because of those there protesting the proceedings. “That is going to peter out,” Limbaugh replied to the question from a caller. “That’s going to be nothing more than a golden shower. They’re going to be … Don’t let that stop you. The Million Woman March? I don’t even think that’s for Inauguration Day. Isn’t it the day before be the day after? The it’s the next day. And be no’s gonna care anyway. They can’t even find enough people. Probably get a little bit more now that I’m mocking them here. No. Don’t let that bunch of broads stop you from seeing this. In no way. If that’s the march that you’re concerned, no way. Don’t let that bunch deter you at all. ( RCP Video) Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 0 |
Sunday on NBCs “Meet the Press,” New York Post columnist Claire Atkinson said Donald Trump was “a creature” of the tabloid world. Partial transcript as follows: TODD: What can the Washington press corps learn from Donald Trump’s incredible interactions with the tabloids of New York over the last 30 years? ATKISION: That’s a great question. TODD: Since you are at “The New York Post. ” ATKISON: He is a creature of “The New York Post” and the tabloid world. TODD: And he loves it. ATKISON: Feature of our front pages for many years. Does love it. He obviously loves reading the paper as well. And I think he is a lover of all journalism. I think he reads things closely like you say. He is in contact with journalists. I feel like — I’m an immigrant, obviously. I’m from England. I voted for the first time in this election. And I was very taken aback by the results, as I think a lot of people were. And when I’m chatting with folks out there, they tell me two things. They tell me first that the media whiffed on this campaign completely. ( Grabien) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
ROME — Among the bureaucrats of the European Union, it is an article of faith that the bloc always emerges stronger from a crisis. The idealistic founders who six decades ago dreamed of stitching warring nations into a peaceful whole knew the path would be bumpy. But always, the union wobbled forward. Now the dream of an integrated and Europe could sink into the English Channel on Thursday, when British voters decide whether to abandon the bloc. To the establishment, this latest crisis is considered a peculiarly British affair, in which the villains are opportunistic politicians steering voters toward a delusional, mistake. That may be. But if Britain does leave, the European Union can also blame its own handling of the crises of the past decade — the tribulations of the euro, the debt standoff with Greece and a flawed approach to migration. Each time, the bloc rammed through ugly, fixes that only inflamed the angry nationalism now spreading across the Continent and Britain. The result was almost a decade of ad hoc crisis management that even many admirers agree has left the European Union badly wounded and its reputation badly damaged. Idealism has given way to disillusionment. The bloc’s elite technocrats are often perceived as out of touch, while European institutions are not fully equipped to address problems like unemployment and economic stagnation. Political solidarity is dissolving into regional divisions of east and west, north and south. The economic implications of a British exit, the Brexit, are potentially staggering, but many experts agree that regardless of how the British vote, politics across Europe must change. The structure of the euro currency zone is still considered fragile. The bloc’s economic policy has meant nearly a decade lost in much of southern Europe, which is still struggling to recover from its economic crisis. “We cannot continue with the status quo,” said Enrico Letta, a former Italian prime minister. “We have to move forward. ” Politics in Europe, as in the United States, have gotten ugly and mean. parties are gaining strength in Poland, Hungary, Austria, France and Germany. That same nasty tenor has infused the British campaign with hostility and xenophobia toward immigrants. The killing on Thursday of Jo Cox, a member of Parliament who had campaigned for remaining in the union, shocked all of Britain. “It is not very easy being English at the moment,” said Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform in London. “Grim stuff. ” Mr. Tilford falls into an interesting camp: He has long been an outspoken critic of the European Union’s handling of its currency woes, yet he strongly supports Britain’s remaining in the bloc. The benefits far outweigh the disadvantages, he argues, even as he realizes that policy failures by the European Union have helped legitimize the arguments of some who want to leave. “It has made it easier for them to portray the E. U. as a failure,” he said. “Lots of people have become euroskeptics in Britain because they are so angry at what has happened in the eurozone in recent years. ” During the 1990s, Britain was already a member of the European Union and was considering whether to drop its currency, the pound, and join the zone of countries adopting the bloc’s new currency, the euro. (Today, 19 of the 28 countries in the European Union share the euro.) But a crisis in the financial markets in 1992 effectively settled the matter as Britain decided not to join other countries changing to the euro. Those skeptical of using a common currency to drive closer integration in Europe have always argued that joining the euro system would limit policy flexibility, such as the ability to devalue the national currency during economic downturns or use deficit spending to encourage growth. And they said problems would inevitably arise because of the stark economic differences among the countries sharing the currency. Each proved true. The economic crisis in plunged the bloc into a cycle of crises from which it still has not recovered. The disparities among eurozone countries were exposed, and to save the currency, northern countries led by Germany bailed out their desperate southern counterparts. The eurozone became divided between debtors and creditors rather than equal partners. The solution of austerity economics inflicted heavy punishment on countries like Greece. And Britain, outside the euro, recovered more quickly from the 2008 crisis than did most members of the currency group. The politics also shifted: Germany, the bloc’s economic powerhouse, steadily accrued more political power inside European Union institutions. Resentment gradually followed, especially in Greece, the weakest and most indebted member of the eurozone. Populist anger erupted in January 2015 when Greek voters swept aside the country’s political establishment and elected as prime minister a radical leftist, Alexis Tsipras. Mr. Tsipras promised to end austerity, write down Greek debt and change Europe by leading a clash of ideas against the consensus. It was political theater, and the Greeks would badly misplay their hand. But what followed was a clash of cultures, not ideas: Union officials refused to budge on Greece’s debt obligations, and after months of negotiation and brinkmanship, Greece nearly collapsed into bankruptcy before acceding to demands from Brussels. The Greek standoff was a demonstration not just of European Union power politics, but also of the bloc’s penchant for muddling through. The bloc agreed on a new bailout package for Greece that most analysts regard as a stopgap solution. Greece’s debt is now higher than before, and analysts warn that another euro crisis could still occur. “There is a lot of criticism of the German way of handling the eurozone,” said Daniela Schwarzer, the director of the Europe Program for the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “That bleeds into the perception that the European Union is not functioning properly. ” It is this perceived ineffectiveness of mainstream political parties at the European and national levels that has emboldened populist or parties from the left and the right. Last year, parties seized on the migration crisis — with its images of hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring through Europe — to provoke public anxiety. Led by Hungary, some countries began erecting fences to block migrants despite the European Union system of open borders. European leaders struggled to mount a coherent response, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s popularity plummeted after she opened Germany to Syrian refugees. She has since tightened restrictions and championed a controversial deal with Turkey that has sharply reduced the migrant flow into the Continent. In the British referendum, forces have sought to drive support for the campaign to leave the union by depicting the Continent as being under invasion from migrants. A campaign poster unveiled last week by Nigel Farage, the U. K. Independence Party leader, showed a parade of migrants. It was pilloried as blatant xenophobia. But it is little different from the propaganda of politicians in Hungary or Poland. Should it remain in the bloc, Britain could emerge as a powerful force, with more clout to force the changes that most analysts believe are necessary. Even among top officials, there is a growing recognition that Europe’s political mainstream has misjudged the public appetite for rapid European integration. “The specter of a breakup is haunting Europe,” warned Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, which comprises the heads of state of the bloc’s members. “We need to understand the necessity of the historical moment. ” It is easy to forget that the European Union is an audacious political experiment to wash away the antagonisms of World War II and build a new Europe. Unity required putting aside the ancient rivalry between France and Germany, and binding together countries with different languages, cultures and economies. Generations growing up between the 1980s and the 2000s saw how an expanding Europe brought tangible benefits — borderless travel, job and educational mobility within the bloc, rising prosperity. Poorly governed countries came under pressure from Brussels to improve. But as the bloc expanded, also became more unwieldy. Frictions inevitably arose, and old resentments between member states were never fully scrubbed away. Tensions also increased between European institutions and national governments over sovereignty. This has meant little political space for the deep reforms — and possible further integration of political powers — that some advocates say are needed in Brussels. Many analysts say that even if Britain remains in the bloc, the likelihood of the union’s undertaking significant political reforms is slim until after the national elections in France and Germany in 2017. Doing something bold in Brussels before then could spur an electoral backlash. So the European Union will wait to see what Britain does, and then, possibly, wait some more. “What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom?” Pope Francis asked last month during his acceptance speech for the Charlemagne Prize, awarded for service toward European unification. He added, “What has happened to you, Europe, the mother of peoples and nations, the mother of great men and women who upheld, and even sacrificed their lives for, the dignity of their brothers and sisters?” | 1 |
Font Size are they doing humankind? Elsewhere, the U.S. State Department operatives were busy little bees. Again through NGO involvement the warmongers set their sights on Ukraine. The bigger prize though was Russia. By launching the Maidan Color Revolution chicken hawks in the U.S. Congress hoped to establish a bridgehead on Russia's very borders; the duplicitous MSM reported this intervention in terms of their own bias; it was vital to stop to 'Russian aggression'. Each step of every day the Kiev coup murderers continued to vilify Russian President Vladimir Putin. Wise to the U.S. 'end game strategy', Crimea, home to the Russian Black Sea Naval fleet at Sevastopol, voted to accede to Russia. East Ukraine was not as fortunate. To this day, despite signing the Minsk II roadmap for peace agreement the Nazi Kiev hordes continue to terrorize Russian speakers in the Donbass region; innocent civilians are killed and maimed each day by prohibited artillery bombardment from Ukraine. Of course, the junta blames Russia for the hostilities. The Obama Administration goes further: it tries to lure President Putin into the fray. The Pentagon crazies chomp at the bit to engage Russia on an open but foreign battlefront. Several new war fronts. It will continue The Establishment was not done yet. With help from the usual suspect NGO's, NATO opened several new war fronts in the Middle East. Syria and its democratically elected President Assad are in their gun sights; tiny Yemen is another potential military target to be exploited by Washington; but the Houthi militia has put up a fierce resistance. Oddly enough ISIS or Daesh is never on America's military radar screens; but when Russia fights the Islamic Terrorists it is headline news. Since a desperate Clinton invoked the Big Daddy, err, Baghdadi name at the third debate, the Mosul Campaign in Northern Iraq has commenced. The biased MSM deny coincidence. No one buys it. Given the chaotic and disjointed foreign policy 'objectives' of this current U.S. Administration and its crooked backers, Republican candidate, Donald Trump was compelled to act; he stepped in. The Donald entered the breach. Using clear logic Donald Trump has enunciated to Americans what needs to be done: change course; turn 180 degrees. Moreover, Trump has identified and charged as incompetent the real culprits behind this disastrous policy. Chief amongst those is Democrat challenger Hillary Clinton. Clinton was the sole advocate for these failed foreign misadventures. And people are going to vote for her? As a former Secretary State, Clinton was the sole advocate for these failed foreign misadventures in the Middle East. While under oath she lied to Congress as to her real motivation: broker arms to 'moderate' rebel groups in Syria. She continues to lie to the American people about Benghazi. During the Commander-in-chief forum, Clinton claimed no Americans were lost in Libya. Clinton though was remiss to mention the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three others. Those four were murdered on her watch. With his legions of supporters massed around the country, Donald Trump is now poised to march on Washington, DC. All of the Establishment stooges are broken. Although they tried mightily the complicit media could not put Humpty-Dumpty-Frumpy candidate Hillary Clinton back together again. She is too far gone; with the help of Wikileaks, the electorate will soon learn more about her scandals and wanton corruption that she keeps hidden. Her feckless campaign is lost. Yes indeed; the one per centers got more than they bargained for; much to their angst. Contempt.... Scorn.... Slight regard.... Defiance! Come Election Day that is 'the movement's' message to the Establishment. American patriots are going for the knockout on November 8th. With President elect Donald Trump's help they will take their country back; make it great again! Montresor | 0 |
The Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin said that the political figures vowed to work together to improve U.S.-Russian relations and try to create world peace.
The statement issued by the Kremlin also stated that Trump and Putin discussed settling the crisis in Syria, and combating terrorism. They also agreed that their aides will work together to schedule a direct meeting.
Trump’s office declared in a statement that the Russian leader offered his congratulations before they discussed a range of issues. The numerous items included challenges and threats facing the U.S. and Russia. Strategic economic matters and the U.S.-Russia relationship that began over 200 years ago were also discussed.
After Trump’s triumph last week, the president-elect has received congratulatory calls from an enormous amount of foreign leaders. Putin sent the president-elect a statement concerning his desire to have a discussion based on a clear respect for each other’s political viewpoints.
