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Next Swipe left/right Swedish men can’t contain their joy after putting a leash on a horse fly Not that we support the capture and lassoing of horse flies, but these Swedes have done just that, and they can’t contain their excitement.
And here’s how to do it yourself, if you happen to be the kind of person that thinks it’s OK to oppress the freedom of flies. | 0 |
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The emergence on Monday of several videos that appear to show uniformed soldiers shooting Congolese civilians has added urgency to calls for an international investigation of recently discovered mass graves in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Last week, the Congolese military’s auditor general announced that seven officers had been arrested and charged with war crimes after a video surfaced last month depicting soldiers shooting a group of civilians in Province, a massacre that left at least 13 dead. Now at least five new videos that appear to show members of Congo’s military shooting civilians are circulating on social networking platforms. Amid mounting accusations of violence against civilians, and the discovery of 10 mass graves dug in January and February in the chief of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo urged the United Nations Security Council this week to press the government to open an investigation into possible rights violations. The chief of the mission, Maman Sambo Sidikou, urged Congo’s government on Tuesday to investigate the recent reports “to ensure that the perpetrators of these acts are held fully accountable and that justice is done,” according to Charles Bambara, Mr. Sidikou’s spokesman. In Congo, elected officials and rights advocates are calling for an international investigation. On Wednesday, Claudel André Lubaya, a member of Parliament representing said an independent international panel was needed to investigate the eight mass graves in his province, “as well as the possibility of other mass graves in all areas where clashes have been reported. ” Jonas Kabiena, the national coordinator of a network called the New Congolese Civil Society, also called for an international inquiry and said on Wednesday, “We condemn the excessive use of force against populations without means of defense. ” The Congolese Army has been carrying out operations against a militia in the region. Fighting between soldiers and rebels has left hundreds dead and displaced hundreds of thousands of people since August. A government spokesman, Lambert Mende, told Reuters this week that the bodies in the mass graves were those of militia fighters, and that the group’s fighters, not the army, had buried them. The government denies that its soldiers have used disproportionate force against the often lightly armed fighters. Militia members could not be reached for comment, Reuters said. Province is volatile, with frequent clashes despite the presence of United Nations peacekeepers. This month, two United Nations officials, an American and a Swede, were among six people abducted in the area. On Saturday, the United Nations mission in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, released a statement expressing concern about reports of renewed fighting and restrictions on the movements of its peacekeeping forces. In response to that statement, the government angrily criticized the United Nations mission on Tuesday for making “imprecise allegations” that hampered “the discovery of the truth. ” But Mr. Lubaya said the inaction of provincial and national officials regarding the mass graves amounted to contempt for the victims, their families and the nation. He added that an investigation was needed to determine who had been killed and how, adding that the victims should be given a dignified burial. | 0 |
Of course, this was not the case for the urban élites: Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-09/source-our-rage-ruling-elite-protected-consequences-its-dominance
Cultural Resistance
The second aspect to the present discontent has been cultural oppression (or, in the rhetoric of the Democratic Party, “identity politics” – one of the mainstays of the Clintonite electoral base). Its roots are complex, and lie with philosophic currents emerging out of Germany during WWII that somehow fused with American Trotskyist intellectual thinking (which then migrated to the Right). But, in gist, this current of political thought borrowed from the emerging discipline of psychology the concept of clearing the human mind – shocking it, or forcing it into becoming the “clean slate” on which a new mental program could be written by the psychiatric (or political) therapist respectively.
The political aim here was to eliminate totalitarian thinking, and fascist mental “programming,” and to replace it with a liberal-democracy circuit board.
Indeed, the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was promoted by this intellectual group precisely in furtherance of the notion that concepts such as “national culture” would become meaningless as a result of immigrant cultural dilution. By the 1970s and 1980s , the objective had evolved to implant the idea that there was really no politics to modernity (Fukuyama’s End of History ) since all governance somehow had boiled down to technocracy: ensuring effective liberal market functioning — a matter best left to experts.
In political terms, the “clearing” of the mind’s inherited cultural clutter was to be achieved by cultural wars of political correctness. The class war had become discredited, but there were other “victims” on whose behalf war could be waged: the war on gender discrimination, on racism, on denial of gay rights and sexual orientation stereotyping, on verbal micro-aggressions, on sexist language, or any ideas or language which disturbed the individual’s sense of “safe space” were used as tools to clear away old cultural “brush” of inherited national culture, and open the way for an American-led, globalized world.
The ostensible factor linking all these notions of victim “wars” was that their antonym amounted either to fascism or authoritarianism. The problem with this has been that any white American blue-collar worker who attended church, who believed in family life, and was patriotic, became potentially a fascist, a racist, a sexist or a bigot.
Many ordinary Americans (and Europeans) disdain this “cultural” war which places him or her ( according to Hillary Clinton), in the “‘basket of deplorables’ Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic, you name it,” and who looked upon his or her community as representing nothing more than a “fly-over” state in the view of the U.S. coastal élites.
The deplorables have now risen up. Donald Trump’s salty language was no liability – it was an electoral asset by thumbing his nose at this correctness, and at so-called ”snowflake” sensibilities . Trump’s ‘incorrectness’ touched on a deep vein of resentment within American traditional society.
Not only does “flyover America” resent being termed “deplorables,” they feel too clearly the disdain in which the American and European elites hold them – and dislike their arrogance in suggesting that there is only one rational, sensible way of doing things, and that they – the elites, being the experts and a part of the Davos set – should tell the rest of us what it is: (despite their decades of failures).
High Emotions
Emotions are high on both sides. To gain a sense of how bitterly the cultural war will be fought, listen to this from the partly-Soros-funded populist mobilization movement Azaaz (linked to America’s Move On organization): “Dear Mr. Trump: This is not what greatness looks like. The world rejects your fear, hate-mongering, and bigotry. We reject your support for torture, your calls for murdering civilians, and your general encouragement of violence. We reject your denigration of women, Muslims, Mexicans, and millions of others who don’t look like you, talk like you, or pray to the same god as you. Facing your fear we choose compassion. Hearing your despair we choose hope. Seeing your ignorance we choose understanding. As citizens of the world, we stand united against your brand of division.” Billionaire currency speculator George Soros. (Photo credit: georgesoros.com)
In short, with Brexit and the Trump victory, we are witnessing an historic point of inflexion. As I noted in mid-October (quoting British political philosopher John Gray): “If the tension between [the globalization project on one hand] and the [sovereign] nation state, [on the other] was one of the contradictions of Thatcherism … From Bill Clinton and Tony Blair onwards, the center-left embraced the project of a global free market with an enthusiasm as ardent as any on the right. If globalization was at odds with social cohesion, society had to be re-engineered to become an adjunct of the market. The result was that large sections of the population were left to moulder in stagnation or poverty, some without any prospect of finding a productive place in society.”
“If Gray is correct that when globalized economics strikes trouble, people will demand that the state must pay attention to their own parochial, national economic situation (and not to the utopian concerns of the centralizing elite), it suggests that just as globalization is over – so too is centralization (in all its many manifestations).”
Well, the global trend does not seem to be going in the Avaaz direction. It seems rather to be heading toward prioritizing the recovery of the state, of state sovereignty, and of state engagement in the pursuit of economic policies appropriate to the particular circumstances of the state, and in the state’s ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole.
The question is what does this mean geo-strategically? And, secondly, can and will, Trump be able to deliver the new era? The short answer is that this new era seems to presage a period of political volatility, financial volatility and in Europe and the Middle East, the prospect of continued political “shock.”
It is clear that Mr. Trump is not a globalist. It is also clear that he is aware of some of the dangers of the present global monetarist policy. He has spoken of the U.S. Federal Reserve creating “big ugly bubbles” and that the next economic and financial crisis has been “kicked down the road” by Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen – and clearly awaits whomsoever becomes U.S. President on Jan. 20, 2017.
Painted into a Corner
But three decades of debt-led, financialized “growth policies” leave the President-elect effectively painted into a corner: global debt has spiraled; the bubbles are there still (kept afloat by Central Bank coordinated intervention), and bubbles are infamously difficult to deflate gently; zero or negative interest rates are undermining many a business model, but cannot easily be foregone, without crashing the bond market; and QE (printing money) is systematically eating away at consumer purchasing power through the dilution of its newly created purchasing power, and the latter’s re-direction from “main street” into the financial sector – lifting nominal asset values – but creating no tangible wealth. China’s President Xi Jinping.
America and Europe effectively are in debt-deflation. How then to grow incomes so that producers of goods and services can also afford then subsequently to purchase these goods and services? Trump’s answer is to spend on domestic infrastructure projects. This may help a bit, but is unlikely – in itself – to lift and float the entire U.S. economy.
The reality is that there is no obvious global engine of growth (now that China’s “industrial revolution” has stalled at best). Every nation now is in search of new engines of growth. And it is not easy to imagine that Europe or America will succeed in retrieving all those jobs lost through globalization. Indeed, the attempt so to do – in, and of itself – might just precipitate a further deceleration of world trade, and a consequent decline in output.
In brief, the global economy may see a brief “honeymoon period” thanks to a likely spurt of U.S. fiscal indulgence and a concomitant psychological lift, stemming from – at least – the U.S. construction sector enjoying something of a boom. But ultimately the very economic crisis which Mr. Trump anticipates may prove to be the only way to cut the Gordian knot in which three decades of unprecedented debt and money printing have fettered us.
And if he is to steer through the expected crisis, Mr. Trump will have to eschew the Siren voices of the present elites telling him “TINA” (there is no alternative, but to continue as before).
Where Mr Trump might look for an early (and relatively easy) success however, may be in foreign policy. As “Nixon went to China,” so Trump can go to Russia and China, and begin to treat them as normal nations with whom it is possible to find an intersection of interests (as well as areas of disagreement).
This would be revolutionary. It could change the geo-strategical map. And as President Putin keeps repeating … the door is open (at least for now). Nothing is forever in politics.
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, which advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West. | 1 |
This post was originally published on this site
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This analysis originally appeared in December 2015
Recent days and weeks have seen several news items pertaining to the future state of the Russian nuclear triad. The scope of modernization plans suggests the role Russia’s strategic nuclear forces are to play as of Russia’s security foreign policy.
The scale of Russian strategic nuclear modernization is impressive. President Putin recently attended the laying down of Aleksandr III, the seventh Borey-class ballistic missile submarine out of eight planned which carry 16 multi-warhead Bulava SLBMs each. Three of these ships are already in service, the whole series is to become operational by 2020. It was also announced that the first PAK-DA heavy bomber flight is to take place in 2020, with the aircraft becoming operational by 2025. In the interim, Russia’s Long-Range Aviation will receive several squadrons of Tu-160M2 bombers, whose production is expected to resume in the upcoming years. The Sarmat heavy ICBM research and development has been recently declared complete, and the missile will begin launch testing in 2016 or 2017. The missile’s unique capabilities include the ability to strike any target on the planet using multiple possible trajectories, for example, it could be used to strike North America not only by flying over the North Pole, but also using an alternative trajectory over the South Pole which would render US ABM systems irrelevant. The construction of Voronezh-DM over-the-horizon ballistic missile attack early warning radars is continuing. Finally, the Russian General Staff announced the development of a system allowing strategic ballistic missiles to be retargeted following launch, which thus far was impossible to do because once the target selection was completed prior to launch there was no way to alter it once the missile was in flight.
This brief outline of current developments shows that Russia is pursuing a sophisticated strategy of deterrence. The comparatively small and uniform French, Russian, and Chinese nuclear arsenals are capable of deterring only one threat, namely a nuclear attack on their national territory. The variety of capabilities inherent in Russia’s triad means that its national leadership has a range of responses at its disposal and can use its capabilities to deter not only nuclear attacks against its territory but also conventional attacks against its military targets, including outside of Russia’s borders.
Syria is an example of what these capabilities mean for Russia. It is no accident that Putin’s request to raise the strategic nuclear force readiness level to 95% came when he instructed the General Staff to destroy any potential threat to Russian aircraft or ground facilities in Syria. The Russian military presence in Syria is not large enough to guarantee survival against a concerted NATO attack. Fifty aircraft located at a single airbase, even one protected by the S-400, are still vulnerable due to their exposed location and lack of strategic depth. Russian conventional forces could not easily come to Hmeimim’s aid in the event of it being attacked by NATO forces. What makes Hmeimim secure from attack is the credible and flexible deterrence posture.
What makes that deterrence both credible and flexible is the variety and modernity of Russia’s delivery vehicle force which is not limited to having to launch a multi-warhead ICBM or SLBM, and which can penetrate all current or planned defenses. The credibility of Russia’s nuclear deterrent is strengthened by the existence of a powerful conventional deterrent in the form of Kalibr and Kh-101 cruise missiles. The use of these missiles against ISIS targets was likely motivated to dissuade any countries hostile to Russia’s presence in Syria because it demonstrated Russia could use these weapons to retaliate against any attack on Hmeimim. The target state would then have to choose between backing down or escalating, thus risking a nuclear exchange with Russia. If Russia simply had an ICBM and SLBM force, Hmeimim would be a much more tempting target because an ICBM launch would be disproportionate response to the attack. Russia’s strategic force modernization plans indicate that its leadership anticipates Syria-like scenarios in the years to come.
Donate | 1 |
WASHINGTON, D. C. — China’s government will reportedly ban dog meat from being sold at this year’s annual and barbaric Yulin festival. However, it is likely cats will be served instead, and animal rights activists note that prior alleged bans on dog meat have usually not prevented the Yulin festival from occurring. Every year they say the same thing, and when the festival happens, thousands of dogs are tortured. If it becomes true, then it is a victory for the animals. But do not let up the fight. Do not think for one minute it is over. Protest. Use your words and your voice. Be their hero. There are no victories until laws are changed. No milestones achieved until what people say actually happens. While we believe the government wants to change, and while we are trying to work with them to bring that to fruition. Never give in to what is said each year — it never becomes reality. Scream for them because that is what they do when they are tortured. Be their voice, because as they are drowned, they have no words. Speak until we see the end. Stand until justice is served. The inhuman practices associated with the dog and cat meat trade have triggered a response from Congress domestically. Rep. Alcee Hastings ( ) presented House Resolution 1406 (HR 1406) “The Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act,” in March. It seeks to”prohibit the slaughter of dogs and cats for human consumption. ” | 0 |
Amnesty International Moscow office sealed Source: Amnesty.org.ru The Department for Property of the City of Moscow sealed the Moscow office of Amnesty International human rights organization. "Due to substantial violations of conditions of rent payment, the organization was notified in written form about the need to repay the debt within a month. The company was also informed that the rental agreement would be terminated in three months otherwise. The organization ignored the claim," a message from the Department for Property said. Human rights activists were thus unable to enter their office. It was also noted that Amnesty International was supposed to send a formal appeal to the department to remove the property of the organization from the office. Later, John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Europe and Central Asia Director, described the incident as an unpleasant surprise and set out a hope for a quick resolution of the situation. "We are 100% confident that we fulfilled all our obligations as tenants," Dalhuisen said. He also noted that the human rights organization had not received any prior warning. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the Kremlin did not know anything about the situation around the Moscow office of Amnesty International. Amnesty International is an international NGO based in the UK in 1961. As of 2013, Amnesty International has about seven million supporters in almost every country and region of the world, including more than two million members and more than five million activists. The organization draws attention to violations of human rights and advocates compliance with international standards. Pravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru | 0 |
cis , military , belarus , kazakhstan , RBTH Daily About 100 aircraft and more than 9,000 troops took part in the drills. Source: Marina Lystseva/TASS
The annual battle readiness test of the command bodies and alert forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Joint Air Defense System was successfully completed on Oct. 26, the Russian Defense Ministry's department of information and mass communications has said in a statement .
The exercise involved seven of the 11 CIS countries – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. About 100 aircraft and more than 9,000 troops took part in the drills.
"During the training, the battle readiness of the CIS alert forces and air defense assets was tested with flights of training targets, including supersonic and stratospheric," the department said.
Video by YouTube
The Russian Air and Space Forces' A-50 airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) were used to increase radar detection range in the Eastern European and Central Asian regions during the drills.
The exercise involved MiG-29, MiG-31 and Su-27 fighters, Su-24 and Su-34 tactical bombers, Su-25 attack bombers and Mi-8 and Ka-27 helicopters. The Russian Airspace Forces' Tu-160 and Tu-95MS strategic missile-carrying bombers and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers posed as imaginary enemy targets.
The exercise was led by the head of the Russian air force, Colonel-General Viktor Bondarev. Exercise against hijacking
The exercise was pre-planned and had nothing to do with the current military-political situation, said Lieutenant-General Aitech Bizhev, former Deputy Commander of the Air Force for the CIS. Controlling the airwaves: Russia's electronic warfare systems
Usually, the CIS air-defense forces practice executing scenarios involving the use of patrol forces against aircraft that violate the CIS borders, as well as in the case of hijacking of aircraft, in helping the crews of aircraft and helicopters in distress, said Bizhev.
"In the summer, these exercises develop into tactical live-fire exercises on the Ashuluk firing range in the Astrakhan Region," he added. "This is the so-called practical stage of the international exercises of the CIS Joint Air Defense System, 'Combat Commonwealth'." Soviet reunion
The recent exercise primarily involved command bodies from the Central Command Post to command posts of anti-aircraft missile battalions and individual radar companies' control points.
"By and large, such exercises involve all the air defense troops of the former Soviet Union, of course, severely truncated compared with the 1980s," said Bizhev.
The most important element of the exercise was the practicing of interoperability when aircraft cross the state borders of the CIS Joint Air Defense System members, as well as the movement of forces and equipment to the forward-based airfields, explained Colonel Sergei Volkov, former chairman of the Russian Air Defense Forces' Scientific and Technical Committee. Who are the members of the CIS Joint Air Defense System?
The CIS Joint Air Defense System was established based on an agreement between 10 member countries, signed on Feb. 10, 1995 in Alma-Ata. Initially it included Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova later left the organization.
The S-300PM hit the target, an imitation of a tactical rocket warhead, by the first rocket. Air Defence forces of seven states of the CIS hold military exercises code-named "Military community -2000" at the Ashuluk Air Force test range / Source: Vladimir Tyukaev/TASS
In 1997, Turkmenistan effectively withdrew from the CIS Joint Air Defense System, while Uzbekistan cooperates with Russia exclusively on a bilateral basis. All relations in the sphere of defense with Ukraine were terminated after February 2014 over Russia’s seizure of Crimea and support for rebels in the Donbass region.
According to Volkov, the joint air defense system helps create a more cost-effective duty roster and military personnel training. In addition, according to him, the use of neighboring countries' airfields can dramatically increase the range of fighter aircraft. | 0 |
TEL AVIV — In a shameful display of rogue diplomacy, 72 countries — minus Israel — are set to attend a Middle East “peace” conference in Paris on Sunday widely expected to set the parameters for a future Palestinian state. [Fresh from his speech two weeks ago largely singling out Israel for condemnation, Secretary of State John Kerry will represent the U. S. at the Mideast confab. There, Kerry is slated to represent the Obama administration in crafting a “consensus” document on an deal. This after a U. S. abstention last month allowed the passage of a United Nations Security Council Resolution calling the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem “occupied Palestinian territories,” and demanding a halt to Israeli construction in those areas. Some of the holiest sites in Judaism are located in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, including the Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron, which was home to the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world until the Jews of Hebron were massacred and expelled the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus — biblical Shechem. The Associated Press on Friday reported on what it said was a draft statement that may be presented at the conference calling on Israel and the Palestinian Authority “to officially restate their commitment to the solution. ” Continued the AP on the draft statement: It also will affirm that the international community “will not recognize” changes to Israel’s lines without agreement by both sides. The draft says that participants will affirm “that a negotiated solution with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, is the only way to achieve enduring peace. ” Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rightly described the Paris summit as a “rigged” effort aimed at inflicting damage on Israel. The Paris onslaught may not be the end of it. Two weeks ago, Breitbart Jerusalem cited a senior PA official saying the PA has been in contact with the Obama administration and European countries about the possibility of taking more UN action based on the outcome of the Paris conference. Citing the official, Breitbart Jerusalem reported: The official said the UN action could come in the form of declarations by UN bodies, including the General Assembly UN sessions on the conflict or even another United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution. He said any further UNSC resolution would depend on the support of the U. S. and European countries after the upcoming Paris Mideast summit slated for January 15. He said the UN action would seek to set the parameters of a future Palestinian state with a clear timeline for negotiations. If the action comes in the form of a resolution at a UN body, it could call for an infrastructure to establish mechanisms to enforce last month’s UNSC resolution. The PA official said the proposals set forth at the Paris Mideast conference will likely serve as the basis for upcoming UN action. An Israeli official told Breitbart Jerusalem that the Israeli government is aware of the possibility of more UN action in the coming weeks, although the official did not have information about a new UNSC resolution. Instead, a spokesperson for the State Department pointed to Tuesday’s press briefing with Deputy Spokesperson Mark C. Toner at which Toner was asked about future action on the conflict and replied that the Obama administration will continue to “work until January 20th. ” The process of using international mechanisms to pressure Israel can only be viewed through the lens of a diplomatic assault on the Jewish state. If the Palestinians wanted a state, they would not have to resort to introducing resolutions at the UN. Israel has offered the Palestinians a state in much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a shared capital in Jerusalem numerous times. These offers were made at Camp David in 2000, Taba in 2001, the Annapolis Conference in 2007, and more offers were made in 2008. In each of these cases, the PA refused generous Israeli offers of statehood and bolted negotiations without counteroffers. The PA has failed to respond to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented attempts to negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state, including freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and releasing Palestinian prisoners. 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. | 1 |
45 Views November 04, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
With continued uncertainty in global markets, today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, and major global events, spoke with King World News about what is really happening in the gold market.
Eric King: “Egon, what is happening with the physical gold market? I know you have your eyes on the refiners in Switzerland and the physical market as well. What’s happening?”
Forget The Propaganda, This Is What Is Really Happening In The Gold Market Egon von Greyerz: “What is so fascinating is that throughout the whole downturn in the gold price from September of 2011, when gold peaked at $1,920, there has been constant physical demand and all of the (world gold) production has been absorbed. The refiners (in Switzerland, which supply 75 percent of the world’s refined gold) have been working at full capacity since 2011…
Continue reading the Egon von Greyerz interview below…
In a King World News interview I spoke with the man who predicted the Swiss National Bank would experience staggering losses and that the Fed would also experience massive losses that will destabilize the global financial system! His company is the only one in the world offering a precious metals investment service outside the banking system, with direct ownership and full control by the investor. He has also become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, and major global events. To find out what he and his company can do to help answer that age old question for you CLICK HERE. Sponsored
Egon von Greyerz continues: “ So all of the gold that is being produced (and more) is being absorbed. A lot more gold is actually being bought (than what is being produced globally) every year, so…Within hours KWN will be releasing this extraordinary Egon von Greyerz, where he gives KWN listeners a look what is really happening behind the scenes in the gold market, and you can listen to it when it’s released by CLICKING HERE.
***ALSO RELEASED: DANGER: Gold/Oil Ratio At Levels Last Seen During The Great Depression! CLICK HERE.
© | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson sought on Wednesday to isolate President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for backing the Syrian government in the wake of its lethal chemical weapons attack on civilians, and worked to build international pressure on Moscow to change course. In Washington, Moscow and New York, the Trump administration publicly chastised Mr. Putin but privately worked to hash out increasingly bitter differences with him. At the same time, Mr. Trump embraced NATO — a military alliance he had previously derided as obsolete — as an effective and vital force for peace and security in a region where Russia has been an aggressive actor. During his presidential campaign, and in his early days in office, Mr. Trump’s approach to foreign policy included speaking warmly of Mr. Putin and the prospects of a United States alliance with Russia. He had also questioned the usefulness of NATO, and the concept of an alliance for common defense to counterbalance Moscow’s belligerence. In an interview that aired on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Putin was partly to blame for the conflict in Syria and denounced him for backing President Bashar whom he called an “animal. ” Later at the White House, Mr. Trump said that Russia had likely known in advance of the Syrian government’s plan to unleash a nerve agent against its own people, and asserted that the United States’ relations with Moscow were at an “ low. ” In Moscow, Mr. Tillerson came away from a meeting with Mr. Putin — the first such session of the Trump administration — without reaching agreement on facts involving the chemical weapons assault in Syria or Russian interference in the American election. And sharply diverging from the meeting of the minds between the United States and Russia that Mr. Trump frequently aspired to when he was campaigning, there was no visible warming of the relationship. “There is a low level of trust between our countries,” Mr. Tillerson told reporters at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov. “The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship. ” The most immediate casualty of the clash was Russia’s decision last week to suspend a communication channel, set up in 2015, to share information about American and Russian air operations over Syria to avoid possible conflict. Mr. Lavrov said on Wednesday that “we’re willing to put it back into force” if Washington and Moscow can resolve their differences. Further punctuating the Syria dispute, Russia on Wednesday vetoed a resolution at the United Nations Security Council that condemned the chemical weapons attack. It was the eighth time in the Syrian civil war that Russia, one of the five permanent Security Council members, had used its veto power to shield the government in Damascus. But in a possible sign of Russia’s isolation on the chemical weapons issue, China, the permanent member that usually votes with Russia on Syria resolutions, abstained. The vote came the day after Mr. Trump spoke by phone to President Xi Jinping of China, whom he hosted last week at a summit at his retreat in Palm Beach, Fla. White House officials said they credited the relationship between the two leaders that was forged during the visit, and the conversation Tuesday evening, with helping to influence China’s vote. The day began with harsh words from Mr. Trump toward Mr. Putin, whom he had once praised effusively. “I really think there’s going to be a lot of pressure on Russia to make sure that peace happens, because frankly, if Russia didn’t go in and back this animal, we wouldn’t have a problem right now,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network, referring to Mr. Assad. “Putin is backing a person that’s truly an evil person, and I think it’s very bad for Russia. I think it’s very bad for mankind. It’s very bad for this world. ” Later, after a meeting at the White House with Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, Mr. Trump went out of his way to praise the military institution, which he called a “great alliance,” and to express disappointment with Russia. Asked whether it was possible that Syrian forces could have launched the chemical attack without Russia’s knowledge, Mr. Trump said: “It’s certainly possible I think it’s probably unlikely. ” “I would like to think that they didn’t know, but certainly they could have. They were there,” Mr. Trump said of the Russians during a news conference at the White House. Even as they have intensified their criticism of Russia for backing Mr. Assad, other senior Trump administration officials, including Mr. Tillerson and Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, have been careful to say there is no consensus that Moscow had foreknowledge that the Assad government planned to launch a chemical assault. “Right now, we’re not getting along with Russia at all — we may be at an low in terms of a relationship with Russia,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday. Still, he held out hope that the United States and Russia could come to terms, suggesting that Mr. Tillerson’s talks with Mr. Putin had gone better than expected. A quick détente seemed a remote possibility, given the level of tension surrounding the aftermath of the Syrian chemical weapons attack. On Tuesday, the White House accused Mr. Putin’s government of covering up evidence that Mr. Assad had been responsible for the sarin assault, which was launched from a base where Russian troops are operating. Mr. Putin shot back that the charge was fabricated and accused the administration of Mr. Trump, who American intelligence agencies believe benefited during the election campaign from Russian cyberattacks intended to embarrass his Democratic rival, of fabricating the evidence to create a fake confrontation. Amid the rift with Russia, Mr. Trump made a striking reversal on NATO, saying the alliance had transformed into an effective one since he took office. “I said it was obsolete it’s no longer obsolete,” Mr. Trump said, standing beside Mr. Stoltenberg. Mr. Trump attributed his change of heart to unspecified transformations within NATO, which he said were a direct response to criticism he had leveled that the alliance was not doing enough to combat terrorism. “I complained about that a long time ago,” Mr. Trump said, “and they changed. ” It was not clear what the president was referring to NATO forces have been fighting alongside the United States in Afghanistan for more than a decade, an effort focused on combating terrorist groups including the Taliban. Still, the turnabout drew praise from some lawmakers who had been concerned with Mr. Trump’s previous stance. “Without NATO, the Soviet Union would be quarterbacking half of Europe today and Putin knows it,” said Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska. “NATO is the most successful military alliance in human history. This was the right decision. ” His comments came hours after a senior White House official said the Trump administration had supported the admission of Montenegro into NATO this week, in part to counter the influence of Russia in the small Balkan nation. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official cited “credible reports” that Moscow had backed a plot for a violent Election Day attack there last fall. Mr. Trump on Tuesday signed the paperwork allowing Montenegro to enter NATO, two weeks after the Senate approved the move in a March 28 vote. The country’s admission, White House officials said in a statement, should signal to other nations aspiring to join the alliance that “the door to membership in the community of nations remains open and that countries in the western Balkans are free to choose their own future and select their own partners without outside interference or intimidation. ” | 1 |
US Navy: Iran Giving Terrorists Missiles to Fire at US Ships October 28, 2016
There's only one possible solution.
Let's load $400 million in unmarked foreign currency on an unmarked cargo plane and deliver it to Iran, Then make follow that up with a few more. And make sure Iran scores $150 billion in sanctions relief.
That's how we got here . It's SmartPower, which is neither smart nor powerful.
Earlier this month US Navy ships had to fire defensive interceptor missiles after they were targeted by attacks launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen.
This was likely the first time in history the Navy had to take such measures, and officials are now saying they think Iran is behind the attacks.
"We believe that Iran is connected to this," Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan told NBC News. In fact, the US has intercepted many shipments of weapons from Iran to the Houthi militants, who oppose Yemen's internationally recognized government in a conflict that has seen thousands of civilian deaths and mass starvation of the civilian population.
The intercepted shipments "were filled with coastal defense cruise missiles, boats that we believe were explosive boats, other weapons that were clearly on the decks of their ships that we saw," Donegan said.
I'm sure there's no chance that the billions Obama lavished on Iranian jihadists have in any way freed up the terror state to open its own Jihadi candy store. Not a chance.
And I'm sure that when Iran gets the nuclear weapons that Obama is enabling, it will use them as responsibly as it's using its cruise missiles. | 0 |
by Yves Smith
Yves here. This Real News Network segment continues its discussion of yet another acronym, TRIPS, that has much to do with how the economic playing field has been tilted against ordinary workers. Please note that the transcript below was published without apostrophes. I added them as best I could but may have missed some.
LYNN FRIES: Welcome to The Real News Network. Im Lynn Fries in Geneva.
This is part 5 of a series with Peter Drahos who is explaining the story of intellectual property linked to trade.
Joining us from Australia, Peter Drahos is a Professor at the Australian National University, in the School of Regulation and Global Governance. He holds a Chair in Intellectual Property at Queen Mary, the University of London. Peter Drahos is co-author of Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?
Welcome Peter.
PETER DRAHOS: Thank you.
FRIES: In Part 4 you talked about how the ownership of intellectual property rights is concentrated among very few key multinationals. And it’s these incumbent players that profit from the TRIPS Agreement. In what other ways did the globalization of intellectual property rights concentrate power in the hands of these multinationals?
DRAHOS: One of the things that’s probably not fully appreciated about intellectual property rights is that they are a form of private tax. So that a patent owner or a copyright owner essentially can require a producer say in a developing country, to pay a licensing fee before they can use the relevant bit of intellectual property whether that is copying a book, making use of a film or making use of the patent. Essentially intellectual property rights are a form of private taxation on innovation which is why they should be minimized. When you globalize I intellectual property rights you essentially put in the hands of the owners of intellectual property rights a global private form of taxing power. That’s a pretty big form of power.
Now this effect people in all countries. But in developing countries the cost of textbooks for example, has a severe impact on accessibility. And of course it’s not just textbooks in developing countries, students in the United States or Europe would probably be able to say a lot about the costs of textbooks they have to pay for. But chances are those students have more chances of paying for those textbooks than people in developing countries. So the basic point here is that if you globalize IPR you are in effect putting in the hands of multinational companies a form of private taxing power right across the board in relation to copyrighted goods, in relation to patented goods, in relation to trade marked goods.
We can see that citizens essentially pay and pay again. Public taxes support a lot of research and development in US universities, European universities and Australian universities. So we have a lot of research and development that’s supported through public taxes. Now a lot of that research and development ultimately ends up being patented. Now through the patent system companies can levy private taxes as I said. Intellectual property rights are a form of taxation.
So goods that are produced or innovation that’s produced at public expense is recycled through the intellectual property system and people in a sense pay the license fees, the private taxes, again. So it’s a form of double payment both public taxes and private taxes. And this happens all the time. Think of for example books that are produced by university academics and those academics are paid for by tax payers. And then those books end up being published by publishers who basically collect fees from universities that use those books or parts of those books in their various courses. So the problem of copyright cartels essentially obtaining very high profits from recycling textbooks that have been produced at public expense is a very severe problem.
FRIES: An argument in favor of globalized IPR is that it’s needed for innovation. Talk about your views on that.
DRAHOS: When we look at the history of innovation in most countries what we see is that public investment has played a hugely important role. That public institutes of research have been extremely important. Intellectual property is often confused with innovation but the explanation for innovation lies in states committing to the funding of basic research. And that’s true for the United States. If we look at the history of the United States, the federal government of the United States has really played a huge role in promoting excellence in universities in funding public research.
Now intellectual property rights have some modest role in all of this. But the problem is that theyve grown like topsy. Theyve grown out of control. These things march like Frankenstein through our economies. And that’s the real problem. My argument is not that there is no role for IPR but what to be recognized is that governments have to commit to using public taxes as they have in the past to funding basic research and to funding universities.
And one of the great dangers in relying on the intellectual property rights system is that you are actually undermining public research, the very thing that historically has given us such great innovations whether in biotechnology or whether is areas of mathematics. The contribution of public research has been so profoundly important and now we are moving into a world where there is excessive reliance on intellectual property in the mistaken belief that intellectual property somehow promotes innovation. When in many senses intellectual property or the globalization of intellectual property is actually anti-innovation. One I think has to recognize the role of public investment in innovation.
An obsession with intellectual property rights can have unexpected repercussions on research cultures. And I think many scientists would say that the research environment in universities is profoundly different to what it was thirty or forty years ago. I mean scientists when for example when they were working on recombinant DNA technology as they were in the early 1970s publicly spoke about the dangers of recombinant DNA technology and they spoke about some of the advantages.
They were able to do this because they were working in public institutions. And in the United States public universities drove much of the research in recombinant DNA technology. Now I think if you spoke to those researchers many of them would say that these kinds of public discussions about the direction of research are much harder for our society to have because scientists worry about undermining the validity of a patent application for example.
FRIES: And what’s the problem on relying on the international patent system?
DRAHOS: There are many complicated problems around patents. And one of the big problems is that patents tend to serve people who can afford to pay. Now if the patented commodity is a tennis racket that’s not such a big problem. But if the patented commodity is a medicine that is a big problem because patents drive up the costs of medicines. And the way that preferences are measured is through the ability to pay.
And of course billions of people in the world do not have the ability to pay for patented medicines. So in essence the patent system is picking up the preferences of predominantly wealthy citizens which is why many diseases, tropical diseases, are essentially not researched. Because the markets in those patented medicines are not big enough. There are not enough incentives for pharmaceutical companies to enter those particular markets. So relying on the patent system to serve the entire globe, all the citizens of the world, is essentially flawed.
FRIES: It’s not hard to see the critical need for public institutes of research but they are state funded and states are collecting less taxes. Which brings us to the role of intellectual property rights in tax avoidance games. Tell us about that.
DRAHOS: One of the issues that’s confronting all countries is raising sufficient revenue. Getting companies to pay sufficient taxes. Now at an international level a perennial problem has been the issue of transfer pricing. This is basically where a large company transfers a particular asset between its subsidiaries.