Trump applauded Putin as an as a robust leader during his campaign. He also said that the two world leaders should collaborate to combat terrorists. The president-elect chiefly mentioned the Islamic State in Syria. He stated that closer relations with Russia would try to create world peace.
The Washington Post reported that the president-elect seemed to dismiss Russia’s responsibility for their annexation of Crimea and their intervention in the Ukraine. The future leader of the U.S. also questioned the relevance of NATO.
Trump and Putin agreed to share a common view in an attempt to ease tension between the U.S. and Russia. They want to unite their efforts against the common enemy and then fight international terrorism and extremism. The Kremlin declared that the two discussed ways to settle the Syrian crisis and create world peace.
The Kremlin added that they talked about ways to build commerce and induce constructive cooperation between the two nations. Next year, the U.S. and Russia will celebrate the 210-year-anniversary of the start of diplomatic relations. Russian officials stated that the date might encourage the progress of a relationship that would satisfy the interest of both countries.
Putin’s government said that Trump is looking forward to having a long-term and resilient relationship with Russia and the nation’s people. Putin stated that he is ready to have a discussion with Washington that it will be based on mutual respect. There will also be no intervention into each other’s affairs.
There will be no intervention into each other’s affairs. The Russian government believes that creating a solid root for bilateral ties is important. This was especially stressed by the rising trade-economic component.
The Kremlin stated that the two nations should return to a state of equally valuable cooperation. Putin said they will attempt to address the concern and try to ease the tension between the two nations and create world peace.
By John A. Federico
The Washington Post: Trump, Putin agree in phone call to improve ‘unsatisfactory’ relations between their countries, Kremlin says
RT Question More : Putin & Trump discuss Syria and US-Russia relations in phone call – Kremlin
Mirror: Trump and Putin vow to tackle ISIS together as they hold breakthrough talks after billionaire’s election
Featured Image Courtesy of Luftphilia’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License Trump | 0 |
Syria - Waiting For The Next Moves By Moon Of Alabama
November 09, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - We had expected a Syrian Army "Election Campaign" , a large size attack on Al Bab or east-Aleppo. That did not happen despite the right "assets" being in place and I have heard no reason yet why it was delayed. The Russian aircraft carrier group, which was expected last Friday along the Syrian coast, will only arrive this evening. It must have intentionally slowed its travel. There has been no single Syrian or Russian airstrike on east-Aleppo in last 21 days. "Rebel" shelling of west-Aleppo has not stopped for a day and caused many casualties. That will now change. One Russia source claims the Russian fleet will engage immediately. NOTAMs, NOtices To Air Men, about imminent operations on Syria's west-coast have been released. The declared areas and times of operation correspond to a campaign, not a single strike.
After some 12 days of fighting, the second large al-Qaeda campaign to break the siege on east-Aleppo by attacking the south western side of west-Aleppo completely failed. While the first round nearly achieved a break through but was then contained the second attack was only a alibi attempt which never made any progress towards its claimed aim. The Syrian army has recaptured the housing project 1070 and will soon have cleaned all other areas that were shortly in the hands of the Jihadis. The loss in material and men for the Jihadis were immense. The Syrian army has finally learned how to defend against suicide vehicle bombs: have adequate weapons ready in the front line to kill them on their approaches. Of nearly 20 such bomb runs only 3 or 4 reached their targets and losses from those were less sever than from earlier bombs. The Jihadis and their "western" media and "expert" proxies seem to have given up on east-Aleppo. There is no sign that another break through attempt will be launched.
The Obama administration has announced a campaign to encircle Raqqa in center-east Syria. It bought help from the Kurdish YPG to achieve that and has thereby excluded a Turkish campaign. The taking of Raqqa is supposed to be left to some Arab troops in cooperation with the Kurds. But those Arab troops do not yet exist and hiring and training has not even begun. The whole announcement of the beginning of a Raqqa campaign was obviously not serious. The Kurds will take a few small towns and the U.S. will temporarily protect them from sever Turkish interference in their areas in Syria. Raqqa will not be attacked before next years spring.
The Turks are now miffed (though silently relieved) that they were not asked to take part in the Raqqa campaign. They have been promised that they may help to "develop a long-term plan for seizing, holding and governing Raqqa". That means exactly nothing. But the Turks never had a real chance to go and take Raqqa. It is too far from their borders and the imponderables are too big.
In the area around Damascus the Ghouta rebel hold out has been split and reduced to small kettles which will be eliminated within a few days. The Syrian capital is safe for now and its people can live a rather normal life without fear of being killed in the next minute by some random grenade. A significant number of troops will become available when all the small rebel areas around the capital are gone. Those can be used in future campaigns. The frontline strength of the Syrian army in critical areas will increase and its maneuver force will become more powerful and efficient.
The momentum in all of west Syria is on the side of the Syrian government. The Jihadists are more and more concentrated in Idleb governate and city. When the surrounded hold outs in its back are eliminated the Syrian army can launch an assault on them. The east is complicate. Deir Ezzor is still surrounded by ISIS and will likely be attacked again soon. Reinforcements for the defenders would be welcome.
The Kurds are playing games and change alliances every now and than. For the time they again bet on the U.S. - a hope that has already been disappointed several times. The U.S. will let them fall as soon as it is convenient. The Kurds will learn again that such a policy does not bear tasteful fruits. There is a common Turkish and Syrian interest in cutting them back to size. In a year from now we may see new surprise alliances in that area.
All the positive developments we have seen especially in west-Syria may be for naught if a new U.S. president decides to throw up the chess board and risk World War III by attacking Syrian and Russian positions. Its about the most stupid thing Washington could do and has thereby a good chance to happen. I hope that the Pentagon will lecture the politicians of the very real consequences such a move would have.
Russian Navy will hit ISIS targets in Aleppo with cruise missiles : The Russian source insisted the missiles will aim for areas surrounding Aleppo to avoid harming the 200,000 civilians still living there. | 1 |
A Kentucky man allegedly overdosed on a synthetic street drug and tried to bite officers after they repeatedly tasered him, video footage of the incident shows. [The video shows Lexington police officers trying to help the man stand up while his legs buckle under him. Suddenly, the man, who is reportedly high on a drug called Serenity, gets a surge of energy and fights the officers who are trying to subdue him with his mouth open. “Get off me,” one officer shouts as the man growls at him. Both officers take out their tasers to subdue the man. “Sometimes force has to be used to take them into custody if they are combating against us,” Lexington Police Sgt. Jervis Middleton told WKYT. “You know, we try to make that the last line of activity for that situation but sometimes force will have to be used. ” In the video, the man smashes his head through a store window as he flails at the officers, sending glass shattering all over the place. He is on the ground writhing in the shards of glass allegedly trying to attack the officers, who take out their tasers again in defense. WHAS reports that addiction recovery centers in the area are using the viral video as a way to show people the harmful effects of synthetic drugs. | 0 |
Read Roberta Smith’s review of this exhibition. The gilded objects by Pierre Gouthière sitting in regal silence in the Frick Collection galleries make one thing brilliantly clear. Gold is not a material of mere decorative art. It is the visualization of power. From the Renaissance to Gouthière’s French royal court to masters of the modern universe, gilt — gold’s application to metal, whether powder, leaf or plate — is the assertive surface of . We seem to be having a Midas moment. With the election of the commercial Sun King Donald J. Trump to the presidency, and the pedestrian aristocracy of gold sneakers walking the street — Chuck Taylors, Nikes, Skechers, Keds for Kate Spade — there is again the gleam of gilt in the public eye. Reappearing from an unscheduled hospital stay this month, Kanye West suddenly had gold hair when he visited Mr. Trump in New York, framed for the photo op by the aura of the Trump Tower lobby. In addition to Gouthière at the Frick, there is Charles Percier, architect and designer to Napoleon Bonaparte, on exhibit in drawings and extraordinary objects at the Bard Graduate Center on the Upper West Side. Farther uptown on Fifth Avenue, the Guggenheim has Maurizio Cattelan’s “America,” an solid gold toilet, on working display. Downtown, Martin Puryear’s “Big Bling,” a sculpture with a monumental shackle, commands Madison Square Park until April. Few today would hope to approach the level of artistry in Gouthière’s work — from the original conceptions to the irreplicable craft. Yet, for a select group of artisans, designers and their clients, interest flourishes in contemporary interpretations of objects. And foundries, finishers, gilders, patinators and other workshops produce them, with processes that recall, remarkably, the 18th and early 19th centuries. At his studio in Long Island City, Queens, beneath the Long Island Expressway, William P. Sullivan creates furnishings for the architect Robert A. M. Stern and Michael S. Smith, who designed the Obama family’s living quarters at the White House. Mr. Stern deployed Mr. Sullivan’s and mirror in the private sales suite of Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue headquarters. “There is something about the pouring of bronze,” Mr. Sullivan said. “You feel like you’re at the beginning of civilization. ” Polich Tallix in Rock Tavern, N. Y. cast and finish many of Mr. Sullivan’s designs. Polich Tallix also produced the 2016 Oscar statuettes — the contemporary world’s most famous . Empire Metal in Astoria, Queens, does much of Mr. Sullivan’s plating. Alexander Kellum, a Brooklyn artist, is director of specialty finishes at EverGreene Architectural Arts. EverGreene executed the gilding on the ’s latest project, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, in particular its presidential ballroom. To quote William Shakespeare, “All that glisters is not gold. ” The ballroom’s gilt is composition leaf, a copper alloy with only trace amounts of gold, a variation of which gilders call brass leaf. Brassy, yes. Gold, no. “Real gold leaf in this situation would be a 60 to 80 percent increase in cost,” Mr. Kellum said, declining to discuss actual pricing. EverGreene also gilded Mr. Puryear’s “Big Bling” and has worked on residences and hotel spaces at the Plaza in New York (23. gold). Michael Kramer, president and founder of the Gilders’ Studio, a company in Olney, Md. that gilded the William Tecumseh Sherman monument at the entrance to Grand Army Plaza in Central Park, estimated the cost of using brass leaf at roughly $2 a square foot, excluding installation. Gold leaf could run $25 to $35 a square foot. Gilding is a topical application of precious metal to an object. In Gouthière’s workshop, gilt was applied with fire gilding, a process by which an amalgam of mercury and gold was gently baked onto an object in a low fire, the mercury evaporating and the gold remaining as a coating of gilt. Electroplating — using an electric current to adhere the gold to the object — appeared in the 19th century, largely replacing fire gilding, whose mercury fumes are highly toxic. Fire gilding, specifically, is now rarely used except in restorations. Objects in Gouthière’s time were first modeled in wood, wax or porcelain, pressed between blocks of compressed sand and removed. Molten metal was poured into the reclosed casting to create the design in bronze. Chasing and matting achieved with hand tools, provided detail and relief to the ornament of the castings before they were gilded, and in some cases, after the gilt was applied. At P. E. Guerin, a hardware manufacturer in Greenwich Village, this process continues largely intact from 1857, when the company was founded. Guerin pours its bronze on Fridays at the top of the building, molding objects with liquid brass heated to 2, 000 degrees in sand blocks, or flasks. The hardware is finished and plated in the two floors of workshops below. Visiting the premises is like walking into an engraving. Because of its encyclopedic inventory of and models, Guerin works with projects like the Henry Ford estate Fair Lane, in Dearborn, Mich. presently being restored, and its clients have included Susan Gutfreund, whose apartment at 834 Fifth Avenue, decorated in the French style, is on the market for $96 million. Guerin is collaborating with William Sofield of Studio Sofield to produce custom bronzes for the interiors of 111 West 57th Street in Manhattan, the luxury condominium tower rising over Steinway Hall. “I always think it’s important to design things that look better with age, and I think bronze is a material that does that,” Mr. Sofield said. “For me, it gets better. ” SHoP, the architects on the project, created a major bronze component for the facade: an ascending fretwork that appears to stitch the building together delicately as it spins vertiginously to the top. “The material has a kind of bright, brassy aesthetic that will age within a year to a rich, dark, warm brown,” Gregg Pasquarelli, one of SHoP’s founding partners, said. SHoP moved its offices three years ago into the Woolworth Building, one of Manhattan’s high temples of giltwork. Its influence seems to have had its effect. At a symposium at the Frick on Dec. 12, conservators, curators and craftsmen from France, England, the Netherlands, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum and elsewhere gathered before the Gouthières, many borrowed from what Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s director, called “very private” collections. Eric Thiriet, who specializes in finishing techniques, and Marc Voisot, a restorer who works with fire gilding, huddled before a golden column and capital at the entrance to the exhibition, whispering in low conspiracy about its detail. In other corners of the galleries’ hushed, carpeted rooms, swans attacked, goats bleated, poppies unfurled and snakes slid over the rims of Chinese urns, frozen in gold but animated in time by Gouthière’s almost obsessively executed observation. “It’s not ornament anymore it becomes a story,” said Charlotte Vignon, the exhibition’s curator, standing before a pair of hissing swans whose angry gold wings upheld two potpourri vases. Joseph Godla, the Frick’s chief conservator, pointed out that Gouthière would gild an object four or five times to get a thick layer in which to work his naturalistic art. Gouthière’s work was five times more expensive than that of his contemporaries, Ms. Vignon said. He also had chronic issues over payment with some of his noblest patrons. At his death in 1813 in a retirement home, Gouthière’s estate — only small items of furniture — was valued at 41 francs, a negligible sum even two centuries ago. His laughing, lively work outlived his clients, though, many of whom did not survive the French Revolution. The artist’s lesson? If you want your name to rule forever, make it in gilt bronze. | 1 |
Cardinal Vincent Nichols says: “Britons could learn a lot from the ‘vibrant’ faith of Muslim migrants” British people have much to learn from the “vibrancy of the Muslim faith” of new immigrants including refugees, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has said. UK Telegraph Cardinal Vincent Nichols said immigrants had been enduring a worsening “atmosphere of fear” in the months since the EU referendum with the members of the public casually voicing hatred in a “self-indulgent” way. (Self-indulgent? I wonder what this French priest would have to say about that?) H e accused politicians of “trading in fear” and said media stories constantly portraying immigration in a negative light were proving “corrosive of our best nature”. In an interview with the BBC , he insisted that increasingly secular British society could learn much from the faith of new arrivals whether Muslims or followers of other religions. “Of course what we have to learn too is from the vibrancy of the Muslim faith that comes here. H e added: “I think the immigration crisis is real and it needs concerted effort to address it,” he said. “It needs to be addressed realistically with resources and proper legislation, but it’s almost impossible to do that in an atmosphere in which fear and hatred are the dominant features. “It does nobody any good, this somewhat self-indulgent way in which people have begun to express themselves and their distaste and their hatred of people who they see as different. “And that is creating a culture of fear among people who have been welcomed here.” | 0 |
Fans notoriously blame weird and bizarre things for the demise of their favorite sports teams, normally based on superstition or some kind of jinx. [Normally, normal people do not blame the person with the least impact on the game when their team gets blown out by 31 points. Then there’s this particular Ohio State fan. After Ohio State got shut out in a bowl game on New Year’s Eve, for the first time since 1920, this fan found an unlikely culprit for his team’s blowout loss. He blamed Ohio State’s field goal kicker Tyler Durbin: Stay classy pic. twitter. — OSU Specialists (@BuckSpecialists) January 1, 2017, To recap, Tyler Durbin missed two field goals. Had he made them, they would have resulted in exactly six points. Six points, in a game that Ohio State lost by 31. So how in the world can he be singled out and made responsible for the Buckeye’s loss? Meanwhile, Ohio State Quarterback J. T. Barrett had a QBR of 12. 7 on Saturday night, the Buckeye offensive line consistently gave up sacks when Clemson would only rush three or four players, and, let’s not forget, the Ohio State defense that allowed 470 yards and couldn’t get off the field. Any one of those factors would have had a far greater impact than Durbin, who would have had to kick and make eleven field goals in order to win the game for Ohio State. That’s asking a bit much. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 0 |
Email
REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DONALD TRUMP SIGNALED THURSDAY PLANS TO SEEK NATIONWIDE CHANGES TO SCHOOL CURRICULA WITH THE GOAL OF “PROMOTING AMERICAN PRIDE AND PATRIOTISM IN AMERICA’S SCHOOLS.”
“In a Trump administration, I plan to work directly with the American Legion to uphold our common values and to help ensure they are taught to America’s children,” Trump said, speaking at the American Legion’s annual convention in Cincinnati.
“We want our kids to learn the incredible achievements of America’s history, its institutions and its heroes, many of whom are with us today,” he told the veterans group.
The comments suggested a federal government intervention in the programs of locally run schools, which is prohibited under federal law“We will stop apologizing for America. And we will start celebrating America. We will be united by our common culture, values and principles, becoming one American nation, one country, under one Constitution, saluting one American flag, and always saluting it,” Trump said.
Last year a Denver-area school board sought to change the content of the AP U.S. history course because some board members thought it failed to promote patriotism.
That sparked a political proxy war in Jefferson County, Colorado, and the 2015 school board election drew nearly $1 million in campaign funding from outside interest groups.
Public schools nationwide are funded by their local communities along with some state money. Most schools receive little federal funding.
Current federal law prohibits the federal government from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system.” | 0 |
Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA): Canada and the EU By Jim Miles
Most interesting watching the progress of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU through the various opaque backroom ministrations this past week.
NAFTA first
As the progeny of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994) it serves to refer to a bit of history. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney very recently on CBC said that NAFTA was a wonderful agreement. He said that its purpose generally was to help all economies but more specifically “to help Mexican workers” who at that time had been devastated by the devaluation of the peso (also 1994) due to capital flight from Mexico (one of the many outcomes of fiat currency markets).
Unfortunately, the record does not support this. Mulroney used the example that this year (2016) more Mexicans were returning home than entering the U.S., implying it was due to the NAFTA success. More realistically it has been due to the increasing police violence in the U.S. accompanied by the election cycle fought between a manipulative chicken-hawk liar and a misogynist xenophobic narcissist.
The truth behind NAFTA is different. Yes thousands of jobs were created in the Mexican maquiladora along the U.S. border. These jobs were filled by workers who in general were displaced from their lands through a combination of two economic hits. First was the IMF and its “structural adjustment programs” (known and admitted failures, at least in an economic sense, not in a political control sense) applied after the 1994 debt collapse. This was quickly followed or accompanied by NAFTA which allowed ample cheap subsidized U.S. agricultural products to flow into Mexico, cutting the main basis of support for the agricultural sector.
Not only was NAFTA not good for Mexico, it also seriously affected well paying jobs in Canada and the U.S. as corporations moved their production to where the wages and benefits were lowest or, as for benefits, non-existent. Much of the increased trade was not due to increased economic activity but the recording of cross-border transactions that used to take place internally. Nowadays, views of the U.S. “rust belt” and the declining number of living wage jobs in both Canada and the U.S. testify to the negative impact of NAFTA—except for the corporations and their managers who have gained enormously.
Another aspect of NAFTA that is of note is the political manipulations that occurred in Canada. NAFTA was essentially a Conservative creation under PM Mulroney, as above. The Conservative Party was devastated in 1993 in part due to NAFTA (but also due to other domestic failures)—the interesting part being that his replacement, Jean Chretien, Liberal leader, campaigned against it, but once in power accepted it as it was (with additional “side deals” and promises).
One of its significant factors, other than selling out Canadian workers and resources, was the trade dispute settlement section, the appropriately labeled “Chapter 11” section. This allows for opaque, non-democratic, supranational (above national sovereignty), closed door arbitration panels staffed by selection rather than qualification (other than perhaps their pro-business financial status). Along with this is that a foreign corporation can sue the Canadian government for perceived loss of profits due to some Canadian regulation or policy, regulations that would generally serve to protect the environment, the health, benefits of Canadian workers, and the independent agricultural sector.
This has resulted in many lawsuits against Canadian sovereignty that has cost the taxpayer billions of dollars in lawyers’ fees and settlements to companies that may or may not have intended to set up business here in the first place. It has also caused the government to change some of its regulations in favour of corporations.
NAFTA begets CETA
The same indicators on dispute settlement occur with CETA. Many informed citizens object to corporations having supranational rights over sovereignty both in Canada and the EU; concerns that reflect the same “investor dispute settlement” mechanisms. Note also that it is “investor” dispute and not citizen dispute, meaning that the average citizen cannot sue either the government or the corporations for damages to health, benefits, wages et al. There is a lawsuit currently underway to challenge the constitutional legality of the agreement as it also overrides provincial, territorial, and First Nations jurisdiction. These are not national functions but can be effectively manipulated through various degrees of transfer payments and the good old fashioned crony benefit payment system.
The Walloons opposed the “investor dispute mechanism,” in part because it would facilitate the loss of an independent agricultural sector (via Canadian corporations, in effect U.S. branch corporations, suing for agricultural benefits—much of Canada’s agricultural sector is already owned/controlled by a small number of supranational agribusinesses).
While listening to Scott Peterson on CBC discuss CETA and the Walloons, he said it was “amazing how money and politics are intertwined.” Well, really, if that is the ignorant level of commentary that CBC can provide, considering it abides by establishment guidelines [1], no wonder we get little truth from the media and the government—being intertwined themselves—concerning what is truly being negotiated with CETA.
But Peterson also reiterated the tired old mantra, CETA will create jobs and promote growth. Kevin O’Leary also added his support indicating the agreement is “progressive,” another meaningless platitude when given without context (e.g., progressive for whom?).
Jobs, growth, the middle class, values, and progressivity
PM Trudeau spoke this morning (Sunday, October 30, 2016) after signing CETA. It was almost a déjà vu moment, after having listened to Mulroney brag about jobs and progress with NAFTA. Even further, it has another similarity because it was the loathed Conservative government that began the secret negotiations, only to be defeated, in part because of that, only to have the Trudeau Liberals accept the agreement essentially as is—with a few “side deals” with Belgium and Wallonia—without allowing it to be voted on in a referendum. Do they not trust their ability to manipulate a referendum, relying instead on their false majority (with 39.5 % of the vote) in the House to give it legitimacy?
In sum, very similar to the Mulroney/Chretien duo, and also very similar to our NAFTA partners, wherein the Democrats and Republicans are essentially two sides of the same coin—pretty much literally as it is the corporate-industrial-military coin that determines policy, not the House nor the ever absent referenda.
But on. . . . the rhetoric from Trudeau this morning was quite repetitive, with the same old platitudes brought forth. He indicated “we need economic growth. .to contribute to society,” we have progressive “values and concerns very similar” to the EU, the dispute mechanism is a “progressive mechanism,” and Canada has provided “leadership . . . on values” with “like-minded countries.” Even though it needs to be ratified after signing, it has a “provisional implementation” clause (but that clause has not been ratified?) and we will “feel benefits immediately,” and it is “good for middle class.”
Sounds great, but if NAFTA is our guide, not much benefit will be seen by the middle class, not much “progress” will be made (exactly how is that defined, Justin?), not many jobs will be created to lift the poor up into the middle class (maybe by Mexican standards).[2] And what really are our values? Corporate control over government? Intertwined networks of bankers, industrialists, militarists, politicians, and media telling us what is best for us? Can we go forever in our finite world with “economic growth” that is based on consumer extractive industries backed by corporate military power?
PhD—“piled higher and deeper,” conveyed by Mr. Harper, as he watches his nemesis follow exactly the same policies he had pushed for. The main benefactors of all trade agreements, none of which are “free,” are large corporations and the financiers and politicians that work within and alongside them.
In sum
CETA is an agreement that reflects all that was negative about NAFTA. It provides the promise that further agreements (TTIP, TTP) will provide the same investor dispute mechanism that supersedes national sovereignty. It further disenfranchises the average citizen while enriching and empowering the corporate elite, again promising more for the future. It displays all the hollow rhetoric that is manipulated through the media, generally meaningless undefined platitudes without context or reference to the realities of existing agreements.
The Trudeau government is simply reinforcing the Harper government that preceded it, using essentially the same verbiage but somehow with a kinder, gentler persona. And both reflect the will of the corporate political elites who chase the overall dream of global control of wealth and resources regardless of the detriment to the people or the environment.
Notes
[1] Prime recent example: CBC’s Natasha Fatah commenting on the Syrian war, asking a question about the “collateral effects” of the U.S. led attack on Mosul. So it’s no longer ‘collateral damage’ and assuredly a far cry from “war crimes” charges that are made against Russia and Syria for very similar actions against al-Nusra/al-Qaeda/ISIS in Aleppo.
[2] Another CBC asisde: Canada’s Finance Minister Morneau recognized that currently there is a large job “churn” that workers will need to get used to short term, insecure, “precarious” jobs; if this is the way the Finance Minister thinks—along with his cronies—it provides a more realistic picture of what a CETA future will hold for Canada, and other countries aligned inside trade deals.
Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications. This entry was posted in Business , Commentary . Bookmark the permalink . | 1 |
Special Agent Henry Cabrera, a third Capitol Police officer who helped stop the massacre of GOP congressmen and their staff during baseball practice in Alexandria, VA, on Wednesday, went mostly overlooked. [Media attention primarily focused on hero Capitol Police officers David Bailey and Crystal Griner, who were wounded as they fired back at the gunman, James T. Hodgkinson. But a third police officer, Henry Cabrera, who was also there at the time to protect House Majority Whip Steve Scalise ( ) also helped take down the shooter, but was not wounded. Cabrera appears to be a U. S. Army veteran, according to his Facebook page. His page features a picture of himself in fatigues, and another of an Army platoon at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, on Sept. 12, 1994. The unit is the 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment. Asked to confirm whether he is a veteran, Capitol Police Spokeswoman Eva Malecki responded, “We can’t comment any further on an ongoing investigation. ” However, a relative of Cabrera confirmed to Breitbart News that he is a veteran. Cabrera’s name became known to the public after Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa thanked him, Griner, and Bailey at a press conference on Wednesday. “I want to commend Special Agents Crystal Griner, David Bailey, and Henry Cabrera for their heroic and appropriate response in protecting the Members and others today during their practice for the Congressional baseball game,” he said. Cabrera posted on Facebook on Wednesday after the shooting: “Yesterday was NUTS! !!! Many thanks to those who reached out to me yesterday. I’m proud of my TEAMMATES David Bailey and Crystal Griner. They took care of business! !!!! Prayers for Mr Scalise and his family. ” Supportive comments poured into Cabrera’s page and on Twitter. “Dont sell yourself short man. You are one of the heroes too!” a friend posted. There was a third officer there who should also be recognized. He just wasn’t wounded. Special Agent Henry Cabrera. — BAJ (@BarbAnnJ) June 15, 2017, Why did CBS @CBSThisMorning NOT mention HENRY CABRERA from the Capital Police for his heroic actions?? — teslaire (@teslaire) June 15, 2017, Although details are scant, eyewitnesses say the officers took down Hodgkinson, 66, after he opened fire on Republican congressmen and their staff, critically wounding Scalise and lobbyist and former congressional staffer Matt Mika. Bailey, Griner, and an aide to Rep. Roger Williams ( ) Zach Barth, was also wounded. Those who were on the field that day credited the officers for saving their lives. Eyewitnesses said the officers stepped forward, towards the shooter, and saved everyone’s lives. “It could have easily been 25 deaths or more,” Williams said. “The thin blue line held today. And Americans everywhere should be thankful that it’s still the kind of country that produces these heroes. ” “Without the Capitol Police, who literally took a step forward … they saved all of us out there. There is no question about it. We had no arms, all we had were bats. And the shooter,” he added. Rep. Brad Wenstrup ( ) an Iraq veteran, said that after Hodgkinson fired at them with a rifle, he came out from behind a building with a pistol. “That’s when security detail was able to take him down,” he told ABC News. “You never expect a baseball field in America to feel like being back in a combat zone in Iraq, but this morning it did,” Wenstrup tweeted later. Sen. Rand Paul ( ) who was also there at the scene, said it would have been a “massacre” without the Capitol Police. “I can tell you, that I think with absolute certainty, nobody would have survived without the Capitol Hill Police. They saved everybody’s life,” he said. “It would have been a massacre without them. ” | 0 |
Image Credits: flickr, 9731367@N02 .
The following excerpt is adapted from Mendenhall’s review of Deirdre McCloskey’s book Bourgeois Equality; the original review, which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, is available here.
If it’s true that Wayne Booth inspired Deirdre McCloskey’s interest in the study of rhetoric, then it’s also true — happily, in my view — that McCloskey has refused to mimic Booth’s programmatic, formulaic methods and boorish insistence on prosaic succinctness. Bourgeois Equality is McCloskey’s third volume in a monumental trilogy that began with The Bourgeois Virtues (2006) and Bourgeois Dignity (2010), each published by the University of Chicago Press. This latest volume is a Big Book, alike in kind but not in theme to Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence (2000), Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae (1990), or Herald Berman’s Law and Revolution (1983) and Law and Revolution II (2006). It’s meandering and personal, blending scholarship with an essayistic style that recalls Montaigne or Emerson.
McCloskey’s elastic arguments are shaped by informal narrative and enlivened by her plain and playful voice. At times humorous, rambling, and deliberately erratic, she gives the distinct impression that she’s simply telling a story, one that happens to validate a thesis. She’s having fun. Imagine Phillip Lopate articulating economic history. McCloskey is, in this regard, a latter-day Edward Gibbon, adopting a mode and persona that’s currently unfashionable among mainstream historians, except that she’s more lighthearted than Gibbon, and unashamedly optimistic.
McCloskey’s elastic arguments are shaped by informal narrative and enlivened by her plain and playful voice. At times humorous, rambling, and deliberately erratic, she gives the distinct impression that she’s simply telling a story, one that happens to validate a thesis. She’s having fun. Imagine Phillip Lopate articulating economic history. McCloskey is, in this regard, a latter-day Edward Gibbon, adopting a mode and persona that’s currently unfashionable among mainstream historians, except that she’s more lighthearted than Gibbon, and unashamedly optimistic.
Writing with an air of confidence, McCloskey submits, contra Thomas Piketty, that ideas and ideology — not capital accumulation or material resources — have caused widespread economic development. Since 1800, worldwide material wealth has increased and proliferated; the quality of life in poor countries has risen — even if it remains unequal to that of more prosperous countries —and the typical human being now enjoys access to the food, goods, services, medicine, and healthcare that, in earlier centuries, were available to only a select few in the richest parts of the globe. The transition from poverty to wealth was occasioned by shifting rhetoric that reflected an emerging ethical consensus. The rhetorical-ethical change involved people’s “attitudes toward other humans” (p. xxiii), namely, the recognition of shared experience and “sympathy,” as Adam Smith stated in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Attributing human progress to ideas enables McCloskey to advocate the norms and principles that facilitated economic growth and social improvement (e.g., class mobility and fluidity) while generating extensive prosperity. Thus, her project is at once scholarly and tendentious: a study of the conditions and principles that, in turn, she promotes.
She argues that commercialism flourished in the eighteenth century under the influence of ideas — such as “human equality of liberty in law and of dignity and esteem” (p. xxix) — that were packaged in memorable rhetoric and aesthetics. “Not matter, mainly, but ideas” caused the Great Enrichment (p. 643). In other words, “[t]he original and sustaining causes of the modern world […] were ethical, not material,” and they included “the new and liberal economic idea of liberty for ordinary people and the new and democratic social idea of dignity for them” (p. xxxi). This thesis about liberty and dignity is clear and unmistakable if only because it is repetitive. McCloskey has a habit of reminding readers—in case you missed her point the first, second, or fifty-seventh time around—that the causes of the Industrial Revolution and the Great Enrichment were ideas, not “narrowly economic or political or legal changes” (p. 470). She maintains, to this end, that the Scottish Enlightenment succeeded in combining the concepts of liberty and dignity into a desirable form of equality—not equality of outcomes, of course, but of opportunity and treatment under the law. And the Scottish model, to her mind, stands in contradistinction to the French example of centralized, top-down codification, command, planning, and design.
A perennial villain lurks in the pages of her history: the “clerisy,” which is an “appendage of the bourgeoisie” (p. 597) and often dubbed “the elite” in regular parlance. McCloskey calls the clerisy “the sons of bourgeois fathers” (p. xvii) and “neo-aristocratic” (p. 440). The clerisy includes those “artists, intellectuals, journalists, professionals, and bureaucrats” who resent “the commercial and bettering bourgeoisie” (p. xvi). The clerisy seeks, in different ways at different times, to extinguish unfettered competition with exclusive, illiberal, irrevocable grants and privileges that are odious to free society and offensive to the rights of average consumers. “Early on,” says McCloskey, referring to the period in Europe after the revolutionary year 1848, “the clerisy began to declare that ordinary people are misled in trading, and so require expert protection and supervision” (p. 609). The clerisy since then has been characterized by paternalism and a sense of superiority.
Because the clerisy is shape-shifting, assuming various forms from time to time and place to place, it’s a tough concept to pin down. The word “clerisy” does not appear in the book’s index to permit further scrutiny. By contrast, McCloskey’s general arguments are easy to follow because the book is separated into parts with questions as their titles; subparts consisting of onesentence headings answer those questions.
In a massive tour de force such as this, readers are bound to take issue with certain interpretive claims. Historians will find McCloskey’s summaries to be too breezy. Even libertarians will accuse her of overlooking manifest wrongs that occurred during the periods she surveys. My complaints are few but severe. For instance, McCloskey is, I believe, either careless or mistaken to announce that, during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, “under the influence of a version of science,” in a territory that’s never specifically identified, “the right seized upon social Darwinism and eugenics to devalue the liberty and dignity of ordinary people, and to elevate the nation’s mission above the mere individual person, recommending, for example, colonialism and compulsory sterilization and the cleansing power of war” (p. xviii).
Let’s hope that it’s innocent negligence rather than willful distortion that underlies this odd, unqualified, categorical assertion. Adam Cohen’s Imbeciles (2016) and Thomas C. Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers (2016) describe how, in the United States, social Darwinism and eugenics were adopted primarily, though not exclusively, by the Left, not the Right. These recent books come on the heels of several scholarly treatments of this subject: Thomas M. Shapiro’s Population Control Politics (1985), Philip R. Reilly’s The Surgical Solution (1991), Joel Braslow’s Mental Ills and Bodily Cures (1997), Wendy Kline’s Building a Better Race (2001), Stefan Kuhl’s The Nazi Connection (2002), Nancy Ordover’s American Eugenics (2003), Christine Rosen’s Preaching Eugenics (2004), Christina Cogdell’s Eugenic Design (2004), Gregory Michael Dorr’s Segregation’s Science (2008), Paul A. Lombardo’s edition A Century of Eugenics in America (2011), and Alexander Minna Stern’s Eugenic Nation (2016). These represent only a small sampling.
Is McCloskey unware of these texts? Probably not: she reviewed Leonard’s book for Reason, although she did so after her own book reached press. At any rate, would she have us believe that Emma Goldman, George Bernard Shaw, Eugene Debs, Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger, John Maynard Keynes, Lester Ward, and W. E. B. Du Bois were eugenicist agitators for the political Right? If so, she should supply her definition of “Right,” since it would go against commonly accepted meanings. On the matter of colonialism and war, self-identified members of the Old Right such as Albert Jay Nock, John Flynn, and Senator Robert Taft advocated precisely the opposite of what McCloskey characterizes as “Right.” These men opposed, among other things, military interventionism and adventurism. The trouble is that McCloskey’s muddying of the signifiers “Left” and “Right” comes so early in the book—in the “Exordium”— that readers may lose trust in her, question her credibility, and begin to suspect the labels and arguments in her later chapters.
Other undefined terms only make matters worse, ensuring that McCloskey will alienate many academics, who, as a class, are already inclined to reject her libertarian premises. She throws around the term “Romanticism” as if its referent were eminently clear and uncontested: “a conservative and Romantic vision” (p. xviii); “science fiction and horror fiction [are] … offshoots of Romanticism” (p. 30); “[Jane Austen] is not a Romantic novelist … [because] [s]he does not take Art as a model for life, and does not elevate the Artist to a lonely pinnacle of heroism, or worship of the Middle Ages, or adopt any of the other, antibourgeois themes of Novalis, [Franz] Brentano, Sir Walter Scott, and later Romantics” (p. 170); “Romanticism around 1800 revived talk of hope and faith and a love for Art or Nature or the Revolution as a necessary transcendent in people’s lives” (p. 171); “Romantic candor” (p. 242); “the late eighteenth-century Romantic literary critics in England had no idea what John Milton was on about [sic], because they had set aside the rigorously Calvinist theology that structured his poetry” (p. 334); “the nationalist tradition of Romantic writing of history” (p. 353); “Romantic … hostilities to … democratic rhetoric” (p. 510); “[i]n the eighteenth century … the idea of autonomy triumphed, at any rate among the progressive clerisy, and then became a leading Romantic idea, á la Victor Hugo” (p. 636); and “the Romantic conservative Thomas Carlyle” (p. 643).