So for example, a licensing agreement in which one part of the company licenses another part of the company to produce a particular good. Now the whole idea behind transfer pricing from a companys point of view is that in those countries where the tax is high, the particular subsidiary pays the most for the license. So in other words, it can claim the biggest costs for the purposes of the taxation system in that country. Now in theory, tax departments require that companies value the transfer of assets for the purposes of transfer pricing at arms length.
Now this can work fairly well in relation to physical goods such as factories for example, where it is reasonably easy to determine the value of what the sale of the factory really is. It is actually very difficult to value invisible, intangible property. Trying to value what a particular license, a patent license, is worth is quite a complicated problem for a tax bureaucracy. Now the transfer pricing problem has been around for decades. And tax departments all over the world have struggled with it. And it’s really led to this problem of fiscal degradation.
The taxation games that are played around intellectual property rights ultimately harm all states whether they are rich or poor. So there is a lot of concern in the United States for example that intellectual property rights are being used to shift profits by US companies out of the US tax jurisdiction. So the US Congress for example, a few years ago heard of examples of licensing agreements in which Ireland for example was used as a conduit to land profits in various tax havens whether in the Bahamas or elsewhere. So the problem of using intellectual property rights to shift profits to deprive states of a proper share of public taxes is a problem for the United States as much as it is a problem for China or for India or for Australia.
FRIES: We are going to break and be back with Part 6. Please join us as we continue our conversation with Peter Drahos. Peter Drahos, thank you.
DRAHOS: Thank you.
FRIES: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 |
Comments criticizing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai are “full of bot accounts, fake comments, and death threats,” according to a report. [The Washington Free Beacon reports that “thousands of comments” against Pai’s reversal of the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules were found to be using “fake names and bots posing as ‘Jesus Christ,’ ‘Michael Jackson,’ ‘Homer Simpson,’ and ‘Melania Trump. ’” 1, 761 comments were also discovered to be filed under the name “John Oliver,” while 611 comments used “1” as their name. Oliver criticized Pai’s Restoring Internet Freedom proposal on the latest episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and encouraged viewers to visit www. gofccyourself. com to lodge complaints. The URL redirects to the Restoring Internet Freedom filing on the FCC’s website where comments can be left. Ajit Pai’s name was also used 500 times, as well as “Donald Trump,” which was used 189 times, and “f*ck,” which was used 11 times. “Pai also received death threats in several submissions,” reported the Washington Free Beacon, adding, “One commenter said, ‘[F] — k you Ajit Pai for what you’re are trying to do and I hope you die a horrible painful death with no remembrance to your name you cocksucka [sic]. ’” Others reportedly prayed “for the slow and painful death of Chairman Ajit Pai and every living member of his family, direct or indirect,” while some even called for his deportation. “Save internet and fuck this Ajit guy,” said one user. “He’s from India, deport that asshole. We will take care of him when he’s back. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0 |
BERLIN — Robert Gentz stepped off an Air Berlin plane in Beijing with the goal of conquering online fashion in China. By the time he boarded his return flight to Berlin, he had a new plan: to copy it. Mr. Gentz, a German who is a of Zalando — a European clone of Zappos, the online American shoes and fashion retailer owned by Amazon — held meetings in the fall of 2013 with Chinese and international fashion labels, online stores and other parts of the local industry. He wanted to expand his company into the world’s largest digital market. But after the meetings, Mr. Gentz decided China’s approach to online fashion was far ahead of anything available elsewhere. He marveled at how Chinese consumers freely chatted with — and bought from — brands and stylists on WeChat, a local internet messenger, while online retailers, independent delivery companies and fashion houses routinely joined forces. “We wanted to take that experience back to Europe,” Mr. Gentz said. This holiday season, Zalando, which is Europe’s biggest digital fashion player, is using a approach to take on Amazon, just as the American giant is looking to cement its place as the world’s dominant company by expanding aggressively into the Continent’s world of digital fashion. Few companies have been able to keep Amazon — the largest online fashion seller in the United States — at bay after it enters a new market. The notable exception is in China, where rivals like Alibaba, the world’s online seller by market value, have been able to hold their ground. For decades, tech companies have taken their cues from Silicon Valley. But Zalando’s approach of borrowing from its Chinese counterparts represents a new strategy of looking East, not West, for inspiration. In overhauling its successful European online fashion store into a digital platform, Zalando differs from others trying to match Amazon and its logistics and technological prowess. The German company previously focused on handling all sales and inventory itself. But in addition to selling directly to consumers, it now wants to remake itself into a digital shopping mall, allowing fashion houses and retailers to make sales as well, often with limited input from Zalando. These efforts, roughly a year in the making, may foster a rare European tech player able to give Silicon Valley a run for their money across the region, still one of the world’s largest — and most profitable — markets. “If you want to be the dominant player in a geographical area, you need to go beyond being just a traditional player,” said Erik Mitteregger, a board member at Kinnevik, a Swedish investment firm that was an early Zalando investor and still owns a 32 percent stake. “It’s a necessary move. ” Zalando’s inspiration from China, though, comes with challenges. Despite domestic dominance, Chinese players like Alibaba have yet to successfully replicate their business model overseas. Online shopping habits in Europe also are somewhat different from those in China. And Amazon and European competitors, including ASOS and Yoox may yet outmuscle Zalando with their traditional takes on . For most Americans — and even some Europeans outside its core markets — Zalando is not a household name. It began in 2008 as a Berlin founded by Mr. Gentz and David Schneider, two business school graduates who once tried — and failed — to build a Latin American rival to Facebook. By 2014, Zalando had become the largest public offering in the European tech sector since 2000. It counts Rocket Internet, a Berlin incubator known for copying successful online business ideas, and DST Global, a backer of Facebook, Twitter and Alibaba, among its early investors. To meet the needs of Europe’s national markets, Zalando has tweaked its offerings. In Germany, where few people use credit cards, consumers can pay with an online service linked to their bank accounts after receiving clothes in the mail. In Italy, it worked with a local delivery company so people wary of goods not arriving could pay in cash upon receipt of their orders. While European competitors have also earned loyal followings, Zalando remains the largest, both by market valuation and total online sales, according to Euromonitor, a data provider. It is expected to double its yearly pretax earnings this year, to $220 million, and revenue is likely to jump more than 20 percent, to $4 billion, according to an average of equity analysts’ estimates. “Zalando is well placed to be a leading fashion platform in Europe,” said Andrea Ferraz, a Morgan Stanley analyst in London. Still, the company remains a relative minnow — its $9. 5 billion valuation is that of Amazon. And Europe’s online fashion market, estimated to be worth $75 billion, has not gone unnoticed by giants. Alibaba has hired local country managers and brought its payment service to Europe, mostly to serve Chinese visitors. Amazon has opened a fashion studio in London and joined the British Fashion Council to bolster its local credibility. To compete with Amazon and others, Zalando has spent heavily on a network of logistics hubs that dot the European landscape. On the outskirts of Erfurt, a sleepy German town, orange boxes filled with designer dresses and shoes scuttled along miles of conveyor belts, while workers on sped through Zalando’s first logistics warehouse, now the size of 18 football fields. Four more — from Italy to Germany — are up and running, and new sites are planned outside Paris and, potentially, near London. And just like Amazon, the company has been accused of mistreating some of its workers, complaints Zalando executives acknowledge they could have handled better. As part of its overhaul, Mr. Gentz gathered his management team soon after Zalando’s I. P. O. in 2014, outlining the steps needed to become a digital hub for all things fashion. For one, it is combining its logistical expertise with that of big brands and mom and pop stores all over Europe. The goal, executives say, is to use Zalando’s website and smartphone application as a platform to sell goods either from its warehouses or directly from fashion houses themselves, giving customers greater choice and flexibility. Adidas, for instance, allows people to buy its items through Zalando’s platform, even though the final sale may come directly from the German sports brand’s stock (Zalando takes a commission). The relationship now includes deliveries — the fastest, in Berlin, took just 24 minutes — from some of Adidas’s German stores. “No one else offers this level of partnership,” said Roland Auschel, Adidas’s head of global sales, who first discussed stronger ties with Zalando during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The company has also offered up its advertising team. That includes testing an online marketplace where Zalando connects fashion houses with “online influencers,” or personalities with large social media followings. For Nicolas Borg, a Zalando strategy executive who previously worked at eBay, the next stage will most likely be chatbots, or humanlike interactions powered by artificial intelligence, to offer fashion advice to consumers on the likes of Facebook Messenger. “In the future, what will matter is not where the purchase happens, but how you can influence it,” Mr. Borg said. “That is our biggest challenge,” he added. “How do we change the online experience?” | 1 |
UNITED NATIONS — It was President Obama’s last appearance on the marble dais of the United Nations General Assembly hall, and his farewell speech on Tuesday revealed a man whose eye was fixed as much on the next seven weeks of the American political campaign as on his place in history. Mr. Obama delivered a stinging rebuke of those who would build walls, a message aimed at foreign leaders who he said had fueled rising nationalism, sectarian hatred and economic inequality — but, unmistakably, at Donald J. Trump, as well. “A nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself,” Mr. Obama said of the protectionist impulse to resist the forces of global integration. At another point, he declared to the packed chamber in New York, “the world is too small for us to simply be able to build a wall” to keep out extremists. Lest anyone miss the point, he said of the spreading Zika virus, “mosquitoes don’t respect walls. ” Mr. Obama has addressed the disruptive forces of globalism before, in speeches at Stanford University and before the Canadian Parliament. But this time, with his days in office ticking down, his legacy up for grabs and the global picture more unsettled than ever, there was a darker tone and a deeper urgency to his plea for international order. “At this moment, we all face a choice,” Mr. Obama said. “We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration, or we can retreat into a world sharply divided and ultimately in conflict along lines of nation and tribe and race and religion. ” That choice, Mr. Obama implied, was as sharply drawn in the race between Mr. Trump and the president’s preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, as it was in the grinding sectarian war in Syria, the predations of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the of China. Mr. Obama spoke of a “crude populism” driving politics in the United States and Europe that fed on “uncertainty and unease and strife” around the world. Mr. Obama’s words underscored the distance he has traveled from the hopeful leader who first addressed the General Assembly on Sept. 23, 2009. On that day, he pledged to forswear the unilateralism of his predecessor, George W. Bush, heralded a new era for the United States’ relationship with the Muslim world and promised to revive peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. On Tuesday, he dismissed the peace process with a single sentence — not a fervent call for a solution but the perfunctory observation that both sides would “be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel, but Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land. ” Even more telling was Mr. Obama’s reference to Syria. On a morning when his secretary of state, John Kerry, was struggling to salvage a fragile agreement there after a deadly airstrike on an aid convoy — which American officials said later in the day was probably carried out by Russian aircraft — the president said, “we have to be honest about the nature of these conflicts. ” No outside actor, he said, will ever be able to force people from different religious or ethnic groups to coexist peacefully. “In a place like Syria, where there’s no ultimate military victory to be won,” Mr. Obama said, “we’re going have to pursue the hard work of diplomacy that aims to stop the violence and deliver aid to those in need and support those who pursue a political settlement and can see those who are not like themselves as worthy of dignity and respect. ” There are a couple of explanations for Mr. Obama’s circumspect tone. The obvious one is that he has only four months left in office, which means that intractable problems like Syria are not going to be fixed on his watch. Mr. Obama also finds himself in a political bind: He does not want to saddle Mrs. Clinton with policies that could backfire with voters, like a new plan to push Israel and the Palestinians back to the bargaining table. Mr. Obama was reticent even about his diplomatic achievements. The nuclear agreement with Iran, for example, consumed him and Mr. Kerry for months, requiring a titanic battle against opponents on Capitol Hill and months of diplomatic repair work with allies in the Persian Gulf. Yet on Tuesday Mr. Obama described the deal’s benefits in the blandest terms, saying that it “enhances global security and enhances Iran’s ability to work with other nations. ” He coupled this unenthusiastic boast with a warning about another major proliferation threat, North Korea, which recently tested another bomb. Whatever its risks and payoffs, the Iran nuclear deal remains a source of political static in the United States. To the extent that Mrs. Clinton refers to it on the campaign trail, which is not often, she mostly promotes her credentials to police Tehran aggressively. For his part, Mr. Obama saved his activism for what would otherwise be a less controversial issue: the plight of refugees. He led a meeting of fellow leaders to nail down commitments from countries to take in more displaced people, and to spend more to integrate them. But even here, in an election year in which fears of terrorism loom large, the constraints on Mr. Obama were clear. In noting that the United States had agreed to admit 110, 000 refugees in 2017, up from 85, 000 this year, he said that “refugees are subject to more vigorous screening than the average tourist. ” Mr. Obama’s annual speeches to the United Nations are a good way to track the evolution of his foreign policy. The soaring ambition of 2009 gave way to a more restrained tone in 2013, when Mr. Obama acknowledged the limits of American military force. A year later, however, the president struck a more hawkish tone, trying to enlist the world in the fight against the Islamic State and promising to resist Mr. Putin’s aggression in Central Europe with sanctions — and force, if necessary. Russia, Mr. Obama said on Tuesday, remains a threat to the international order. “In a world that left the age of empire behind,” he said, “we see Russia attempting to recover lost glory through force. ” But he left to his successor how best to resist that. And though Mr. Obama reiterated the need for a “united and relentless” effort to destroy the Islamic State, he lamented that “the of sectarianism and extremism and bloodletting and retribution that has been taking place will not be quickly reversed. ” As he exits the world stage, Mr. Obama sometimes seems less determined to change the world than to come to terms with it. | 1 |
By Catherine J Frompovich This is the continuation of the testimony I will present before the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission’s Administrative Law Court November 2 and 3, 2016. Currently,... | 0 |
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By Adam Johnson | AlterNet
Council of Foreign Relations resident skeptic Micah Zenko recently tallied up how many bombs the United States has dropped on other countries and the results are as depressing as one would think. Zenko figured that since Jan. 1, 2015, the U.S. has dropped around 23,144 bombs on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, all countries that are majority Muslim.
Related Article: Atrocities Committed in the Name of the American Empire (Chris Hedges)
The chart, provided by the generally pro-State Department think tank, puts in stark terms how much destruction the U.S. has leveled on other countries. Whether or not one thinks such bombing is justified, it’s a blunt illustration of how much raw damage the United States inflicts on the Muslim world:
It does not appear to be working either. Despite the fact that the U.S. dropped 947 bombs in Afghanistan in 2015, a recent analysis in Foreign Policy magazine found that the Taliban control more territory in Afghanistan than at any point since 2001. The U.S. has entered its 16th year of war in Afghanistan despite several promises by the Obama administration to withdraw. In October of last year, President Obama reversed his position and decided to keep American troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2017.
Related Article: The West’s Latest Phony Military Narrative Is Aimed Directly At You
The last four U.S. presidents have bombed Iraq , and that includes the current one since airstrikes were launched on Aug. 7, 2014. The war against ISIS was originally framed as a “ limited,” “humanitarian ” intervention. Since then, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has insisted it will be a “ 30-year war ” and the White House has spoken vaguely of a “long-term effort” in both Iraq and Syria. | 0 |
Porn star Bree Olsen wants people to treat her like a married registered nurse with 2.5 kids, LOL, LMAO. Shut up whore. | 0 |
Ohio Gov. John Kasich claimed in his new book that the reason President Trump won the election was because America is in a moral decline. [In Two Paths: America Divided or United, Kasich blamed Trump’s electoral win on groups ranging from the media to dishonest politicians, but he also said one of the main reasons Trump won was because of the spiritual decline in America. “I happen to believe that you can’t guide an entire society without a shared religious foundation,” Kasich wrote. “I saw Trump’s reckless entreaties as a weakening of our shared American values — even more so, a coarsening of our shared American values … Donald Trump gave the impression of a man who would do or say anything to get attention, even incite a crowd to violence. ” Kasich also noted that Trump “gave millions of disenfranchised voters a voice. ” “What the voters were telling us in this election was that they were angry, that they were feeling that their lives were out of control, that there was a sense of helplessness and hopelessness in the heartland,” Kasich wrote. Kasich announced back in March that he does not believe he will make another run for political office again, surprising many of his supporters. His term as Ohio governor will expire in January 2019. | 0 |
Facebook has begun to mark content that may be false with a tag reading “disputed” as part of their promise to crack down on “fake news. ”[In December of last year, Facebook promised to take a hardline stance against “fake news,” partnering with partisan such as Politifact, Snopes and ABC News to police content on the platform. Recode reports that Facebook recently began implementing their new “fake news” measures by marking stories that may be false as “disputed” while linking to articles by Politifact and Snopes. Currently, in order to flag a story as fake, a user must report it or Facebook’s algorithm must detect it. The story will then be sent on to Politifact and Snopes who will investigate and determine whether the story is incorrect. Only when the two agree will the story be marked as disputed. A fake news article published by the satirical website The Seattle Tribune was reported on February 26th but was not flagged as disputed by Snopes until March 2nd. By March 3rd Politifact had also marked the article as disputed. The current review process is designed to ensure that Facebook operates solely as a platform while the responsibility for defining “fake news” relies on Facebook’s partnered . Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 0 |
Yes, Donald Trump has fallen behind in the national polls. All of them. But here’s a number you don’t hear enough: 41 percent of voters are still supporting him. Four out of every 10 people. Who are they, exactly? In the latest episode of The we spoke with a man who may be better qualified than anyone to answer that question: J. D. Vance, who grew up in the heart of Mr. Trump’s America, Appalachia, where stubborn poverty, economic decay and class resentment were as firmly rooted as the coal mines. His new book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” now No. 6 on the New York Times best seller list, may be the best explanation yet of Mr. Trump’s political rise. It is a deeply personal memoir about growing up poor in Rust Belt Ohio that doubles as a cultural anthropology of the white underclass that has flocked to the Republican presidential nominee’s candidacy. In our interview, Mr. Vance explains who these voters are, what animates them and why they have responded so powerfully to Mr. Trump’s message. “These people feel ignored in a very substantive way,” he said, especially by the Republican Party, with which they have long identified. “They’re not addressing the sense of crisis that I think a lot of these people feel in their own lives and that they see in their own communities,” Mr. Vance said. “So along comes Donald Trump,” he continued, “talking the way that they talk and simultaneously speaking to their concerns over trade and over the economy, so it’s not super surprising that they’ve gravitated towards him. ” Mr. Vance mixes compassion for the plight of his family, friends and neighbors with cleareyed judgments about what he says are the personal failings and flawed thinking that have made it impossible for many of them to escape those circumstances. “It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst possible way,” he writes in the book. “It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. ” In the episode, I’m joined by my colleagues Nick Confessore and Nate Cohn, who discuss the in Mr. Trump’s campaign, which seems to confirm his almost singular focus on white, economically insecure voters. We also discuss whether that segment of the electorate can really put him in the White House. Please let us know what you think of the show. You can reach us at therunup@nytimes. com, or find me on Twitter, and you can leave ratings and feedback on iTunes. From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “The ” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, just tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, just click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 1 |
by Yves Smith
Yves here. Even by the normal, as in low, standards of New York Times defenses of Wall Street, the Roger Lowenstein piece that Black shellacks is particularly inept.
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives
When last I wrote of Roger Lowenstein he was complaining that the Wall Street felons were being criticized – not jailed – criticized. Lowenstein is Wall Street’s self-appointed apologist-in-chief. Naturally, he despises Senator Warren, the most effective elected official in exposing Wall Street’s elite frauds. The New York Times granted him an op ed in which he sought to mansplain financial regulation to Senator Warren.
Lowenstein does not like women that he considers too loud, gratuitously complaining that Senator Warren is “high-decibel” supporter of regulation. Coming from someone who has spent his journalistic career shilling for Wall Street, this sexist trope is painfully embarrassing. Wall Street is infamous for raging males who believe that screaming at subordinates who can’t fight back proves their virility.
Lowenstein was piling on to the recent sexist attack of Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer, an ultra-right wing Missouri Republican, on Senator Warren. Congressman Luetkemeyer , a senior member of House Financial Services, was speaking to the American Bankers Association when he labeled Senator Warren the “Darth Vader of the financial services world” and pleaded with the bankers to work with the Trump Republicans to “neuter her.” The Kansas City Star coverage of this Trumpian assault on women notes that Congressman Luetkemeyer “led multiple congressional efforts to protect the payday loan industry, according to fortune.com.”
Senator Warren, who is decidedly not a screamer, is the target of Lowenstein and Luetkemeyer’s wrath because Wall Street’s greatest fear is the return of effective regulators who would end the elite frauds and make the criminal referrals that would imprison thousands of Wall Street’s elite criminals. Wall Street knows that Senators Warren, Sanders and Brown are working tirelessly to ensure that the next president appoints regulatory leaders that would restore the rule of law to Wall Street. Lowenstein and Congressman Luetkemeyer are desperate to defeat that effort.
Lowenstein wrote that his article was prompted by Senator Warren’s recommendation that President Obama fire Mary Jo White as the chair of the SEC. Because Senator Warren understands federal regulation, she made no such recommendation. Senator Warren requested President Obama to designate another SEC commissioner as the Chair. The President does have that power.
Ms. White has been an exceptionally weak leader of the SEC. I witnessed Ms. White’s presentation at the annual law professors meeting years ago giving her ode to “good earnings management.” “Earnings management” is one of many euphemisms for a form of accounting securities fraud that reduces the value of corporation in order to “hit the number” and maximize the officers’ bonuses. The revolving door perverted someone who once was a moderately effective prosecutor into a very well paid apologist for elite frauds. President Obama is notorious for appointing weak law enforcement officials at the Department of Justice and the financial regulatory agencies. Senator Warren is correct to call on President Obama to transfer the chair to a more capable SEC commissioner.
Senator Warren knows that there is no chance that President Obama will request Ms. White’s resignation or no longer designate her as the SEC Chair. Senator Warren is establishing her consistency and serving notice on the next president that the democratic-wing of the Democratic Party will push for appointees in the next administration that will be dedicated to restoring the rule of law to Wall Street. Lowenstein has no expertise in regulation. Senator Warren is one of the Nation’s experts in financial regulation. As one would predict, his pretense of mansplaining financial regulation to Senator Warren went hilariously wrong. Lowenstein begins with a fundamental error that betrays the fact that he does not understand even the basics of federal regulation.
Last time I checked, the S.E.C. was a regulatory agency of the executive branch….
The SEC is an independent regulatory agency, as was the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) when I worked for it — and unlike the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) when I worked for it. The OTS was “a regulatory agency of the executive branch.” The normal view under U.S. jurisprudence is that the independent regulatory agencies such as the SEC are “creatures of Congress.” The problem is not that the SEC became an independent regulatory agency since the “last time [Lowenstein] checked.” The SEC was created as an independent regulatory agency in 1934 and has remained one for its entire existence.
Lowenstein never understood the SEC’s legal nature because he never “checked” on the SEC’s legal nature. Had he checked, he would have found statements such as this by the SEC :
[A]s an independent regulatory agency the SEC is not obligated to follow the guidelines for regulatory economic analysis by executive agencies….
Building on this initial error, Lowenstein imagines President Obama’s response to Senator Warren’s call for President Obama to ask Ms. White to resign as Chair of the SEC:
“Hey, firing agency heads is my job.”
Well, no. The President cannot “fire” the heads of independent regulatory agencies such as the SEC, precisely because they are not “executive branch” agencies. The SEC Commissioners do not serve “at the pleasure of the president.”
I am delighted that progressives such as Senators Sanders and Warren blocked Larry Summers’ appointment to chair the Federal Reserve, which led to the well-deserved appointment of Janet Yellen to Chair the Fed. Progressives were enthused that progressives such as Senators Sanders and Warren blocked Antonio Weiss — whose only ostensible qualification for the Treasury slot was that he was an investment banker who contributed to the crisis rather than warning about it and trying to prevent it. Contrary to Lowenstein’s assertion, Weiss had to be pushed by Senators Sanders and Warren to even begin to respond to Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy.
The thing that the Street will never forgive Senator Warren for is the thing they claim they value as their preeminent virtue — she succeeds. Indeed, she succeeds despite their intense opposition and their rage against her. They try to go head-to-head with her and she hands them their heads. CEOs like Wells Fargo’s John Stumpf are so used to being surrounded by sycophants that tell them how brilliant they are that they approach prepping for Senator Warren’s questions with contempt and immense over-confidence. Then she tears into them and they look like a deer frozen in place by headlights while being eviscerated by a wolverine. The best that Lowenstein can muster in his attempted takedown of Senator Warren is that “there is no good evidence” that Stumpf resigned because of Senator Warren’s evisceration of him. Senator Warren has never claimed that Stumpf resigned due to her questioning. Prior to the Senate hearings the commentators were virtually unanimous that he would not resign. After the hearings, he was doomed.
Wall Streeters’ belief that they are far smarter than anyone else (because they pay themselves more than almost everyone) and should run the economy and the government by divine right is a form of arrogance so central to their self-definition that they are frequently clueless about the most basic facts of finance, e.g., a “flight to quality” will produce highly correlated changes in interest rates among a wide range of securities. Lowenstein propagated this Wall Street “genius” myth in his best-known book ( When Genius Failed ). The “geniuses” he profiles in the book were unable to understand that a “flight to quality” would render their investing strategy suicidal.
Lowenstein’s ode to the revolving door rests on his assertions about the supposed Wall Street giants of federal regulation. His assertions will strike most readers, correctly, as bizarre. He asserts that “many of the best” financial regulators came from Wall Street, giving three supposed examples including Henry M. Paulson Jr., a Treasury Secretary under the second President Bush. Unsurprisingly, Robert Rubin, President Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary wrote a glowing review in the NYT’s of Lowenstein’s most recent book. Rubin and Paulson share a number of characteristics. They both were the leaders of Goldman Sachs before being appointed as Treasury Secretary. They both presided over the three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization of finance. They both are immensely culpable for creating the criminogenic environment that produced the three most damaging epidemics of accounting control fraud in history. Those fraud epidemics hyper-inflated the bubble and drove the financial crisis. The fact that Lowenstein cites Paulson as one of the greatest financial regulators in history and the fact that Rubin wrote such an over-the-top review of the supposed brilliance of Lowenstein demolish Lowenstein’s credibility and his claim that the revolving door that leads Wall Street. His modern hero was one of the important contributors to the catastrophe.
Lowenstein’s second proposed Wall Street hero is Arthur Levitt, who worked for a series of Wall Street firms before being appointed as Chairman of the SEC. After he left the SEC he worked for Goldman Sachs. Levitt did try to make some reforms as Chairman of the SEC. Mr. Levitt, however, was ultimately critically flawed – and those flaws came from the dogmas he absorbed from his many years on Wall Street. I discuss one of those flaws below.
Lowenstein fails to even mention this Nation’s most effective financial regulator, Edwin Gray, Chairman of the FHLBB. This is unsurprising because Gray was successful largely because he had no Wall Street ties. Gray’s most virulent foe in the government was Donald Regan, the former head of Merrill Lynch, and the fiercest proponent of the deregulation that made the savings and loan industry so criminogenic that George Akerlof and Paul Romer concluded it was “bound” to produce widespread “ looting .” Gray enraged Mr. Regan by seeking to regulate against deposit brokers. Merrill Lynch was the Nation’s largest deposit broker. Gray’s top supervisors who proved so brilliantly successful in countering the raging fraud epidemics in Texas and California that drove the savings and loan debacle, Joe Selby and Michael Patriarca, were long-time government employees who had never worked for Wall Street. None of regulatory leaders who distinguished themselves in containing the debacle came from Wall Street.
Lowenstein fails to mention the sole federal regulatory leader of the last 20 years who sought to emulate Gray and serve as a vigorous financial reregulator – Brooksley Born – who attempted to regulate financial derivatives. Ms. Born’s efforts were destroyed by a bipartisan coalition of Wall Street officials and alums holding key government positions that exemplify the dangers of the revolving door. That coalition included Bill Clinton (as President of the U.S., soon to be made wealthy by Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms for speeches with obscene payoffs), Treasury Secretary Rubin (former CEO of Goldman Sachs and soon-to-be be made even wealthier as a top officer of Citigroup where he had no real job duties), Mr. Greenspan (Chairman of the Fed; Wall Streeter before and after), Eugene Ludwig (Comptroller of the Currency; soon to leave to be made wealthy by Bankers Trust/Deutsche Bank, the giant serially criminal enterprise that is Germany’s largest bank), Senator Gramm (Chairman of Senate Banking; later made wealthy by UBS, the giant, serially criminal enterprise that is one of Switzerland’s largest banks) – as well as both of Lowenstein’s purported modern financial regulatory heroes – Mr. Paulson (while he was running Goldman Sachs, before being named by the second President Bush as his Treasury Secretary) and Mr. Levitt (when he was SEC Chairman, before he would take the revolving door to Goldman Sachs). Note that Mr. Paulson was only one of the infamous “13 Bankers” (the CEOs of the largest banks) who met with Treasury Secretary Rubin to (successfully) demand that Ms. Born’s be forbidden to regulate huge classes of financial derivatives, including credit default swaps(CDS).
You can see why Lowenstein left out of his column any discussion of these Wall Streeters racing through the revolving door to enrich themselves and other Wall Street officers at the expense of our Nation and people all over the world by bringing together this assemblage of naked political and economic power to crush Ms. Born’s efforts to fulfill her statutory duties as Chair of the CFTC. I agree that Mr. Levitt was the least bad regulator of this corrupt coalition. Mr. Levitt has conceded that his attacks on Ms. Born were disgraceful and erroneous.
As best I can tell, Senator Warren takes a position about the revolving door that is very similar to mine. We do not oppose any appointment of people of Wall Street to government. We oppose the continued domination of the regulatory agencies and executive agencies by Wall Street personnel. That domination has produced a pathetic track record of intentional failure due not simply to conflicts of interest and self-interest, but even more to the anti-regulatory dogmas that are endemic on Wall Street. Neither our economy nor our democracy can afford the terrible cost of this continued, corrupt domination. The domination has perverted the U.S. into a system of crony capitalism. As one of my fellow co-founders of Bank Whistleblowers United (BWU), Gary Aguirre (formerly an SEC enforcement attorney before he blew the whistle of the SEC leadership) stresses, the SEC routinely waives for former senior SEC officials the existing revolving door restrictions. BWU has called on the SEC to end this indefensible practice.
Lowenstein then makes another dishonest claim about the SEC.
When the S.E.C. has landed in trouble, it has usually been because it has wandered from its charter and ignored its bread-and-butter responsibility (see Madoff, Bernie).
That statement is carefully crafted to mislead the reader. The SEC failed with regard to Bernie Madoff by refusing to act on clear evidence of fraud provided by multiple whistleblowers. Madoff was an example of a variant of the revolving door. Mr. Madoff was a Wall Streeter who became for years the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NASD, a self-regulatory association that functions under aegis of the SEC. The SEC generally treats the NASD as a quasi-public ally. The SEC was reluctant to believe warnings about Mr. Madoff because of his former role as the NASD’s leader.
The SEC did not get in “trouble” with Madoff because it “ignored” its core responsibilities to divert large of resources in order to take on some exotic, tangential function. Lowenstein simply invented that fiction. The SEC got in trouble in large part because of the combination of the revolving door and Congressional Republicans’ war on the SEC budget. The Republicans want the SEC to be ineffective as a regulator because the Wall Street’s leaders who are criminals fear a vigorous SEC.
Lowenstein knows that this Republican war is a critical threat to the Nation, but asserts a policy implication of this war that is nonsensical to anyone but Wall Street’s apologist-in-chief.
[T]he S.E.C. faces continual pressure on its budget from a skeptical and unappreciative Congress. The last thing it needs is political grandstanding from Ms. Warren.
Note that Lowenstein dishonestly uses the term “Congress” instead of “Congressional Republicans.” The Congressional Republicans are not “skeptical and unappreciative” of the SEC – they are virulently hostile to effective securities (and financial derivatives) regulation. This exceptional hostility has been a constant feature preventing the SEC and CFTC from having adequate resources to fulfill their statutory duties since the early 1990s. Criminologists call this the deliberate creation of “systems incapacity.” Senators Sanders, Brown, and Warren are the strongest supporters of the SEC and the CFTC receiving the substantial increases in budget required for these agencies to perform their statutory missions. Logically, Lowenstein should be criticizing virtually every Republican member of Congress and praising Senator Warren and her progressive allies. Instead he refuses to identify the Republicans as the source of problem and attacks only Senator Warren – implying dishonestly that if she would stop pushing for the SEC to restore the rule of law to Wall Street the Republicans would cease their actions on behalf of criminal Wall Street elites designed to gut the SEC’s ability to counter the elite Wall Street frauds. 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 |
October 28, 2016 at 9:00 PM
Why would Putin aim Russian nuclear weapons at Washington D.C, maybe because of BO and Hillary strategic US foreign policy ? The White House has a bullseye on it thanks to enept foreign policy by the two above mentioned criminals.
BO the community agitator is way over matched in this conflict. Putin will not let the declining Russian people die in a retaliatory nuclear strike with the US. If Putin’s
Russia feels threaten they will strike first on America. In a game of chicken BO will flinch because he is of weak character, he will be in ball and chains come 2017.