To allege that the clerisy was “thrilled by the Romantic radicalism of books like Mein Kampf or What Is to Be Done” (p. xviii) is also recklessly to associate the philosophies of, say, Keats or Coleridge or Wordsworth with the exterminatory fantasies of Hitler and Lenin. McCloskey might have guarded against this misleading conflation by distinguishing German idealism or contextualizing Hegel or by being more vigilant with diction and definition. Her loose language will leave some experts (I do not profess to be one) scratching or shaking their heads and, more problematic, some non-experts with misconceptions and misplaced targets of enmity. One imagines the overeager and well-meaning undergraduate, having read Bourgeois Equality, setting out to demonize William Blake or destroy the reputation of Percy Shelly, about whom Paul Cantor has written judiciously.2 Wouldn’t originality, imagination, creativity, and individualism—widely accepted markers of Romanticism—appeal to McCloskey? Yet her unconditionally derogatory treatment of Romanticism—which she portrays as a fixed, monolithic, self-evident thing—undermines aspects of that fluctuating movement, period, style, culture, and attitude that are, or seem to be, consistent with her Weltanschauung.
But I protest too much. These complaints should not diminish what McCloskey has accomplished. Would that we had more grand studies that mapped ideas and traced influences across cultures, communities, and eras. McCloskey takes the long view, as we all should. Her focus on rhetoric is crucial to the future of liberty if, given the technological advances we have made, the “work we do will be more and more about decisions and persuading others to agree, changing minds, and less and less about implementation by hand” (p. 498). Equally significant is her embrace of humanomics—defined as “the story [of] a complete human being, with her ethics and language and upbringing” (p. xx)—which materializes in casual references to Henrik Ibsen’s plays, challenges to the depiction of John Milton “as a lonely poet in a garret writing merely to the starry heavens” (p. 393), analyses of Jane Austen’s novels, and portrayals of Elizabethan England. Her historical and narrative arc enables us to contextualize our own moment, with all of its troubles and possibilities.
Best of all, her book is inspiring and exhilarating and brimming with rousing imperatives and moving calls to action. “Let us, then,” she says at one point, “not reject the blessings of economic growth on account of planning or pessimism, the busybody if wellintentioned rationalism of some voices of the French Enlightenment or the adolescent if charming doubts of some voices of the German Romantic movement, fashionable though both attitudes have long been among the clerisy. As rational optimists, let us celebrate the Great Enrichment, and the rhetorical changes in freer societies that caused it” (p. 146). At another point she encourages her audience to guard against “both cynicism and utopianism” (p. 540), and elsewhere to heed “trade-tested cooperation, competition, and conservation in the right mix” (p. 523). These little nudges lend her credibility insofar as they reveal her true colors, as it were, and demonstrate that she is not attempting—as is the academic wont—to hide her prejudices and conceal her beliefs behind pretended objectivities.
Poverty is relative and, hence, permanent and ineradicable, despite McCloskey’s claim that we can “end poverty” (p. 8). If, tomorrow, we woke up and the wealth of each living person were magically to multiply twentyfold—even fiftyfold—there would still be people at the bottom. The quality of life at the bottom, however, would be vastly improved. The current manifestation of global poverty shows how far we as a species have advanced in the last few centuries. McCloskey is right: We should pursue the ideas that accelerated and achieved human flourishing, that demonstrably brought people out of distress and destitution. Hard sciences and mathematical models are insufficient in themselves to convey the magnitude and splendor of these ideas and their accomplishments. Hence we should welcome and produce more books like McCloskey’s that undertake a “rhetorical-ethical Revaluation” to both examine and celebrate “a society of open inquiry,” one which not only “depends on rhetoric in its politics and in its science and in its economy,” but which also yields intellectual creativity and political freedom (p. 650). In McCloskey’s approach, economics and the humanities are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are mutually illuminating and, in fact, indispensably and inextricably tied. An economics that forsakes the dignity of the human person and his capacity for creativity and aesthetics does so at its own peril and to its own disgrace. All economics is, at its core, humanomics. We could do without the latter term if we understood the former. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Just days into his new position as President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn found himself in a meeting that any White House official would dread. Face to face with F. B. I. agents, he was grilled about a phone call he had had with Russia’s ambassador. What exactly Mr. Flynn said has not been disclosed, but current and former government officials said on Tuesday that investigators had come away believing that he was not entirely forthcoming. Soon after, the acting attorney general decided to notify the White House, setting in motion a chain of events that cost Mr. Flynn his job and thrust Mr. Trump’s fledgling administration into a fresh crisis. Mr. Flynn’s rise and fall followed familiar patterns in Washington, where ambitious figures secure positions of great authority only to lose them in a blizzard of contradictions, recriminations and scandal. But rarely has an official at such a high level risen and fallen in such a dizzyingly short time, in this case just 24 days after Mr. Flynn arrived in the West Wing to take his corner office. Given his short stay at the top, Mr. Flynn’s case might be quickly forgotten as an isolated episode if it did not raise other questions, particularly about what the president knew and when. Even more broadly, it underscores lingering uncertainty about the relationship between the Trump administration and Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, a subject of great interest given American intelligence reports of Moscow’s intervention in last year’s elections in the United States. As leaders of both parties said on Tuesday that they expected the Senate to investigate and probably even summon Mr. Flynn to testify, more details emerged about a drama that played out largely in secret inside a White House riven by competing power centers. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, revealed that Mr. Trump had known about concerns that Mr. Flynn lied for more than two weeks before demanding his resignation on Monday night. But Vice President Mike Pence was kept in the dark and did not learn that Mr. Flynn had misled him about his Russia contacts until reading news accounts late last week. Mr. Spicer described a deliberative process in which a new president took his time deciding what to do with Mr. Flynn, a retired general who played a major role in his campaign. The issue, Mr. Spicer said, was not about legality but credibility. “The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the president to ask for General Flynn’s resignation,” he said. But other aides privately said that Mr. Trump, while annoyed at Mr. Flynn, might not have pushed him out had the situation not attracted such attention from the news media. Instead, according to three people close to Mr. Trump, the president made the decision to cast aside Mr. Flynn in a flash, the catalyst being a news alert of a coming article about the matter. “Yeah, it’s time,” Mr. Trump told one of his advisers. Until around that point, Mr. Flynn seemed to think he was going to keep his job. He told The Daily Caller, a conservative news site, on Monday that he had not violated the law. “If I did, believe me, the F. B. I. would be down my throat, my clearances would be pulled,” he said. “There were no lines crossed. ” But by that evening, he was writing a resignation letter, admitting no deception, only that he had “inadvertently” passed along “incomplete information. ” The issue traced back to a call last December between Mr. Flynn, then on tap to become Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. President Barack Obama was imposing new sanctions on Russia and expelling 35 diplomats after the election meddling. The day after the sanctions were announced, Mr. Putin said Russia would not retaliate in kind, as has been the custom in the long, tortured history of relations, instead waiting for a new administration that he assumed would be friendlier. Inside the Obama administration, officials were stunned. Mr. Trump publicly welcomed the decision. “Great move on delay (by V. Putin),” he wrote on Twitter. “I always knew he was very smart!” Around the same time, Obama advisers heard separately from the F. B. I. about Mr. Flynn’s conversation with Mr. Kislyak, whose calls were routinely monitored by American intelligence agencies that track Russian diplomats. The Obama advisers grew suspicious that perhaps there had been a secret deal between the incoming team and Moscow, which could violate the rarely enforced, Logan Act barring private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers in disputes with the United States. The Obama officials asked the F. B. I. if a quid pro quo had been discussed on the call, and the answer came back no, according to one of the officials, who like others asked not to be named discussing delicate communications. The topic of sanctions came up, they were told, but there was no deal. On Jan. 12, David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post, reported that Mr. Flynn had called Mr. Kislyak, setting off news media interest in what was said. Mr. Spicer, then the spokesman for Mr. Trump’s transition team, went to Mr. Flynn, who he said told him that sanctions had not come up during the call. Briefing reporters the next day, Mr. Spicer repeated the misinformation, saying that the conversation had “never touched on the sanctions. ” Mr. Flynn told the same thing to Mr. Pence and Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, who were scheduled to go on the Sunday talk shows and expected that they would be asked about the matter, according to the two men. On Jan. 15, Mr. Pence went on “Face the Nation” on CBS and on “Fox News Sunday” and repeated that sanctions had not been discussed, while Mr. Priebus said much the same on “Meet the Press” on NBC. The topic came up again after Mr. Trump and his team moved into the White House. At his first full briefing on Jan. 23, Mr. Spicer said that Mr. Flynn’s conversation had touched on only four subjects, none of them sanctions. That caught the attention of the F. B. I. and the Justice Department. Sally Q. Yates, an Obama appointee held over as acting attorney general until Mr. Trump’s choice was confirmed, concluded that the disparity between what was said on the call and what Mr. Flynn had evidently told the vice president and others about it might make the new national security adviser vulnerable to blackmail. When foreign governments hold information that could prove embarrassing, it is considered a potential leverage point. Soon after the Jan. 23 briefing, James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, sent agents to interview Mr. Flynn. If he told the agents what he said publicly for more than a week after that interview — that his conversations with the ambassador had been innocuous and did not involve sanctions — then he could face legal trouble. If the authorities concluded that he knowingly lied to the F. B. I. it could expose him to a felony charge. It was not clear whether Mr. Flynn had a lawyer for his interview or whether anyone at the White House knew the interview was happening. But they knew afterward because Ms. Yates, with the support of Mr. Comey, reached out to Donald F. McGahn II, the new White House counsel, on Jan. 26 to give him what Mr. Spicer called a “heads up” about the discrepancy. Mr. Trump was told “immediately,” Mr. Spicer said, and directed Mr. McGahn to look into the matter. After an “extensive review” that lasted several days, Mr. McGahn concluded that nothing in the conversation had violated federal law, Mr. Spicer said. But the president then set out to determine whether he could still trust Mr. Flynn. Mr. Spicer said Mr. Flynn stuck to his original account, making matters worse. “We got to a point not based on a legal issue, but based on a trust issue, with the level of trust between the president and General Flynn had eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change,” Mr. Spicer said. “The president was very concerned that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others. ” Asked if Mr. Trump had instructed Mr. Flynn to talk about sanctions with Mr. Kislyak, Mr. Spicer said, “No, absolutely not. ” Asked if Mr. Trump knew that the issue had come up before the Justice Department told the White House, Mr. Spicer said, “No, he was not aware. ” Mr. Spicer emphasized that there was “nothing wrong” with Mr. Flynn’s talking with representatives of other countries to prepare for the new president taking office, and that, in fact, Mr. Trump wanted him to. By that point, Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Flynn had grown more awkward. One person close to the president, who asked to remain anonymous to describe private discussions, said Mr. Trump had been “uncomfortable” with Mr. Flynn for weeks. Jared Kushner, the president’s and senior adviser, had expressed concern about Mr. Flynn’s appointment even before the inauguration, according to another person briefed on the discussions. Mr. Trump’s views were coming around to the same point. “What he knew was that Flynn was too much about Flynn, versus Mattis,” the person close to the president said. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was seen as deferential to the chain of command. “He loves Mattis because Mattis is respectful and . ” Another key figure with growing concerns about Mr. Flynn was Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist whom Mr. Flynn perceived as a rival for control over national security. Mr. Trump began asking Mr. Mattis about two weeks ago for suggestions of possible replacements for Mr. Flynn. The defense secretary recommended retired Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward. Mr. Bannon reached out to Mr. Harward last week, two senior officials said. The situation escalated late Thursday when word reached the White House that The Washington Post was reporting that the transcript of Mr. Flynn’s call showed that he had discussed sanctions, contrary to his assurances to Mr. Pence and others. White House officials confronted Mr. Flynn, who only then said that it was possible they had come up, but that he did not remember. “His story remained the same until that night,” Mr. Spicer said. “That’s when his response changed. ” That was also when Mr. Pence first learned that the Justice Department had proof that Mr. Flynn had not told the truth and had warned the White House two weeks earlier, according to Marc Lotter, his spokesman. “He did an inquiry based on those media accounts,” Mr. Lotter added, without elaborating. Another person who speaks frequently with him said Mr. Pence went “ballistic,” or at least what qualifies as ballistic for the coolheaded vice president. Mr. Pence, Mr. Priebus and Mr. Bannon urged Mr. Trump to fire the national security adviser, according to officials, but the president could not bring himself to do it, in part for fear of losing face. When a reporter on Air Force One heading to Florida on Friday asked him about The Post’s report, Mr. Trump said he had not read it. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I haven’t seen it. ” As late as Monday, he was sticking by Mr. Flynn. He sent his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, to tell a television interviewer that he had “full confidence” in Mr. Flynn. And Mr. Flynn phoned a reporter for The Daily Caller on Monday to say the president had “expressed confidence” in him and urged him to “go out and talk more. ” In that interview, posted on Tuesday, Mr. Flynn said he had discussed the Russian diplomats’ expulsion with Mr. Kislyak. “It wasn’t about sanctions,” he said. “It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out. ” Mr. Flynn added: “It was basically, ‘Look, I know this happened. We’ll review everything.’ I never said anything such as, ‘We’re going to review sanctions,’ or anything like that. ” Either way, it was too late. When the matter came to overshadow the president’s meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and word arrived of another Post article on Ms. Yates’s warning to the White House, Mr. Trump ordered an end to the situation. “He made a determination late in the day,” Mr. Spicer said, “and he executed on it. ” | 1 |
TRUMPENSTEIN: "I'm a big believer tremendous believer of the freedom of the press. Nobody believes it stronger than me but if they make terrible, terrible mistakes and those mistakes are made on purpose to injure people."