Stacking and packing | 0 |
Friday on Fox News Chanel’s coverage of the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States, President Donald J. Trump, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said of President Trump‘s inaugural address that, “They’re quaking in their boots in foreign capitals. ” Krauthammer said, “I wanted to make a point about the speech. A part that we overlooked but I am sure is not being overlooked around the world. There are two audiences obviously for inaugural address — domestic and foreign. I guarantee you that they are quaking in their boots in foreign capitals, particularly of our allies and trading partners. The way that Trump spoke about the outside world was the most aggressive, most sort of hyper nationalist and in some ways, most hostile of any inaugural address I think since the second World War. What Trump pointed out, what he drew was a picture of a world where what we’ve done for the world, they have been stealing from us. He says for decades we have enriched foreign industry at the expense of our American industry, subsidized others’ military at the expense of the weakening of our army. ” “We’ve made others rich while becoming poor. Then this scattering sense that the wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed around the world. In other words, the other guys, “the other,” including friends. Kennedy spoke harshly about the communist world. This is about our allies,” he continued. “They have been stealing from us, our corrupt ruling class has taken the money of the and sent it around the world. That is the exaggerated view. I can understand a lot of the sentiments, but imagine how this has been heard in East Asia, in Europe, in other places, and then he ends up with a phrase that may not be as a resonant here, he says we are going to have one principle, “America First. ” It is capitalized in the version that you get printed out, and capitalized in the name of the isolationist party from the 1930s that fought to keep us out of any entanglements abroad, i. e. out of the second World War, led by Charles Lindbergh and others that dismantled a week after Pearl Harbor. For many people around the world, the British in particular, that is quite a resonant phrase, and it says to them, to the free world, since Harry Truman and Eisenhower, we constructed a world where we carried a lot of you — economically, militarily, etc. That game is over, you are on your own. That is an amazing message for an inaugural address. We heard it on the campaign, but that is policy now and it’s going to have a huge effect around the world. ” ( Mediaite) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
KABUL, Afghanistan — More than 50 people were killed on Sunday in southeastern Afghanistan’s Ghazni Province when two buses collided with a fuel truck, which then exploded, officials said. Scores of others were injured, many of them critically. The crash in Ghazni was bad even by the standards of Afghanistan’s notoriously dangerous mountain highways. A total of 111 people were either killed or injured, said Hamidullah Nawroz, the head of Ghazni’s provincial council, but because the victims were taken to many hospitals in different cities, and many died on the way, the number of fatalities was hard to determine. A bus full of passengers tried to pass the fuel tanker on a narrow highway in Mukur District around 6 a. m. Sunday and crashed into another fully loaded bus, Mr. Nawroz said. Both buses then collided with the tanker, which exploded and engulfed all three vehicles in flames. Estimates of the number of fatalities ranged from 50 to 76, and many feared that the death toll could be even higher. Ismail Kawusi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Health, said that there were 140 passengers on the buses but that rescue workers had identified only 50 bodies so far. Many of the remains were badly burned, and body parts were scattered around the accident site. “It takes time, and only forensic medicine will be able to identify them,” Mr. Kawusi said. In Kabul on Sunday, the government hanged six Taliban prisoners convicted of various terrorism offenses — the first such executions of President Ashraf Ghani’s administration. The executions had been expected for some time, after the Taliban’s Haqqani network detonated a large truck bomb on April 19 at the National Directorate of Security, the country’s intelligence agency, killing 64 people. Mr. Ghani vowed in a speech afterward to retaliate with military action and the execution of Taliban prisoners. During his tenure, which began in September 2014, the government had executed only one prisoner, a notorious crime boss, although about 300 men are on death row. All six who were executed Sunday were members of the Taliban or the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction that has operated independently, according to a statement from the National Directorate of Security. The president signed the order for the executions, according to a statement released by his office, after “repeated requests from the families of victims of terrorist attacks. ” The statement continued, “The signing happened after a close examination of the fairness of the sentencing process, in accordance with Afghanistan’s human rights obligations. ” The executions reflected a lack of optimism among Afghan officials about efforts to restart the peace process with the Taliban, who have refused to attend recent sessions hosted by Afghanistan’s neighbors. The Taliban responded to the executions by threatening “to make military targets out of all those institutions involved in the martyrdom of prisoners,” according to a statement issued by Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the group. “They will not be able to breathe one breath in peace, and their relatives will not be able to live with confidence, either. ” | 0 |
BEIJING — President Tsai of Taiwan sharply criticized China’s leaders on Saturday, saying they had resorted to military and economic threats in order to intimidate the island. “Step by step, Beijing is going back to the old path of dividing, coercing and even threatening and intimidating Taiwan,” she told journalists in Taipei, the capital, at a news conference. Tensions between Taiwan and China, which have been rivals since the Communist Revolution of 1949, intensified in December after Ms. Tsai spoke on the phone with the American Donald J. Trump, breaking a longstanding diplomatic practice. In recent weeks, China has stepped up military activities near Taiwan, sending its sole aircraft carrier through the waters near the island and dispatching military planes in the region. On Monday, Beijing announced that São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation off the west coast of Africa that was one of Taiwan’s fewer than two dozen remaining diplomatic allies, had switched its allegiance to the mainland, provoking an outcry in Taiwan. Despite Beijing’s recent actions, which she said had “hurt the feelings” of the Taiwanese people and destabilized relations, Ms. Tsai vowed to avoid a confrontation. “We will not bow to pressure, and we will of course not revert to the old path of confrontation,” she said. Ms. Tsai faces the delicate task of registering discontent with Beijing while also sending a message that Taiwan will exercise restraint. The United States, which sees Taiwan as one of its most reliable allies in Asia and has sold billions of dollars of weapons to the island, has long sought to avoid a conflict between the two sides. But the election of Mr. Trump could complicate matters. He has antagonized Beijing with a series of critical comments. The has also questioned the One China policy, which has underpinned relations between Washington and Beijing for decades, and criticized China’s military buildup in the disputed South China Sea. Bonnie S. Glaser, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Ms. Tsai’s words might reassure American officials that she would not pursue rash policies in the face of China’s show of strength. “She remains calm, rational and patient,” Ms. Glaser wrote in an email. Still, Ms. Tsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party has traditionally favored independence for Taiwan, could face serious challenges in the coming months. Many people in Taiwan are nervous that Mr. Trump will use the island as a bargaining chip against China. And Ms. Tsai’s preference for stability in the region may not mesh with Mr. Trump’s bombastic style. Richard C. Bush, the director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said Ms. Tsai understood the need to “maintain a balance among relations with China, relations with the United States and domestic politics. ” Ms. Tsai’s vision, however, “may not align well with the incoming Trump administration’s apparent belief that it can pressure China on all fronts more than the Obama administration has,” he said. Ms. Tsai also sought to quell concerns about planned stopovers in Houston and San Francisco during a visit to Central America scheduled for January. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday called on the United States to block Ms. Tsai from entering the country, warning that such a visit would embolden independence activists in Taiwan. Ms. Tsai described the visit as “unofficial,” saying, “A transit stop is just a transit stop. ” | 0 |
Not that long ago, Alex Caicedo was stuck working a series of odd jobs and watching his 1984 Chevy Nova cough its last breaths. He could make $21 an hour at the Johnny Rockets food stand at FedEx Field when the Washington Redskins were playing, but the work was spotty. Today, Mr. Caicedo is an assistant manager at a pizzeria in Gaithersburg, Md. with an annual salary of $40, 000 and health benefits. And he is getting ready to move his wife and children out of his ’s house and into their own place. Doubling up has been a lifesaver, Mr. Caicedo said, “but nobody just wants to move in with their . ” The Caicedos are among the 3. 5 million Americans who were able to raise their chins above the poverty line last year, according to census data released this month. More than seven years after the recession ended, employers are finally being compelled to reach deeper into the pools of untapped labor, creating more jobs, especially among retailers, restaurants and hotels, and paying higher wages to attract workers and meet new minimum wage requirements. “It all came together at the same time,” said Diane Swonk, an independent business economist in Chicago. “Lots of employment and wages gains, particularly in the end of the jobs spectrum, combined with increases that started to hit some very large population areas. ” Poverty declined among every group. But and Hispanics — who account for more than 45 percent of those below the poverty line of $24, 300 for a family of four in most states — experienced the largest improvement. Government programs — like Social Security, the tax credit and food stamps — have kept tens of millions from sinking into poverty year after year. But a main driver behind the impressive 1. 2 percentage point decline in the poverty rate, the largest annual drop since 1999, was that the economy finally hit a tipping point after years of steady, if lukewarm, improvement. Over all, 2. 9 million more jobs were created from 2014 to 2015, helping millions of unemployed people cross over into the ranks of regular wage earners. Many workers increased the number of hours on the job. Wages, adjusted for inflation, climbed. “Another hidden benefit was lower prices at the pump,” Ms. Swonk said. “People who couldn’t afford the commute before could now afford to accept a job. ” There are different roads out of poverty, said Sheldon Danziger, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, a social science research institution, but today, one of the most promising is to “go somewhere where they raised the minimum wage. ” About 43 million Americans, more than 14 million of them children, are still officially classified as poor, and countless others up and down the income ladder remain worried about their families’ financial security. But the Census Bureau’s report found that 2015 was the first year since 2008, when the economic downturn began, that the poverty rate fell significantly and incomes for most American households rose. “If you look under the hood of the census report,” Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative research organization American Enterprise Institute, said, “you see more people are working, so fewer people are going to be in poverty. ” After a long period of rising inequality, Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, added, the benefits of the improving economy finally began to seep downward. Wage increases were “even stronger at the bottom than in the middle,” she said. For those on the lower rungs of the income ladder, a step upward can be profound. For some, it means the difference between sleeping on a friend’s couch and having a home. For others, it is the change from getting shoes at Goodwill to buying a new pair at Target, or between not having the money to buy your daughter an ice cream cone to getting her a bicycle for her birthday. The poverty rate fell in 23 states, with Vermont leading the way. The rest stayed flat none got worse. And other evidence suggests the improvement has continued, if not as strongly, this year. Mr. Caicedo, 32, initially found his job on Craigslist last summer, starting at $12 an hour. Recently, he was promoted to his salaried position and now drives a 2015 Nissan Pathfinder. His wife was able to leave her job at a clothing store and take care of their four children. Michael Lastoria, who started the chain called Pizza where Mr. Caicedo works, said: “We try to pay as close to a fair or living wage as possible,” roughly $2 an hour above the minimum with a steady schedule and benefits. “We want people to have careers, not just jobs,” he said. The availability of jobs at a livable wage may be essential to move out of poverty but is not necessarily enough. Many poor people, saddled with a deficient education, inadequate health care and few marketable skills, find small setbacks can quickly set off a downward spiral. The lack of resources can prevent them from even reaching the starting gate: no computer to search job sites, no way to compensate for the bad impression a missing tooth can leave. Many of those who made it had outsize determination, but also benefited from a government or nonprofit program that provided training, financial counseling, job hunting skills, safe havens and other services. Cheyvonné Grayson, 29, grew up in Los Angeles, where he, at the age of 14, saw a friend gunned down. Since graduating from high school, Mr. Grayson has worked mostly as a day laborer. In 2014, he was paying $300 a month to sleep on someone’s couch and showing up at 6 a. m. morning after morning, at nonunion construction sites in the hopes of getting work. Often the supervisors and workers spoke only Spanish, and it was hard to understand the orders and measurements. He remembered one foreman looking him up and down, skeptical that he could do the job. “I had to prove this man wrong,” Mr. Grayson said. At every site, he said he tried to pick up skills, carefully observing other workers, asking questions and later reinforcing the lessons by watching YouTube videos. Even so, the work was inconsistent and paid poorly, he said. What made the difference, he said, was getting into the carpenters’ union — a feat he could not have achieved without the help of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center. “That was the door opener,” Mr. Grayson said. He had to borrow a few hundred dollars for fees and tools, but his first apprenticeship as a carpenter started at $16. 16 an hour. He quickly moved up to $20. 20 an hour and is paid for his further training. He is now hanging doors for new dormitories at the University of Southern California. For the first time in his life, he opened a bank account. Seventeen hundred miles east, Christine Magee, a mother of four, joined an intensive program administered by the Chicago Housing Authority and the Heartland Alliance after she fell into bankruptcy from racking up $22, 000 in debt on a credit card. As a recipient of a federal housing voucher, Ms. Magee was eligible to enroll. She set three goals after joining the program in 2014: buy a house, raise her dismal credit rating and get a better job that would provide for her retirement someday. “She was really motivated,” said her counselor, Barbara Martinez. “Not everyone is. ” Ms. Magee’s husband has found only sporadic work. But she has moved from a job that paid $23, 000 a year and left her family on Medicaid to one at a veterans hospital that pays more than $35, 000 and provides health and educational benefits. The extra earnings automatically went into an escrow account. A couple of weeks ago, she graduated from the program with more than $8, 000 in savings — which she plans to use for a down payment on a home — and a bank letter confirming she qualifies for a mortgage. “I knew,” Ms. Magee said, “there was something more out there. ” | 1 |
In the weeks after Roger Ailes was ousted as the chairman of Fox News in July amid a sexual harassment scandal, company executives secretly struck an agreement with a longtime broadcast personality who had come forward with similar accusations about the network’s top host, Bill O’Reilly. The employee, Juliet Huddy, had said that Mr. O’Reilly pursued a sexual relationship with her in 2011, at a time he exerted significant influence over her career. When she rebuffed his advances, he tried to derail her career, according to a draft of a letter from her lawyers to Fox News that was obtained by The New York Times. The letter includes allegations that Mr. O’Reilly had called Ms. Huddy repeatedly and that it sometimes sounded as if he was masturbating. He invited her to his house on Long Island, tried to kiss her, took her to dinner and the theater, and after asking her to return a key to his hotel room, appeared at the door in his boxer shorts, according to the letter. In exchange for her silence and agreement not to sue, she was paid a sum in the high six figures, according to people briefed on the agreement. The agreement was between Ms. Huddy, 47, and 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News. The company and Mr. O’Reilly’s lawyer said her allegations were false. In the aftermath of Mr. Ailes’s departure, executives declared that such behavior would never again be tolerated. Mr. O’Reilly, 67, has continued to host his show on weekdays at 8 p. m. and has published two more books. Details about the allegations and the agreement between Ms. Huddy and 21st Century Fox are based on interviews with current and former Fox News employees, the letter written by her lawyers to the company, and three pages from the draft of the settlement agreement. The letter was mailed anonymously in December to reporters for The Times its authenticity was verified by several people who have been briefed on it. A person close to Ms. Huddy told The Times that she shared accounts of Mr. O’Reilly’s unwanted advances at the time they occurred. Lawnewz. com first reported the existence of the agreement Monday afternoon. In the letter, lawyers for Ms. Huddy also said that a longtime Fox executive, Jack Abernethy, had retaliated against her professionally after she made clear that she was not interested in a personal relationship. Representatives for Fox News and Mr. O’Reilly dismissed the allegations Monday night. “The letter contains substantial falsehoods, which both men have vehemently denied,” Irena Briganti, a spokeswoman for Fox News, said in a statement. Speaking for Mr. O’Reilly, Fredric S. Newman, his lawyer, said, “There is absolutely no basis for any claim of sexual harassment against Bill O’Reilly by Juliet Huddy. ” Jeanne M. Christensen, a lawyer for Ms. Huddy at Wigdor L. L. P. declined to comment. Ms. Huddy made her allegations known to Fox News in the letter her lawyers sent to the network in August. The settlement was reached on Sept. 5, at a time when the company was completing other agreements, including one with Gretchen Carlson, the former anchor whose sexual harassment suit forced the departure of Mr. Ailes. (Mr. Ailes has denied allegations of sexual harassment.) The company has not reached an agreement with Andrea Tantaros, another TV personality who raised similar complaints about network executives. About a month before Mr. Ailes resigned, Fox News offered Ms. Tantaros nearly $1 million for her silence and a promise not to sue the network, its executives or its employees, including Mr. O’Reilly, according to a draft of a proposed agreement. Ms. Tantaros rejected the offer and filed suit against the company in August. Mr. O’Reilly has a towering presence at Fox News. He was close to Mr. Ailes, and his show generated about $180 million in advertising in 2015, according to Kantar Media, an firm. He was also viewed by employees and program hosts as an influential figure in the newsroom he was the gatekeeper to time on his show, and his support could be crucial to advancement. But Mr. O’Reilly had run into problems before. In 2004, a producer on his show, Andrea Mackris, sued him, asserting that he had made unwanted sexual advances and lewd comments in a series of phone calls and dinner conversations. According to the suit, Mr. O’Reilly told her on multiple occasions to buy a vibrator, called her when it sounded as if he was masturbating, and described various sexual fantasies. After two weeks of sensational headlines in New York’s tabloid newspapers, Mr. O’Reilly settled for millions of dollars, according to people briefed on the agreement. Both sides said that no wrongdoing had occurred. According to the letter in Ms. Huddy’s case, her lawyers said that Mr. O’Reilly began sexually harassing her in 2011. She started her career at Fox News in 1998 as a reporter based in Miami and went on to be a host of a syndicated morning show in New York that was canceled in 2009. In the months afterward, Ms. Huddy tried to find a landing place at the network and appeared as a guest on Mr. O’Reilly’s show. Ms. Huddy’s father, John Huddy Sr. who was a confidant of Mr. Ailes and a consultant to Fox News, left the network in July. Her brother, John Huddy Jr. continues to work there as a correspondent based in Jerusalem. In January 2011, Mr. O’Reilly invited Ms. Huddy to lunch near his home in Manhasset on Long Island, according to the letter. After lunch, he drove her back to his home, where he showed her every room, including his bedroom, and his collection of presidential memorabilia. “To shock and disgust, as Ms. Huddy was saying goodbye to Mr. O’Reilly, he quickly moved in and kissed her on the lips,” the letter said. “Ms. Huddy was so taken aback and repulsed that she instinctively recoiled and actually fell to the ground. Mr. O’Reilly, looking amused, did not even help Ms. Huddy up. ” The next week, Mr. O’Reilly asked her to join him for dinner at the Harvard Club, followed by a Broadway show, according to the letter and to current and former Fox News employees. Ms. Huddy was not interested in having a romantic relationship with Mr. O’Reilly but, the letter said, “she felt compelled to comply with Mr. O’Reilly’s request, given that he had total control over her work assignment. ” During the Broadway show, according to the letter, Mr. O’Reilly moved close to Ms. Huddy in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. He tried to hold her hand, but she pulled it away. Then he dropped a key to the room at a Midtown Manhattan hotel he was staying at into her lap, and told her to meet him there after the show. He stood up and left, the letter said. Ms. Huddy went to the hotel to return Mr. O’Reilly’s key, according to the letter. She asked him to meet her in the lobby, but he refused and asked her to join him in his room. “Ms. Huddy declined and explained that she was not interested in Mr. O’Reilly on a personal or sexual level,” the letter said. Mr. O’Reilly persisted and again asked that Ms. Huddy come up to his room, and she ultimately went up to give him the key, according to the letter. When Mr. O’Reilly opened the door to his room, he was wearing only boxer shorts, according to the letter. Ms. Huddy was “very embarrassed, handed Mr. O’Reilly his key and quickly left,” the letter said. In the months after Mr. O’Reilly and Ms. Huddy went to the show in Manhattan, his “obsession with her only escalated,” the letter said. Mr. O’Reilly started calling Ms. Huddy at all hours, even while he was on vacation. At times, the calls were about work, but they were sometimes “highly inappropriate and sexual,” the letter said. On some occasions, it sounded as if Mr. O’Reilly was masturbating, the letter said. “Disgusted, Ms. Huddy came up with an excuse and hung up the phone,” the letter said. As Mr. O’Reilly’s pursuit continued, Ms. Huddy answered and returned fewer of his calls. “Ms. Huddy’s rejection of Mr. O’Reilly apparently did not sit well with him, as he began to retaliate against her both on and off air,” the letter said. Mr. O’Reilly “nitpicked her work” and would “berate Ms. Huddy for minor mistakes,” according to the letter. Mr. O’Reilly stopped preparing her for segments and would surprise her with story angles that they had not discussed. In 2013, Ms. Huddy was replaced on one segment of his show. Another segment that she was featured in, called “Mad as Hell,” was canceled. She did not complain, fearing retaliation, she told current and former Fox News employees at the time. The letter also included a series of accusations by Ms. Huddy against Mr. Abernethy, including that he started “trashing her” after she rejected his attempts to pursue a personal relationship. Mr. Abernethy signed a new multiyear contract with Fox News in September, after having been named a president of the network in August. At the time, the company was aware of the allegations against Mr. Abernethy, which it has said are false. As part of Ms. Huddy’s confidential agreement with 21st Century Fox, she agreed not to “disparage, malign or defame” the parties the company, on its behalf and on the behalf of Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Abernethy, agreed not to “disparage, malign or defame” Ms. Huddy. The consequences for breaking confidentiality are severe, costing either side $500, 000 per infringement, according to the document. Ms. Huddy is also liable if her lawyers or a person close to her discloses the terms of the agreement. On Sept. 7, Ms. Huddy, who had hosted “Good Day Early Call” on WNYW, a Fox affiliate, went on the station and gave a tearful goodbye. “Thank you to everyone who has made the last 20 years the most challenging but best of my life,” she said. “Perhaps someday, even someday soon, you’ll see me on television again. ” | 1 |
This shocking image of a giant crab under a popular crabbing spot in Whitstable was taken last weekend. The boys were unaware of the danger, but as several passersby shouted to them, the crab slipped silently away under the water, into the dark, sideways.
It is not the first time a giant crab is spotted, las year in a British harbour a shock snap clicked from the air has caused a stir online, with many convinced it shows a crustacean that is at least 50ft-wide lurking in shallow water.
The Japanese spider crab has the greatest leg span of any arthropod, reaching 5.5 metres (18 ft) from claw to claw. The body may grow to a size of 40 cm or 16 in (carapace width) and the whole crab can weigh up to 19 kilograms (42 lb)
Crabzilla appears to be about ten times this size .
WATCH THE VIDEO :
Sea-life expert Dr Verity Nye, who has worked on logging new species of crab, has previously said Crabzilla is impossible.
Disclose TV
SOURCE | 0 |
As the media class struggles to understand an election result few foresaw, some have blamed a quirk of modern technology. “The ‘Filter Bubble’ Explains Why Trump Won and You Didn’t See It Coming,” New York magazine announced the day after the election. “Your Filter Bubble Is Destroying Democracy,” Wired declared a week out. One month in, an M. I. T. Media Lab analysis confirmed that Trump supporters “exist in their own information bubble,” as Vice reported — and that journalists didn’t let Trump supporters into their bubbles, either. The filter bubble describes the tendency of social networks like Facebook and Twitter to lock users into personalized feedback loops, each with its own news sources, cultural touchstones and political inclinations. We seem to like these places, and so do social media companies — they keep us clicking from one to another. But now our bubbles are being blamed for leading us toward the most divisive presidency in recent memory, and suddenly, the bubble doesn’t feel so inviting anymore. So media and tech companies are pivoting, selling us a whole suite of offerings aimed at bursting the bubbles they helped to create. Few people get a kick out of acknowledging their own biases, so new digital features are easing the way with visuals and interactive quizzes. Download the Chrome extension PolitEcho and watch as it crawls through your Facebook network and visualizes its political bias based on how many of your friends “like” pages dedicated to Breitbart, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders or NPR. Then hop over to the PBS website and take a quiz, conceived by the libertarian Charles Murray, that rates your affiliation with “mainstream American culture. ” (Rack up points for having evangelical Christian friends, eating at IHOP and watching “Dr. Phil. ”) Other tech products invite us to reach out and understand other people without the hassle of actually talking to them. FlipFeed, a Twitter created by M. I. T. researchers, provides a voyeuristic thrill: Click a button, and your regular Twitter feed is replaced by that of a random, anonymous user of a different political persuasion. (It’s perfect for seeing how the other half a Trump news conference.) And the iPhone app Read Across the Aisle gamifies political outreach — as you read articles from The Huffington Post or The Federalist through the app, you’ll see a meter turn red or blue based on the particular site’s ideological bent. The real ingenuity of these solutions lies in stripping opposing ideas of their negative emotional impact. It’s not too hard to find people who disagree with you online — just create a Twitter account, state an opinion and watch the haters roll up — but the heated social media climate provides a tense, abstracted version of human connection that often leaves both sides more polarized. To alleviate the tension, BuzzFeed is testing a new feature, “Outside Your Bubble,” which pulls in opinions from across the web and gives them a neutral platform. A curator takes the comments, removes them from their combative context and rephrases them as cogent, dispassionate bullet points. Escape Your Bubble, a that seeds your Facebook feed with opposing political views, goes a step further, repackaging partisan content with an aggressively positive affect. Each story appears with a pink heart icon and a banner that says: “Happily inserted by your EscapeYourBubble Chrome Extension :)” Meanwhile, a new crop of online media offerings comes equipped with guides who travel to the other side and present their findings. Every week, the Washington journalist Will Sommer publishes a kicky newsletter digest, “Right Richter,” which aggregates perspectives for audiences. Slate’s “Today in Conservative Media” feature provides a similar service. And Crooked Media, a political podcast network created by former Obama staffers, just debuted a new show, “With Friends Like These,” in which the liberal journalist Ana Marie Cox shepherds listeners through conversations with conservative guests. A cynical impulse lies behind many of these kumbaya vibes. The same social media networks that helped build the bubbles are now being framed as the solution, with just a few surface tweaks. On the internet, the “echo chambers” of old media — the ’90s buzzword for partisan talk radio shows and political paperbacks — have been amplified and automated. We no longer need to to Fox News or MSNBC unseen algorithms on Facebook learn to satisfy our existing preferences, so it doesn’t feel like we’re choosing an ideological filter at all. But now, no entity is playing the filter bubble crisis more than Facebook itself. The company’s leader, Mark Zuckerberg, has published a manifesto of sorts, “Building Global Community,” which jockeys for Facebook to seize a central role in opening our minds by exposing us to new ideas. Just last summer, the company was whistling a different tune. In a blog post called “Building a Better News Feed for You,” Facebook declared that the information it serves up is “subjective, personal, and unique — and defines the spirit of what we hope to achieve. ” That all seemed harmless when the network was a site for reconnecting with old high school friends, but now Facebook is a major driver of news. (A Pew study from last year found that 62 percent of Americans get news on social media.) And as Mr. Trump rose, Facebook found itself assailed by critics blaming it for eroding the social fabric and contributing to the downfall of democracy. Facebook gave people what they wanted, they said, but not what they needed. So now it talks of building the “social infrastructure” for a “ community. ” Mr. Zuckerberg quoted Abraham Lincoln as inspiration for Facebook’s next phase. The agitators and audiences for these new fixes have an ulterior motive for expanding their horizons, too. Recent calls to burst the filter bubble have come largely from liberals and #NeverTrump conservatives alarmed by their election losses. Their bipartisan spirit has partisan roots. President Trump’s critics feel the practical need to break down these ideological cocoons, so they can win next time. Charlie Sykes, a former conservative radio talk show host who was blindsided by Mr. Trump’s win, now writes of the need to dismantle the “tribal bubble” of modern American politics, where citizens are informed through partisan media and bullied into submission by Twitter mobs. And Sam Altman, the president of the incubator Y Combinator, recently set out from the liberal Silicon Valley and traveled across America to better understand the perspectives of Trump voters. His final question to them: “What would convince you not to vote for him again?” It will be more difficult to entice Trump supporters to consider alternative perspectives, and not just because the president himself has declared the mainstream media the “opposition party. ” As members of the winning team, Trump supporters have no urgent need to understand the other side. Besides, it’s not too hard to find perspectives in the news media. Typical members of the mainstream media are, if not expressly ideological liberal, then at least poorly positioned to pass Charles Murray’s “mainstream American culture” quiz. In his manifesto, Mr. Zuckerberg spoke of the need to grow local news outlets (which have seen their prospects plummet even further as Facebook tightens its grip as a leading source of news) and present people with a range of perspectives. Whether those sentiments make their way into every feed remains to be seen — after all, Facebook became an internet superpower by serving up easy, compulsively clickable content. Some Americans are interested in peeking outside their filter bubbles right now, which gives tech companies an incentive to cater to their desires. Will they feel the same way when they’re winning again? | 1 |
The White House declined to comment on new details on the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich after reports said he was communicating with Wikileaks before his unsolved murder in Washington D. C. last summer. [“I’m not aware of that,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer replied during a press gaggle with reporters at the White House, when asked by a reporter about the news. Spicer added that it would be “highly inappropriate” to comment on the ongoing investigation into Rich’s death, despite the possibility of leaked emails to Wikileaks. The Democratic National Committee also declined to comment on the investigation. “We know of no evidence that supports these allegations. We are continuing to cooperate with investigators and have no further comment,” DNC spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement. NBC News reported that Ed Butowsky, a conservative financial advisor in Dallas, helped pay for the investigation. Butowsky denied details in the story. “I didn’t pay anybody. I didn’t hire anybody,” he said to NBC News, referring further comment to Rod Wheeler, the former Washington, D. C. homicide detective who conducted the private investigation. Wheeler revealed to Fox News that Rich was communicating with Wikileaks before his death, sparking renewed interest in the investigation. The news was confirmed by an anonymous federal investigator. Rich’s family denounced the report in a statement, calling for facts in the case. “We are a family who is committed to facts, not fake evidence that surfaces every few months to fill the void and distract law enforcement and the general public from finding Seth’s murderers,” they said. | 0 |
Sean Hannity interviewing Mike Pence about Obama’s claims on election fraud. Mr. Trump has recommended everyone watch this clip. by IWB · October 27, 2016
Exposing the sheer hypocrisy of Barack Obama on the election fraud issue.