Public figures like The Donald already can sue the press when they intentional print falsehoods to injure people. The standard under US law requires actual malice, defined as:
1. knowing that the statement is false; or
2. acting with reckless disregard for the statement's truth or falsity.
Trump's a populist, and an intellectually lazy one at that who researches nothing, learns nothing and knows nothing, except "What I hear..." | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The middle class will see a big tax cut, but the wealthy will not. American businesses will pay much lower taxes, and as a consequence bring back billions of dollars from overseas. All this will create sustained growth of 3 to 4 percent a year and prevent the budget deficit from exploding. That is the economic future described on Wednesday by the people Donald J. Trump’s has chosen to lead the Treasury and Commerce Departments, Steven Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross. But in making those bold promises, the two men have contradicted some of Mr. Trump’s campaign pledges, promised economic growth targets that will be difficult to achieve given modern demographics, and committed to plans that even sympathetic analysts project will vastly widen the budget deficit. The comments shed light on how two men tapped as top economic policy makers in the Trump administration view their job ahead — but also expose what will be challenging about getting campaign goals accomplished. “Any reductions we have in upper income taxes will be offset by less deductions so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class,” Mr. Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday morning. “There will be a big tax cut for the middle class, but any tax cuts we have for the upper class will be offset by less deductions that pay for it. ” That is not what independent analysts concluded after analyzing the tax proposal Mr. Trump made during his campaign, which would reduce the income tax rate on the wealthiest families from its current 39. 6 percent to 33 percent. In that plan, families would see a 0. 8 percent increase in their income, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, while the top 1 percent of taxpayers would see a 10. 2 to 16 percent gain. Another group, the Tax Policy Center, calculated families would get a 1. 8 percent boost in income, while the top 0. 1 percent of earners would see a 14 percent gain and a tax cut worth an average of $1. 1 million. But Mr. Mnuchin was talking big: “This will be the largest tax change since Reagan. ” Mr. Mnuchin suggested closing some tax loopholes would counter the effect of lower tax rates for the rich, but he mentioned only one: a cap on the mortgage interest deduction. Tax reformers have long suggested that mortgage payments should either no longer be deductible or be capped for mansions and second homes. Mr. Trump’s Treasury pick did not clarify what he meant. It was not clear whether the comments on Wednesday represented a shift in Mr. Trump’s tax policy intentions or political spin. “What he described there doesn’t match the plan unveiled in September,” said Alan Cole, an economist at the Tax Foundation. “This statement could be a legitimate pivot, or it could be hand waving. I don’t know which. ” One promise of Mr. Mnuchin’s that matched Mr. Trump’s was a 15 percent corporate income tax rate, a huge cut from the current 35 percent. Leaders in both parties favor a lower corporate rate, paid for with a simpler tax code with far fewer deductions and dodges. But former Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner could get the rate down only to 28 percent when he ran the numbers. Even House Republicans have aimed for 25 percent. “We’re going to cut corporate taxes, which will bring huge amounts of jobs back to the United States. We’re going to get to 15 percent, and we’re going to bring a lot of cash back to the U. S.,” Mr. Mnuchin said. Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Ross suggested that the plans would not widen the budget deficit thanks to “dynamic scoring,” or forecasts that assume tax cuts will release much faster economic growth and therefore pay for themselves. But the Trump tax cuts would need to unleash far faster growth than the historical record suggests is likely to avoid rapidly increasing the budget deficit. The Tax Foundation’s analysis of the September Trump campaign plan found that even with dynamic scoring, the plan would reduce federal revenue by $2. 6 trillion to $3. 9 trillion over the next decade, which absent spending cuts would enlarge the deficit by up to over levels the Congressional Budget Office projects. And the Trump nominees stuck with a bullish forecast for growth. “Our No. 1 priority is going to be the economy, get back to 3 to 4 percent growth,” Mr. Mnuchin told reporters gathered at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Wednesday. “We believe that’s very sustainable. ” It is true that economic growth averaged around 3. 5 percent a year in the second half of the 20th century, before falling to around 2 percent a year in the last 15 years. In trying to achieve that goal, though, the Trump administration will face significant demographic headwinds. The speedy growth of the last century was helped along by the enormous baby boom generation entering the work force, and more women joining the ranks of the working. Now, the baby boom is retiring and the proportion of women working is stable. For those reasons, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the United States labor force will grow by 0. 6 percent a year over the next decade. By contrast, from 1949 to 2000 it rose by an average of 1. 7 percent a year. Another complication to the Trump team’s predictions? Mr. Trump has promised tight controls on immigration, the one lever that could increase work force growth. To achieve the economic strength that the Trump administration is aiming for, either something will need to change existing demographic trends, such as higher immigration levels or retirees working longer, or American businesses will need to find ways to become sharply more productive than they have been in recent years. In other words, as the Trump economic team forms and tries to turn bold campaign promises into policy reality, it may find that the biggest limit of all is economic math. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s campaign on Thursday reaffirmed its extraordinary embrace of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, signaling a preference for the leadership of an authoritarian adversary over that of America’s own president, despite a cascade of criticism from Democrats and expressions of discomfort among Republicans. “I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country,” Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Mr. Trump’s running mate, said on CNN, defending Mr. Trump by echoing his latest praise for the Russian leader, offered Wednesday night in a televised candidate forum. Hillary Clinton excoriated Mr. Trump for asserting that Mr. Putin is a better leader than President Obama, saying it was “not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as to our commander in chief — it is scary. ” She seized on Mr. Trump’s assertion in the televised forum that Mr. Putin’s incursions into neighboring countries, crackdown on Russia’s independent news media and support for America’s enemies were no more troublesome than Mr. Obama’s transgressions. She said it showed that, if elected, Mr. Trump would be little more than a tool of Mr. Putin. “It suggests he will let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do and then make excuses for him,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters Thursday morning at Westchester County Airport in New York, stepping up her criticism as polls indicate the race has tightened, and as Mr. Trump continues to say things rarely heard before from a major party’s presidential nominee. In Wednesday’s forum, which was moderated by Matt Lauer of NBC and was devoted to national security issues, Mr. Trump twice denigrated America’s generals suggested he would fire the country’s current military leadership and insinuated — vaguely, unverifiably and without evidence — that the intelligence officials who recently gave him a classified briefing about threats to the United States had said that the president had flouted their advice. Mrs. Clinton delighted at the chance to change the subject from her uneven performance at the forum, under treatment by Mr. Lauer that many observers believed was harsher than his handling of Mr. Trump. Her campaign could barely contain its wonder that her opponents were now allowing her to chain Mr. Trump to a Russian leader widely seen as hostile to the United States. In the forum, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin that he had been a leader “far more than our president,” and he praised Mr. Putin’s firm grip on Russia. And after Mr. Lauer highlighted Mr. Putin’s record, Mr. Trump shot back, “But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?” Such talk is a remarkable break from the traditional boundaries of American political speech. And, as with his past provocations, Mr. Trump once again left his fellow Republicans scrambling to defend what many effectively conceded was indefensible. “Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters on Thursday in Washington, accusing the Russian leader of “conducting cyberattacks” on “our political system. ” Mr. Ryan was referring to the hack of the servers of the Democratic National Committee, which American officials believe was conducted by Russian intelligence services. At the NBC forum, Mr. Trump disputed Russia’s guilt, telling Mr. Lauer the culprits were not definitively known. Mr. Trump went even further on Thursday, saying in an interview on the Russia Today network that it was “probably unlikely” Russia was trying to interfere in the election and that Democrats “are putting that out. ” In a fashion that would have been for a Republican during or immediately after the Cold War, Mr. Trump has made improved relations with the Kremlin a centerpiece of his candidacy. And Russia has been a subplot of the campaign that Tom Clancy and John le Carre together may have been unable to conjure, complete with the apparent Russian hack of one of America’s political parties, a threat that Russian hackers may try to tamper with electronic voting machines, and Mr. Putin’s unsubtle preference for Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton. While railing against Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries, Mr. Trump has continually praised Mr. Putin’s government: He has hailed Mr. Putin’s tight control over Russian society, hinted that he may not defend the Baltic nations formerly in Moscow’s sphere of influence, and for a time employed a campaign chief with close ties to Ukraine’s forces. Most extraordinarily, he used a news conference over the summer to urge the Russians to hack into Mrs. Clinton’s emails to find messages the F. B. I. might have missed. It is all rather confounding — unless Mr. Trump is simply eyeing postelection business interests — for congressional Republicans, who evince little doubt that Moscow was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee. On Thursday, they volunteered the sort of criticism of Mr. Putin more typical of conservatives discussing an adversary of the United States. “He’s a thug,” said Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. “He’s a dangerous and bad guy. ” But Mr. Rubio, who is running for has gotten behind Mr. Trump since withdrawing from the presidential primary, and he declined to say whether Mr. Trump’s comments were out of bounds because, he said, he did not want to “be a commentator. ” Even Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, perhaps Mr. Trump’s closest ally on Capitol Hill, appeared ill at ease when pressed about Mr. Trump’s statements. Asked whether political combat should stop at the water’s edge, Mr. Sessions paused for nearly 10 seconds before saying, “I’ve tried to adhere to that line pretty assiduously, but less and less does that get adhered to in the modern world. ” Democrats were at once dumbfounded over Mr. Trump’s latest verbal excess, gleeful over a fresh opportunity to portray him as unpresidential and irritated that he had not been pressed more aggressively by Mr. Lauer. Mingling outside the Capitol on a broiling day, the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, and Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, two of the and members of Congress, found themselves uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “If Rangel or Reid had said that, 15 years ago or five years ago, we would be through,” Mr. Reid said of Mr. Trump’s Putin praise. “Can you imagine somebody running for president who has acknowledged publicly that he likes Putin better than Obama? How about that one?” Mr. Rangel interjected: “A communist leader that’s a potential enemy!” Other Democrats, though, saw Mr. Trump’s comments about Mr. Putin as a bonanza, given the scrutiny of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. Representative Joseph Crowley of New York called Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Russians should hack into Mrs. Clinton’s emails “verbal treason” and said Mr. Trump’s “diarrhea of the mouth” would be his undoing. Democrats and even some Republicans said the fury would have been unceasing on the right had a Democratic presidential candidate held up the leader of a hostile power to deride a Republican president. Scholars could recall few parallels in modern American history. Only the campaign of Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party nominee in 1948, was so willing to align itself with Russia, the historian Richard Norton Smith said. “We’ve become to some degree numbed to this, saying, ‘That’s just Trump,’” he said. “And that’s dangerous. ” In her news conference Thursday, Mrs. Clinton invoked the right’s most venerated president, from whose library Mr. Pence appeared on CNN. “What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks American generals and heaps praise on Russia’s president?” she asked. After the news conference, Mrs. Clinton flew to North Carolina to rally voters, and seized the chance to assail Mr. Trump’s comments again. “He prefers the Russian president to our president,” Mrs. Clinton said in Charlotte. But Mr. Trump showed no sign of regret. His aides did not reply to an email asking if the campaign wanted to clarify his comments about Mr. Putin, and deemed Mrs. Clinton’s assault “the desperate attacks of a flailing campaign sinking in the polls. ” Mr. Trump himself appeared mostly focused on news coverage of the NBC forum. “Wow, reviews are in — THANK YOU!” he wrote on Twitter. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Deep into the Senate’s questionnaire of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, the Supreme Court nominee was asked to describe how he had come to President Trump’s attention. The first thing he wrote was, “I was contacted by Leonard Leo. ” Most Americans have probably never heard of Leonard A. Leo, who has long served as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, an organization of conservatives and libertarians who “place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values and the rule of law. ” But as Mr. Trump begins the process of filling what could be the most federal court vacancies left to any president in nearly a Mr. Leo is playing a critical role in reshaping the judiciary. He sits at the nexus of an immensely influential but largely unseen network of conservative organizations, donors and lawyers who all share a common goal: Fill the federal courts with scores of judges who are committed to the narrow interpretation of the Constitution that they believe the founders intended. “The Supreme Court needs to be an institution that helps to undergird limited constitutional government,” said Mr. Leo, 51, whose cerebral, unassuming demeanor belies the enormous clout he has developed in Washington. It is a worldview that has brought Mr. Leo and his allies together with a range of conservative players. In addition to major corporate backers such as Google and Chevron, the Federalist Society’s supporters include and business leaders like Charles G. and David H. Koch the family foundation of Richard Mellon Scaife and the Mercer family, which gave significantly to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and helped start Breitbart News. This judicial reformation is being coordinated from Washington by a relatively small team closely aligned around Mr. Leo, who is on leave from the Federalist Society while he helps the White House shepherd the Gorsuch nomination. The network includes John G. Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation and Ann Corkery, a Washington lawyer who along with her husband, Neil, oversees the Judicial Crisis Network and related groups that also support the cause. While a agenda and the desire to place judges who will be more skeptical of federal and state regulations is a driving force, several central players in the group are also motivated by intense religious beliefs. “We can have an incredible impact,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network. Ms. Severino counts among her clients Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, a group of Catholic nuns who participated in a lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court alleging that Obamacare limited their religious freedom. Judge Gorsuch, 49, is their first test case, with his confirmation hearing set to begin on Monday — but the conservative activists say more is at stake than just the Supreme Court. “Make no mistake,” Mr. Leo said in a speech last month at the Ronald Reagan Dinner at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “How we deal with this vacancy now, the strength that we as the movement demonstrate in this fight, will determine the extent to which we are able to both nominate and confirm judges as we move forward. ” Mr. Trump already has 124 judgeships to fill — a backlog created by Senate Republicans who blocked the confirmation of many of President Barack Obama’s nominees. That includes 19 vacancies on the federal appeals courts. Because of the age of many judges today, the White House expects between 70 to 90 appeals court positions to open up over the next four years. That would give Mr. Trump the opportunity to fill anywhere from to half of all appellate seats — a profound impact considering that those courts are often the final word on thousands of cases that never reach the Supreme Court. The scale and sophistication of the right’s judicial confirmation efforts would seem to portend a dark period ahead for the left, which, despite having made great strides under Mr. Obama, finds itself outmaneuvered. “The right wing, very purposely and methodically, has built a stable of nominees that fit their ideological profile, and it’s been a national movement, well organized and strategized,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, who serves on the Judiciary Committee. “Frankly, I think the progressives of the Democratic Party have been less vigilant and vigorous than the right. ” There was little question to whom Mr. Trump would turn when he was putting together his list of possible Supreme Court nominees last year: Mr. Leo, who has spent almost his entire legal career at the Federalist Society, after graduating from Cornell Law School in 1989. The father of seven children and fond of speaking in biblical allusions, he rose to prominence more than a decade ago as the Republican Party’s of Catholic outreach. At Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral last year, he read from the Old Testament. When President George W. Bush made his two nominations to the Supreme Court in 2005, picking Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Mr. Leo assumed the responsibility of coordinating outside campaigns to buttress their Senate confirmations. It is a role — which he has described as analogous to running a political campaign — that he has reprised with the Gorsuch confirmation. Mr. Leo has an exalted reputation among conservatives, including Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general who is now head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Pruitt recalled in a speech last year at the conservative bastion Hillsdale College how he was in Washington for a Federalist Society meeting in 2013. Mr. Leo asked him to stay an extra night for dinner, without giving a hint of who might show up. “Any time that Leonard asks you to go to dinner, you stay, because he feeds you well,” Mr. Pruitt said. But it was not only the menu that was impressive. Mr. Pruitt arrived to see Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas at the table. “We spent three hours talking about the Constitution and things that we were involved in as attorneys general,” Mr. Pruitt recalled. “It was a fabulous time. ” Mr. Leo has been at the center of Mr. Trump’s judicial selection process since last spring, when Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump’s campaign lawyer and now the White House counsel, introduced them. It helped enormously that Mr. Leo came to the campaign at a critical time of need. Mr. Trump’s relationship with the conservative moment was tenuous at best. Last March, a prominent group of Catholic leaders in the United States, including several with close ties to Mr. Leo, published an open letter in National Review, a conservative magazine, declaring Mr. Trump “manifestly unfit to be president of the United States. ” It was the type of rejection that was becoming all too worrisome for Mr. Trump. At the same time, a faction of delegates threatened to block his nomination. So in May, in an unprecedented move for a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump shrewdly released the first of two lists of people he was considering to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Scalia, at first with help from Mr. Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation. Judge Gorsuch’s name was added in a second version of this list, with Mr. Trump thanking the Federalist Society and Heritage for their help. Polls showed this published list of 21 names was a significant factor in the election. Of the of voters who said the Supreme Court was the most important issue in their decision, 57 percent voted for Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump gave broad discretion to Mr. Leo and his colleagues. Mr. Trump’s most important criterion, these lawyers said, was that he wanted judges who were “not weak” and of “high quality. ” Their approach in coming up with candidates was similar to President Ronald Reagan’s. “They had this very sophisticated, detailed frame of reference from which they could begin to say, ‘O. K. well, who understands these things like we do? ’” Mr. Leo said in an interview, referring to the Reagan era. “As opposed to an administration that might sit around and say, ‘Who’s a really smart lawyer who’s been really accomplished?’ Or, ‘Hey, what about my frat buddy from 1964? ’” And as Reagan did by nominating Justices Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy, Mr. Leo and his conservative colleagues have looked for judges who can serve as long as possible. “Young is good,” Mr. Leo said. “There will be an opportunity for a transformation of the federal bench. ” Even before Mr. Trump walked into the East Room of the White House on Jan. 31 to name Judge Gorsuch as his first Supreme Court nominee, the public relations campaign to confirm him had started. “Neil Gorsuch’s talent and skill would make for a great #SupremeCourt Justice,” said a post sent out on Twitter by the Judicial Crisis Network on the afternoon before the announcement. By that point, television and radio advertisements about Judge Gorsuch were already on their way to stations across the country. The campaign focused on five states picked for a very explicit reason: Each had a Democratic senator up for next year, and all the states had voted to elect Trump. This more public part of the push — Mr. Leo has never been particularly comfortable in the spotlight — has been handled by Ms. Severino, 40, a Harvard Law School graduate who served as a clerk to Justice Thomas and is a frequent speaker at Federalist events. Ms. Severino said the group’s efforts to secure Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation reflected the consensus of American voters, who picked Mr. Trump in part because of the Supreme Court choices he said he would make. But an examination of the Judicial Crisis Network’s operations and financial records suggests that the group, in fact, has an incredibly narrow base. In 2015, the last year that tax records were available, the Judicial Crisis Network’s entire budget of $5. 7 million appears to have come from a single donor, an organization called the Wellspring Committee, based in Manassas, Va. that describes its mission as advancing “limited government and free markets. ” Judicial Crisis and a sister organization, the Judicial Education Project, reported in tax returns that they had a total of only two employees and no volunteers, and instead largely relied on outside consultants, like CRC Public Relations, a Virginia firm that also lists the Federalist Society and other conservative groups as clients. Ms. Severino, asked whether her group was simply a shell to secretly move money on behalf of others, said the Judicial Crisis Network should not be judged based on the size of its staff. “We are not trying to be a large membership organization,” Ms. Severino said in a written statement, sent by CRC, which asked that the remarks be attributed to her. “There are others who excel at that type of work, and we are happy to support them as allies. ” It is clear that there are close personal ties among the leaders of the push to confirm Judge Gorsuch. Ann and Neil Corkery help run a network of nonprofit organizations like Catholic Voices USA, an organization that promotes the church’s views. They also help Mr. Leo in managing the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, tax records show. There are even overlaps with the funding. Mr. Corkery is listed as treasurer of the Judicial Crisis Network. A separate Internal Revenue Service filing shows that Ms. Corkery is president of the Wellspring Committee. Tax records from the past two years also show that Mr. and Ms. Corkery were paid nearly $600, 000 to help run 15 nonprofit groups, including the Judicial Crisis Network. They declined requests to discuss their overlapping roles in these organizations. The impact of this intertwined network can also be seen in a number of efforts to appoint more originalist judges. Last year, the Judicial Crisis Network and a second organization it donated money to bought political advertisements in two Supreme Court races in Arkansas, which are decided directly by voters. The advertising by the groups, which spent far more than the candidates themselves, attracted widespread attention to what has normally been a race. The intervention was considered disturbing enough that the state legislature held a special hearing last year where those targeted by the groups testified. “I suppose some with misplaced or contorted egos might be flattered these shadowy groups would spend over a dollars directed to keep one off the court,“ said Clark W. Mason, a Little Rock, Ark. lawyer who was one of the candidates for the Supreme Court. “But I am outraged. They are attempting to shift the scale of justice. ” The legislature this year failed to pass a law that would require a group like Judicial Crisis to disclose the source of its funding if it wants to play a similar role in future elections in the state. Judicial Crisis has also donated more than $2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association — making it the single largest contributor in the 2016 election cycle, as it sought to elect top state law enforcement officers who could bring cases to state or federal courts with judges the group also helped put into place. Mark Holden, general counsel of Koch Industries, a donor to the Federalist Society, said in an interview that the efforts of these conservative legal activists were necessary to overcome a bias favoring judges who put their agendas before the law. “It’s very important that we have the right people in place, people who will follow our laws, judges who will follow our laws as they have been written and not as they wish they were written,” Mr. Holden said. One point all the parties agree on: Mr. Trump must not repeat the mistake that Mr. Bush made in moving slowly to fill the many vacancies in the federal court system. Mr. Leo is ready to play his part. “Those nominations to the lower federal courts are a high priority to the president and for senior administration staff,” Mr. Leo said in an interview last month that was broadcast on . He said the number of vacancies was historic. “It is something that is very much on the president’s mind. ” | 1 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Travis Kalanick, the famously combative chief executive of Uber, took the stage at a Vanity Fair conference in San Francisco last October and quickly faced a prickly question. Why all the blunders at the company, Vanity Fair’s editor, Graydon Carter, asked. And had Mr. Kalanick learned anything? Off in the wings of the auditorium, Bill Gurley appeared to tense. Mr. Gurley has a lot riding on Uber. His venture capital firm, Benchmark, bought into Uber six years ago, when the company was a mere pipsqueak. Today, what was a 20 percent stake in Uber is worth billions. Mr. Gurley is a rare figure, a Silicon Valley habitué who chides some of the biggest stars to show some discipline and drop their arrogant behavior. That day in October, Mr. Kalanick passed Mr. Gurley’s test. He answered calmly, saying that he could learn from leaders who had failed in the past. “We’ve made mistakes,” Mr. Kalanick said. “We always find a way to learn and to get better. ” Mr. Gurley relaxed visibly. Now, however, Uber faces precisely the kind of test Mr. Gurley has warned about. Former employees have said they were sexually harassed and discriminated against at the company. This month, Uber ended its use of a tool to thwart authorities in various cities who were trying to stop the service, after complaints that the behavior was unethical. Mr. Kalanick himself was caught on a video, which quickly went viral, in which he told one of Uber’s drivers that “some people just don’t want to take responsibility” for their own behavior, using an obscenity. At the same time, Uber is facing business challenges — a tarnished image, legal difficulties and competition from rivals like Lyft — and is spending big to get around those issues. The company needs to resolve the controversies and get its business back on track. Mr. Gurley has become deeply involved in that effort. In recent weeks, he has been active in a review of Uber’s practices, according to a person briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conversations are confidential. Mr. Gurley is also helping the company search for a chief operating officer. Throughout, Mr. Gurley has remained one of Mr. Kalanick’s few trusted advisers, and the two communicate several times a week, according to three people who have spoken with the men. Helping to right the ship at Uber is a somewhat fitting role for Mr. Gurley, who for years has warned about excessive on the part of . Going against the Silicon Valley orthodoxy, the venture capitalist has urged technology to go public as soon as they are able, instead of continuing to take venture capital funding: Taking on too much venture funding, he has said, can fuel a lack of discipline. “Bill was the one who pushed hard for my company, Net Gravity, to be profitable at the height of the boom” in the late 1990s, said Thuan Pham, a tech entrepreneur who joined Uber in 2013 and is now chief technology officer. “It was a very unpopular stance. At Uber, he is willing to speak up too. ” Mr. Gurley, 50, didn’t respond to requests for comment on Uber. In one of three interviews last year, he said of his warnings for that “I say these things because the longer bad behavior goes on, the worse things end up. ” Uber declined to comment on Mr. Kalanick’s relationship with Mr. Gurley. Mr. Gurley, who cuts a distinctive figure in Silicon Valley in no small part because of his lanky frame, went against conventional wisdom even before he became an investor. The son of a NASA engineer, he grew up in Houston, obtained a computer science degree from the University of Florida, and worked at Compaq before joining the investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston in 1993 as a stock analyst. A student of behavioral economics, markets and technology, Mr. Gurley became known on Wall Street for his nonconformist calls. In 1997, after joining Deutsche Bank, he downgraded Netscape Communications, then the wildly popular company behind the Navigator web browser, because he feared it was overvalued. The stock fell about 18 percent after his report. A year later, Netscape was acquired by AOL. “He’s not pessimistic,” said Rich Barton, the founder of the real estate site Zillow, which Mr. Gurley also invested in. “He’s simply ahead. ” In 1999, Mr. Gurley joined Benchmark Capital, as the venture firm was known at the time. Benchmark was then on a hot streak, having initially invested $5 million in eBay in 1997 and reaped a more than 50, 000 percent return after the online auction marketplace went public in 1998. The firm underwent a rougher stretch during the bust in the early 2000s. Like many Silicon Valley venture firms, Benchmark watched investments — including in the online grocer Webvan and the online furniture retailer Living. com — tank. Benchmark has since maintained a consistent string of investment hits. Mr. Gurley has been active, investing in GrubHub, the food delivery company OpenTable, the restaurant reservation system and Zillow, all of which went public. His partners’ successes include investments in Twitter, Instagram, Zipcar and, most recently, Snap, the maker of the ephemeral messaging app Snapchat. For more than 20 years, Mr. Gurley has maintained a personal blog, called Above the Crowd, a reference to both his height and his point of view. It has been a primary channel through which he has made his prognostications. Since 2014, the blog has tended to contain more cautionary notes about behavior. In one post in 2015, as investors were pouring money into what became known as “unicorn” companies — companies valued at more than $1 billion — Mr. Gurley wrote, “We are in a risk bubble. ” Last year, he wrote that there would be “inevitable failed unicorns. ” Among Mr. Gurley’s main concerns are Silicon Valley’s growing which he has said is expertly captured in “Silicon Valley,” the HBO show that lampoons the misadventures of several entrepreneurs who hope to strike it rich. “The Valley reeks of entitlement,” he said in an interview last year. “It’s bad for the industry. ” Another of Mr. Gurley’s concerns relates to the way entrepreneurs have delayed initial public offerings. By staying private for as long as possible, these companies often operate without rigorous financial and operational controls, which is to their detriment, he said. Mr. Gurley’s starkest warnings have been directed at the venture industry, now flush with more cash than at any time since the late 1990s. The flood of capital has allowed both good and bad companies to stay afloat, which Mr. Gurley said lets entrepreneurs engage in unsound business practices. For example, are encouraged to compete with one another with price cuts and discounts when investors are willing to subsidize them. In the long run, however, price cuts are not a sustainable way to keep customers. Thanks to all the easy money in the system, “it could take years to know which business models really work,” Mr. Gurley said. For investors, that could depress returns, he added. Such opinions have sometimes made Mr. Gurley less than popular in Silicon Valley. Marc Andreessen, a founder of Netscape who is now a venture capitalist and who has been optimistic about the boom, once called Mr. Gurley his Newman, a reference to the annoying postal worker in the sitcom “Seinfeld. ” Mr. Gurley’s bearish outlook has also opened him to teasing. At his 50th birthday party last spring, his family poked fun at his distaste for unicorn companies with a slide presentation showing the investor secretly tending to a herd of the mythical creatures. Some said they appreciate Mr. Gurley’s speaking out. Mr. Gurley is “calling B. S. on the relentless, blind confidence,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley investor, adding that it was “brave. ” That outspokenness has not meant Mr. Gurley is always right. In 2015, onstage at the South by Southwest festival, he said there would be “some dead unicorns this year. ” None died that year. Since the end of 2015, the number of unicorn firms has risen to about 186 from 144, according to data from CB Insights. When the Jet. com garnered a $600 million valuation in 2015 before it had sold even a single item, Mr. Gurley tweeted his doubts and wrote “when I see this stuff I fear the end is near. ” Last year, Jet. com sold to Walmart for more than $3. 3 billion, netting a big payday for investors. Mr. Gurley later said on Twitter that he had been wrong. “He’s respected because of how he behaves when he’s wrong, and when he’s right, he makes the point in a way that makes everyone laugh,” Jon Sakoda, a partner at the venture firm New Enterprise Associates, said of Mr. Gurley. The firm was one of the backers of Jet. com. Of all the investments that Mr. Gurley has made in tech none are set to be as lucrative as Uber. When Benchmark invested in Uber in 2011, the company was just two years old and its service had barely gotten off the ground. At the time, Mr. Gurley put $12 million into the company, which was then valued at $60 million. He also joined its board of directors. Today, Uber is valued at close to $70 billion — about 1, 100 times as valuable as it was when Benchmark invested — and has become the world’s most valuable privately held tech . Benchmark is known as one of Silicon Valley’s most venture capital firms, meaning that it doesn’t carve out special deals for itself at the expense of entrepreneurs and employees. With Uber, Benchmark agreed to let Mr. Kalanick and two of his colleagues have significant voting control over the company. That has left Mr. Gurley with few levers he can pull for influence, though he is known for his deft touch with big personalities. Whether in a boardroom or around a poker table, “he ribs people and tells jokes,” said Nirav Tolia, the founder of Nextdoor, a local social networking company that Benchmark funded in 2011. “He loves people, and he has your best interests in mind. ” With Mr. Kalanick, Mr. Gurley is said to have a tight relationship. He is Uber’s most engaged board member and the closest thing Mr. Kalanick has to a consigliere, according to two investors who have spoken with both men. Mr. Gurley has helped guide Mr. Kalanick with Uber’s breakneck expansion into 72 countries in six years. Yet in many ways, Uber now epitomizes many of the excesses Mr. Gurley has publicly condemned, and Mr. Kalanick has said he is in no hurry to take Uber public. Uber also does not have a chief financial officer and is unready for a public offering, despite Mr. Gurley’s past entreaties to prepare for the possibility, according to two people who participated in the conversations. Worse, Uber has been spending prolifically, using price cuts to compete with rivals and barreling into new markets at a rapid rate. Mr. Kalanick has said that after the company entered China in 2013, Uber burned through about $2 billion in three years fighting a price war against the local incumbent, Didi Chuxing. Mr. Gurley’s thinking has occasionally held sway at Uber. Last year, with its spending in China showing few signs of abating, many investors agreed that such losses would squash any hopes of a public offering, according to four people who participated in those conversations Mr. Gurley held an informal meeting with Jean Liu, the president of Didi, in according to a person briefed on the . Shortly thereafter, Mr. Kalanick, partly at the urging of Mr. Gurley, agreed to sell Uber’s China business to Didi, with Uber taking a stake in the resulting entity. It was a win for investors. The experience was humbling for Mr. Kalanick. During the Vanity Fair conference, he told the crowd that he had been forced to rethink how he had done everything in China. “You have to start from scratch,” Mr. Kalanick said. He called the foray an amazing corporate and personal journey that reinforced the Uber belief “in always improving” and “becoming a better version of yourself. ” In the shadows, Mr. Gurley smiled. | 1 |
A new video released Monday by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas shows activists allegedly planning to use butyric acid bombs — commonly known as “stink bombs” — to disrupt an event scheduled for the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the United States. [The leftists captured on film were allegedly targeting the Deploraball, a event being held on Thursday at the National Press Club “to celebrate and honor … the passionate citizens who worked social media, knocked on doors, and endured harassement to support” Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. On Friday, several news outlets reported that a group of activists from the “D. C. Coalition,” part of a broader effort called “#DisruptJ20” (for January 20th, the date of the inauguration) had been captured on tape discussing plans to crash the Deplorable, disrupt the parade at the inauguration, and target specific individuals. Now, Project Veritas reveals just how the #DisruptJ20 activists may have been prepared to go. According to the video, they allegedly planned to place explosive “stink bomb” devices at the party and, if those failed, to trigger the fire sprinkler system, forcing attendees to evacuate outside in cold weather conditions. One activist is also heard on the video to threaten the city government of Washington, D. C. and the police: The message has to be, we do not recognize the city government either. If you try to close us down we will look for your house, we will burn it. We will physically fight the police if they try to steal one of our places. We will go to war and you will lose. During the campaign, O’Keefe and Project Veritas exposed efforts by the activists contracted to the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to stage protests at Republican events, and to incite violence at Donald Trump’s events in particular. Their goal was to create, in their words, a sense of “anarchy” around the candidate. Now, O’Keefe has apparently revealed further plans to create anarchy and disorder around Trump’s inauguration. And, as he points out in the video, the actions planned by the activists could run afoul of laws. O’Keefe and Project Veritas say that they shared the results of their investigation with the FBI, the Secret Service, and the D. C. Metro Police. In commenting on the video, O’Keefe concludes: “Just to be clear, we don’t have a problem with people protesting peacefully or voicing their First Amendment rights, that’s protected by the Constitution. But in this case, Disrupt J20 says openly that their plan is to shut down the inauguration. The question is where do these people draw the line. ” The video released Monday is Part One of a continued investigation by Project Veritas, which plans to release other videos later in the week. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 0 |
Get short URL 0 8 0 0 A parliamentary inquiry reports that there are four Ku Klux Klan-affiliated groups currently operating in Germany. © AP Photo/ Markus Schreiber Strangers in Their Homeland: Germans Leaving Germany En Masse Due to Migrants While the groups have very low membership, they are suspected of committing at least 68 crimes in Germany since 2001. Their members also include at least two police officers, though it remains unclear whether they are still on the force.
“The low membership numbers cannot discount the danger that emanates from such organizations,” Left Party politician Monika Renner told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
Germany is currently seeing a surge in hate crimes following the acceptance of an estimated one million refugees last year. The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany’s intelligence agency, recorded 990 hate crimes in 2014, and 1,408 in 2015.
The BfV also recorded 75 arson attacks on refugee centers in 2015. There were just five such attacks in 2014. © AFP 2016/ Sven Hoppe “One thing is clear – a state under the rule of law can never accept racist violence. We need to do everything we can to quickly catch the perpetrators and rigorously punish them,” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas stated.
Amnesty International has stated that their researchers observed an 87 percent increase in hate crimes between 2013-2015. “With hate crimes on the rise in Germany, long-standing and well-documented shortcomings in the response of law enforcement agencies to racist violence must be addressed,” Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s European Union researcher, stated . “There are many factors that point to the existence of institutional racism with German law enforcement agencies. This question needs to asked, and it needs to be answered… This is not a time for complacency, but for law enforcement agencies to take a long, hard look in the mirror.”
The nation has also seen a rise in sexual assault, theft, and rape, especially by people with refugee status. There has been a noticeable uptick since the mass attacks on New Year’s Eve in Cologne. ... | 0 |
Hillary Clinton's election fraud finally exposed. California stolen from Bernie Sanders! page: 1 link With all the talk from MSM of Russians interfering with US elections. Rumors of Soros owning new computer voting machines that can easily be programed to steal election. If you don't think that the DNC won't steal an election if they can. Think again. a reply to: Doctor Smith Intuitively, we all know that Hillary is capable of attempting to steal an election. Your video, combined with the many e-mails provided by WikiLeaks, confirms that she does indeed have an army of cronies out there breaking federal and state election laws, to not only cheat Bernie Sanders, but to get her into the White House again too. Hillary is indeed a Nasty Woman, just as Elizabeth Warren confirmed this past Monday. link This is the stuff that needs a independent investigation launched pronto. If it is found out 100% it is a fix, what then? I guess there could be a sweeping write in movement for Bernie..or just vote for Stein a reply to: Doctor Smith Now the million dollar question is what are "we" the people going to do about it ? originally posted by: SaturnFX This is the stuff that needs a independent investigation launched pronto. If it is found out 100% it is a fix, what then? I guess there could be a sweeping write in movement for Bernie..or just vote for Stein Vote for Pee Wee Herman if you want. Just don't vote those Clinton criminals in again. But if you really want to stop her, you have to vote for Trump. Compared to Hillary, Trump is Honest Abraham Lincoln. new topics | 0 |
Subsets and Splits