Starting at 28:53 | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s trio of selections on Friday served notice that he intends not only to reverse eight years of liberal domestic policies but also to overturn decades of bipartisan consensus on the United States’ proper role in world affairs. Mr. Trump is moving quickly to realize his campaign’s promise of a nation that relentlessly enforces immigration and drug laws views Muslims with deep suspicion War II alliances and sends suspected terrorists to Guantánamo Bay or C. I. A. secret prisons to be interrogated with methods that have been banned as torture. At a time when American cities have been inflamed by racial tensions, police shootings and fears over homegrown terrorism, Mr. Trump made no conciliatory gestures toward Muslims, Mexicans or residents of neighborhoods, all of whom he disparaged during his campaign. In his first major national security selections so far — Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, for attorney general Representative Mike Pompeo, Republican of Kansas, for C. I. A. director and Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn for national security adviser — Mr. Trump sent a clear message that he does not intend to use these personnel choices to build bridges to Democrats or the moderate and traditionally conservative Republicans who opposed the nationalist overtones of his presidential campaign. The reaction from Democrats was swift and sulfurous. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts demanded that Mr. Trump withdraw Mr. Sessions, while Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey charged that some of Mr. Trump’s choices had “degraded and demeaned Americans. ” “The has created a White House leadership that embodies the most divisive rhetoric of his campaign,” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said. Mr. Trump swept into office promising to dispense with the political correctness of Washington’s establishment, and his choices reflect that. President George W. Bush assembled a Republican cabinet with a variety of shades of conservative ideology, including some members who challenged the president. Mr. Trump’s early decisions suggest he favors a cabinet that will echo his opinions. The choices also suggest that on the perennially vexing question of how the government should balance security and civil liberties, Mr. Trump will throw his weight firmly behind security, in matters of both counterterrorism and traditional law enforcement. Mr. Sessions, one of the Senate’s most conservative members, defended Mr. Bush’s authority to conduct wiretapping without a warrant after the Sept. 11 attacks. He has been a vocal supporter of military detention at Guantánamo Bay and sharply criticized the Obama administration for assigning lawyers to suspected terrorists and giving them the right to remain silent, even when arrested on American soil. He has said the United States should keep waterboarding — a banned technique that the Obama administration considered to be torture — as an interrogation option because it works. A former prosecutor with a history of racially tinged remarks, Mr. Sessions has voted against laws that protect gay people and guarantee equal pay for women. He has also supported efforts to roll back the Voting Rights Act. He has shown over two decades in the Senate that he believes the Justice Department should do more to crack down on illegal immigration. And he has supported strict enforcement of drug laws and opposed the détente that Washington reached with states that legalized marijuana. While the Obama administration has used the Justice Department to expand the definition of civil rights — to cover gays, lesbians and transgender people, for example — Mr. Sessions says the government should not be “a sword to assert inappropriate claims that have the effect of promoting political agendas. ” “Jeff Sessions has a record — from his early days as a prosecutor to his present role as a senator — of opposing civil rights and equality,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and of the N. A. A. C. P. ’s Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement. “It is unimaginable that he could be entrusted to serve as the chief law enforcement officer for this nation’s civil rights laws. ” As one of Mr. Trump’s earliest, most vocal supporters, Mr. Sessions has supported Mr. Trump’s call for a temporary ban on immigration from Muslim countries. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Mr. Sessions would be in position to help put that ban into effect. “We have no duty to morally or legally admit people,” he said this year. “We need to use common sense with the of the threat. It is the toxic ideology of Islam. ” Along with Mr. Pompeo and General Flynn, he will thrust the charged phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” to the center of American foreign policy in a way that blurs the lines between a war on terrorism and a war on Islam. General Flynn, in particular, has used language that even the most strident Republicans have avoided. “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” he posted on Twitter in February. He has described Islam as a political ideology that has turned into a “malignant cancer. ” Like Mr. Sessions, General Flynn favors an immigration ban and has expressed support for the idea of forcing Muslims in the United States to register with the government. He once erroneously wrote on Twitter that Shariah, or Islamic law, was in danger of taking over the country. Both Mr. Bush and President Obama believed that such assertions inflamed sentiment, served as a recruiting tool for terrorists and antagonized countries in the Middle East that the United States needed as allies in the fight against violent extremism. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there has been bipartisan consensus that the best way to combat terrorism was to dismantle Al Qaeda and other networks while avoiding being seen as attacking Islam. Mr. Trump has shown no such qualms. Mr. Pompeo has said Muslim leaders contribute to the threat of terrorism by refusing to repudiate it, although Islamic leaders and advocacy groups have done so repeatedly, and often. “Silence has made these Islamic leaders across America potentially complicit in these acts and, more importantly still, in those that may well follow,” Mr. Pompeo said in 2013. William McCants, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse,” said Mr. Pompeo and other Trump allies “are operating on the assumption that it’s something going on in the religion itself. ” “It is a sea change,” he said, “and it really changes the terms of the discussion about what to do. ” Should the Trump administration shape its counterterrorism strategy and broader foreign policy around these ideas, Mr. McCants predicted the United States would find itself at odds with its allies in Europe and the Middle East, which have long sought to separate violent extremists from the billions of peaceful mainstream Muslims. “This kind of rhetoric pushes them together and in a way creates a prophecy,” he said. Some analysts said they believed that Friday’s selections were intended to reward loyalty and appeal to Mr. Trump’s base. They held out hope that the next set of selections — for secretary of state and secretary of defense — would go to more moderate figures, much as Mr. Trump balanced out the selection of Stephen K. Bannon at the White House by naming Reince Priebus as chief of staff. On Saturday, Mr. Trump will meet with Mitt Romney in Bedminster, N. J. to discuss, among other things, the top post at the State Department, according to people close to the transition. Last week, he held similar discussions with Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina. “From the beginning,” said Peter D. Feaver, a political science professor at Duke who served in Mr. Bush’s National Security Council, “the challenge for Trump is that he can’t do all the work he needs to do, with the caliber of people he needs, just from within his core of supporters. ” | 1 |
Legendary conservative columnist and author Pat Buchanan joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Tuesday’s Breitbart News Daily to look at President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and consider the state of the conservative movement. [Marlow referenced a new profile of Buchanan published by Politico in which he explains that he approaches politics from the perspective of a historian. Marlow proposed that the historical ignorance of so many voters on both left and right is dangerous. LISTEN: “I have to agree with you, Alex,” said Buchanan. “One thing that bothers me is really the lack of knowledge of history not only going back into the history of the country, back to its founding and what happened up in the 19th and 20th centuries, but you talk to a number of folks — even good friends and political allies, young people — and they don’t understand what you’re referring to. The examples you use, they know nothing about. ” “I think this depriving America’s young people of the knowledge of the history of their country and the political battles left and right, everything going back into the 20th century and the 19th century, I think is a real injustice to American youth because they don’t have the real ability to base what they’re saying in examples in history,” he lamented. “Most of these battles we’ve seen before. ” Buchanan said he was gratified and “astonished” that Donald Trump picked up on so many of his own key issues during the 2016 presidential campaign. He believes these issues helped propel Trump to victory, even though “everyone was writing him off as a joke. ” “I said that these issues, which we had raised in the 1990s — mainly the results of quote ‘free trade,’ globalism, also of open borders immigration, of failures to secure the borders, and also of the Bush II interventions and wars in the Middle East — that these were going to come back to haunt the United States of America,” he said, referring to his own presidential campaigns in 1992, 1996, and 2000. “The truth was, we raised those issues back in the nineties, and we said this is what’s going to happen: you’re going to lose half your manufacturing base in this country if you go along with NAFTA and GATT and MFN for China and these other trade policies which basically were giveaways of American industry,” he recalled. “What Trump had going for him was he had the results of America having taken the wrong course on all of these issues. We left the borders unprotected. We enacted one after another of these trade deals to the benefit of communist China and Mexico and Japan and other countries. And of course, we plunged into one after another of these wars in the Middle East, not looking at where we were going to wind up after we put our flag over the Capitol. So Trump had the benefit of the consequences of the United States having failed to take the right course in the 1990s under Bush I and Bill Clinton,” said Buchanan. Marlow said he was concerned that “who has the president’s ear inside the White House are not the populists and the nationalists and the conservatives that got him elected. ” Buchanan said he shared that concern. “I do believe this, Alex: once Trump won, he was the leader of the Republican Party,” he added. “Now, there are many issues on which I remain a solid conservative Republican as I’ve always been. On the Supreme Court, for example, on the slow growth of government rather than these big programs, on belief in the private sector, and belief in cutting the corporate tax rates and making America more competitive in the world. ” “But at the same time, there are these new issues: securing America’s borders, protecting the sovereignty of the United States,” he continued. “Stop forfeiting our sovereignty and independence of action that was won for us, back years ago. Stop forfeiting that to some new world order and globalist . So on all these issues, I felt that you had a marriage, a potential marriage here between the Republican base, the conservative base, and the new conservatives — and that these two forces together, if they stayed united, could get a tremendous amount done. We’re not going to agree on everything. ” “My concern has been that it hasn’t really come off as smoothly as one would have hoped. Quite frankly, there’s an awful lot of forces in this city of Washington, DC, where I was born and raised, that really want to cashier and dump the agenda. Excuse me, but that’s the future of the world. You take a look at countries all over the world. Populism, economic nationalism, sovereignty concerns, identity concerns — these are what is moving mankind. With all due respect, the European Union is yesterday,” Buchanan said. Marlow invited Buchanan to define “nationalism,” one of the most contentious terms in contemporary political discourse. “Look, all of us are American citizens, everyone here who has taken the oath of loyalty to the government of the nation of the United States. But in the world arena, it means that we look out first and foremost for the national interests of the United States of America. We are not acolytes of some ideology, some globalist ideology that dates back to Immanuel Kant and people like that, where we’re going to create some new world order and we’re going to fit ourselves into that,” Buchanan replied. “Also that we are a country, a unique people with its own culture, with its own identity, with its own history, its own heroes, its own holidays, its own cuisine,” he continued. “We are a separate nation, a different nation from other nations, and in looking out for this, we look out for basically what is our own national family first. ” “This is why governments are formed,” he argued. “If you go back to ‘Federalist 2’ and read what John Jay wrote in there about us sharing various principles and histories and memories, that we are unique and we are separate, we’re not just citizens of the world. I reject that. The on this earth is about the highest or largest entity to which human beings can give true love and allegiance. ” Buchanan laughed heartily when Marlow noted that the mainstream media routinely denounced such views as bigotry, and those views were even more aggressively vilified during Buchanan’s national political campaigns of the nineties. “I think we defended ourselves fairly ably,” he recalled. “We certainly got mussed up a little bit. In the ’92 campaign, for example, I came off a Crossfire television show where I articulated my views then. In 1991, ten weeks before the New Hampshire primary, we closed a gap with the President of the United States to 15 points, and it was something of a sensation then. In 1996 we won Alaska, and then we won the Louisiana caucuses, came in second to Dole in Iowa, and then we won the New Hampshire primary. I think these were successful campaigns. They were not triumphal campaigns, obviously. But we were able to make our case through the national media. ” “If you go back to when it was really the Dark Ages, I was the author of the Agnew speeches. If you read my new book, Nixon’s White House Wars, Nixon undertook a counterattack on the media when they trashed his great ‘Silent Majority’ speech in 1969. That was a great battle back in 1969, but at the end of 1969, Richard Nixon was at 68 percent approval and 19 percent disapproval. Spiro T. Agnew, whose speech in Des Moines just savaging the networks as unelected elites imposing their agenda on the nation, was the third man in America,” he noted. “Now, if you stood up in those days and made these statements and said what you believed, you could find tremendous echoes out in America. That is what some of the new media, conservative media have discovered,” he said. “They’ve been very successful. They’ve been created basically in recent years I remember speaking with Mr. Murdock about Fox when he was just starting it up. These were ideas that we had back in the sixties, creating a conservative media and creating conservative institutions. It was sort of the beginning. It’s not a bad thing to be out there on the lines, in the earliest days of the cause, and then to see many of these ideas succeed,” Buchanan said happily. As to whether he was optimistic about the future of the Trump administration, Buchanan professed he was a “historical pessimist. ” “If you go back and look at the great arc of history and Western civilization, and you see its extraordinary accomplishments, and the fact that the West once really ruled the world, and now the West itself is being colonized and invaded by folks from its former colonies who are changing the character of Western civilization, and, frankly, who disregard many of the traditions and things that we have built, it is hard to be an overall optimist,” he explained. “But in terms of the shorter term, I was elated with Donald Trump’s election because he ran on these issues: preserving the nation, securing its borders, preserving its independence out of this new world order, getting out of all these Third World wars and the rest of it that I thought was really best for my country,” he continued. “I think he’s really making an effort. There have been some stumbles, obviously, in the early days. But I’m delighted that I voted the way I did, that I supported him and his causes, and I wish him well,” said Buchanan. “In the longer term, if you take a look at the demographic change taking place in Europe, as I wrote in Death of the West almost 20 years ago, there’s not a single European country that has a birthrate that is going to enable it to replace its . That’s especially true on the Mediterranean coast. As these places empty out, you have new people who come from destitute countries all across the Med and from the Middle East who are going to cross the Med into Europe,” he predicted. “I don’t see the national will there to stop this invasion. I see a lot of talk about how wonderful it’s going to be, but let’s just say I’m not optimistic. My late friend Clare Boothe Luce once said that there are two kinds of people in this world, the optimists and the pessimists, but the pessimists are better informed,” said Buchanan. Buchanan said he was not surprised by the campus left’s growing hostility to free speech, as manifested in riots and blocking conservative speakers from universities. “I don’t think the future is going to be very positive in terms of relations among Americans,” he said. “I think, quite frankly, many Americans dislike and detest each other, as I’ve written many times, and really regard the ideas of their opposites as ‘ ’ and all the other names we’ve been called. ” “I think what is happened here is that an ideology, a political religion, has taken hold among America’s elites and especially among America’s young, where they regard statements and expressions of traditional conservative values and beliefs as really intolerable,” he warned. “They’re racists, they’re sexists, they’re homophobic. They shouldn’t be tolerated because they’re precursors of some sort of fascist future. ” “Therefore, we have to stamp them out, in the way folks in schools would not want people coming in and selling the idea that drugs are good for you and things. … These ideas are evil, and we should have no compunction — frankly, we should have moral certitude — about erasing these ideas because we know the horrendous things they’ve resulted in,” he said. “So they’re doing this in quite good conscience. I think they’re fanatics, but they’re doing it in good conscience because they sincerely believe what they say about us,” Buchanan observed. “When they call us those names — what did Hillary say about us? — you know, a ‘basket of deplorables,’ racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, Islamophobes, bigots. That’s what they think about us. ” “I think you can expect, quite frankly, if people believe that about you, and they don’t want you to take power, and you’ve taken power, and you’re going to advance your ideas, then you behave the way they’re behaving. It is not unpredictable what is coming,” he said ominously. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. Listen to the full audio of the interview above. | 1 |
MAKING frozen vegetables hip is a daunting task, but BG Foods thinks it has just the guy to do it. The company is bringing back the Jolly Green Giant after a long hiatus to introduce new recipes. But his comeback comes with a twist. The campaign will initially seek to create a sense of mystery by not showing the giant. BG, which bought the more than Green Giant brand from General Mills for $765 million last year, is betting that the way to appeal to finicky children and picky parents is with new dishes, an old mascot and a dash of suspense. In a trailer released in September titled “The Giant Awakens,” people look to the sky, mouths agape. Cars screech to a halt, raucous children in a swimming pool fall silent and grocery bags fall to the ground. Yet the giant is visible only indirectly: through footprints in fields and shadows that fall across skyscrapers. “It’s well done,” said David R. Just, professor and of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs. “By the end of it, it leaves you wondering, ‘So what’s going to happen?’ I think they’ve hit the right note there. ” Dan Kelleher, the chief creative officer of the New York office of Deutsch, which BG chose as its marketing and advertising agency for the Green Giant brand, said the “cinematic” element of suspense in the trailer, which mimics a fantasy or superhero movie, provided flexibility about where the ad could be shown. “We were able to air this in movie theaters as a teaser,” said Jordan Greenberg, vice president and general manager of the Green Giant brand at BG. “It didn’t look like a regular commercial. ” Mr. Just added, “Kids are going to love this because it looks like an ad or a preview for a movie. ” The slowly unfolding narrative is a good way to reintroduce the giant to audiences that remember him and to introduce him to others, especially younger viewers, Mr. Just said. “The goal with the two teams together was to figure out how to build this brand back in a very large way,” Bob Cantwell, the president and chief executive of BG Foods, said about the Green Giant group and Deutsch. “It’s a very powerful teaser commercial. We’ll probably continue to use it in some format” as the campaign continues, he said. The giant has also received some updates to keep up with the times, acquiring a selfie stick and a Spotify playlist, for instance. There is a Green Giant Instagram account, which purports to chronicle a road trip taken by the giant and his elfin buddy, Sprout. There are dozens of “snapshots” of landmarks and sight gags, like the giant doing triceps dips on the St. Louis Gateway Arch, but viewers won’t see his face in a commercial until the campaign’s reveal moment in television ads next month. Mr. Cantwell said the $30 million BG was spending on the campaign was just the beginning. “We’re going to continue that level of spend, if not more, as we go through 2017, 2018 and 2019 — we’re going to continue to support this,” he said. While the bulk of the money is expected to be for TV ads, the campaign includes elements like mobile stands at concerts and other events where people can sample new dishes. Next year, print ads will appear in magazines like People and Real Simple. “He was always the good giant in the distance,” Mr. Greenberg said. “We’re going to make him more relevant, more socially active with the consumer, and bring him into today’s world. ” Tying a new campaign to a character could be a good way to do this, industry experts say. “This whole concept of what’s old is new again is something the resonates across the consumer landscape,” said David Portalatin, chief food analyst at the NPD Group, a market research firm. “The giant is kind of this returning superhero,” Mr. Greenberg said, a story line on which future ad material will build. Parents, of course, might view true heroics as getting their children to willingly gobble up vegetables, and BG has something for them as well. “The next step is the reason why the giant’s back,” Mr. Kelleher said, “to introduce new food products and frozen vegetables. ” BG is introducing 15 new products, including roasted vegetables, mashed cauliflower and vegetable tots, which substitute ingredients like broccoli and cauliflower for the usual potatoes. “It speaks to the way consumers are eating today and what they’re feeding their children,” Mr. Greenberg said. | 1 |
Donald J. Trump has vowed to dismantle many of the signature policies put in place by the Obama administration to fight the effects of climate change. During the campaign, he threatened, among other things, to kill the Clean Power Plan, a set of rules to reduce emissions from power plants. He has also taken aim at new regulations to limit methane leaks from wells and pipelines. And members of his transition team have suggested that he may reduce or eliminate basic climate research at NASA or other agencies. If he follows through, most of these moves will be opposed by environmental groups, by Democrats in Congress and perhaps even by some Republicans. But Mr. Trump will have several tools to begin nullifying the Obama climate agenda. One of them is the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a small outpost within the executive branch that has, since the Clinton administration, been the last stop for many regulations before they go into effect. Lawyers in the office pore over thousands of pages of federal regulations daily and pride themselves on meticulously reviewing the fine print, even if that takes months or years. Under the control of the new administration, the office could slow President Obama’s latest regulatory initiatives by repeatedly sending them back for additional work. “It has been a brake on agency regulation throughout its lifetime,” said Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on environmental regulation. “Some presidents have used it as more of a brake than others. ” Much remains to be learned about the ’s environmental policy goals, and some of his views appear to have shifted. Mr. Trump, who has claimed that global warming is a hoax, said this week in an interview with The New York Times that he now saw “some connectivity” between humans and climate change, and that he would “keep an open mind” about whether to pull out of the Paris climate accord, as he threatened to do during the campaign. Yet at the same time, some key positions on his transition team are occupied by people with a long history of rejecting the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Other than climate change, there are numerous environmental issues that he has never talked about and that he might be content to leave untouched. And once agency heads are in place, they may choose very different tactics from those discussed during Mr. Trump’s campaign or by his advisers. Two people considered to be in the running to head the Environmental Protection Agency — Jeffrey R. Holmstead, an energy lobbyist, and Robert E. Grady, a venture capitalist — also have experience in the complex machinations of the federal government. “Every new administration comes in with an overestimation of what it can accomplish and how quickly it can accomplish it,” said Kevin Ewing, a partner at Bracewell, a Washington law firm. If Mr. Trump does decide to withdraw from the Paris agreement, he will find it difficult: The accord went into force this month. He would also encounter tremendous obstacles were he to try to dismantle the E. P. A. another campaign threat. But he may have an easier time abandoning other climate initiatives, including a United program to reduce the environmental impact of international air travel beginning in 2020. The United States has only informally committed to participate in the program, and the new administration could refuse to make that commitment legally binding. One of the most powerful methods to hobble Mr. Obama’s domestic environmental initiatives would be to block financing for the E. P. A. and other agencies. “Congress can always pass an appropriations rider that for one year prevents any funding for the implementation or enforcement of a particular regulation,” said Scott H. Segal, a partner and director of the policy resolution group at Bracewell. Riders can be passed year after year, effectively neutering a specific regulation, Mr. Segal said. Such an approach can be “stealthier” than trying to undo the regulation itself, Professor Freeman said. “You don’t have to repeal these statutes,” she said. “You just have to make it impossible to implement them. ” Another opening for Mr. Trump lies in regulations that were proposed by the Obama administration but are still technically “in motion. ” In theory, he could pull back or block these rules. But a departing administration can also use a regulation’s “in motion” status to its own advantage. Last week, the Obama administration banned drilling in the Alaskan Arctic under the Interior Department’s proposed plan regulating oil and gas leases. Republicans could kill the plan. But to do so would mean crafting a replacement, a process that could take two years or more. Last week, the White House unveiled a sweeping plan to try to stiffen environmental regulations before Mr. Obama leaves office. Environmental groups can be expected to fight any efforts to undo them. “Donald Trump can’t just snap his fingers and change climate policy,” said David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We have ways to thwart him in Congress and the courts that we could employ. ” The approach the Trump administration takes will depend in part on the status of specific rules and regulations. Some environmental policies — like “guidance” issued by the White House earlier this year, instructing agencies to consider the effects of climate change when conducting environmental reviews — do not have the force of law that agency regulations do, and can be abolished with a pen stroke. Undoing a regulation is more complicated. Some of the E. P. A. ’s new methane rules are completed, for example, but other rules, both at the E. P. A. and at the Interior Department, are not and can simply be abandoned. If a rule is final, the options are different. The new administration cannot just rescind these regulations, but it can order agencies to revisit them. That reopens the process, however, including the opportunity for public comment. Any revisions or replacement regulations must have a basis in facts and a analysis, not politics or ideology. There are other potential options for specific regulations. The Clean Power Plan, for instance, is completed but not yet in effect because of a judicial stay imposed while legal action against it plays out in a federal appeals court in Washington. If there is no ruling by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department can ask the court to put the case in abeyance, effectively extending the stay indefinitely. “In some respects, this is in the Department of Justice’s hands,” said Tom Lorenzen, a lawyer at Crowell Moring who argued against the plan before the appeals court. “They will make a determination of how they want to proceed. ” Mr. Segal said the Republican Congress might also be able to overturn some recently completed regulations under a law that gives both houses up to 60 legislative days to reject them. That law, the Congressional Review Act, usually comes into play only when the party of the incoming president is different from the departing one’s and the same party controls both houses, as is the case now. William K. Reilly, a Republican who was E. P. A. administrator under President George Bush, said Mr. Trump needed to be careful about whom he picked for the top jobs in each department. He cited the Reagan administration’s experience with Anne Gorsuch, who incurred the wrath of politicians of both parties when, as administrator of the E. P. A. she cut the agency’s budget by more than 20 percent, gutting research and regulatory enforcement. She resigned under fire in 1983 in the midst of accusations that she had mismanaged a hazardous waste cleanup program. “The administration got badly burned by discounting the sensitivities and public support for what the E. P. A. protects us from,” Mr. Reilly said. “It’s a public health agency above all. ” | 1 |
Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name Recipient Email =>
Donald Trump’s startling and explosive victory has not only shaken America’s oligarchy to its core, it’s also sending shock waves across Europe and scaring the top hats off plutocrats and their tame politicians.
The great Mark Twain wrote early in the 20th century: ‘if you don’t read newspapers you are uninformed. But if you do read them, you are misinformed.’ Amen.
As with the 2003 war against Iraq, the US media totally dropped its mask of phony impartiality and became a cheerleader for the Clintons and their financial backers. Media was clearly revealed as a propaganda organ for the ruling elite. No wonder its disgusted clients are decamping to online sources or just ignoring the biased media.
Amazingly, working class men and women rose up and overthrew the oligarchy, led by the corporate media and the self-enriching, war-promoting Clinton dynasty and its Davos friends. There was plenty of anguish among leftist groups and weepy young women, but America breathed a gigantic sigh of relief.
So did the stock market. So did ordinary white Americans royally fed up with the elite’s promotion of ‘diversity,’ which they believe is a euphemism for mixing races, pushing junk popular culture, and advocating homosexuality, lesbianism, and bisexuality.
Across the Atlantic, political nerves were just as tense. Three major votes will be held in the coming 10 months in France, Germany and Italy, Europe’s economic, political and cultural core. The old order is scared to death by Trump’s crashing victory.
France holds a presidential primary in a month in which sitting president, François Hollande, is expected to be thrashed. Hollande’s public support now is struggling to reach 4%.
Former prime minister Nicholas Sarkozy has risen from the political dead and is preaching a farrago of populism, nationalism and Islamophobia. Many French don’t trust or like Sarko. He may shortly face charges for accepting illegal campaign money from Libya’s late Mummar Khadffi, in whose murder Sarko may be deeply implicated. Dead Libyans tell no tales.
Sarko’s rivals are former foreign minister Alain Juppé, a moderate conservative and ally of the ailing former president Jacques Chirac, who remains France’s most liked politician. Juppé, dignified, sensible, and moderate, is just what France needs after the disastrous socialist president François Hollande.
But adding a wild card to the primary is the youthful ex-banker and rightwing socialist Emmanuel Macron, a former economy minister under Hollande. He used to work for the French Rothschilds, arousing suspicions on the left and far right. Macron is expected to shortly announce his candidacy for president.
Add in former prime minister François Fillon, a solid moderate with a reputation for strong ethics who may be able to stand up to France’s thuggish unions. Fillon, Juppé and Macron are all considered leftwing conservatives who can restore France’s staggering economy and fight the bureaucracy, teachers and, of course, the unions who can quickly shut down all key sectors of France’s economy.
Lurking in the background is the nemesis of France’s current political system, Madame Marine LePen, leader of the hard right National Front. Anti-EU, anti-globalization, and anti-Muslim, she is a modern day version of France’s WWII Vichy Catholic far right. Le Pen, like her aged father Jean-Marie, is very popular and can articulate, like Trump, the anger and dismay of working whites.
She may knock the hapless Hollande out in the first round of voting in 2017. But Le Pen would then have to go on to defeat the moderate candidate – Sarkozy, Fillon, Macron or Juppé. This will be very tough because, as in previous elections, leftist and centrist voters will gang up to defeat her.
Such is conventional logic. But after Trump nothing is certain. Good! Our stagnant western economies and corrupt political systems badly need shaking up and refreshing. I say, ‘vive Monsieur Trump.’
On Dec 4, Italy holds a very important referendum to modernize its rickety political structure. If voters reject it, Italy’s young, reformist prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has vowed to resign. This would likely plunge Italy into political confusion and encourage a looming banking crisis.
Finally, in Germany, Angela Merkel’s coalition government looks increasingly fragile. Many Germans are tired of the ultra-moderate Merkel and her cautious government which is often accused of being an American vassal. If Germany ever wakens from its post-1945 stupor, all Europe will shake.
So enter Donald Trump just at a time when Europe may be coming to a boil. (Reprinted from EricMargolis.com | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic presidential nomination tonight, taking American women to a new political peak. She offered a vision of unity, saying, “When any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. When there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit. ” Her speech directly challenged Donald Trump’s ability to lead. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons,” Mrs. Clinton said. Mrs. Clinton was introduced by Chelsea Clinton, who may play a White House role if her mother wins. “I’m voting for a fighter who never, ever gives up,” Ms. Clinton said. _____ 2. Mr. Trump said his call for Russia to hack into Mrs. Clinton’s email was meant as sarcasm. But he also added to his previous praise for Vladimir Putin, saying the Russian president was “a better leader than Obama. ” Above, a short video looking at the history of the relationship. Mr. Trump’s comments have been criticized by former government officials of both major parties, as well as many foreign policy experts. Some say the security briefings he is now entitled to should be curtailed, while he counters that Mrs. Clinton’s email troubles prove she should not be trusted with the briefings. _____ 3. How is Fox News getting along without its creator, Roger Ailes? Mr. Ailes left under a cloud after a lawsuit accused him of sexual harassment, which then drew corroborating accounts. Nothing looks all that different onscreen in the convention coverage. But when the cameras are off, two people with direct knowledge said, an icy silence descends over the anchor Megyn Kelly, who cooperated with the investigation into Mr. Ailes, and the Bret Baier and Brit Hume. _____ 4. The purge being carried out by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has sidelined or jailed half of the country’s top generals and admirals. Some analysts warned of dangerous consequences. “With its main pillar, the military, broken, the Turkish state will no longer be able to check a divided society or effectively counter security threats,” one said. Above, the army’s remaining top officers gathered in Ankara, the capital. _____ 5. U. S. officials say they have new hope against the Islamic State. A trove of more than 10, 000 documents and 4. 5 terabytes of digital data recently seized in northern Syria traces the movements of militants. The information, which is being shared with allies, could help direct battlefield operations and keep plotters from entering Europe. Above, ISIS fighters in 2014. _____ 6. Pope Francis addressed a vast crowd of young people gathered for the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland. Earlier, saying Mass at a revered monastery to commemorate the 1, 050th anniversary of the country’s conversion to Christianity, Francis stumbled and fell, to the consternation of thousands of assembled pilgrims. He rose unharmed. _____ 7. Opposing marches are being held in a mostly white Boston suburb divided by concerns over police shootings and police safety. The galvanizing issue is a “Black Lives Matter” sign hung at City Hall in Somerville, Mass. almost a year ago. The local police are rallying to demand that the mayor, the son of Italian immigrants, put up one saying “All Lives Matter” instead, while counterdemonstrators plan to urge him to keep it. _____ 8. Officials at the Bank of Japan, above, meet Friday to come up with more ways to try to end its country’s long bout with deflation. One option on the table is something economists call helicopter money: dropping money from the sky, to be freely spent. Sadly, that’s just a metaphor. In reality, it means printing more money to pay for government spending on public works, mass distribution of funds to citizens or tax cuts. _____ 9. The weekend is almost here. Got plans? Our movie reviewer says “Jason Bourne,” the fifth installment of the franchise, may have rote aspects. But he says that tone befits a film that is less a thriller than “a somber meditation on the crisis of the professional in the throes of middle age. ” And there’s “Bad Moms,” featuring six overachieving female characters summed up by the lines: “We’re killing ourselves to be perfect and it’s making us insane. Screw it. ” Also, check out our Book Review’s roundup of summer thrillers. _____ 10. And maybe exercise a bit. A new study found that being out of shape may be second only to smoking as a risk factor for premature death. “Even small amounts of physical activity may have positive effects on fitness,” the lead researcher said. _____ 11. Finally, we leave you with a great dessert for summer: thick, strained yogurt, sweetened and enhanced with pistachios or almonds, cardamom and saffron. Called shrikhand in India, it suits spoons everywhere. _____ 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 |
TJC: Please tell us about your new film, The Coming War on China .
JP: The Coming War on China is my 60th film and perhaps one of the most urgent. It continues the theme of illuminating the imposition of great power behind a facade of propaganda as news. In 2011, President Obama announced a ‘pivot to Asia’ of US forces: almost two-thirds of American naval power would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific by 2020.
The undeclared rationale for this was the ‘threat’ from China, by some measure now the greatest economic power. The Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, says US policy is to confront those ‘who see America’s dominance and want to take that away from us’.
The film examines power in both countries and how nuclear weapons, in American eyes, are the bedrock of its dominance. In its first ‘chapter’, the film reveals how most of the population of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific were unwittingly made into nuclear guinea pigs in a programme whose secrets – and astonishing archive – are related to the presence of a missile base now targeting China. The Coming War on China will be released in cinemas in the UK on December 1st and broadcast on ITV (in the UK) on December 6th.
TJC: How do you assess Australia’s role in America’s ‘Pivot to Asia’?
JP: Australia is virtually the 51st state of the US. Although China is Australia’s biggest trader, on which much of the national economy relies, ‘confronting China’ is the diktat from Washington. The Australian political establishment, especially the military and intelligence agencies, are fully integrated into what is known as the ‘alliance’, along with the dominant Murdoch media. I often feel a certain sadness about the way my own country – with all its resources and opportunities – seems locked into such an unnecessary, dangerous obsequious role in the world. If the ‘pivot’ proceeds, Australia could find itself fighting, yet again, a great power’s war.
TJC: With regards to the British and American media, how can the US get away with selling China as a threat when it is encircling China?
JP: That’s a question that goes to the heart of modern-day propaganda. China is encircled by a ‘noose’ of some 400 US bases, yet the news has ignored this while concentrating on the ‘threat’ of China building airstrips on disputed islets in the South China Sea, clearly as a defence to a US Navy blockade.
TJC: Obama’s visit to Japan, and particularly to Hiroshima, was a really cynical act. What was your impression of Japan and the political situation there?
JP: Japan is an American colony in all but name – certainly in terms of its relationship with the rest of the world and especially China. The historian Bruce Cumings explores this in an interview in the film. Within the constraints of American dominance, indeed undeterred by Washington, Japan’s current prime minister Shinzo Abe has developed an extreme nationalist position, in which contrition for Japanese actions in the Second World War is anathema and the post-war ‘peace constitution’ is likely to be changed.
Abe has gone as far as boasting that Japan will use nuclear weapons if it wants. In any US conflict with China, Japan – which last year announced its biggest ever ‘defence’ budget – would play a critical role. There are 32 US military installations on the Japanese island of Okinawa, facing China. However, there is a sense in modern Asia that power in the world has indeed moved east and peaceful ‘Asian solutions’ to regional animosities are possible.
TJC: Do you think the new trade and investment deals like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and especially the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) will affect China’s business operations?
JP: It’s difficult to say, but I doubt it. What is remarkable about the rise of China is the way it has built, almost in the blink of an eye, a trade, investment and banking structure that rivals that of the Bretton Woods institutions. Unknown to many of us, China is developing its ‘New Silk Road’ to Europe at an astonishing pace. China’s response to threats from Washington is a diplomacy that’s tied to this development, and which includes a burgeoning alliance with Russia.
T.J. Coles is the author of Britain’s Secret Wars (2016, Clairview Books). | 1 |
Ambitious creators and releases have turned series television into a medium of sprawling stories that stretch across entire seasons, or longer. But the fundamental TV unit is still the episode. Here, the television critics of The New York Times discuss their favorite single episodes of 2016 — the hours or that most moved, amused or otherwise stuck with them, for whatever reason, out of the thousands they watched this year. This utterly unscientific list, arranged alphabetically by series, contains spoilers. Please share your own favorite episodes of 2016 in the comments. [Related: The Best TV Shows of 2016] ‘The Americans’ (FX) Among the many things at which this show excels is action, and the flight of the reluctant spy Martha Hanson in this episode was the high point of the season. It was suspenseful, comic (in the K. G. B. ’s ability to stay two steps ahead of the F. B. I.) and heartbreaking, as she clung to the belief that her marriage to a K. G. B. agent was real. Unfortunately, it was also Martha’s appearance of the season, and the chances that Alison Wright might reprise her wonderful performance look slim — she has roles in two coming series, “Sneaky Pete” for Amazon and “Feud” for FX. MIKE HALE ‘Atlanta’ (FX) No other show this year had such a nimble mastery of tone or such a surprising and enchanting ability to toy with form. This is an entire episode of a fake talk show (“Montague”) on a fake channel (the Black American Network) including fake commercials. “B. A. N. ” is hilariously silly — “I wasn’t getting enough crystal in my diet,” sighs a woman on a commercial for a oracle — but then shockingly and effectively slides into a scathing political commentary when a cartoon commercial for children’s cereal becomes a criticism of police brutality. MARGARET LYONS ‘Bates Motel’ (AE) As a prequel to “Psycho,” this series has always had an inevitable future looming over it. The core piece of that future arrived in shattering fashion in this May episode, which ended with the young Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) lying down beside his mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga) after making sure the faulty furnace would fill her bedroom with gas. Norman has been deteriorating psychologically from the start of the series in 2013, but the pace has accelerated, and Norma’s marriage to Sheriff Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell) left the disturbed boy feeling under siege. He survived the gas thanks to Alex’s dramatic rescue, but Norma died, as we knew she must eventually. Ms. Farmiga, though, will still be there when the show returns next year for its fifth and final season. Because in Norman’s mind, Mother never dies, does she? NEIL GENZLINGER [Sign up for the Watching newsletter to get recommendations straight to your inbox.] ‘ ’ (ABC) This in the spirit of the issue comedy of the Norman Lear 1970s, directly addressed the Black Lives Matter protests. The extended Johnson family watches a very familiar case play out on the news, coming at the topic from multiple angles and drawing broad connections. As Andre (Anthony Anderson) remembers his pride and terror in seeing the newly elected Barack Obama leave his bulletproof limousine, he gives this comedy one of the finest dramatic moments of the year. JAMES PONIEWOZIK ‘Black Mirror’ (Netflix) The recurring theme of Charlie Brooker’s anthology is the entanglement of digital and emotional life. As the series’ foreboding title hints, it rarely goes well, but “San Junipero” is a delightful exception. A technology that allows people to inhabit the past brings together two women (Mackenzie Davis and Gugu ) in a 1987 of the mind, where they make a connection that survives death. There’s a bittersweet theme about nostalgia as an opiate, but for once this ingeniously dark series ends on a note of cyberhope. JAMES PONIEWOZIK ‘BoJack Horseman’ (Netflix) A celebrity horse and his personal demons go underwater and find new depths. In this episode set — naturally — at a film festival at the bottom of the ocean, the BoJack (Will Arnett) gets lost in a city and finds himself caring for a newborn seahorse separated from its father. Gorgeously surreal and almost entirely without dialogue, this tour de force marries “Lost in Translation” with Looney Tunes to haunting, slapstick effect. JAMES PONIEWOZIK ‘Broad City’ (Comedy Central) Leave it to Ilana on “Broad City” to accidentally wear a dog hoodie to work — and to “solve” that by simply coloring in her exposed midriff with a red marker to match the hoodie. Also leave it to her to sing while sitting on the toilet, accompanying herself with an egg shaker. Abbi’s rabid competitive spirit at a work outing makes for a good for the episode, but the crowning moment of the episode (and maybe the season) comes from Ilana’s celebrating her firing. They the “Joyful, Joyful” choir performance from “Sister Act II,” and then Whoopi Goldberg shows up in a full habit. MARGARET LYONS ‘Documentary Now!’ (IFC) In this parody of “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” Arturo (Fred Armisen) apprentices in his obsessive father’s critically lauded restaurant but must overcome his own debilitating fear of poultry. (“They call a man who is afraid a chicken,” says his Bill Hader, playing a food writer. “So what do you call a man who is afraid of a chicken? Can you even call him a man at all? ”) As meticulously as its subject chefs, this episode — written by Seth Meyers — is both hilarious and as sincere, even moving, as its source material. It’s a deceptively simple dish, impeccably plated. JAMES PONIEWOZIK ‘Easy’ (Netflix) “Easy” on the whole was aimless and but this one episode shines thanks to terrific performances, a perfectly depicted mood, and one of the richest, most beautiful TV scores of the year. Gugu plays Sophie, an actress going through the final phases of a breakup while poised for a big break professionally. Jane Adams plays Annabelle, one of Sophie’s and confidants, who’s startled and saddened to find herself single at this point in her life. These two performances are extraordinarily full, especially given how sparse the dialogue on the show is, and Jake Weber’s warm sexiness as Annabelle’s amiable booty call is a special treat. MARGARET LYONS ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ (AMC) Set at a fledgling internet company, Mutiny, in the early days of personal computing, “Halt” can’t rely on the usual tricks of serial drama. There’s no murder, no magic, just people with conflicting ideas on how best to run a business and create a new world. Three seasons of this tension built to the stunning ending of this episode, in which the partnership behind Mutiny dissolves. Anchored by the committed performances of Mackenzie Davis and Kerry Bishé, it’s a sad, inevitable breakup that allows everyone to be a little bit right and a little bit wrong. JAMES PONIEWOZIK ‘Mom’ (CBS) No series is better at mixing comedy and somber themes than “Mom,” which managed that difficult feat with particular skill in this February episode. The show stars Allison Janney and Anna Faris as a mother and daughter working hard to shake substance abuse, and they have a circle of friends also in recovery. The episode, the strongest in a strong third season, devotes a lot of time and laughs to a bachelorette party. That makes the ending, with the news that a young character named Jodi (Emily Osment) has died of an overdose, all that much more jolting. This is a comedy confident enough to have a serious agenda. Treating addiction humorously works on a certain level, but, Chuck Lorre, one of the show’s creators, told The Hollywood Reporter, “you don’t lose sight of the fact that this is a issue. ” NEIL GENZLINGER ‘Occupied’ (Netflix, Pivot TV) This Norwegian political thriller had a great premise: When a Green Party prime minister announces that Norway is ending its oil production, the European Union backs a Russian occupation of the country (in the guise of industrial assistance). “April,” the premiere, detailed the complicated scenario and set the smart, twisty plot in motion in just 45 minutes of nonstop tension. Keep your eyes on the helicopter. MIKE HALE ‘Outlander’ (Starz) Caitriona Balfe has been giving an performance as the Claire since this series began in 2014, but her work in this May episode really stood out. Claire suffers a miscarriage, and Ms. Balfe’s portrayal of grief is . In another show, the episode would have built to that singular moment, but in this series, always fearless about depicting things that are hard to watch, it’s just one of several emotionally fraught developments. Among the others: the rape of a child, a rape by a king and a trial by witchcraft. To pack so much into an hourlong episode is an achievement to do so without any of it seeming rushed or gimmicky is astonishing. NEIL GENZLINGER ‘Silicon Valley’ (HBO) Episodes of HBO’s comedy tend to be as intricately assembled as the products its characters labor over. This one took the Pied Piper crew from joy at moving into lavish new offices — Dinesh could now play solitaire on six monitors at once — to the dawning realization that their utopian storage platform was being turned into a black box designed to hide information. And it included the unforgettable scene in which the cynical new chief executive played by Stephen Tobolowsky explained business realities while watching two of his thoroughbreds mate. MIKE HALE ‘Speechless’ (ABC) “Speechless,” a sitcom about a family with a nonverbal child, knocks down more preconceptions about the world of disabilities with each episode. This one, from early December, took on a particularly annoying story that crops up constantly on local news and social media: the one in which a child with Down syndrome or autism or whatever is allowed to score a touchdown or goal in a meaningless game while the opposing team stands down. It happens to JJ DiMeo, who has cerebral palsy (as does Micah Fowler, the actor who plays him) during gym class, and he is quick to use his device to tell everyone that he is not interested in being condescended to or pitied in that way. By the end of the episode, he has found a team for people with disabilities where the competition is real, and so is the contact — he ends up with a smashed face, just as nondisabled hockey players sometimes do. The message, as always on this show, is served with a brash brand of mirth. A side plot in the episode finds JJ’s mother (Minnie Driver) walking in on his aide (Cedric Yarbrough) in the shower. NEIL GENZLINGER ‘Superstore’ (NBC) The genial “Superstore,” about misfits who work at a establishment, is hardly the most daring or topical comedy on television, but the episode it broadcast five days before the November election somehow captured the bizarreness of the 2016 campaign better than many of television’s most earnest offerings did. The store was a polling site, and before the zany day was done, a customer used a voting booth as a changing booth, employees and management engaged in a battle of dueling pamphlets, and ballots were inadvertently destroyed, among other things. The names “Trump” and “Clinton” were barely mentioned, but the episode managed to capture the surreal electoral moment perfectly. NEIL GENZLINGER ‘Westworld’ (HBO) Between the opaque of its early episodes and the numbing exposition of its later ones, “Westworld” had a midseason sweet spot where it found the right balance of ideas and action — where it was just plain good science fiction. “The Adversary” stood out for Thandie Newton’s otherworldly performance as Maeve, the rebellious android who turned on her human handlers. Secretly touring the Westworld labs, she looked in wonder at her fellow robots being built, taught, repaired and disposed of. MIKE HALE ‘The Walking Dead’ (AMC) You could argue that this season premiere was excessively gory and thoughtless. Many viewers did. Or you could argue that it gave the most realistic, uncompromising rendering in the show’s seven years of how people would actually think and behave in a zombie apocalypse. MIKE HALE ‘The ’ (Fox) “Yeah, this is how I like my Mulder,” Scully says as Mulder wraps up a kooky rant. She might as well have been speaking for the entire “ ” fandom: The reboot of the series was, like many reboots, less spectacular than one might have hoped. But at least there was this one episode, written by Darin Morgan, who is responsible for some of the best and most beloved installments of the original series. “ ” includes loads of callbacks and nods to superfans, but it was also the only revival episode that captured the wry humor of the series. MARGARET LYONS | 1 |
Bizarre! Drone Records Speeding UFO Over Trees Please scroll down for video
POSSIBLE UFO SIGHTING? Man sees 'weirdest thing EVER' while filming fall leaves.
A Parkland County, Alberta, Canada resident has spotted what he believes are flying objects, orbs, and discs while operating a drone camera. The unnamed man was filming at Hasse Lake when he noticed this odd objects zooming through his frame while shooting footage of the fall foliage. The video, recorded with a Phantom3P drone, was sent to the MUTUAL UFO Network (MUFON). The man stated that it was "the weirdest thing" he has ever recorded.
The odd object was not noticed until the drone operator viewed the video at home. He was operating the drone from 500 meters away and did not physically see the weird shapes. The home video shows a collection of white spheres and one darker object that appears as a disc .
The object zoomed past the drone, swerved to the left and then vanished. It had to be moving at incredible speeds, as his camera was recording at 60 frames per second. The objects appear as a blur when a frame is paused. The man at first thought they must be birds, but then noticed birds in the frame that do not look anything like the objects.
The man, who has experience recording over 100 other drone videos, has never recorded anything like this. MUFON is currently investigating the case.
This article (Bizarre! Drone Records Speeding UFO Over Trees) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with full attribution and a link to the original source on Disclose.tv Related Articles | 0 |
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered an extended military operation against the Islamic State affiliate Abu Sayyaf and assured civilians that any violent action they take to subdue local terrorists will be forgiven in a court of law, following the arrest of a policewoman with ties to the group and the beheading of a soldier. [Abu Sayyaf, which has been active for years in the southern Philippines but more recently pledged allegiance to Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr has become active in southern Bohol Island, a new territory for them. Duterte’s administration has responded with a reinforced military presence in the region, while Duterte himself has threatened to cannibalize the jihadists. “I can eat you,” Duterte said this week. “Just give me salt and vinegar. True. Make me mad. Get me a terrorist. Give me salt and vinegar. I will eat his liver. ” In September, Duterte made a similar promise to “eat” Abu Sayyaf terrorists, following a series of attacks on soldiers. Duterte also assured civilians living in affected regions that he would endeavor to protect their right to . Speaking last week following an attack on soldiers in Bohol, Duterte said, “to the police … and even civilians interested to fight and kill, the order is dead or alive. ” “I intend to also arm the civilians and I will include the civilians … you don’t have to worry,” he said. “Just go to the police and make a report and state your truth … no problem. I’ll take care of you, I’ll pardon you, whatever. ” Duterte has taken a similar stand with drug criminals, assuring civilians of impunity if they kill drug offenders. In addition to the increasingly common clashes between Abu Sayyaf terrorists and police, law enforcement arrested a Philippine policewoman this week for ties to the group. Philippine National Police (PNP) Superintendent Maria Cristina Nobleza is under arrest after police found evidence that she had been engaged in an affair with an Abu Sayyaf bombmaker, potentially handing over sensitive information. The investigation into whether she was a source for the terrorist group is ongoing. Authorities also found the head of Sergeant Anni Siraji, a Philippine soldier abducted on April 20 by the terrorist group. Abu Sayyaf terrorists reportedly beheaded him this weekend after the soldier was assigned to work as an intermediary between the terrorists and police. “He is involved in peace efforts,” Brigadier General Cirilito Sobejana told reporters. “He is not actually a combatant. We are using him to engage stakeholders because he is a Tausug [like most Abu Sayyaf],” he added, referring to the man’s ethnicity. Dutertespokesman Ernesto Abella called the beheading a “barbaric act” over the weekend and vowed more military action. “The President is firm and decisive in the fight against terrorism,” he said. “He has ordered government troops to carry out sustained, focused and intense operations to put an end to lawless and gruesome acts of violence. ” The Philippine Star quotes another PNP official as stating, “[Our] teams will do nothing except to ‘eat Abu Sayyaf in breakfast, lunch and dinner. ’” Duterte, who had repeatedly demanded the United States stay out of Philippine matters during the Obama administration, recently changed his disposition, requesting that American soldiers help his country fight the jihadist insurgency in the south. “As we fought together to stay above the enemy then, so we should help each other to address the threats that confront our societies, our region, and our world,” Duterte said in April, reaching out to President Donald Trump, according to regional outlet News. | 0 |
“Cops don’t even want to make a damn traffic stop. Afraid they’ll wind up on Anderson Cooper. ” “Maybe [the police] are not going to have to be so politically correct. Maybe they’re being overly politically correct. ” The first quotation is from Frank Rourke (Bill Paxton) the morally suspect but brutally effective Los Angeles police detective at the center of CBS’s “Training Day. ” The second is from the new president of the United States. If you have a hard time telling them apart, who can blame you? The candidate Donald J. Trump, running on “law and order” rhetoric borrowed from Richard M. Nixon, talked crime as if he were recapping a ’70s cop drama. He repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that United States murder rates were the highest in 45 years. Cities, to him, were lawless hellscapes: “You walk down the street, you get shot. ” That’s essentially the outlook of two new police shows — “Training Day” and Fox’s “A. P. B. ” — each of which depicts American cities as zones that need a tough, boor to break rules, crack skulls and restore order. In the 2001 film “Training Day,” Denzel Washington played a corrupt narcotics detective with a knack for busting drug gangs and a weakness for skimming the take. CBS’s “Training Day,” beginning on Thursday and set in the present, has a tenuous connection to the original. Antoine Fuqua, the film’s director, is among the producers (who also include Jerry Bruckheimer, of “C. S. I. ”). But it perverts the dynamic of the film by making its central cop into a charming, roguish maverick. Here, Frank is partnered with Kyle Craig (Justin Cornwell) an idealistic “trainee” who is actually working undercover to investigate whether Frank has been crossing ethical lines. He has, and he’s damn proud of it. On their first outing, Frank lays out his philosophy: “Police work’s like sex, Kyle. It’s a lot more effective if it isn’t pretty. ” (I would not recommend this as a pickup line.) They cruise the squalid streets as Frank cites some statistics of Trumpian dubiousness: Crime is “up 300 percent,” which does not seem to square with recent Los Angeles police data. “It’s like ‘The Purge’ every night,” he says. Ugly times call for ugly tactics, he feels. If a few lies get told, a few suspects get tortured, a few confiscated dollars go missing — hey, freedom ain’t free. “Training Day” starts off building tension between idealism and security, but it ends up in the tank for Frank. Mr. Cornwell plays Kyle as an upstanding stiff, and the authorities investigating Frank are vindictive bureaucrats. Mr. Paxton gets to deliver the best lines and blow the most stuff up. Wry and swaggering, he’s the only one having any fun here, which pushes the audience to Frank’s side. In this formulaic “cop who won’t play by the book” setup, the book doesn’t stand a chance. Kyle decides to work with Frank rather than turn him in, and “Training Day” loses its nerve in the process, turning Frank into a raffish renegade who just says what everybody’s thinking. (His name is “Frank,” after all.) This “Training Day” is a version of the movie, which paired Mr. Washington with Ethan Hawke as the rookie. The racial dynamic is glaring as nostalgic white guy Frank fights to Make L. A. Great Again against largely minority criminals. An episode that pits him against Japanese mobsters is almost parodic. “How is a yakuza like a cue ball?” he says, while beating information out of one. “The harder you hit ’em, the better their English gets!” He ends up using an aluminum baseball bat to duel with a mob boss, a Yankee Doodle metaphor that’s as subtle as an aluminum baseball bat. If “Training Day” comes from the “Dirty Harry” school of pop authoritarianism, Fox’s “A. P. B. ,” beginning on Monday, is a Silicon Valley “Batman. ” Its origin story: on a business trip to Chicago, the billionaire engineer Gideon Reeves (Justin Kirk) watches his best friend die in an armed robbery. Outraged by the sluggish 911 response, he bullies the city government into giving him control of an overwhelmed police precinct. He promptly equips officers with drones, tasers and a smartphone app for instantaneous police response. RoboCop, meet UberCop. Chicago has become a flash point, to the right for its murder rate (Mr. Trump recently threatened to “send in the Feds! ”) and to the left for police brutality. But in “A. P. B. ,” all the city needs is — sound familiar? — a cocky, rude, billionaire to disrupt the establishment. “A. P. B. ,” inspired by a New York Times Magazine article about a police force in New Orleans, stumbled into its relevance. At heart, it doesn’t aim to be more than a disposable, action show. Mr. Kirk is disarmingly snide as the arrogant Gideon. There’s a little melodrama and a lot of and the crime stories are as mechanical as Gideon’s gadgets. The closest the show gets to big ideas about policing come when the detective Theresa Murphy (Natalie Martinez) reminds her new boss that computers can’t replace the human element. Like “Training Day,” “A. P. B. ” was in the works well before Election Day (though not before Black Lives Matter and the reaction to it). The shows’ content is mainly driven by the eternal needs of broadcast drama: heroes (or, increasingly, antiheroes) villains and stakes. You can’t make much of a crime procedural out of people not committing crimes. Occasionally, a serial like HBO’s “The Wire” or FX’s “The Shield” will question the tactics and premises of an objective like the war on drugs. In March, Fox will air “Shots Fired,” a provocative series about the complicated aftermath of a racially charged shooting in North Carolina. Most network police series don’t have that kind of ambition. But intentionally or not, “Training Day” and “A. P. B. ” have a message, anyway: that it’s a sick, sad world, and if you want to live, you’d best give a free hand to the kind of abrasive jerks you see on TV. They alone can fix it. | 1 |
Hillary Clinton Life Sized Gangster Statue Visits NYC LOL https://youtu.be/HSSPQxR0d2g NOTE CLINTON WROTE PART OF THE LAWS FOR THE HAIG -RACKET . https://youtu.be/Jljuppo7Qxk aLEX JONES SHOULD GET ALL HIS READERS OUT THERE IN A CONTEST WITH PLASTIC GUMMIES HILARY FOR PRISON , IF THEY WERE EVERYWHERE IT WOULD HAVE A PROFOUND AFFECT . | 0 |
Get short URL 0 4 0 0 The unique properties of the Caspian Sea has dogged decades of negotiations on the status of the body of water, political scientist Vladimir Sazhin told Sputnik Persian. Russian Defense Ministry Russian Caspian Flotilla Ships Successfully Complete Kalibr Missile Drill This week the 47th Session of the Special Working Group (SWG) on the development of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea met in Tehran, where deputy foreign ministers of the Caspian states met to discuss a possible agreement on the Sea's status.
Since 1991, the five Caspian Sea countries have made agreements on a range of areas including the environment, the protection of marine resources, security, co-operation in the case of emergency situations and military activities in the lake.
In practice, they have come to agreement regarding the division of the water surface into sovereign zones. According to this agreement, the five Caspian countries have the right to exploit marine resources up to 25 miles from their coast. This includes 15 nautical miles which constitutes national waters, plus another ten nautical miles in which each state has the exclusive right to fishing. The rest of the water is considered international.
Political analyst Vladimir Sazhin told Sputnik Persian that while the Caspian Sea countries have made a lot of progress on the issue, a final Convention is still far from being agreed.
"I will say straightaway that for the moment the prospect is extremely remote. At the moment the legal framework for the Caspian Sea is based on two agreements signed by Iran and the Soviet Union in 1921 and 1940," Sazhin said.
"Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, three new littoral states established after the collapse of the Soviet Union, do not recognize these agreements and are holding discussions about the future status of the sea."
"Of course, this is justified because after all there are now five, not two independent Caspian states, each of which has an equal right to this sea-lake, on the basis of their geographical location," Sazhin explained. © Sputnik/ Baku Summit to Enrich Persian Gulf With Caspian Sea Resources The issue of whether the Caspian Sea is actually a lake or a sea is at the core of many of the disagreements, since the two bodies of water are governed differently under international law.
Iran is convinced that the Caspian is a lake, and should be divided equally five ways, giving Tehran control over 20 percent of the water and sea bed.
However, Iran's four neighbors in the Caspian insist that, as reflected by its name, the body of water is really a sea. Therefore, they argue, the water and sea bed should be divided according to a modified median line.
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan have all signed agreements according to this principle. However, since Iran's Exclusive Economic Zone would constitute only 13 percent of the sea according to this principle, the proposal is rejected by Tehran.
Azerbaijan to the west of Iran and Turkmenistan to the east reject in turn Tehran's idea, which would deprive them of maritime territory. ... | 0 |
I disagree that State officials and their energy industry corporate bosses view this as a minor and temporary event.
I think they correctly see it as an existential threat, which explains the harsh and growing crackdown and repression. | 0 |
EU In this October 21, 2016 photo provided by Sea-Watch aid group refugees sit in an inflatable boat, background left, while a speedboat labeled Libyan Coast Guard, background right, and Sea-Watch members in a boat foreground arrive off the Libyan coast in the Mediterranean Sea. (Via AP)
The UN refugee agency, also known as the UNHCR, says the number of refugees who died in the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Europe in 2016 has reached an all-time high.
"We can confirm that at least 3,800 people have been reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean Sea so far this year, making the death toll in 2016 the highest ever recorded," said the UN refugee agency spokesman, William Spindler, on Wednesday.
The alarming surge, which surpassed the death toll of 3,771 for 2015, comes despite a considerable decline in the number of refugees crossing the Mediterranean in 2016.
More than a million people reached Europe via the Mediterranean in 2016, while fewer than 330,000 crossings have been reported so far this year.
The number of refugees heading to Europe has declined as the European Union in March signed a controversial deal with Turkey aimed at stemming the flow of refugees into the continent by forcing those deported from the EU to either be located in Turkey or go back to the original country of departure.
Since then, the route between Libya and Italy across the central Mediterranean has become the main way as pathways to Greece have been closed down.
According to the agency, the likelihood of perishing in the shorter route between Turkey and Greece was one in 88, while one death for every 47 arrivals was reported in the most perilous route between Libya and Italy in 2016.
The UNHCR attributed the surge mainly to the overcrowded “lower quality vessels, flimsy inflatable rafts” often used by smugglers. In this October 21, 2016 photo provided by Sea-Watch aid group refugees sit in an inflatable boat off the Libyan coast in the Mediterranean Sea. (Via AP)
25 refugees found dead in Mediterranean Sea, MSF says
Earlier on Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders, known as the MSF by its French acronym, said 25 bodies had been retrieved from a refugee boat during a rescue operation in the Mediterranean.
The MSF said its ship, Bourbon Argos, found the bodies aboard the vessel 26 nautical miles off Libya late on Tuesday. The vessel was carrying 107 survivors. The victims had apparently been burned, suffocated or drowned.
The recovery operation, which took place with the help of a team from the Berlin-based non-governmental organization Sea-Watch, took a long time as the boat was flooded with a mixture of fuel and seawater.
"The mixture of water and fuel was so foul that we could not stay on the boat for long periods. It was horrible," said Michele Telaro, the MSF project leader.
The MSF also saved 139 people aboard another dinghy on Tuesday. Sea-Watch recovered a body in another operation.
The Italian Coast Guard reported that 500 refugees were rescued from overcrowded boats on Tuesday.
Most of the asylum seekers that have triggered the unprecedented influx of refugees Europe has been dealing with over the past few years flee conflict-ridden zones in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria. Many blame Western policies toward the conflicts for the refugee crisis. Loading ... | 0 |
Nuclear war may break out for reasons that no one speaks about 01.11.2016 Print version Font Size Scientists from the United Nations University named a place in the world, where a nuclear conflict may break out already in the near future."The Indus river basin may be seen as a water time bomb, which may go off any time with increasing water scarcity, variability and progressively changing climate. There are similar water-related accumulating tensions and issues in other major river basins and UNU-INWEH has embarked on the scrupulous analysis of those to ensure peaceful and sustainable trajectory of river basin developments," UNU-INWEH Director Vladimir Smakhtin said. It goes about two warring countries, both being nuclear powers - India and Pakistan .A month ago, India announced the termination of the work of the bilateral Indus River Commission. The commission had been in charge of water relations between India and Pakistan since 1960, when the countries signed the Indus Waters Treaty. Islamabad, in turn, declared it a hostile action on the part of New Delhi and said that such a move of the Indian government would be regarded as "an act of declaration of war."The problem remains serious not only because of the irreconcilable hostility between India and Pakistan, but also because of the growing consumption of water in China and Afghanistan - the adjacent countries to India and Pakistan.The Indian subcontinent already has water supplies problems, and the further increase of the shortage of water resources may give rise to internal political instability in the country. The instability will in turn push the country's leadership to a move to "solve all problems at once." In March of 2016, former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Russia (in 1998-2004), Igor Ivanov, said that the danger of a nuclear war in Europe was higher than it was in the 1980s.Ivanov, who now heads the Russian Council for International Affairs, noted a high risk of confrontation with the use of nuclear weapons in Europe. According to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, Russia and the United States currently own fewer nuclear weapons than they did during the Cold War. However, even though both Russia and the USA have 7,000 warheads each, the countries still own approximately 90% of all nuclear weapons in the world.The former minister, speaking in Brussels to foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland and a US congressman, said: "We now have fewer nuclear warheads , but the risk that they will be used, is increasing."He also accused the United States and Europe of raising such risks by deploying the European missile defense system. A part of the nuclear shield is being built on one of the bases in Poland. The missile defense system will be deployed in 2018, which is particularly sensitive for the Kremlin, as the US missile defense system will be taken very close to Russia's borders. Pravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru USA gets ready for nuclear war? | 0 |
The CDC has warned swimmers about pool water contaminated by people pooping in them following an increase in cases of a parasitic infection. [CNN reports that cases of a parasitic infection linked to pools in the United States have doubled between 2014 and 2016 according to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report issued by the CDC. Michele Hlavsa, chief of the CDC’s Healthy Swimming Program, stated in an email, “Cryptosporidium is a germ that can make people sick with diarrhea for up to three weeks. ” The parasite can be spread by the feces of an infected person. The CDC received reports of as many as 32 outbreaks linked to swimming pools and water playgrounds in 2016. In comparison, there were only 16 reports in 2014. In Ohio, nearly 2000 people became sick due to being infected by cryptosporidium or “crypto. ” Symptoms of the infection include watery diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting. “Parents can encourage their children not to swallow the water when swimming,” Hlavsa said, warning that swallowing a single mouthful of contaminated water can lead to illness. “Also, take kids on bathroom breaks every hour, and check diapers in a area and not right next to the pool,” Hlavsa explained. “We all share the water we swim in, but we don’t want to share germs, pee or poop. ” The crypto infection is a major contributor to diarrheal illnesses in toddlers and infants in countries across Africa and Asia. It can also lead to poor nutrition which can be dangerous for young children. “Crypto is extremely hard to kill with normal levels of chlorine, which is why it’s important to keep Crypto out of pools in the first place,” Hlavsa wrote. “We can all help do this by not swimming or letting our kids swim if sick with diarrhea. ” “Most people who have healthy immune systems will recover from Crypto without treatment,” Hlavsa stated, but she noted that individuals afflicted with diarrhea for more than three days should contact their doctor. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 0 |
The U. S. military cannot afford to wait when it comes to modernizing and recapitalizing America’s nuclear capabilities, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told lawmakers. [In written testimony prepared for Wednesday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing on the military assessment of nuclear deterrence requirements, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the noted that the armed forces had placed nuclear deterrence, including weapons, infrastructure, and personnel, at the top of their modernization priorities list. He added: Nuclear modernization can no longer be deferred. Previous decisions to defer modernization have resulted in overlapping acquisition programs today, which present two major consequences. First, any disruption to the current program of record or future acquisition plans will introduce risk to our strategic [nuclear] deterrent … Second, the cost of funding modernization and replacement of the entire nuclear enterprise all at once is substantial. Current projections already show that the Pentagon is expected to increase spending on the nuclear deterrent by billions, from about 3 percent (nearly $20 billion) of its fiscal year 2016 budget to more than double (6. 5 percent) the amount in the late 2020s when the budget is likely to be higher. “Despite these risks and costs, there is no higher priority for the Joint Force than fielding all components of an effective nuclear deterrent, including weapons, infrastructure, and personnel,” Selva told lawmakers. “The fundamental role of U. S. nuclear forces is to deter a strategic attack against the United States, its allies, and its partners,” he added. “Simply put, nuclear weapons pose the only existential threat to the United States and there is no substitute for the prospect of a devastating nuclear response to deter that threat. ” Although the general stressed that it is high time to overhaul American’s nuclear capabilities, he noted that the United States is currently capable of responding to an unforeseen emergency. Gen. Selva pointed out that Russia and China pose the top strategic nuclear threats to the United States but added that the inventory of adversaries is growing. “No one should doubt that our weapons, delivery systems, the infrastructure that supports them, and the personnel who operate, monitor, and maintain them are prepared today to respond to any contingency,” he declared. “Our current challenge, however, is to maintain this high level of readiness and capability as long as the policy and strategy of this nation depends in part on nuclear weapons for its security. ” Currently, the U. S. military’s nuclear deterrent capabilities stand near a crossroads. “We are now at a point where we must concurrently recapitalize each component of our nuclear deterrent,” explained the general during his verbal testimony. “The nuclear weapons themselves, the triad of strategic delivery platforms, the systems to support our decision processes, the networks that connect the president to our field forces, and our tactical aircraft that can be equipped with nonstrategic nuclear weapons. ” For more than two decades, the U. S. military has been forced to defer some nuclear force modernization to deal with other more urgent needs while ensuring that the country’s nuclear capabilities and infrastructure remain safe, reliable, and secure. “In making those decisions we have squeezed about all the life we can out of the systems we currently possess,” Selva told lawmakers. “So that places an extra premium on a very deliberate investment strategy to replace those systems as existing systems age out of the inventory. ” Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U. S. Strategic Command, testified alongside Selva. He noted that other nations, including U. S. adversaries, have continued to modernize and revamp their nuclear abilities as America squeezes the life out of its nuclear weapons stockpile, delivery systems, and other essential infrastructures at a time when the U. S. is facing unpredictable threats posed by the current security environment. “Maintaining strategic deterrence, assurance and escalation control capabilities requires a multifaceted investment approach and a sustained commitment to maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent,” noted Gen. Hyten, adding that “nuclear deterrent is only as effective as the command and control that enables it to function. ” Nuclear weapons continue to play a significant role in keeping the U. S. homeland safe. Nevertheless, America has drastically reduced “the role and prominence of nuclear weapons in our defense planning” and “both the number of deployed weapons and the overall size of our stockpile” since the end of the Cold War, testified ret. U. S. Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. In his written testimony, he noted that “shaped by presidential initiatives and arms reduction agreements, by 2018 the number of weapons deployed on triad systems will be barely one‐tenth of Cold War highs. ” | 1 |
Home / Military-Industrial Complex / In Light of Recent Attacks on Police, White House Considers Re-Militarization of American Cops In Light of Recent Attacks on Police, White House Considers Re-Militarization of American Cops Claire Bernish July 22, 2016 8 Comments
Reactionary politics and legislation put us on hamster wheels guaranteeing a number of issues will never change, and militarized, brutal policing marks a prime example of this problem — particularly now, following a smattering of attacks on officers in Dallas and elsewhere .
In a reactionary response to several shootings of officers, Pres. Obama now plans to review — and potentially repeal — the May 2015 ban on police obtaining military surplus equipment like riot gear, explosives, armored vehicles, grenade launchers, bayonets, and more.
In an exclusive interview, Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, and Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, told Reuters changes to the ban on the transference of military equipment to law enforcement agencies nationwide will be reviewed by Obama in the wake of those attacks.
While violence from either side of the Thin Blue Line should be neither tolerated nor condoned, the militarization of police forces — in both equipment and training — has inarguably fueled the epidemic of police brutality that spawned these retaliatory attacks.
A repeal of even part of this ban, particularly as now-nervous officers increasingly view the public with suspicions any encounter could escalate without warning, will inevitably fan the flames on this nation’s powderkeg.
According to an unnamed White House official cited by Reuters , the administration regularly reviews rules concerning military surplus wares to ensure police receive the “tools they need to protect themselves and their communities while at the same time providing the level of accountability that should go along with the provision of federal equipment.”
Accountability, however — in contrast to the weapons and gear of war on American streets — is in extremely short supply. Countless questionable uses of excessive force by officers against civilians, including riot-clad, MRAP-backed harassment and menacing of otherwise peaceful protesters, have gone unanswered by disciplinary or punitive action.
Images from Ferguson, Missouri, during protests after Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed Michael Brown — of armored vehicles rolling down the street, riot gear-clad and heavily armed police launching the same tear gas banned internationally in war at protesters and journalists, alike, and cordoned-off ‘free speech zones’ — catapulted the issue of militarization into the glare of the national and world spotlights.
Obama eventually succumbed to enormous pressure from human rights advocates, activists, and swaths of the public by implementing the ban not long afterward, citing “a substantial risk” of police “overusing” or “misusing” military gear — as clearly evidenced in Ferguson and elsewhere against, ever-so ironically, anti-police brutality demonstrations.
But the retaliatory attacks on officers in several cities has twitchy cops begging for the return of the program of federal grants to obtain further equipment — though, notably, the ban did not affect departments’ obtainment of these goods from private defense companies.
“The White House thought this kind of gear was intimidating to people, but they didn’t know what purpose it serves,” Pasco stated without even a hint of irony.
Though protests in Ferguson did, indeed, turn violent, the overwhelming majority of protests against police violence have not — though officers in riot gear menacing peaceful demonstrators exercising constitutionally-protected rights of assembly and free speech often manufacture violence where none existed.
Protests in Baton Rouge over the shooting death of Alton Sterling evidence exactly that — demonstrators congregated peacefully at an intersection and permissibly on private property were pushed into streets and promptly arrested for … being in the streets. As the public is increasingly left without viable options to air grievances free of police intimidation — an issue even the non-activist segment of the public recognizes as inexcusable — backlash by the furious is a virtual guarantee.
Repealing the ban at a time of frayed law enforcement nerves will essentially allow military equipment to flood the country — a terrifying move as a growing number of cops have literally declared war on the people they putatively swore oaths to protect.
Pasco and Johnson told Reuters White House chief legal counsel Neil Eggleston will be reviewing the ban.
Meanwhile, no move toward the reform of training that teaches police to view the public with heightened suspicion, if not as the outright enemy, remains a pipe dream of those calling for an end to State violence.
In reviewing the ban — and to understand the outrage over the epidemic of police brutality — it would be wise for politicians, the public, and the administration to consider this simple cycle: unaddressed problems can only be compounded by reinforcing the source of the original problem.
Too bad the simplicity will be lost to the purely propagandized ‘war on cops’ narrative, anxious police, and a public eager to validate police force.
Clearly, the escalation of this cycle won’t be halted anytime soon. Share | 1 |
A regional cartel boss and his security detail engaged in a firefight with Mexican Marines were eradicated when a military helicopter rained gunfire from above. [The gun battle took place in the Mexican state of Nayarit where authorities were trying to arrest a top leader within the Beltran Leyva Cartel. A video taken by a citizen journalists and shared on social media revealed the moment when a Mexican military helicopter used what appears to be rotary machine gun commonly referred to as a to fire hundreds of rounds at the gunmen in mere seconds. The Mexican military had been trying to arrest Juan Francisco “ ” Padron Sanchez, a top ranking member within the Beltran Leyva Cartel. Authorities tracked the capo to a neighborhood in the city of Tepic, Nayarit where the gunmen made their stand. Padron Sanchez and seven of his gunmen died in the gun battle, the Mexican Navy confirmed to Breitbart Texas. It remains unclear if any military personnel were injured during the fighting. As Breitbart Texas reported, the Beltran Leyva Cartel recently lost another of their key regional leaders who was arrested in a ritzy suburb in the border state of Nuevo León. Authorities in that state arrested Eleazar “El Cochi” Palomo Castillo, who was the Beltran Leyva Cartel’s top leader in the area. Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “M. A. Navarro” from Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas “J. M. Martinez from Piedras Negras, Coahuila and Tony Aranda from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. | 0 |
Chamae Rose: The Herb That Contains Monatomic Gold, Detoxifies & Creates Clear Skin Oct 26, 2016 0 0
Chamae Rose, or Chamaebatiaria millefolium, is an herb that grows in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and may be one of the most interesting and potentially helpful herbs out there. While many incredible and medicinal herbs exist, the location where Chamae Rose grows is the reason for the fascinating story behind it. Chamae Rose, or Desert Bush. Source
Chamae Rose became well known when Patrick Bailey , a leader in research and development in the dietary supplement industry heard of a story behind this herb. What was told to him was that a Native American woman was allegedly curing people of AIDS, HIV, cancers, diabetes, gout, pneumonia and others with using only a single herb.
He initially disregarded the information but an insistent friend who offered to introduce him to the lady convinced Patrick to meet with her and hear her story. At the time, she was 81 and Bailey reported that she looked no older than 60, and even without any gray hair.
She told Bailey that when she was 60, she had congestive heart failure and kidney failure and was being advised by her tribe’s elders to prepare to pass over. Her and her husband decided to take a visit to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which is a sacred place for her ancestors. One night during her stay, she had a dream of being instructed to drink a cup of tea and that it was not her time to go. When she woke up, she noticed the Desert Bushes that surrounded her and her husband and she decided she needed to dig up the roots of the bush and make tea from it. Within one month of regularly consuming the tea, all of her ailments vanished. Soon after, she began helping many others.
Before leaving his meeting with the Native American healer, she told Patrick Bailey that the property (which she and her husband bought after visiting the land) was on a large white mineral deposit. It occurred to Bailey that maybe the soil contained what David Hudson had researched and called, monatomic gold. Four weeks later, test results came back on the soil and it did indeed contain monatomic elements, including monatomic gold. Source
What is different about using Chamae Rose to obtain monatomic gold, is that the roots from the plant uptake the monatomic elements and utilize them in the plant. When the plant is ingested by a human, we absorb the monatomic elements. It is believed that the massive healing power with Chamae Rose is because of the monatomic elements in it and the energy transfer it induces from plant to person.
Monatomic elements can be explained :
“The center of the periodic chart of elements consists of what are known as the “transition elements,” meaning that they can transit from metallic to monatomic or diatomic via chemical treatment or through other means (what some would refer to as “shadow chemistry” or “arcane chemistry” or even “alchemy”). Take gold for example. When you have two or more gold atoms in a microcluster, it will have metallic properties, but if you have only one atom, it will then have ceramic properties, which means that it becomes chemically inert but at the same time will have superconductive capabilities even at room temperature. The weight of these amazing materials can also change by heating, becoming lighter, even to the point of levitation. Because it is chemically inert, it can be ingested for health, wellbeing and super-energizing at the cellular level.
Not only do our cells communicate via chemicals and electricity in our nervous system and intercellularly throughout other processes, but also through the exchange of photons, or light particles. The human body is a marvelous bioelectric machine, and all of its processes depend on the clear and (ideally) unimpeded conduction of electrical “messages” required to carry out those processes. Light, as proven by fiber optics, can carry more and actually “purer” information. As mentioned above, these materials are superconductive, and therefore change our bodies at the cellular level, from our organs, muscles and tissues to our brain and nervous system, into superconductors of a greatly increased flow of photons, greatly increased because the materials themselves are in a sense “liquid (or powdered) light.” It’s like installing ‘gold tipped’ wires on your brain synapse. Put another way, you could say that monatomics transform the body’s “wiring” from being simple copper cable to being wired with fiber-optics, where the same “width” of wiring is able to carry 1,000 times as much ‘processing’ information.”
Harmonic Innerprizes , which is the company started by Patrick Bailey and is the only known company selling Chamae Rose, says there are other benefits of Chamae Rose in that it also contains many polyphenols and antioxidants, which helps to detoxify the body. In fact, Chamae Rose is known to detoxify the kidneys, lungs, liver, throat and bladder, as well as help with sinus and allergy issues. Because of it’s ability to detoxify, it is known as the beauty herb because it creates healthier, clearer skin. As we cleanse the inner organs, this reflects itself in the appearance and health of our skin.
What are your thoughts? Is this something you have used before? What do you think about monatomic gold? Cheers to our health!
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and practices health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information on how to receive health coaching for yourself, a family member or a friend as well as view other inspiring articles. Vote Up Lance Schuttler Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and is Director of Creative Health Non-Profits for Personable Media. He is passionate about holistic and naturopathic medicine as well as helping to bring awareness to an efficient, sustainable and health-promoting transition that our world’s current socio-economic model is rapidly undergoing. | 1 |
SAY you’re doing a web search on something like the flu. The next thing you know, an ad for a flu remedy pops up on your web browser, or your video streaming service starts playing a commercial for Tylenol. The content of those ads is no coincidence. Digital ads are able to follow people around the Internet because advertisers often place invisible trackers on the websites you visit. Their goal is to collect details on everywhere you go on the Internet and use that data to serve targeted ads to your computer, smartphone and connected television. This global commercial surveillance of consumers is poised to become more extensive as tech companies expand into the Internet of Things, a category that includes wearable computers and connected home appliances like smart thermostats and refrigerators. Amazon, eBay, Facebook and Google can already follow users from device to device because people log in to their services with the same IDs on various gadgets. For other marketing companies, tracking people on multiple devices has become a holy grail. The process is complex, because some lack the direct relationship with people that the giant tech companies already have. Only about 6 percent of marketers can reliably track a customer on all of that customer’s devices, according to the research firm eMarketer. But advertisers are working toward the goal. “Our privacy is completely under assault with all these connected devices,” said Jeremiah Grossman, the founder of WhiteHat Security, a web security firm. So what better time to get a head start on defending yourself against web snoops (as if email trackers, which this column covered last year, weren’t annoying enough already)? Many companies offer tools to help obscure your digital footprints while you’re browsing the web. We researched and tested four tracker blockers and found their results varied widely. In the end, the app Disconnect became our tool of choice. Here’s how web tracking works: In general, targeting individuals with digital ads involves a sophisticated ecosystem of third parties — like online advertising networks, data brokers and analytics companies — that compile information on consumers. When you visit websites, these companies typically pick out your browser or phone using technologies like cookies, which contain unique alphanumeric identification tags that can enable trackers to identify your activities as you move from site to site. To sell ads delivered to certain categories of consumers, like suburban singles looking for romance, companies may sync these ID tags to pinpoint individuals. The downside is, your browsing history may contain sensitive information about your health concerns, political affiliations, family problems, religious beliefs or sexual habits. “More than just being creepy, it’s a huge violation of privacy,” said Cooper Quintin, a privacy advocate for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit that also offers the tool Privacy Badger. “People need to be able to read things and do things and talk about things without having to worry that they’re being watched or recorded somewhere. ” We took a close look at four free privacy tools: Ghostery, Disconnect, RedMorph and Privacy Badger. We tested them with the Google Chrome browser on the top 20 news websites, including Yahoo News, CNN, The Huffington Post and The New York Times. The tracker busters generally work in similar ways. You download and install an for a web browser like Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. The companies each compile a list of known web domains that serve trackers or show patterns of tracking services. Then when someone connects to a website, the tools prevent the browser from loading any element that matches their blacklist. Ghostery, a popular tracker blocker, was the most difficult to set up. When you install it, it asks you to manually select the trackers you want to block. Our problem with that approach is that there are hundreds of trackers, and most consumers probably won’t recognize most of them, putting the onus on users to research which specific services they might wish to block. Scott Meyer, the chief executive of Ghostery, said this had been a deliberate design choice. When trackers are blocked, parts of websites may not function, so it is less confusing to let users experiment and decide which ones to block on their own, he said. “We block nothing by default,” he said. “That’s in direct contrast to other companies who are saying, ‘We’re turning everything off and let you turn whatever you want back on.’ That’s way too complex for users. ” The tracker blocking tool RedMorph takes the opposite approach. It blocks every tracking signal it can detect and lets people decide which ones to allow. For parents concerned about their children’s Internet use, RedMorph also offers a service to filter out certain sites or block certain swear words or other language they find inappropriate. “When you go home, you lock the door and you may pull down the shades at night,” said Abhay Edlabadkar, the chief executive of RedMorph. “You should have the same level of privacy control over your Internet activities. ” In our tests, RedMorph was the most thorough with blocking trackers. It blocked 22 of them on USAToday. com, whereas Privacy Badger blocked seven, Disconnect blocked eight and Ghostery detected eight. But in the process, RedMorph caused the most collateral damage. It blocked some videos on the websites for CNN, USA Today, Bleacher Report, The New York Times and The Daily News. It also broke the recommended reading list on Business Insider and a Twitter box on BuzzFeed. For people who run into issues loading websites, the company offers an “Easy Fix” button to stop blocking a website’s trackers, but that’s hardly an ideal solution when it causes so many websites to malfunction. Mr. Edlabadkar of RedMorph said the tool was blocking some videos or recommended reading lists because they were loading only after a tracker had been loaded first. That leaves Privacy Badger and Disconnect. Privacy Badger detects domains that users are connecting with when they’re loading a website and blocks those domains only if they are determined to be tracking you. Its widget shows sliding bars of trackers it has detected. The ones in red are blocked and the green ones are allowed. Disconnect takes a similarly nuanced approach. The company said some tracking was fair and necessary for a website to work properly — for example, if a site like The New York Times is using analytics to collect information about readers, as it describes in its privacy policy. However, Disconnect will block trackers from third parties that are collecting, retaining or sharing user data. On its website, it publishes lists of trackers it blocks and those it allows, along with explanations of its policy. “We really focus on privacy rather than blocking ads that are done in a respectful way,” said Casey Oppenheim, the chief executive of Disconnect. “It’s important we have the ability for publishers to survive and make money. I think there’s a middle ground. ” In the end, we picked Disconnect as our favorite tool because it was the easiest to understand. It organizes the types of tracking requests it is blocking into different categories: advertising, analytics, social media and content. Mr. Grossman of WhiteHat Security also tested tracking blockers and chose Disconnect for similar reasons. He breaks his online activities into two separate web browsers to make himself more difficult to track: On one browser, he does everyday tasks like reading news articles on the other browser he logs into accounts that are linked to his personal identity, like online banking sites and Amazon. But Mr. Grossman said that in the broad arms race between consumers and advertisers, the advertisers always find some way to outmaneuver us. “We’re talking industries totally designed to track you online,” he said. “That’s their mission in life. ” | 1 |
In recent months, Tribune Publishing Company installed new executives, overhauled its business strategy, admitted accounting weaknesses and issued shares to fund an acquisition that was ultimately rejected by regulators. For the Gannett Company, the owner of USA Today, all that turmoil looked like an opportunity. On Monday, Gannett went public with an unsolicited bid to acquire Tribune Publishing, an offer it had put forth in a letter on April 12 that was subsequently reviewed by The New York Times. After two weeks without a definitive answer from Tribune Publishing, Gannett decided to go straight to shareholders, disclosing the bid and corresponding letter. “With the challenges we face today, waiting is not really an option,” Bob Dickey, the chief executive and president of Gannett, said in a telephone interview. “We need to continue moving our company forward. ” Tribune Publishing, which owns newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, has hired advisers to consider the bid, which amounted to $815 million including debt and other liabilities, the company said in a statement. The unsolicited bid is a rare move in the newspaper industry, but it underscores the industry’s rising desperation. In the last several years, publishers have rushed to consolidate as newspaper prices have fallen. Many see these moves as a way to cut costs and build scale as they struggle with declining circulation and dwindling print advertising revenue. The Los Angeles Times is widely considered Tribune’s crown jewel, but Gannett has broader interests. Acquiring all of Tribune’s newspapers would expand Gannett’s portfolio to nearly 120 newspapers and give it a bigger presence in major metro markets like Baltimore, Hartford and Orlando, Fla. “We’re very interested in the entire company,” Mr. Dickey said. “Their geographic footprint fits very, very nicely for us if you look at where we’re currently situated across the United States. ” Gannett could also cut costs by eliminating duplicate departments and management positions, Mr. Dickey said. He estimated these savings at $50 million, a number that some experts saw as a bit low. Gannett’s expansion could help it appeal more to national advertisers as well. It was a pursuit that apparently could not wait. Days after Gannett completed its acquisition of Journal Media Group this month, adding 15 daily newspapers to its repertoire, the company started preparing a bid for Tribune Publishing. Gannett hired advisers and submitted a letter to Tribune Publishing’s management team with an offer of $12. 25 a share. Briefly, the two sides had considered a grace period of several weeks so that Tribune Publishing could consult with its advisers about the offer, according to people briefed on the proposal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private negotiations. Ultimately, Gannett was unwilling to wait, and took its bid, which represented a 63 percent premium to Friday’s closing price, straight to Tribune’s shareholders. The recent upheaval at Tribune Publishing is the latest the company has faced. Soon after the real estate tycoon Sam Zell bought the company’s predecessor, Tribune Company, for $8. 2 billion in 2007, it filed for bankruptcy, with $7. 6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion. The culture at the company had turned poisonous, and Tribune Tower, once a symbol of a great media company, became a place where executives used sexual innuendo and profane invective. In August 2014, Tribune Publishing was spun off from Tribune Company, now called Tribune Media, and saddled with about $350 million in debt. Since then, its stock has tumbled as its newspapers, like many print publications, have struggled to offset the decline in print with digital growth. In the last year, The Los Angeles Times has become a flash point for disagreement between the company and its California newspapers. Austin Beutner, The Times’s publisher, was ousted last fall after only a year in the position. In a further sign of discontent between Tribune Publishing and its California newspapers — in addition to The Los Angeles Times, the company also owns The San Diego — the two entities have sparred over financial projections. A potential savior for Tribune emerged in the form of Michael Ferro, a Chicago entrepreneur, who in early February acquired a stake worth $44 million at the time in the company through his Merrick Ventures. Less than three weeks later, Jack Griffin was replaced as chief executive by Justin C. Dearborn, a close associate of Mr. Ferro’s and the former chief executive of Merge Healthcare. Soon after, Tribune Publishing announced it was combining the role of editor and publisher across its newspapers, a decision that raised questions about editorial independence. Some also wondered whether editors had the business acumen to manage their newspapers. Recently, Tribune had sought to expand its reach in California by acquiring Freedom Communications, which owns The Orange County Register and The of Riverside, Calif. but that bid failed after the Justice Department objected. Adding to Tribune’s woes, the company admitted for the second year in a row in its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had identified “material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. ” Not long after, the company dismissed its accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers. When asked about Tribune Publishing’s accounting improprieties, Mr. Dickey said: “We’re very confident that we can resolve whatever issues that are there. ” Ultimately, Tribune shareholders may be hard pressed to find a more compelling offer. A group including the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad had been considering buying The Los Angeles Times, but there was no indication on Monday that Gannett’s offer would spur competing bids. “Given the uncertainty of a turnaround in a secularly declining business, we think TPUB will eventually take the offer,” Matthew Brooks, an analyst at Macquarie Securities, said in an email. “It may also be hard for Ferro to justify a higher price, given he paid less than $10 a few months ago and is effectively controlling the company now. ” Mr. Ferro’s Merrick Ventures, Oaktree Capital Management and Primecap Management Company own more than 40 percent of the company combined. “With Michael Ferro having taken over as chairman of the Tribune board only three months ago, board support becomes a complicated issue,” Lance Vitanza and Brian Denes, analysts at CRT Capital, said in a note. “What we do know is that hostile takeovers are virtually in the newspaper industry, where cultural fit is paramount and regulatory concerns loom large. ” | 1 |
$18 10 Things Anthony Weiner Did That Were Worse Than Storing Hillary Clinton’s Emails on His Computer Posted on Oct 29, 2016
By Juan Cole / Informed Comment
WaPo is reporting that it was the FBI investigation of Anthony Weiner that caused new emails between Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin to come to light, which apparently might include forwarded State Department memos or correspondence related to State.
Nothing produces upchuck in the throat like another headline with the name “Anthony Weiner” in it. But here’s an opportunity for me to reprint a column I once did on the things Weiner has said and done worse than sexting. The FBI was investigating him for sending suggestive messages to an under-aged girl.
The nation is fixated on Trump’s groping and Clinton’s email server (uh, the State Department and the NSA got hacked folks, so it isn’t the case that government servers are secure) and, well, maybe it was fixated for a brief second on Weiner’s sexting. But we don’t seem interested in serious policy questions like Syria and Iraq. Oh, the public got all het up about ISIL in 2014 and demanded something be done, but now it has lost interest.
So here’s an actually important policy issue on which Weiner shaped public opinion and helped make policy.
The real scandal surrounding Anthony Weiner is that he is bigoted against Palestinians and has misused his position in Congress to support punitive policies against them. Americans appear to be bored by policy, titillated by private peccadilloes. But it is the policies that are important. Mahatma Gandhi was once kicked out of a brothel in South Africa. No one judges him by his lapses. Weiner, in contrast to Gandhi, has not worked for peace but has rather given knee-jerk support to the worst policies of the most far right-wing parties in Israel toward Palestinians. A social liberal in American terms, Weiner is so blinded by his allegiance to Israel and so studied in his ignorance of the Middle East that he has played a uniformly sinister role in that aspect of foreign policy.
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Weiner:
1. Called for Columbia University professor Joseph Massad to be fired for being critical of Israel; Weiner thus spearheaded a new McCarthyism.
2. On the Israeli attack, in international waters, on the Mavi Marmara relief ship , Weiner sputtered: “”If you want to instigate a conflict with the Israeli navy it isn’t hard to do. They were offered alternatives. Instead they chose to sail into the teeth of an internationally recognized blockade.” The blockade of Gaza civilians is a breach of international law; it is not internationally recognized and has on the contrary been condemned by almost every nation and human rights organization.
3. Alleged that the New York Times is anti-Israel: “Amnesty International in particular, has always had bias against Israel, and frankly I would argue that in many cases, the New York Times has, as well.”
4. Alleged that the Palestine Liberation Organization is still listed by the US as a terrorist organization. It was dropped from the list over 2 decades ago.
5. Tried to bar the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations from New York.
6. Alleged that Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestine Authority, is not the head of the PLO. He is.
7. Refused to condemn the use by Israel of cluster bombs on the civilian farms of south Lebanon in 2006.
8. Alleged that the Israeli army does not occupy the West Bank and that there is no Israeli Army presence in the West Bank.
9. Called Israel’s [2009] war on Gaza a “humane” war. 400 children were killed.
10. Voted for Iraq War authorization in 2002, before later turning against the war. TAGS: | 0 |
A Plea from California to Not Replicate in Canada the Attacks on the Academic Careers of Steven Salaita and Norman Finkelstein for Opposing "the Persecution of the Indigenous Arab Populations of the Occupied Territories." 3 Shares
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TO THE EDITOR OF THE LETHBRIDGE HERALD ON NOVEMBER 15, 2016.
As an American with Canadian friends, I have been following with some interest and concern the unfolding story of Anthony Hall’s recent suspension from his position at the .
I have looked to our northern neighbour as one admires a wiser, older sibling. Canadians to me seem less radical, less extreme, and more ethical than my own more reactive countrymen and women. Canada, after all, accepted our draft dodgers of the ’70s who questioned the morality and justness of the Vietnam War. To me, that was something to be lauded. Imagine my chagrin upon learning that a university professor with a 30-year career, who encourages critical analysis and social responsibility, had been suspended without pay, apparently without a formal and unprejudiced investigation occurring first.
Hall’s suspension reminds me of the famous cases of two American academics, Steven Salaita and Norman Finkelstein. Both were openly critical of Zionism and spoke against the marginalization and persecution of the indigenous Arab populations of the Occupied Territories. Both were ostracized publicly for their vocal support of Palestinian rights and lost their jobs.
I adjure the not to take a page out of the American playbook by punishing academics who dare to speak up for the marginalized peoples of the world. Please live up to the values of the wiser, more ethical and socially conscientious northern neighbour you have always represented for Americans like myself.
Teresa Ghannam
Sacramento, Calif.
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By AHT Staff The Genocide of Indigenous Peoples in North America and Palestine-Israel Prof. Hall speaks at the Haldimand Deed Recognition Dinner at Kanata in the Mohawk Village near Brantford Ontario. Prof. Hall has been the...
By Prof. Tony Hall UK Coverage of the Debacle at the | 0 |
Guest Guest | 0 |
ISTANBUL — As a rebel faction of Turkey’s military began a violent attempt to topple the elected government, the country’s top officer, Gen. Hulusi Akar, was held at gunpoint in his office in the capital and told for the first time about what was happening. “Sir, the operation is starting,” a officer said, according to General Akar in testimony that was leaked to the Turkish news media and verified by a senior Turkish official as authentic. “We will round up people, battalions. Brigades are on their way. You will see a bit later. ” General Akar replied: “What the hell are you saying? What operation? Are you a maniac? Never!” The plotters hoped to secure General Akar’s participation in the conspiracy, but his refusal was decisive in ensuring this coup attempt would fail — unlike those in Turkey in 1971 and 1980, which were supported up and down the chain of command. Now, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wages a widespread purge, jailing and suspending tens of thousands of state employees, the military, which has long served as a unifying force for the country, is deeply divided, diminished and discredited. Nearly half of the top generals and admirals have been jailed or dismissed and thousands of foot soldiers charged. More than 1, 500 officers were dishonorably discharged this week in advance of a meeting of the Supreme Military Council in Ankara on Thursday, where leaders were expected to consider a broader restructuring of the military. Late Thursday night, Mr. Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, spoke only briefly, saying that several top generals, including General Akar, would keep their jobs. Meanwhile, images on social media of conscripts’ being slapped and taunted have shocked a country that venerates the common soldier, as have allegations by Amnesty International that military detainees have been tortured. “With its main pillar, the military, broken, the Turkish state will no longer be able to check a divided society or effectively counter security threats,” said Halil Karaveli, a senior fellow at the Central Institute and Silk Road Studies Program. That is a blow, not only to the country, but also to NATO, of which Turkey is a member. The Turkish military is a crucial ally in fighting terrorism, reining in the Islamic State, and in controlling the migrant tide that has overwhelmed Europe. Chaos within the military symbolizes not only its waning power in the country — and the rise of the police, which Mr. Erdogan built up as a bulwark to the military — but also its diminished reliability as a partner to the West. But it is perhaps the psychological blow that is greatest for a nation that is so badly splintered. Religious and secular, rich and poor, every man served in the Turkish military, and to all, the urban elite and pious poor, it was a symbol of Turkish identity. Alp Konak, who works at a hotel in Istanbul, explained how even within his family, the military was able to bridge differences between brothers. He said he was liberal, but his brother was very religious. “But the time we all got really close and came together was after we completed our military service, because we were all doing it for the future of our country,” he said. “We all believed in it. ” Now, both supporters and opponents of Turkey’s divisive president, Mr. Erdogan, feel deceived. They thought the military had been depoliticized, stripped of those who would undermine democracy to wield the power of force. But they were wrong. “That is what is so devastating about the coup attempt, the treachery involved,” said Soner Sencan, 31, a hairdresser in Istanbul, who said his closest friends were ones he met in the military. “Now no one will trust each other, and the most powerful, unified force of this country is broken. ” Within the diminished military ranks, the officer corps is badly split, and among the rank and file and their families, there is a sense of betrayal. Many soldiers seem to have been dragged into the plot by being told they were conducting an exercise. “These kids did not know anything,” said Nazli Tanburaci Altac, a lawyer in Ankara, the capital, who is representing conscripts who were detained. Speaking of her clients, she said: “The only thing they say is, ‘Those we considered as brothers, fathers, threw us in to the fire and went away. They told us there was an exercise.’ ” The Turkish military, the second largest in NATO, has a budget of roughly $20 billion a year and an army of more than 500, 000 soldiers. The authorities said this week that 1. 5 percent of the army, or about 8, 600 soldiers, participated in the coup attempt, although it was not clear how many willingly took part. The failed coup upended a central assumption about Turkey, one hailed as among Mr. Erdogan’s prime accomplishments: that the days of coups were over. Through a series of sensational trials, based partly on fabricated evidence, many secular military officers were jailed in recent years on charges of plotting a coup. But this effort to secure civilian control over the military backfired, analysts say. Secular officers were pushed from the armed forces and replaced by Islamists connected to Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric in exile in Pennsylvania who the government has said was the mastermind of the coup attempt. At the time, Mr. Gulen was seen as an ally of Mr. Erdogan. The Turkish authorities have started to name commanders suspected of leading this month’s coup attempt, and many of them were officers who rose in the ranks to replace jailed secular officers, according to an analysis by Kadri Gursel, a Turkish journalist. Ismail Hakki Pekin, who served as the head of military intelligence until 2011, said the secular, nationalist officers had long tried to keep Gulenists out of the military, but that their ability to do so waned after Mr. Erdogan came to power. “We knew that the Fethullah Gulen organization was trying to access the military,” he said. “Although we tried to convince people that the Gulenists were causing trouble in state institutions, we weren’t able to convince anyone. ” Mr. Pekin does not oppose the purging now of suspected Gulenists from the armed forces, but he worries about who will replace them. Many leaders in Turkey’s staunchly secular military are concerned that Mr. Erdogan will fill the vacancies with religious allies — Islamists he can rely on, as opposed to the Gulenists. “This was a big trauma,” he said, referring to the failed coup. “And I hope we won’t sow the seeds of bigger traumas in the future. ” For now, the question is how Turkey’s military moves forward, with so many threats to the nation’s security. One of the generals arrested, Gen. Adem Huduti, the commander of Turkey’s Second Army, was leading the fight against Kurdish militants in the southeast, for example, and was also responsible for security at the border with Syria. “What in fact amounts to the collapse of the state is above all an invitation to Kurdish separatism,” Mr. Karaveli of the Central Institute said. “The Kurds are going to have less reason to fear a state whose military is killing each other. ” American officials say they have not yet seen a weakening of Turkey’s resolve or ability to remain an active partner in the fight against the Islamic State, but they worry about aftershocks of the failed coup. The commander of American forces in the Middle East, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the head of the United States Central Command, said on Thursday that many senior Turkish officers whom the United States deals with on counterterrorism were now in limbo, and some were in jail. “I’m particularly concerned about those relationships,” he said in an interview. And yet, Mr. Erdogan is likely to once again move aggressively to permanently depoliticize the military. In the wake of the coup attempt, the government has moved to bring the gendarmerie, a police force, which participated in the plot, and the Coast Guard, under the control of the Interior Ministry, not the military. Some secular former officers, who had been banished in recent years after the trials, have already been brought back. But whatever happens, the overall institution will be deeply damaged for some time. “Now the army is a tarnished force,” said Hulya Kocaoglu, 55, an administrative assistant in Istanbul whose sons have served. “How do you know who is good and bad? Now, you fear that when your child goes, they could get involved with the wrong crowd and be brainwashed or sacrificed. ” | 1 |
by Alliance for Natural Health
They’re concerned the truth will come out about this ubiquitous poison. Action Alert!
Recently we reported that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a draft report on the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. This was in advance of a meeting in which a panel of scientists would discuss the available data on glyphosate and its potential to cause cancer—but that meeting never happened. It was postponed , ostensibly because the agency was seeking additional experts so there could be a more “robust review of the data.”
The biotech industry is going all out to stop this review. CropLife America , the trade group for the nation’s largest biotech and pesticide manufacturers, strenuously objected to the government reviewing the cancer data, telling the EPA that there is no need to discuss the issue at all! Outrageously, CropLife also called for the removal of any scientist from the panel who has “publicly expressed an opinion regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.” The trade group kindly offered the names of scientists who should be removed from the reviewing panel to restore “impartiality.”
Think about that demand for a moment. CropLife wants to exclude any scientist or researcher who has ever published anything on the topic. Any scientific expert would almost certainly have published something on glyphosate—or s/he really couldn’t be considered much of an expert on the subject. It appears that CropLife is attempting to pack the panel with woefully unqualified puppets who will toe the industry’s line.
And these are only the “official” comments by industry. We can imagine what kind of jockeying is going on behind the scenes. So far, they’ve been able to get the whole thing postponed.
It appears that some in Congress also don’t want the government looking at the cancer-causing potential of glyphosate. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, sent a letter to the head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy. He expressed his concern that certain EPA scientists who had been involved in the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) report—the one that found glyphosate was probably carcinogenic—might compromise the agency’s ability to “fairly assess glyphosate based on sound science.”
Let’s put Rep. Smith’s “concern” in clearer language. EPA scientists conclude that glyphosate may cause cancer, but a congressman says this makes the scientists unable to assess the science fairly. What sense does that make? That’s like saying if you have scientific evidence that smoking causes cancer, you’re no longer able to evaluate the scientific evidence on smoking.
We saw the same crony capitalist tactics with the creation of the FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee (PCAC). The PCAC will have a heavy hand in determining the fate of the compounding industry, yet the committee is a stacked deck—it has only one member who is an actual compounding pharmacist, and that member cannot vote.
This review must happen, and real experts must be allowed to submit unbiased data and conclusions about the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. As we reported recently , this poison’s potential to cause cancer is only one of many health dangers that scientists have linked to it—and that isn’t even counting the toxicity of the so-called “inert” ingredients that, combined with glyphosate, make up Roundup and other weed killers.
We are all being exposed to glyphosate at much higher levels than predicted by the government. Since Roundup was introduced in 1996, global use of the herbicide has increased fifteen-fold . In addition to farmers having to use increasingly larger amounts of the poison because of weed resistance, they’re drenching crops in Roundup at harvest to make crops dry faster! On top of this, farmers are using an estimated 383 million more pounds of pesticides and herbicides overall because of GM Roundup-ready crops (crops genetically manipulated to withstand Roundup).
In 2013, the EPA actually raised the permitted toxicity levels, declaring that even higher amounts of Roundup were “safe.” We can all guess why and how this happened.
The bottom line: We must not let crony influences undermine the EPA’s review of this dangerous chemical!
Action Alert! Write to the EPA and to Congress, and tell them to reject CropLife’s influence and keep scientists who are experts on glyphosate on the panel. Please send your message immediately.
Read the full article at ANH-USA.org Products tested for glyphosate. | 1 |
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Following Monday's release of the Project Veritas video in which Democrat operatives are seen discussing Hillary Clinton’s personal involvement in a stunt to embarrass Donald Trump for not releasing his tax returns, James O'Keefe began to troll Hillary on Twitter over his next release—a “birthday surprise.” Today is Hillary's 69th birthday. — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 26, 2016
O'Keefe also tagged Americans United for Change director Brad Woodhouse, whom he taunted yesterday about the pending video release. If you notice @woodhouseb is nervous & losing his temper on TV. Stay tuned tomorrow Brad, because you’re going to have a busy busy day. pic.twitter.com/P63xAhMlB7 — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 25, 2016 Hi, @HillaryClinton & @woodhouseb . When you were coordinating, did you take money from a bank in BELIZE and then return it AFTER first vid? — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 26, 2016
Independent Journal Review will update this post as soon as Hillary Clinton's “birthday gift” drops. And... here it is. | 0 |
Islamist terrorist Michael Adebolajo, who murdered Lee Rigby, has found a lawyer who will pursue his claim when he lost two teeth after lashing out at prison guards. [Adebolajo had intended to sue the prison service in 2015 but had not found a lawyer to take on his case. The Sun has reported Adebolajo has now found legal representation and is seeking £20, 000 in compensation. Muslim converts Adebolajo and accomplice Michael Adebowale were found guilty of murdering army soldier Fusilier Rigby in broad daylight near his barracks in Woolwich, south east London, in 2013. They mowed him down in a car before hacking him to death with knives and a cleaver. Following his conviction, the terrorist was sent to Belmarsh prison where he lashed out at prison guards before hitting his face on a window, breaking two teeth. The five guards involved were suspended but later cleared following a investigation. The Prison Officers’ Association said at the time the guards were restraining Adebolajo, and they only use force “where necessary”. Adebolajo was later found attempting to radicalise other inmates and was moved to Frankland prison in County Durham. During the initial attempt to sue, the Ministry of Justice said it would “robustly” defend itself against claims brought by Adebolajo. “The public will be rightly outraged at the thought of this man receiving compensation from the taxpayer and we robustly defend claims made against the Prison Service,” the ministry said in a statement. On Sunday Lee’s mother, Lyn Rigby, said, “This is nothing more than blood money. This is the last person on earth who deserves compensation. “You can replace broken teeth but you can’t bring back the life of my treasured boy. ” Mrs. Rigby added, “It hurts so much that he just won’t go away and leave us to pick up the pieces of our broken lives. It’s almost as if he revels in the limelight of his heinous crime and has no remorse or shame for what he has done. “Like many killers, he seeks to psychologically control the victims of his crime by toying with our emotions — but we won’t be dragged down again. We are learning to be stronger and hold our heads high out of respect and dignity for Lee. ” Adebolajo was sentenced to a whole life jail term for the murder. Adebowale was jailed for life with a minimum 45 years. | 0 |
It is as iconic an image from the criminal underworld as the Tommy gun or the getaway car, a grim last act for the unfortunate soul whose life is about to end in a new pair of footwear. Cement shoes. One would be to think of a worse way to die than being fitted, as the saying goes, for cement shoes — fate hardening with every passing minute until the time comes to be dumped, feet first, into a watery grave, never to be seen again. Never again — that is the whole point, and it is exactly why cement shoes are the unicorn of true crime. Everyone can describe them, but who has seen them? Before Monday, precious few. Which makes the discovery that morning in Brooklyn of a corpse all the more remarkable. The body of Peter Martinez, 28, better known on the streets as Petey Crack, had washed up near Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn. At one end, his head was wrapped in duct tape. At the other, where his feet should be, was a bucket filled with concrete — a mix of cement, sand, gravel and water — encasing his legs up to the shins. The police said Mr. Martinez had a long history of arrests. He had been reported missing in February by his girlfriend. It seems that strong currents dragged Mr. Martinez, despite the homemade anchor, to shore, where he was discovered by a college student. There were no arrests in the case as of Wednesday, and the results of an autopsy were not yet complete. How long his body had been in the water was just one of the mysteries the police were sorting through Mr. Martinez’s last outfit — gray sweatpants, blue boxer shorts and a black jacket — was intact, and his tattoo of the Virgin Mary holding a rose was still visible. Crime historians were mystified, struggling to think of similar cases. “No,” said Thomas Reppetto, an author of books about organized crime. “Not right offhand. ” Mike Dash, a crime writer in London who has written about Mafia killings, said: “I’ve definitely never heard of this happening before. It’s just one of those stories that goes around. I think you’ve got a first there, by the sounds of things. ” There are countless accounts of those shoes over the years. They are there in the opening pages of E. L. Doctorow’s 1989 novel, “Billy Bathgate,” in which a character, barefoot, “delicately, gingerly, placed one foot at a time in the laundry tub in front of him that was filled with wet cement. ” The scene resembles a killing rumored to have happened in the 1930s, but the real body was never found. Countless similar examples exist — cement shoes believed to be worn by men never seen again, and therefore, by definition, themselves never seen. And yet the shoes fit snugly on the imagination. At the 1987 trial of John Gotti, a prospective juror was dismissed after relating what a boyfriend had once told her: “If you do anything wrong, I’ll get the Mafia after you. You’ll be wearing cement shoes. ” Making a pair of cement shoes sounds easy enough. A bag of concrete mix, some water and a large bucket would seem to be all one needs for the job. But there is one more important ingredient: time. An amount of uninterrupted time not commonly associated with murderers looking to cover their tracks. How long would cement shoes take to harden? Paul Bartelotti, owner of MB Concrete in Brooklyn, tried to imagine the process. “They could have gotten just a bag and added water,” he said. Not too much — the consistency has to be just right. “Like Carvel ice cream. Not, like, . A little thicker. ” For several hours, the captive could still pull his feet out. “It would take at least, I would say, the better part of the day to not get your feet out,” Mr. Bartelotti said. “Depends on the temperature. ” Concrete hardens quickly in warm temperatures, he said. Mr. Martinez disappeared in February. “It was cold,” Mr. Bartelotti mused. “If you let it sit from 12 hours to a day, the guy wouldn’t be able to get his feet out. ” He considered the situations. “They could make it wet and make the guy stand in it, or put his legs in and pour the cement around it. He could have been dead and they just stuck his feet in. ” Mr. Martinez had survived brushes with death before. He was shot in the leg in 2008. The scar was there on the body that was found on Monday, high enough on the leg to be above the concrete. The circumstances surrounding the shooting are as murky as everything else. The discovery of his remains, the actual sighting of a thing of legend, may be the moment for which Mr. Martinez will be forever known. | 1 |
BREAKING: FBI Gets Search Warrant For State Department Emails On Weiner’s Computer (VIDEO) By Michelle Oxman on October 30, 2016 Subscribe
On Sunday afternoon, October 30, 2016, the FBI obtained a search warrant for emails on a laptop owned by Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner. You’ll remember that Weiner was under investigation for sexting a 15-year-old girl. As it happened, the same laptop also contained emails that Abedin, Clinton’s Chief of Staff at the State Department, forwarded to her personal Yahoo account so she could print them. That’s why FBI agents got Director James Comey’s approval to seek access to the emails, as Comey told Congress (and we reported ) on Thursday, October 28. A Rather Unusual Warrant
Now, when is the last time you ever heard about a search warrant being granted? I bet you can’t think of one. That’s because police and prosecutors ask the court to issue warrants in secret. That makes sense, even to those of us who usually err on the side of supporting civil liberties. After all, if you knew the police had a warrant to search your home or your computer, what would you think of doing?
Why do we know about this warrant? Because James Comey told Congress there were new emails “pertinent” to the Clinton investigation. Trump supporters argued that the government must have reviewed the emails and would only have released the information if there was important new evidence. In reality, the FBI couldn’t do so legally. Why? Because the warrant to search the computer for evidence of Weiner’s contact with a 15-year-old girl could not have covered Huma Abedin’s work-related emails from three or more years earlier. There’s a helpful explanation of the legal issues relating to the search warrant in today’s Washington Post.
Still, faced with the innuendo and implications of illegality in Comey’s vague letter, Clinton and her supporters insisted that the FBI disclose what it had. Perhaps the FBI didn’t want to admit that it didn’t know what it had. Or maybe the FBI didn’t want to admit that it had gotten its knowledge illegally. Getting a search warrant bought the FBI time, though, and left the whole mess hanging over Clinton’s head as she approaches the last week of the campaign. Violating Policy
There seems to be no doubt that Comey’s letter to Congress violated two long-standing tradition and policies: (1) prohibiting discussion of ongoing investigations; and (2) not taking actions to favor one side or another in elections. Two former Deputy Attorneys General, one Democrat and one Republican,publicly questioned Comey’s fitness to lead the FBI because of it. In addition, others have pointed out that Comey has repeatedly gone beyond established limits in his discussions of the Clinton email investigation. The Known Unknowns
We still don’t know whether any of the emails on that computer contain new information. We don’t know whether Secretary Clinton ever sent emails to Abedin’s personal account on that computer or received emails from Abedin via that account. We don’t know whether classified information was sent or received via this personal computer. We don’t know what any of the emails would tend to show about Clinton’s respect for classified information. After all, it wasn’t Clinton, but Abedin, who forwarded the emails. One Final Question
Apparently, the FBI agents working on the Weiner case became aware several weeks ago that the computer contained emails that Abedin forwarded to herself while she worked at the State Department. Why did they wait until last Thursday to tell Comey? Surely they anticipated his likely reaction? Did they “play” Comey to manipulate the election results?
About Michelle Oxman
Michelle Oxman is a writer, blogger, wedding officiant, and recovering attorney. She lives just north of Chicago with her husband, son, and two cats. She is interested in human rights, election irregularities, access to health care, race relations, corporate power, and family life.Her personal blog appears at www.thechangeuwish2c.com. She knits for sanity maintenance. Connect | 0 |
By Lambert Strether of Corrente .
2016
Days until: 4. Now you can count the days on the fingers of one hand!
Corruption
“Hillary Clinton Economic Team Planned Secret Meeting With Wall Street Mogul Pushing To Shift Retiree Savings To Financial Firms” [David Sirota, International Business Times ]. And Sirota is a busy lad–
“How Donald Trump Used Fine Print To Make It Harder To Sue Wall Street For Fraud” [David Sirota, International Business Times ]. In Links this morning, but amplifying:
According to hundreds of pages of court documents reviewed by International Business Times, Trump notched a victory for himself and the financial industry by convincing judges that his own fine print warnings meant he had not deceived investors when he lured them to bet — and ultimately lose — hundreds of millions of dollars on one of his riskiest development projects. The real estate mogul known for his litigiousness helped Corporate America secure a ruling making it harder for investors to file lawsuits. Unlike his other past business moves that appeared to affect only Trump’s business partners, vendors and customers, this Trump case helped set a court precedent that was soon codified into law.
Trump, in essence, argued “it’s my nature”:
Trump did not explicitly challenge the plaintiffs’ allegations that his prospectus contained misleading or inaccurate information. Instead, his lawyer argued that “the cautionary language in this prospectus was so complete, so repetitive, so obvious and so well designed” that it could not have misled investors. The court concurred.
“Let’s set aside Hillary Clinton as an individual and consider her as the perfection of a corrupt political system. As I noted yesterday, Politics As Usual Is Dead, and Hillary Clinton is the ultimate product of the political system that is disintegrating before our eyes” [ Of Two Minds ]. “All the Clintons did is assemble the parts more effectively than anyone else. Now that the machine has scooped up hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘contributions’ and other loot, vested interests and corrupted loyalists within the federal government will do anything to protect the machine and its vast flow of funds.” Which is why Clinton’s public promises on policy are meaningless; we don’t know who her silent partners are. And that ties rather neatly into her incrementalism, which she frames as “I don’t want to promise what I can’t deliver” (but to whom were the promises really made?) More: “Cobble together a multi-million dollar private foundation, millions of dollars in speaking fees from big-money contributors, conflicts of interest, the secrecy of private email servers, pay-to-play schemes and corrupted loyalists planted in the Department of Justice, and the inevitable result is a politics as usual money-harvesting machine that lays waste to the nation, supporters and critics alike.”
The Voters
“The Daily 202: College-educated white women are Hillary Clinton’s firewall” [ WaPo ]. “If the Republican nominee was anywhere close to Romney’s 52 percent support level among this traditionally Republican-leaning constituency, he would likely win the election.” From what I read on the Twitter — admittedly an idiosyncratic sample — Clinton’s previous firewall feels like she used and abandoned them. So…
“The End of Black-Checking for Hillary” [ Progressive Army ]. “Michelle Alexander [author of The New Jim Crow went on MSNBC with Chris Hayes to discuss her concerns about the Clintons. She spoke her truth, our truth. Many in America turned on her. They lined up to tell her she was wrong about the very same things we applauded just a year ago.” Predictably, the Democrat nomenklatura went nuts. One Kossack: And now Michelle Alexander comes to lecture other black folks abt voting for Hillary. Ugh what an awful show from Hayes tonight. Just awful.
— Armando (@armandodkos) April 2, 2016
(I think “black folks” is a particularly nice touch.) The writer concludes: “Throwing Michelle Alexander to the wolves to defend the Clintons, of all couples, was far too much for me.”
“Black voters sue North Carolina over last-minute purges” [ Bloomberg ]. In a last-minute lawsuit. As I keep saying, if the Democrats saw voter registration as a core party function, we wouldn’t be seeing shenanigains like this in the first place.
“Identity and the Election: How Groups of Voters Have Changed Their Minds” [ Bloomberg ]. Here is a breakdown of Clinton’s margin before and after the Comey bombshell:
Clinton support among white college voters increased the most . I suppose they actually bought the idea that Comey, like Trump, is a Russian agent of influence? Who are the “stupid” voters now, pray tell?
Policy
“Memo to the Next President: Avoid the ‘Vision Thing’ in the Mideast” [ Foreign Policy ]. Internal disagreements in The Blob! And “old-fashioned GOP realism” looks pretty good compared to crazypants neo-con adventurism (or Clinton’s debacle in Libya).
“Marijuana ballot initiatives 2016: Five more states may make pot legal” [ Yahoo News ]. “The vote to watch is in California, where polls suggest the “Adult Use of Marijuana” referendum has a substantial lead.” I just hope marijuana doesn’t go corporate…
“Younger voters overwhelmingly favor marijuana measure, which is likely to pass, poll finds” [ Los Angeles Times ].
Downballot
“Democrats have a good chance to take control of the Senate just two years after losing it. A friendly map with seven Republican-held seats in states President Obama won has opened the door, and now Republicans are hoping Donald Trump doesn’t drag them down in the many tough states they have to defend” [ WaPo ]. Thing is, if you look at the chart, “50” is smack dab in middle of “toss-up.” RCP agrees , with 46 Democrats, 46 Republicans, and 8 toss-ups. These are RCP’s toss-ups: PA: Toomey (R), IN: Open (R), WI: Johnson (R), NV: Open (D), MO: Blunt (R), NH: Ayotte (R), FL: Rubio (R), NC: Burr (R). Note that WI, NH, FL, and NC are swing states, too!
The Trail
“‘We’ve got to be nice and cool, nice and calm. All right, stay on point Donald, stay on point,’ Trump said in Pensacola, Fla” [ CNN ]. “‘No sidetracks, Donald. Nice and easy,’ Trump said.” So Conway is doing her job.
“Put another way, as Clinton has focused her time and money primarily on swing and Republican-leaning states, the question looming over her campaign is whether she has left herself open to a flanking maneuver from Trump in any of the seemingly safe Democratic states that he is now targeting—key among them Colorado, Michigan, and Wisconsin” [Ron Brownstein, The Atlantic ]. “Clinton and her allies are responding with a new wave of advertising and more surrogate appearances in those blue-leaning states, and most dramatically, a visit by Clinton herself to Detroit on Friday. But overall they see Trump’s late push into these Democratic-leaning places as a sign of weakness, not strength—an admission that at this late date he needs new options for reaching an Electoral College majority because he cannot feel secure of capturing enough of the states both sides consider true battlegrounds.”
“A tightening race nationally has also translated into tightening at the state level. States that were trending Trump’s way in September started to slip away from him in early October. Now, with the focus more on Clinton’s emails than on Trump’s debate performances or his Twitter spats, states like Iowa and Ohio are moving back in Trump’s direction” [ Cook Political Report ]. Republicans “coming home.”
“Two things to look for in the exits: First, how is Mr. Trump doing among white voters? His strategy requires grabbing a higher percentage of whites than Mitt Romney’s 59% and boosting their share of the turnout above 2012’s 72%. College-educated whites traditionally vote Republican, but Mr. Trump has struggled with them. Will he match Mr. Romney’s 51% among all college grads?” [Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal , “What to Watch for on Election Night”]. “Second, how is Mrs. Clinton doing among minorities and millennials? Her strategy calls for replicating President Obama’s 2012 coalition. That year African-Americans were 13% of turnout, and 93% went for Mr. Obama; Hispanics were 10% of turnout, and 71% voted for him; and millennials were 19% of turnout, 60% of whom supported the president.”
“Only voters in six states: Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are allowed to void their early or absentee ballots and cast a new vote” [ Daily Dot ].
Democrat Email Hairball
“Here’s the updated list of all Podesta docs published by @WikiLeaks that have been proven, or claimed, to be fake” [ Glenn Greenwald ].
Stats Watch
Big stats day today! Incidentally, I quote Econoday first, but — and this is one Maine bear’s purely subjective opinion — the tone of the Econoday blurbs is noticeably happier than other commentary. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “happy talk,” but…
Productivity and Costs, Q3 2016: “Productivity has burst out of its slump, rising at a better-than-expected annualized pace of 3.1 percent in the third quarter” [ Econoday ]. “The third-quarter breakdown shows a surge in output, more than doubling to a 3.4 percent growth rate at the same time that growth in hours worked slowed sharply, to a 0.3 percent rate vs the second-quarter’s 1.7 percent. Greater efficiency between output and hours worked holds down labor costs which rose only 0.3 percent which is much better than expectations.” And: “The driving force for third-quarter productivity was a surge in output coupled by the lower labor cost gain” [ 247 Wall Street ]. But: “Although many times the data is significantly revised between releases – it did not happen in this release. But IF I believed this data, costs are rising significantly whilst productivity is in the toilet (as I only look at year-over-year data – the headline compounding distorts the view)” [ Econintersect ]. “If data is analyzed in year-over-year fashion, non-farm business productivity was unchanged year-over-year, and unit labor costs were up 2.3 % year-over-year. Bottom line: the year-over-year data is saying that costs are rising faster than productivity.” And but: “[T]he broader trend remains consistent with a decade-long decline” [ Wall Street Journal , “U.S. Productivity Jumps in Third Quarter, Trend Remains Soft”].
Jobless Claims, week of October 29, 2016: “[H]olding at or near record lows” [ Econoday ]. “[S]trength in the labor market and suggest that employers are holding tightly onto their employees.” Or jobless claims are hard to file and/or people are terrified of leaving. But: “The trend of the 4 week moving average is continuing to marginally worsened – and catch up to the rolling averages of a year ago – and this trend historically indicates a weakening GDP” [ Econintersect ].
Challenger Job-Cut Report, October 2016: “Challenger’s October layoff count is low,” and lower than the third quarter average [ Econoday ]. “[A] positive signal for tomorrow’s employment report.”
Factory Orders, September 2016: “Good news is hard to find in the September factory orders report which is best described as flat” [ Econoday ]. And: “[T]he data in this series is noisy so I would rely on the unadjusted 3 month rolling averages which say there was a moderate improvement this month – but this series remains in contraction year-over-year” [ Econintersect ].
Gallup Good Jobs Rate, October 2016: Up, in a typical seasonal pattern, and “higher than any GGJ rate recorded for the month of October since Gallup began tracking this measure in 2010” [ Econoday ]. “The percentage of U.S. adults who participated in the workforce in October in any capacity — by working full time, working part time or not working but actively seeking and being available for work — was 68.4 percent, up almost a full percentage point from 67.5 percent in September.”
ISM Non-Manufacturing Index, October 2016: “Much of the ISM non-manufacturing report, at a composite of 54.8, is strong with employment, however, an exception,” [ Econoday ]. “Employment growth may be down, but this report, like the services PMI earlier this morning, is pointing to a solid fourth-quarter start for the bulk of the economy.” But: ” This was below the consensus forecast of 56.1, and suggests slower expansion in October than in September” [ Calculated Risk ]. And but: “New orders were solid at 57.7 in October, but while they were above the net reading they were still down from September’s 60.6 reading” [ 247 Wall Street ]. “Business activity was the same reading at a strong 57.7. But like the new orders component, the net business activity was slower growth than what was seen in September.”
Purchasing Managers’ Index Service Index, October 2016 (final): “Growth in the nation’s service sector accelerated sharply in October based on Markit Economics’ U.S. sample” [ Econoday ]. “Strength in consumer spending is what respondents reported as well as a rise in both input costs and selling prices. New orders are at an 11-month high as is business activity while year-ahead expectations are at their best level in a year-and-a-half. Backlogs are also piling up. This report points to a very solid fourth-quarter start for the bulk of the economy.”
Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index, October 20, 2016: “The sharp gain in the prior week was no fluke for the consumer comfort index which, unlike other readings on confidence, has been picking up steam going into next week’s presidential election” [ Econoday ].
Chain Store Sales, October 2016: “Chain stores are reporting mixed sales in October, results that offer little guidance for monthly change in core retail sales (ex-food ex-gas)” [ Econoday ].
Shipping: “Top North America TEU negative performance worsened through September” [James Sands, Seeking Alpha ]. “The marginal decline was impacted by top ten North America seaport laden imports, while laden exports improved. The Hanjin bankruptcy impacted seaports broadly, most notably the Port of Long Beach. Class I rail container traffic has continued to mirror these trends with mixed results.”
Shipping: “[Freignt forwarder] Panalpina has reported signs of an earlier-than-normal start to the end-of-year peak season in air freight partly as a result of the disruption to supply chains caused by the collapse of Korean container carrier Hanjin Shipping [ Lloyd’s Loading List ]. “‘Obviously, not all of the Hanjin ships have arrived at port and there is cargo meant to reach stores for Christmas is still ‘floating’,’ said CEO Stefan Karlen. ‘So some customers are getting concerned and because of that switching containers to air freight, and that’s where the pick-up (in demand) is coming from.'”
Shipping: “With the ocean cargo sector effectively going from 4 alliances to 3, when the Ocean Alliance takes effect in April 2017, the further concentration should enable the alliances, within themselves, to better control capacity as a means to improving revenue” [ Logistics Management ]. One thing cartels are for…
Shipping: “We will behave ourselves, say Ocean Alliance members” [ Lloyd’s List ]. “Ocean Alliance members have vowed to be more disciplined in the area of new tonnage in an effort to tackle the overcapacity that has depressed the container shipping market.”
Shipping: “Dire safety conditions revealed in wake of Gadani fire as death toll feared to surpass 100” [ Splash 247 ]. “A fire, which has now killed at least 21 people, is still raging at Pakistan’s Gadani ship recycling area with fears the eventual death toll could hit triple figures. An explosion occurred on Tuesday as a welder worked on a gas cylinder in a beached oil tanker. The explosion rapidly became an inferno with many workers trapped in the ship.” That is like a war, isn’t it? From John Keegan’s description, in The Price of Admiralty , of the battle of Jutland (“the last major battle fought primarily by battleships in world history”):
Although not a war between states:
Nasir Mansoor, deputy-general secretary of the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), hit out at the absence of safety procedures at Gadani yesterday, saying the Indonesian ship’s tanks had not been cleaned ahead of the scrapping starting. Moreover, Mansoor alleged the yard had just one ambulance, which was being actually used for transporting the officials’ children to and from school. Mansoor said a total of 250 workers were working on the tanker when the explosion occurred.
“We demand that a murder case be registered right away against the Ship Breakers’ Association,” he said, calling for Rs3m compensation for each of the dead victims’ families.
Of course, given the givens, the explosion and the deaths follow from over-capacity as the night the day. And it’s not as if the conditions at Gadani weren’t common knowledge among elites. I remember reading this article in The Atlantic in 2014, and here’s an image from it:
So, in the beached tanker, ka-boom! Whenever you hear the word “accident,” think to yourself: “What do you mean, ‘accident’?” Oh, and there’s this little detail:
The floating oil production tanker, ACES (IMO # 8021830), was sold to the Gadani shipbreaker by Jakarta-based PT Sinar Mentari Prima and was used in the Jabung Batanghari terminal owned by the Indonesian government company BPMIGAS and operated by PetroChina. The change of flag and name of the ship happened just weeks before it reached the beach of Gadani, which strongly point towards the use of a cash buyer for the sale of the end-of-life vessel.
Hmm. An unnamed “cash buyer.” Seems like Richard Smith territory…
Rail: “U.S. rail traffic slump continued in October” [ Progressive Railroading ]. “U.S. railroads logged a 3.2 percent decrease in carload and intermodal traffic last month compared with October 2015, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported yesterday… Excluding coal, carloads fell 3.8 percent last month compared with a year ago.”
Commodities: “Cobalt is the element found within lithium-ion batteries that allows them to generate more power over a longer time-period than normal batteries and it has already powered a consumer tech revolution over the last decade. It is the catalyst for the imminent commercialisation of electric cars, the reason your smartphone doesn’t need charging every half hour, and the reason you can read your kindle cable free during that long plane journey” [ FCPA Blog ]. “But cobalt raises several compliance challenges. it is overwhelmingly found in one country — the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Around 60% of global supply of cobalt comes from the DRC. Cobalt doesn’t currently fall under the SEC’s Dodd-Frank section 1502 covering conflict minerals and there is no specific compliance regulations attached to the sourcing of the mineral. But the lack of scrutiny by regulators seems likely to change in the near future as demand for cobalt and understanding of its sourcing increases.”
ETFs: “This Year’s Most Innovative New ETFs” [ETFs.com]. “Innovative”? Uh-oh…. “Some of this year’s most innovative exchange-traded funds are ones that look at gender diversity as a way to boost corporate performance, generic drugs and even using crowdsourcing to make bets on which stocks will outperform from month to month.” Seems frothy.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 17 Fear (previous close: 18, Fear) [ CNN ]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 3 at 11:31am. Still waiting for single digits.
Gaia
“Michael Pollan Explains Why Psychedelic Drugs Are the Ultimate Meal for Your Mind” [ Mother Jones ]. News you can use!
Imperial Collapse Watch
“Today’s understanding of the British Empire has been shaped by state secrecy and the destruction of historical records” [ Jacobin ]. “There was no moment of reckoning — unless you dig a little deeper, it appears if Britain simply handed official control over the governance of its colonies to locals. As a result, not only does British imperialism receive exaltation and eulogy, but the postcolonial melancholia that afflicts public political culture is premised on the idea it was built on virtue and the diligence, strength, and courage of British people.”
Class Warfare
“‘I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK'” [ Pandaemonium ]. Here’s the British variant of the Acela-rider’s “Trump voters are stupid” meme:
Shortly after the referendum, a meme began to trend. Following the Leave vote there had been a spike in people googling ‘What is the EU?’. Many Remainers took this to be proof of the ignorance of those voting Leave. In fact fewer than 1000 people googled ‘What is the EU?’ and there was no evidence that that a single person who had googled the question had voted Leave. Yet supporters of the EU continued to propagate this as evidence of the ignorance of Leave voters. If it was evidence of anything it was, perhaps, that an education is no insurance against cognitive bias, no protection against a willingness to be swayed by one’s prejudices, no shield against a tendency to jump to conclusions not warranted by the facts.
Well worth a read. | 1 |
“An idea is a good thing,” Ken Downing, the fashion director of Neiman Marcus, said on Tuesday, as he bolted in his biker jacket and skinny jeans from one show to another. “But a theme can scare me running away. ” Despite everyone’s best efforts to shut out the world beyond New York Fashion Week: Men’s, a unifying theme emerged: the parlous state of current politics. It didn’t matter that the visitors to the Skylight Clarkson North event space in Lower Manhattan, where most of the shows were held, tried to drink away their worries at the cozy VIP Amazon Lounge or escaped into chatter about Alejandro Gómez Palomo, a young Spanish designer who shocked the front row with a show featuring men in frilly frocks or talked about the head of Ralph Lauren being unceremoniously shoved into the oubliette. Of the dozens of designers interviewed during a marathon that ended on Thursday, not one failed to volunteer some expression of concern, anxiety, perplexity or stark anger about the barrage of executive orders, tweets and statements recently issued from the White House. “It’s hitting people like a dagger in the heart,” the designer John Varvatos said moments before his best men’s wear show in years, at the Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in Midtown. Mr. Varvatos was referring to President Trump’s order banning the entry of citizens from seven nations and refugees from any country. “People are in disbelief,” Mr. Varvatos said. “Half the people in my company are from someplace else. ” So, it would seem, are half the personnel in the industry. Consider the major designers anchoring a men’s wear fashion week now in its fourth iteration and gaining strength in terms of its offerings and the breadth of representation. Mr. Varvatos, for example, is a American whose parents migrated from Greece and settled in Detroit. The Ralph Lauren is the son of Askhenazi Jewish immigrants from Belarus. Raised in South Boston, Joseph Abboud was born in the United States to Maronite Christian parents who, seeking greater opportunity, fled Lebanon for America. Even the virtuosic Raf Simons — whose finely calibrated collection of satiny topcoats, boxy jackets and slouchy woolens was shown on Wednesday night — has only recently transposed his label to New York, where he also serves as chief creative officer of Calvin Klein. Notably, Mr. Simons chose as the locale for his debut on these shores a Gagosian Gallery, which is run by the art world powerhouse Larry Gagosian, a California native whose grandparents were immigrants from Armenia. It is not only the big guns who can boast of a hyphenated heritage. The Ovadia twins, Ariel and Shimon, moved to Brooklyn from Israel in the early 1990s. The slick show they presented on Tuesday to an audience peppered with stars and athletes was inspired, as Ariel said backstage, by a soccer obsession they share with their father, a man who got his start in the garment business selling children’s wear from the back of a Oldsmobile. A relative newcomer to fashion, Willy Chavarria presented a sublimely deadpan collection on Thursday that he titled “Brown Power” and showed on a group of models that included a young trans woman and a Honduran food deliveryman. The clothes were inspired, Mr. Chavarria said, by Chicano youths in California towns like the one in the San Joaquin Valley where he was raised, a son of Mexican immigrants who worked in the agricultural fields. “The political moment is hard,” Mr. Chavarria said, over the din of recorded at his presentation. “But it’s also a call to action for a generation that maybe got a little lazy. It’s up to us now to be harder ourselves — to love harder, to fight harder, to come hard with our ideas. ” Ideas, as Mr. Downing said, are good things. And, as it happened, the week was rife with them. There were Mr. Chavarria’s supersize denim trousers, his coats of fur or washable alpaca, his knit caps discreetly embroidered with a rebuke to hate speech too coarse to be printed here and his athletic sweatshirts emblazoned with the timely: “Gender Bender Super Bawl Champions. ” There were Mr. Simons’s innovative, oversize intarsia sweaters, developed in collaboration with the Woolmark Company, featuring hems that rode up at the back, kangaroo pockets on the chest and, in some cases, a vaguely ambivalent interpretation of Milton Glaser’s “I ♥ NY” logo. There was a Ralph Lauren Purple Label collection that gave scant indication that his company is in the midst of what one analyst called “brand confusion. ” Seldom bested as a conjurer of narrative fantasy during the he has been in business, Mr. Lauren made it clear that his Gatsbyesque vision still has legs. Here he reimagined a young man of wealth as having humor enough to leave the house wearing a black satin dinner jacket whose subtle jacquard pattern depicts cowboys riding bucking broncos — an image copied from a vintage sleeping bag — and confident enough in his taste to wear a suit of evening clothes in chocolate corduroy. Barely out of Parsons, Matthew Adams Dolan is already a name to reckon with, largely on the basis of an interest taken in him by a single superfan. “Rihanna’s team saw my senior thesis and called in some things,” Mr. Dolan, a native, said modestly on Thursday, as a cluster of models slumped on a dais at the P3 studio at Skylight Clarkson North. “She gets photographed in them a lot, I guess,” he added, referring to monster denims that resemble the offspring of a Carhartt jacket and a moving blanket. Mr. Dolan’s affection for functional work wear, which he reconfigures in Brobdingnagian proportions, is only half the equation, he said. “My mom was a big quilter, and that’s been a big influence on me,” he said. That Todd Snyder’s brightest ideas are often not original to him is something of which the designer makes no secret. For years, Mr. Snyder has mined thrift stores and the treasure troves maintained by folks like the wizard Bob Melet for inspiration. As Mr. Snyder made clear in his Thursday show, his design skill lies in taking the sports jerseys or the weary, stadium coats he finds and then — exploiting his savvy way with fabrics and his tailoring background — turning them into covetable stuff like a handsome camel hair overcoat so pilled it looked as though he had skinned a family of teddy bears to create it. The primary idea driving Mr. Varvatos’s latest collection, he said before his show, involved his conviction that millennial men now discovering the suit want something that keeps them from resembling their fathers. “They want to push out the boundaries,” Mr. Varvatos said. He does, too. With his fall 2017 collection, the designer stuck to a restrained narrow silhouette for taut frock coats, biker jackets, barn coats and jackets. And he confined his experiments to fabrication. Despite the best efforts of moral philosophers like Peter Singer, fur has been steadily making a comeback. The best designs at the Varvatos show were for things like a lynx print calfskin biker jacket that would make anyone want to become rock star or a flimsy topcoat lined with cropped shearling — just the sort of stuff to give PETA conniptions. It’s easy enough to guess at the outrage triggered in the mind of an activist by Mr. Varvatos’s wholesale dispatch of livestock. More challenging, perhaps, is imagining what a traditional male might make of the clothes created by Mr. Palomo. Invited to be a guest of the C. F. D. A. the designer — who has generated a lot of press and engendered a small cult following at home — brought with him a group of clothes that seemed relatively tame by his standards. It included trousers, that is, and a few items you might term suits. True, they came in purple satin brocade with portrait collars or gold lamé with flounces and neck frills or constituted little more than a white satin bustier worn with thigh boots and a pair of briefs. Of all the many design ideas on display during New York Fashion Week: Men’s, Mr. Palomo’s were by miles the most fantastical and giddy. Yet, as the men’s wear industry has been trudging steadily away from gender fluidity and toward masculinity as historically constituted, the sight of a guy kitted out in Cuban heels, a garter belt, a pair of shiny culottes or a flounced costume seemed less outrageous than, perhaps, passé. | 1 |
HAMBURG — Of course there was Beethoven. After all, what better way to conclude the opening concert of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall here than with the jubilant “Ode to Joy”? It’s a choral classic, but Wednesday’s scintillating concert, starring the NDR Symphony Orchestra, now renamed the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, opened with the slender, pliable tone of a single oboe — the instrument to which other players tune in halls around the world. To inaugurate this dazzling hall, nestled inside an $800 million glass structure set atop an old brick warehouse overlooking the port here, the conductor Thomas Hengelbrock assembled a program. Taking as its motto a line from Wagner’s “Parsifal” — “Here time becomes space” — the concert linked fragile chamber performances and flashy orchestral tours de force spanning 400 years of music history into a riveting narrative. Its proud protagonist: the hall itself. Depending on where you sat in the tiered, auditorium, you had to crane your neck to see where the first sounds were coming from when the oboist Kalev Kuljus, standing on a high balcony, intoned the first rhapsodic phrases of Britten’s “Pan,” from “Six Metamorphoses After Ovid. ” His penetrating and clear tone helped to concentrate your ear on the sonic roller coaster that followed, beginning with the metallic aureole of Dutilleux’s “Mystère de l’instant. ” From there, early and recent music alternated fluidly, with individual performers placed high in the farthest rows. The countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, elegantly accompanied by the harpist Margret Köll, sang music written by Emilio de’ Cavalieri and Antonio Archilei for a 1589 Florentine court wedding, his zesty voice effortlessly carrying across the auditorium. The dark, growling rumbles of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s “Photoptosis,” in turn, gave way to the Ensemble Praetorius singing Praetorius’s “Quam Pulchra Es. ” That work was answered by the searing intensity of Rolf Liebermann’s “Furioso,” with its string scales and luscious, broad melodies. Another Baroque aria, “Amarilli mia bella,” by Giulio Caccini, offered quiet reflection before the jaunty finale from Messiaen’s “” its crisp rhythms and fluorescent tone colors vivid and clean. The concert’s second half included the Prelude to “Parsifal” the premiere of an arresting, broody orchestral song cycle, “Reminiszenz,” by Wolfgang Rihm and the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. The soloist in Rihm’s rangy, difficult new work was Pavol Breslik, whose melting tone easily made you forget that the part had initially been intended for the star tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Another cancellation led to the appealing Müller’s taking on the soprano part in the Beethoven symphony, alongside the alto Wiebke Lehmkuhl and the Bryn Terfel, sounding somewhat brittle. The combined NDR and Bavarian radio choirs brought home a thrilling “Ode to Joy. ” If you were seated in different sections of the hall for the two performances (the program was repeated on Thursday night) the sound’s warmth varied. The Wagner could have been helped by a greater sense of mysticism: the acoustics cast a clinical light on occasional imperfections. (It was just as unforgiving of a visitor’s sneeze.) But on the whole, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra revealed itself as a group, possessing a radiantly confident brass section and strings capable of producing a tone. The man behind the sound is Yasuhisa Toyota, one of the world’s most acousticians. In Hamburg, his work was prepared for by the building’s architects, the Swiss firm Herzog de Meuron, which added a layer around each of the two concert halls to prevent the intrusion of foghorns and other city noise — something New Yorkers, used to the periodic grumble of subway trains below several performance spaces, might appreciate. The Elbphilharmonie’s larger hall is clad with thousands of grooved panels, the profile of each precisely calculated to optimize resonance. Visually, the effect is stunning, reminiscent of bleached coral or snakeskin, depending on the lighting. On one side of the hall, softly gleaming organ pipes appear like a waterfall. The elegance of this Great Hall finds no reflection in the Small Hall, which opened on Thursday afternoon with a program of chamber music presented by Ensemble Resonanz. Here, too, Mr. Toyota created a minutely modulated acoustic “skin,” this one carved into sensual waves in oak. The sound was warm and opulent in works by Georg Friedrich Haas (a premiere, “Release,” making lavish use of the microtonal shimmies for which this composer, based in New York, is known) Berg and Bartok. Visually, the rectangular box resembles an oversize sauna. After years of delays and budget increases, which sometimes made it a laughingstock, the Elbphilharmonie is finally open, with music at its center. Judging by the creative zest of the opening events, it is on track to incubate a musical culture as optimistic and striking as the building itself. | 1 |
Ancient Origin
Though it may seem as if Halloween is a modern con trick designed to get us spending our hard-earned cash on an American celebration, this is not the case. In fact, dressing up, knocking on neighbors’ doors and asking for food at this time of year is a very old tradition. Communities on the British Isles were taking part in similar rituals as far back as the 16th century .
For centuries, people have believed this was the time when the boundary between our world and the spirit world became permeable. Terrifying outfits and specific rituals were designed and used to ward off or appease evil spirits roaming the earth around All Hallow’s Eve. But evidence has also been found of ordinary people, as early as the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, using magical incantations throughout the year to call on those departed to help the living. Lead tablets, found bound together, with magical inscriptions. Dated to 300–500 AD. Marie-Lan Nguyen ( Public Domain )
Though the Romans certainly invoked spirits for aid, they also felt the need to placate the dead. According to the Roman poet Ovid , at the Lemuria festival in May, the pater familias – that is the head of the household – walked around the house at midnight, throwing black beans on the floor to pacify any ancestral spirits who might be vengeful because they had not been buried.
The Romans thus had similar concerns regarding angry spirits, but, like the Greeks, they also saw the uses of those vengeful dead in their daily quest for happiness. Ancient Incantations
The Greeks and Romans were as anxious about their health and happiness as we are today. So other, more private – sometimes questionable – approaches were tried, and such practices became labelled as “magic” as early as the fifth century BC.
Magic was big business for the ancients – and though its professionals were often accused of being charlatans who were only after customers’ money, it thrived throughout antiquity. Spells were used for various purposes. Erotic spells, for example, cast to attract someone or control your love interest, were very popular. But they were also used to confound an opponent’s speech in court, make the horses you bet on win in the races, or curse a thief who stole your money. | 0 |
Clemson upset Alabama and won the college football national championship, in Tampa early Tuesday morning. Clemson was led by its star quarterback, Deshaun Watson, who threw for 420 yards despite facing a defense heralded as one of the best ever. With two minutes left, trailing by 3 points, Watson got the ball at his own 32 and started a drive. Nine plays and 68 yards later, with 1 second on the clock, Hunter Renfrow caught a touchdown to win the game. The drive included six completed passes, notably a to Watson’s favorite target, Mike Williams, and a goal line pass interference call. “I’m speechless right now man,” Watson said after the game. “We worked so hard for it we fell short last year. This game is not just for me, it’s for all the alumni, the fans, my family in Gainesville. ” It was the second big title game in a row for Watson, who threw for 405 yards in a loss in this game against Alabama last season. He is likely to go in the top 5 of the N. F. L. draft this year. Watson’s Achilles’ heel during the regular season was the interception, but he threw none in this game. Alabama for its part kept the ball mostly on the ground. Its freshman quarterback Jalen Hurts was for only 131 yards. Alabama had raced to a lead on two touchdowns by Bo Scarbrough. Watson cut the lead to with a long drive that ended with his touchdown run. A game that started as a defensive struggle opened up in the second half. More Watson passing pulled Clemson to within on a touchdown to Renfrow. Hurts finally broke through with a touchdown to a O. J. Howard, making it Alabama. Another long Clemson drive concluded with a pass from Watson to Williams, and Clemson was back within 3, . Clemson seized its first lead in the game, as Wayne Gallman punched in a touchdown run. The key play in the drive was a pass to Williams, boosted by an unsportsmanlike conduct call against Alabama. Alabama answered like champions with a quick drive. Hurts completed several passes, including a to O. J. Howard. Then he turned to his other strength, running, and barreled past defenders for a score. But that only set up Watson for his two minutes of heroics. Here’s how Clemson won the championship: Alabama was 25 percent of the way to another national championship, leading Clemson, after one quarter in Tampa. The early stages of the game were mostly dominated by defense, with the exception a lightning quick sequence of five plays that including a scramble by quarterback Jalen Hurts and a touchdown by Bo Scarbrough to put Alabama in front. Alabama, led by the freshman quarterback Hurts, mostly moved the ball on the ground. Hurts completed just 2 of 8 passes, for 10 yards. He looked especially ineffective going deep. Clemson had limited offensive success against the vaunted Alabama defense — quarterback Deshaun Watson was for 23 yards. It never threatened to score. The Tigers were also hurt by an uninspired failed plunge on at the Alabama 41. The Clemson highlight was probably a partially blocked punt that took an Alabama roll anyway. Turnovers were expected to be critical in the game, and Clemson had the only one of the quarter, a bobbled snap by quarterback Deshaun Watson that gifted Alabama the ball in Clemson territory with 1:50 left in the period. Alabama held a lead at halftime of the College Football Playoff Championship in Tampa. The game looked as good as won when favored Alabama went up by in the second quarter. Alabama was breaking runs and its defense was swamping Clemson’s star quarterback Deshaun Watson. Alabama did it on the ground, rushing for 143 yards. The freshman quarterback Jalen Hurts was for only 40 yards. Watson woke up with a drive through the previously impenetrable Alabama defense with six minutes left. He capped it by taking the ball into the end zone himself. He finished the half for 153 yards. The game was dominated by the defenses, which frustrated most of the game’s drives on both sides. Watson avoided throwing an interception, which he was often guilty of during the season. Clemson did lose one fumble. A poor Alabama punt gave Clemson the ball at Alabama’s 42 and Deshaun Watson took advantage with a quick drive culminating in a touchdown to Hunter Renfrow. Watson was up to 228 yards passing. That drive notwithstanding, defense was generally trumping offense in the second half. The best drive before the touchdown came from Clemson as Watson led the Tigers from their own 16 to Alabama’s 43. The drive might have gone farther, but a catch for a first down was overruled on review, leaving Clemson with a fourth and short. Watson stayed on the field, and it seemed the Tigers might go for it, but it was a bluff, and Watson punted the ball. Jalen Hurts of Alabama had barely registered in the first three quarters of the national championship. He was for only 49 yards. And Alabama, after racing to a lead, was up only . Then O. J. Howard badly beat Clemson’s Van Smith, and raced down the sidelines for a touchdown. Just like that Hurts more than doubled his yardage for the game and Alabama widened its lead to as the third quarter drew to a close. It was a huge play for Alabama, which had been struggling on offense. Watson Takes Over: A mostly defensive game opened up as the third quarter turned into the fourth, with both teams scoring. After Alabama went up by on a pass play, Clemson answered with a drive consisting mostly of shortish passes from Watson. It finished with a pass from Watson to his favorite target all year, Mike Williams. Watson was up to 294 yards passing, but Alabama still led, with 14 minutes left to play. Gallman Gives Clemson the Lead: Clemson seized its first lead in the national championship, as Wayne Gallman punched in a touchdown run. The key play in the drive was a pass to Williams, boosted by an unsportsmanlike conduct call against Alabama. Watson continued to solve the toughest defense in the country and increased his passing numbers to for 360 yards. Alabama Retakes Lead: Alabama, behind for the first time in the game, answered like champions with a quick drive. Jared Hurts, whose passing had been vastly overshadowed by Deshaun Watson of Clemson, completed several, including a to O. J. Howard. Then for the touchdown he turned to his other strength, running, and barreled past defenders for a score Alabama led but Watson still had an opportunity for a drill. We all know how that ended. | 1 |
It is too soon to know whether the unexpected outcome of Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy will inspire more women to run or dampen their aspirations. But either way, it is clear that she has, through her campaigns and career, helped create a political environment in which a woman could come so close to winning the presidency. What is less known is that Mrs. Clinton started changing that political culture for women as far back as the early 1970s — not through a candidacy of her own, but through a series of small, but crucial, networking moves. The number of women who labored in basement meetings, in groups, in boardrooms, in unions, in news organizations and in their own kitchens to expand possibilities for women are far too many to count. Far fewer, however, worked specifically to put women into elected office. Prominent among those who did were a few key friends of Mrs. Clinton whom she helped find paths to the cause, including a Texan political player named Betsey Wright, who Mrs. Clinton introduced to a classmate of hers from Wellesley College, Jan Piercy. “In 1972, I was working at a temporary job at Filene’s Basement, trying to figure out what I was going to do next, when I got a call from Hillary,” recalled Ms. Piercy, who had devoted herself to antipoverty work at Wellesley, but not to feminism, per se. “And Hillary said, ‘We have to go to Washington tomorrow.’ So we jumped on a plane, and I’m ushered in to the National League of Women Voters headquarters, and Hillary tells them, ‘This can be your youth director. ’” Ms. Piercy, representing the league, went on to attend the Republican and Democratic conventions in 1972, a key inflection point for female activists. “We realized that the only way we could be accepted as equals was to be in office,” she said. “But the parties were not interested in cultivating women. So we realized we would have to train them ourselves. ” Ms. Piercy was too inexperienced to do that so was Elisabeth Griffith, another friend of Mrs. Clinton’s and Ms. Piercy’s from Wellesley, who had joined Ms. Piercy in the early stages of a project with that ambition. But while Mrs. Clinton was a law student supporting the presidential candidate Senator George McGovern in San Antonio, she met Ms. Wright, the person she thought could galvanize and prepare potential female candidates. She soon became close to Ms. Wright, a seasoned political operative whose experience of sexism on the McGovern campaign was having a somewhat radicalizing effect on her. Often when Ms. Wright tried to raise an issue with a male staff member on the campaign, “It elicited some kind of crazy response about hormones,” Ms. Wright, now 73, recalled. “I was already a feminist, but that turned me into a raving feminist. I would go home and play Helen Reddy and go to sleep. ” Bill Clinton, who helped coordinate McGovern’s Texas campaign, had his own feminist aha moment while working on the race, when McGovern’s staff did not pursue Mrs. Clinton for a job for which Mr. Clinton had recommended her. “But she’s better than me,” he told Ms. Piercy at the time. In meeting Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Wright said, she no longer just imagined a woman could be president, but believed she had met the very woman who would first reach that milestone. Many friends tried to talk Hillary out of marrying Bill for the sake of her political future Ms. Wright went so far as to try to talk Bill out of marrying Hillary, for the sake of the feminist cause. “I told him it was always going to be a struggle for her to carve her own political direction,” Ms. Wright said. Ms. Wright had previously worked on individual women’s campaigns. Yet it was Mrs. Clinton who suggested that Ms. Wright move to Washington to spread her expertise, by joining Ms. Piercy and Ms. Griffith to work for what would become known as the National Women’s Education Fund, an unofficial training arm of the National Women’s Political Caucus, with no formal affiliation. “Hillary was saying they really did need to get somebody who understood local races,” Ms. Wright said. “And she strongly urged me to go. ” It was not an easy sell: Mrs. Clinton was asking Ms. Wright, a Texan, to move to Washington for a job that did not yet have the funding to support it. But persuaded by Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Wright ultimately accepted the position of executive director, backed by a national board of women working in politics. Ms. Wright recalled driving around a frigid Midwest in the winter of 1973, “sleeping in bunk beds at Y. W. C. A. s, with the bathroom down the hall,” trying to recruit women from local churches, gardening clubs and political caucuses for seminars and training sessions that Ms. Wright created to teach women how to maneuver within the political process. She also formed a powerful partnership with Ruth Mandel, who had recently created the pioneering Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. It was not just that they needed to train women, Ms. Mandel said they needed to “help women overcome their own resistance to gaining political power in their own right. ” Ms. Wright knew that revolutions start with pragmatics: She created a training manual that the Education Fund and the Political Caucus relied on heavily for years, a guidebook that broke down the logistics of opinion polling, reaching the news media and recruiting a staff. The training sessions offered advice on every aspect of campaigning, including details specific to women. “We told them, ‘Put your name tag high up on your right lapel, so people could see your name without staring at your chest,’” said Ms. Griffith, who was associate director under Ms. Wright. They also told women, Ms. Wright remembered, “Never to say anything in a ladies’ bathroom you don’t want to see in a newspaper. ” Vivian Houghton, now a Democratic political activist in Delaware, attended a training session in the ’70s that gave her the confidence, she said, to run several women’s campaigns at the state and local level. Eventually, in 2005, she ran for attorney general of Delaware, for the Green party. “From that training, we carried out a message that women were just as competent or even more competent than men to run for office,” Ms. Houghton said. “And it gave us the instructions on how to do it, because we were at that point completely uneducated about it. ” Judith Lichtman, a senior adviser to the National Partnership for Women and Families, recalled that in 1974, “the N. W. E. F. was already an important presence on the scene. ” She credited Ms. Wright for that: “She turned the glimmer of an idea into an institution that catapulted untold numbers of women into public life. ” But she credits Mrs. Clinton with pairing the right political powerhouse with the right cause. “She had a moment,” Ms. Lichtman said. “That was pretty early for that light bulb — not a lot of people were thinking about women in politics. ” Ms. Wright’s political talents were such that she became the chief of staff for Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas. “In the Capitol, you had to go through Betsey if you wanted to drink a glass of water,” said Sara Ehrman, the Clinton friend who famously drove Hillary Rodham to Arkansas. But the role Ms. Wright played in Mr. Clinton’s 1992 presidential primary has largely overshadowed the work for which she was once well recognized within the women’s movement. It fell to Ms. Wright, the proud, raving feminist, to squelch what she once called, dismissively, the “bimbo eruptions” that threatened to derail Mr. Clinton’s candidacy. “It was my job to defend the Arkansas record and Bill Clinton personally,” Ms. Wright said. As for the derogatory phase she coined, she said, “That was just a brain freeze, and it’s something I’ll go to my grave regretting I ever said. ” The race “tore Betsey apart,” said Ms. Piercy, who saw that her friend’s role was significantly limited once the campaign team made it past the primary. “Betsey was there in the beating heart of a presidential campaign, before we fully understood exactly what it meant for women to be in the cross hairs of that kind of power,” Ms. Piercy said. Ms. Wright is still hopeful that a Democratic woman will be elected president in her lifetime. Certainly, the prospect is far from the pipe dream it seemed like when she first met Mrs. Clinton. “I told Hillary I thought she could be president,” Ms. Wright said. “She would just laugh. Back then, it was pie in the sky. ” Out of politics for years, Ms. Wright is now contemplating ways she could once again engage in causes in Texas, where she has been dismayed by, among other things, the state’s decision to ban Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. “I have to do something,” she said. “We have to create a sense of outrage — to get more women elected, and to scare the hell out of the men who are there. ” | 1 |
BEDMINSTER, N. J. — Donald J. Trump on Saturday moved to mend fences with political rivals after a divisive campaign, meeting with Mitt Romney, who had scathingly criticized him during the race as “a phony” and “a fraud,” to discuss naming him as secretary of state. The outreach signaled a change in tone one day after Mr. Trump moved to elevate to pivotal national security positions. It was not clear whether Mr. Trump had offered the State Department post to Mr. Romney, or whether Mr. Romney, who has broken sharply with him on Russia, free trade and other issues, would accept if he did. But some strategists argued that merely by reaching out to Mr. Romney, Mr. Trump was demonstrating an openness to new people and ideas, even from the unlikeliest of sources. It may also have been intended to inject the sort of unpredictability and spectacle into the transition process that the thrives on. During a weekend of transition talks at Trump National Golf Club here in Bedminster, Mr. Trump was scheduled to hold a series of discussions with what his aides described as a diverse array of potential advisers. The conversations were aimed at showing that the was willing to look beyond his loyal inner circle to fill his administration. Among the others who sat down with Mr. Trump were Michelle A. Rhee, a Democrat who served as the chancellor of public schools in the District of Columbia from 2007 to 2010 Robert L. Woodson, an conservative who works on programs James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who headed the United States Central Command and is being considered for the post of defense secretary and Todd Ricketts, an owner of the Chicago Cubs. Mr. Trump met with Mr. Romney for about an hour and a half. Afterward, both men exited the clubhouse and shook hands for the cameras. “Went great,” Mr. Trump said, cupping his hands at his mouth to project his voice. Mr. Romney then briefly addressed reporters, declining to say whether he was interested in a cabinet position. “We had a conversation with regard to the various theaters of the world with interest to the United States of real significance,” Mr. Romney said. “We discussed those areas and exchanged our views on those topics. A very thorough and discussion over the time we had. I appreciate the chance to speak with the and look forward to the coming administration. ” Mr. Romney did not answer reporters’ questions about whether he had apologized to Mr. Trump for his criticism of him during the campaign. Later in the day, Mr. Trump strongly praised General Mattis after talking with him for about an hour. “All I can say is he is the real deal — the real deal,” Mr. Trump said. Asked whether General Mattis, who was an assertive presence on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, would join the administration, Mr. Trump said: “We’ll see. We’ll see. ” He added: “He’s just a brilliant, wonderful man. What a career — we are going to see what happens, but he is the real deal. ” Mr. Trump said on Saturday that there would be some personnel announcements on Sunday. The is scheduled to meet with a similarly group, including Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whom he removed as the chairman of his transition team days after the election Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has also been a contender for the secretary of state post and Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, who has pressed aggressive measures to crack down on undocumented immigrants. The meeting schedule, Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s transition team, said on Saturday, “really shows the reach and the depth to which we are going to pull in diverse ideas and different perspectives as we form this administration. ” “As we’re working to bring the country together and move forward,” Mr. Miller added in a conference call with reporters, “this shows really where his head is as the next leader of our country. ” On Friday, Mr. Trump moved to install Michael T. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general bent on destroying Islamic extremism, as his national security adviser, and he selected Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an immigration as his attorney general. Both were early supporters of Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Romney fits a decidedly different mold. Earlier this year, he said that if Mr. Trump became the Republican nominee, “the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished,” and he suggested that Mr. Trump was dangerous and unstable. He deplored Mr. Trump’s personal qualities: “the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd theatrics. ” But if he took a cabinet post, Mr. Romney could serve as a moderating influence on the Mr. Trump has already selected, including Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas as C. I. A. director and Stephen K. Bannon as chief strategist. It could also force Mr. Romney to defend administration policies he did not believe in. John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said Mr. Trump was showing “great magnanimity” by talking to Mr. Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee and a former governor of Massachusetts. “I think it is meant to reassure some of the establishment that he is going to reach out to them, and that’s an important part of healing the party. ” Choosing Ms. Rhee as education secretary “would show real disruption,” Mr. Feehery added. But she is “also someone who has a real track record of delivering the kind of results he’s looking for, and who the establishment hates. ” Ms. Rhee governed with a brash style as chancellor of Washington’s public school system, which was struggling at the time to improve underperforming schools and reverse test scores. She enraged teachers’ unions by firing teachers who had received poor evaluations, renegotiating teacher contracts to weaken seniority protections and tie their pay to student achievement, and endorsing vouchers to allow poor students to attend private schools. Contrary to Mr. Trump, who has said he will scrap the set of education standards known as Common Core, Ms. Rhee, who founded the education advocacy group StudentsFirst, supports the program. Mr. Trump traveled on Friday by motorcade to Bedminster. The trip was the second time that Mr. Trump has left Manhattan since Election Day. The other trip was to Washington, where he met with President Obama and congressional Republicans. The country club is about an hour’s drive from Manhattan and on a rural stretch. Since buying the property in 2002, Mr. Trump has built two golf courses on it. In the evening, Mr. Trump left the clubhouse with Mr. Pence to attend meetings on another part of the property. About an hour later, Mr. Trump returned to the clubhouse to have dinner with Patrick a billionaire pharmaceutical entrepreneur best known for developing the cancer drug Abraxane. | 1 |
Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name Recipient Email =>
Should Donald Trump surge from behind to win, he would likely bring in with him both houses of Congress.
Much of his agenda — tax cuts, deregulation, border security, deportation of criminals here illegally, repeal of Obamacare, appointing justices like Scalia, unleashing the energy industry — could be readily enacted.
On new trade treaties with China and Mexico, Trump might need economic nationalists in Bernie Sanders’ party to stand with him, as free-trade Republicans stood by their K-Street contributors.
Still, compatible agendas and GOP self-interest could transcend personal animosities and make for a successful four years.
But consider what a Hillary Clinton presidency would be like.
She would enter office as the least-admired president in history, without a vision or a mandate. She would take office with two-thirds of the nation believing she is untruthful and untrustworthy.
Reports of poor health and lack of stamina may be exaggerated. Yet she moves like a woman her age. Unlike Ronald Reagan, her husband, Bill, and President Obama, she is not a natural political athlete and lacks the personal and rhetorical skills to move people to action.
She makes few mistakes as a debater, but she is often shrill — when she is not boring. Trump is right: Hillary Clinton is tough as a $2 steak. But save for those close to her, she appears not to be a terribly likable person.
Still, such attributes, or the lack of them, do not assure a failed presidency. James Polk, no charmer, was a one-term president, but a great one, victorious in the Mexican War, annexing California and the Southwest, negotiating a fair division of the Oregon territory with the British.
Yet the hostility Clinton would face the day she takes office would almost seem to ensure four years of pure hell.
The reason: her credibility, or rather her transparent lack of it.
Consider. Because the tapes revealed he did not tell the full truth about when he learned about Watergate, Richard Nixon was forced to resign.
In the Iran-Contra affair, Reagan faced potential impeachment charges, until ex-security adviser John Poindexter testified that Reagan told the truth when he said he had not known of the secret transfer of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras.
Bill Clinton was impeached — for lying.
White House scandals, as Nixon said in Watergate, are almost always rooted in mendacity — not the misdeed, but the cover-up, the lies, the perjury, the obstruction of justice that follow.
And here Hillary Clinton seems to have an almost insoluble problem.
She has testified for hours to FBI agents investigating why and how her server was set up and whether secret information passed through it.
Forty times during her FBI interrogation, Clinton said she could not or did not recall. This writer has friends who went to prison for telling a grand jury, “I can’t recall.”
After studying her testimony and the contents of her emails, FBI Director James Comey virtually accused Clinton of lying.
Moreover, thousands of emails were erased from her server, even after she had reportedly been sent a subpoena from Congress to retain them.
During her first two years as secretary of state, half of her outside visitors were contributors to the Clinton Foundation.
Yet there was not a single quid pro quo, Clinton tells us.
Yesterday’s newspapers exploded with reports of how Bill Clinton aide Doug Band raised money for the Clinton Foundation, and then hit up the same corporate contributors to pay huge fees for Bill’s speeches.
What were the corporations buying if not influence? What were the foreign contributors buying, if not influence with an ex-president, and a secretary of state and possible future president?
Did none of the big donors receive any official favors?
“There’s a lot of smoke and there’s no fire,” says Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps, but there seems to be more smoke every day.
If once or twice in her hours of testimony to the FBI, grand jury or before Congress, Clinton were proven to have lied, her Justice Department would be obligated to name a special prosecutor, as was Nixon’s.
And, with the election over, the investigative reporters of the adversary press, Pulitzers beckoning, would be cut loose to go after her.
The Republican House is already gearing up for investigations that could last deep into Clinton’s first term.
There is a vast trove of public and sworn testimony from Hillary, about the server, the emails, the erasures, the Clinton Foundation. Now, thanks to WikiLeaks, there are tens of thousands of emails to sift through, and perhaps tens of thousands more to come.
What are the odds that not one contains information that contradicts her sworn testimony? Cong. Jim Jordan contends that Clinton may already have perjured herself.
And as the full-court press would begin with her inauguration, Clinton would have to deal with the Syrians, Russians, Taliban, North Koreans and Xi Jinping in the South China Sea — and with Bill Clinton wandering around the White House with nothing to do.
This election is not over. But if Hillary Clinton wins, a truly hellish presidency could await her, and us.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”
Copyright 2016 Creators.com. | 1 |
DAYM!
Ok, that was no POS RPG. They gots toys with tech.
Now the important question , was the boom-stick made in USA or Moscow? | 0 |
I used to post on Common Dreams, but I got banned after criticizing their editors. Apparently they didn't like the socialistic content of my posts. As much as I complain about Truthout, at least (as far as I know) they do not ban people for contradicting them. | 0 |
MIAMI — Amanda Paradiz is 16 weeks pregnant, and she has a mission: to get through her entire pregnancy without a single mosquito bite. It hasn’t been easy. Ever since health officials in July announced four cases of Zika transmission by local mosquitoes detected in a neighborhood, Mrs. Paradiz and her husband, Alex, have largely secluded themselves in their Broward County home. They canceled a vacation, and stopped taking evening strolls around the lake and swimming in the neighborhood pool. To walk the dog, Mrs. Paradiz, 35, throws on long pants and a hoodie, even though it’s 90 degrees outside. She’s debating quitting her job as a sales rep, to avoid coming into contact with a mosquito that might carry the Zika virus, which can lead to devastating birth defects, including an abnormally small head, called microcephaly. “All it takes is one mosquito bite to change the entire course of our lives,” Mrs. Paradiz said. In the past three weeks, the number of confirmed Zika infections in the greater Miami area has increased to 36, including 25 linked to the neighborhood of Wynwood considered the Zika zone, as well as isolated cases outside County in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Since Thursday, the number has included a small cluster in Miami Beach, suggesting that there is at least one other location where mosquitoes may be transmitting the virus locally. Federal health officials now are advising pregnant women to avoid traveling to the County area. Public health officials have emphasized they do not expect the virus to spread here as it has in other countries because many homes have screened windows and which keeps mosquitoes at bay. But pregnant women still are worried. Some expectant mothers are choosing confinement indoors to avoid mosquitoes. Women who wouldn’t dream of drinking coffee while pregnant now are coating exposed limbs in bug spray, a tactic recommended by health officials. Some women even are considering temporary moves, leaving their homes, families and doctors to stay with relatives or friends far away from a Zika zone until they give birth. “Patients are very anxious, and they bring up the subject of Zika with me before I even get a chance,” said Dr. Elizabeth an who is a past president of the Dade County Medical Association. “Before, this was an ocean away. Now it’s in their backyard. ” While the Zika epidemic has been sweeping across Latin and South America and the Caribbean since last year, in the United States it is still relatively new. So far, some 2, 260 infections have been confirmed, including 529 pregnant women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But those cases involved people who are believed to have been infected while traveling, as well as 22 who contracted it by having sex with an infected person. Now that the virus has been transmitted through local mosquitoes, pregnant women say they feel vulnerable and frightened, and wonder how they can keep mosquitoes at bay during an entire pregnancy while living in a state that is swarming with the insects. At a regional meeting of obstetricians and gynecologists in Orlando last week, Zika was the main topic of conversation, said Dr. Karen Harris, an in Gainesville who heads the Florida arm of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “It’s hard on the patients, but it’s also hard on the staff, because we don’t have anything to offer but prevention,” she said. “We can’t answer their questions. If you get Zika a month before you’re due, does that affect the baby? We don’t know. There’s total uncertainty. ” The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the Zika virus, doesn’t normally fly more than about 500 feet in its lifetime. Health officials assume that mosquitoes picked up the infection from someone who had just returned from Latin America or the Caribbean with the virus in his or her blood. The latest guidelines direct obstetricians to assess every pregnant patient for exposure to Zika at each prenatal visit, and counsel them to use condoms and insect repellent to lower their risk for exposure. Dr. Aaron Elkin, a Broward County who treats a diverse group of patients from Miami and surrounding areas, keeps a basket of free condoms on the counter in the reception area, along with containers of Off bug spray. Dr. Elkin, a past president of the Broward County Medical Association, spent every visit last week discussing Zika precautions, assuring women that bug spray would not harm the fetus, taking blood and urine samples for tests and doing ultrasounds. “Every pregnant woman who comes in for prenatal care wants Zika testing,” Dr. Elkin said. “You can’t say no to them. They’re very frightened. I’m doing 15 tests a day. ” One patient, Idit Zalouf, a who lives in Sunny Isles Beach just north of Miami Beach, is five months pregnant. She showed Dr. Elkin a bracelet she bought that she thinks will protect her from mosquitoes. Dr. Elkin advised her to use insect repellent with DEET. “Do you think it would be good for me to go to New York for a while?” she asked him. “If a pregnant woman gets the Zika, what does she do?” Dr. Elkin tried reassuring her that preventing mosquito bites and other forms of Zika transmission should be her focus, and that it would be difficult to manage her care from afar. Later Ms. Zalouf said she may move anyway. “I think it’s better to be away from here,” said Ms. Zalouf. “I’m stressed about it. It’s very frightening. “ Another patient, Unique Robinson, a licensed practical nurse who is not working now and lives in Broward County, said she is terrified. She rarely ventures outside her home, except to go to the mall or the movies. “I’ve looked it up and seen the babies, how they come out. I don’t think I could handle that,” she said, her voice breaking. She often goes online to look up information. “The internet makes it worse. ” Some patients are worried about Zika, but find it difficult to take precautions. Malorie Fitzgerald, a secretary who is 33 weeks pregnant with her third child, has separated from the father and has been living in a homeless shelter in an area of Miami adjacent to Wynwood. While most patients came to the office wearing long pants and long sleeves, Mrs. Fitzgerald, who caught a bus, was wearing an dress with a halter top. At the shelter she shares a room with 25 people, and they are lax about leaving doors open. She hangs blankets around her bunk bed to keep flies and mosquitoes out, to no avail. “I get bit a couple of times a day,” she said. “It’s a little less since the doctor gave me a can of Off. But the mosquitoes and flies are horrible there. ” Dr. Elkin runs an ultrasound, and reassures Ms. Fitzgerald that the measurements are normal. It’s not a perfect guarantee, however. Infections can occur at later stages of pregnancy, and the scan won’t pick up more subtle abnormalities caused by Zika that are not visible, like stiff joints and eye damage. “That is the head of the baby, see? It’s completely normal,” Dr. Elkin said. Ms. Fitzgerald smiled with relief. But he repeated his advice about prevention. “Wear long clothes and use the Off!” But even the most vigilant efforts to prevent mosquito bites are not always successful. Lori Tabachnikoff, 36, who is 24 weeks pregnant with her first child and lives in South Miami, said she was fortunate because her employer, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, located just outside Wynwood, has allowed her to work from home to minimize her time outdoors. Even so, mosquitoes sneak in. She recently let a plumber into her home and was soon bitten by a mosquito that must have slipped in at the same time. She has been bitten five times so far this summer, and she and her husband recently went to the health department at 4 a. m. to get in line to be tested. There were already four couples ahead of them. They are waiting for the results. | 1 |
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Mark Cuban has been vocally outspoken about the 2016 election after learning the dark truth about Republican nominee Donald Trump. Initially, Cuban actually supported Trump’s candidacy as someone independent from politics as usual, but as he (and we all) learned more about the dark past of The Donald’s dirty dealings , sexual predations and more, the Dallas Mavericks basketball team owner threw himself wholeheartedly into the political arena, culminating with front row seats to the last presidential debate.
Cuban sat down with local radio broadcasters to discuss rumors that his anti-Trump stance might cost him ticket sales for his NBA franchise. Mark Cuban probably, literally dropped the mic after this response:
“You know what, when it’s all said and done, I’d rather lose every penny than have Trump as president because I care more about the future of my family, my children than I do about my pocketbook. And so if it means we play to empty arenas, I’m down with that.”
“Maybe I pick up some fans. Maybe I lose some fans. I don’t know,. I’ve heard it from both. I’ve had people say ‘there’s no way I can support you. I can’t go to another Mavs game.’ And I’ve had people say ‘you know what? We’re buying Mavs tickets.’ What I’ve heard more often than anything is, ‘are you gonna be this way once the election’s over?’ And the answer is no. You’ve known me forever Newy and I’ve been apolitical my entire adult life and only because I know Donald and I know my feelings about what he would be like as president have I gotten this involved but come November 9, it’s all Mavs all the time.”
Mark Cuban is a shining example of how any American should approach the political arena, which he does by placing integrity over ideology and the good of the country in his viewpoints above the simple view of his bank account’s short term health. Luckily, Cuban is a franchisee in the NBA, which is far and away America’s most progressive major sports league, which doesn’t guarantee ongoing success, but does mean that the typical NBA fan values tolerance and diversity over racial segregation and hatred. | 0 |
Feminist icon Alice Walker has bemoaned the horror of female genital mutilation (FGM) for years and acknowledged in a 2006 interview that Muslim scholars “have traditionally ignored the problem. ”[The author of the Pulitzer The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy — a novel that attacks the practice of FGM and the mythologies that sustain it — Walker told Feminist. com founder and executive director Marianne Schnall in December, 2006, that she had recently received word that “some scholars very high in the hierarchy of the Muslim world” had met in Cairo and resolved that “female genital mutilation is not to happen henceforth among Muslims. ” Walker, who, in 1993, also with Pratibha Parmar, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, further explained: And my friend Pratibha Parmar is visiting and she and I made a film called Warrior Marks that talks about female genital mutilation and we just almost cried, because it’s such a major acknowledgement from people who have traditionally ignored the problem. Basically people like these scholars have ignored the problem. Walker said when men realize they are in danger of contracting AIDS from women who have been victims of FGM, then they will condemn the practice. “[A] lot of it has to be about making sure that men, and maybe starting really young, really understand that they are endangering themselves,” Walker explained, adding: Because they really are very people, most men — and I say that because when I started talking about female genital mutilation and writing about it — many men in Africa and elsewhere just completely denied it, and just didn’t want to hear about it. Until I said, ‘Well, you know, you notice how AIDS is spreading, and one of the ways that it spreads is through these fissures and tears that happen when you have intercourse with someone who has been mutilated,” — and that really sat them up very straight. Walker, an advisory board member of Feminist. com, along with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, said that while she and other feminists are “tired” of educating men, it still seems to be “really important. ” “Especially if we’re thinking of our sisters’ and daughters’ health,” she added. “And not only that, so many of us by now have these wonderful feminist sons and grandsons, who really are allies, and we should give them the respect as allies, in changing a lot of the things that are wrong and done against women in the world. ” Walker’s horror regarding FGM and its association with Islam is at odds with fellow feminist Germaine Greer, who appeared as a guest with Australia’s Tony Jones of ABC. net’s QA. Greer said Islam is not the problem when it comes to FGM. “And it’s the sort of caricature of Islam that we keep promulgating,” she continued. “But it … All of this is weird. I mean, one of the commonest operations in the United States is reduction of the labia minora. And it costs you $8, 000 or something, and it’s carried out massively. Huge, thousands, hundreds of thousands of cases a year. ” The QA discussion continued: Tony Jones:But do you class that as genital mutilation? Germaine Greet:Well, I class circumcision as genital mutilation. Sorry, guys. If you’re going to really deal with this question of genital mutilation, start paying attention. Find out what happens to human genitalia. It’s not pretty and you mightn’t like it, but you’re going to be in a pretty silly situation if you start, you know, doing the — what did we used to call it? — the test, at the passport control. “Let me see if you’ve been mutilated. ” And why does that particular mutilation have this kudos? Why is it such an important thing? Why does God like it? I don’t think God likes it at all. I think God should take issue. During an interview at the end of 2015 with Tami Simon on podcast Insights at the Edge, Walker said she was shocked to hear people criticize her for exposing the problem of FGM. She continued: Now, there is a place that you would think is so obvious. I mean, would you yourself hold down a little baby girl and proceed to cut away all of her genitals? It should be a — just an anathema. People should look at you — and some of them did — and say, “Well, that’s just not possible. ” Well, it is possible. It’s happening right this minute. I wrote this novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, made a film about the practice — first went all over places where FGM is practiced [and] made a film — lugged the film around Africa, wherever we could find a projector, and [then] London, New York, San Francisco. Everywhere we went — [filmmaker] Pratibha Parmar and I — and still, after ten years, to have people say things like, “Oh, this is the colonial gaze. She’s just trying to get back in the limelight. ” Really. As you can tell, I am still on some level speechless. Walker said the practice of FGM has been traveling from Africa and now to London. With the increase in immigration from countries that perform FGM, more girls in the United States are undergoing the cutting as well. A recent study suggests the imported practice of FGM can actually segregate hundreds of thousands of American girls of immigrant parents from their peers in mainstream American society. “That’s why that book is written the way it is written — so that you can see that these atrocities that people do to each other don’t stay in the tribe that they practiced in — whatever the tribe is, whether it’s the gay tribe or whatever,” Walker said. “Things don’t stay put. They travel. That is why people need to pay attention by what has done to harm other people — because if you’re a person, eventually it’s going to fly right back in some form at you. ” | 1 |
In just five seasons, Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein assembled a team that is competing for the franchise’s first World Series title since 1908. Is he any good? Strongside
Finished first in class at Yale School of Sabermetrics
Only person in America emotionally invested in Single-A South Bend Cubs
Views baseball game as hundreds of formulas running across field
Believes this might be the year he finally wins fantasy baseball league
Can explain phenomenon of curses using highly complex linear regression
Turned the 2002 Red Sox into a contender using only the second-highest payroll in baseball Weakside
No fucking way he could do this magic turnaround shit for the Padres
Lucky shirt costs $400
Not even sure how to use gut feeling at this point
Helped make Curt Schilling a World Series hero
Took almost six years after college to achieve every single one of his dreams
Still doesn’t have statistic named after him Share This Story: WATCH VIDEO FROM THE ONION Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter
Give your spam filter something to do. Daily Headlines | 0 |
Persian Gulf A protester throws a glass bottle containing paint at a police armored personnel carrier during anti-regime clashes in the village of Sitra, south of Manama, on February 14, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)
A court in Bahrain has imprisoned and revoked the citizenship of more than a dozen people after convicting them of terror charges as the ruling Al Khalifah regime continues with its heavy-handed crackdown on political dissidents in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom.
On Thursday, the Fourth High Criminal Court convicted two defendants to 15 years in jail and three others to 10 years behind bars each on charges of “forming a terror cell, running it and recruiting new members.”
Seven other people were slapped with seven years in jail each. Three others, namely Sheikh Mohammad Ali al-Tal, Mohammad al-A'ali and Ismail Abdulaziz, were sentenced to life imprisonment.
The trio were also ordered to pay a cash fine of 200,000 Bahraini dinars (over $530,000).
The court later revoked the citizenship of all the 15 defendants.
Separately, Bahrain's Supreme Criminal Court sentenced two civilians to 5 years in prison on charge of holding an anti-regime protest in the small village of Jurdab earlier this year, and setting scrap tires ablaze.
Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the kingdom on February 14, 2011.
They are demanding that the Al Khalifah dynasty relinquish power and a just system representing all Bahrainis be established.
Manama has spared no effort to clamp down on the dissent and rights activists. On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to Bahrain to assist the Manama government in its crackdown on peaceful protesters.
Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of Al Khalifah regime’s crackdown on anti-regime activists. Loading ... | 0 |
U. S. stock markets charged to record highs last week, but a Goldman Sachs downgrade knocked down the so called FAAMG tech stocks that have led the Trump stock boom. [The Dow Jones Industrial Average [DJIA] rose 89. 44 points, or 0. 42 percent, to close at an of 21, 271. 97 on June 9. The index, which includes many of America’s largest companies, is up by 7. 64 percent and up 18. 27 percent in the last 12 months. Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Bouroujerdi warned that the $600 billion outperformance by the 5 biggest tech stocks known as FAAMG — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet — had contributed about 42 percent of all stock market gains over the last year. Goldman worries that the boom has created an “valuation ” similar to the ridiculously high valuations for tech stocks during the boom, according to Zero Hedge. Bouroujerdi suggested that stock traders consider that after the 500 percent gain for the NASDAQ index during the bubble, which lasted from 1995 to 2001, the bust that lasted until 2003 saw the NASDAQ lose 85% of its valuation. Goldman’s report on June 9 caused Facebook, Inc. [FB] to tank 3. 3 percent. Amazon. com, Inc. [AMZN] dropped by 3. 16 percent, Apple Inc. AAPL plunged 3. 88 percent, Microsoft Corporation [MSFT] was down by 2. 27 percent, and Google’s parent Alphabet [GOOG] took a 3. 41 percent dive. There have been a tremendous number of doubters in the latest bull market, which has risen by 260. 5 percent since it began on March 9, 2009. During that period, there have been 12 market corrections of at least 5 percent, according to the Advisor Perspectives blog. During that fabulous run, the U. S. total nominal net worth of households and nonprofit organizations has zoomed from $56 trillion to $96 trillion through the end of the first quarter. That works out to about $292, 000 per capita. Stock market bulls highlight the current positive momentum in the real economy. It is widely known that the U. S. unemployment rate has fallen from 10 percent inn late 2009 to 4. 3 percent, the lowest level in 16 years. But the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed June 6 that its Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) indicator reached an record of 6, 044, 000 million jobs available at the end of May. Stock market bears are less optimistic. Billionaire commodity guru Jim Rogers, who correctly called the 2008 crash, told the Business Insider that the current combination of record debt and real estate and stock valuations means that the next economic crash will be “the biggest in my lifetime. ” A more balanced view of the stock market comes from Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, which manages $150 billion. He wrote earlier this month: “Big picture, the near term looks good and the longer term looks scary. ” He added, “[W]e fear that whatever the magnitude of the downturn that eventually comes, whenever it eventually comes, it will likely produce much greater social and political conflict than currently exists. ” | 0 |
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein ( ) said she is “very worried” what Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ( ) and the working group of “13 white men” will do the heath care. ” Feinstein said, “This is just come over to the Senate. It has no score. It’s probably one of the biggest bills that the senate will ever consider. We don’t know its breadth and depth as analyzed professionally. We don’t know its cost as analyzed professionally. And there are a lot of major changes which are going to have a dramatic impact on the health care marketplace which is now of the economy. ” She continued, “I don’t know what the leader McConnell has in mind. I don’t know what the 13 white men when you have five Republican women who are excluded from that, that these 13 men are supposed to sit down and put something together. ” She added, “I’m really very worried that in the rush to judgment we create a major health care problems for people and we lose a lot of jobs in so doing and we create a whole atmosphere of unpredictability. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
Afghanistan may struggle to recruit enough soldiers for its armed forces, but it’s swimming in generals. The country has close to 1, 000 officers of general rank on its books — more than the United States, whose military is three times as large. And off the books? No one knows. New names are added to the roster at a rate far out of proportion to battlefield realities, where the Afghan armed forces — the army, national police and intelligence forces, numbering 350, 000 in all — have been steadily losing soldiers and territory to the Taliban. Meanwhile, retirements are rare. The United States government, which picks up much of the tab for the Afghan military, can’t pin down the number of generals. “We still don’t know how many police and how many soldiers we’re paying salaries for,” said John F. Sopko, the United States special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. “We don’t even know how many generals. It is pretty pathetic, and here we are, 15 years into this. ” It’s nice work if you can get it, with fairly good pay, fringe benefits and a pension. So how do you become an Afghan general? Some of them have climbed the command ladder for decades, working hard and surviving purges by successive governments. But others took much easier routes. Suppose you are the young son of a former warlord who has just died. Along with condolences, the government will make you a general, as if the rank were hereditary. Commissions are also handed out as political to male relatives of important figures. And in the golden age of — the 1990s civil war — they were sometimes distributed in lieu of pay. In the anarchy that followed the Soviet withdrawal and the fall of the Communist regime, hundreds of generals were born overnight. Sibghatullah Mujadidi, the interim president of the mujahedeen government, which was backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, had little to offer the disheveled fighters who crowded his waiting room, so an aide kept note of whoever asked to become a general. According to Abdul Hafiz Mansour, who ran state television at the time and is now a member of Parliament, a confidant of the president — often his son — would turn up at the studios every evening to hand the news anchor a list of new generals to declare. One night, he said, there were 38 names. “The list would be handwritten on a plain sheet of paper — there was no logo, no official stationery,” Mr. Mansour said. The list sometimes grew mysteriously on the way from the president’s office to the studio. Mr. Mansour said he knew of current generals who had gotten their rank in those days through a little clandestine photocopying and the stroke of a pen. In response to the TV announcements, rival factions across the country would summarily declare their own generals. The former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, who now serves as vice president of Afghanistan, awarded stars to many of the men closest to him, and even printed his own currency to pay them. The joke was that among General Dostum’s bodyguards, there were no colonels. | 0 |
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has turned this election season into a complete circus. One of his advisors, former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, said that we may have to deal with his orange face again in 2020.
In an interview with POLITICO, Gingrich said : “The challenge for everybody’s going to be, ‘What if he gets 48 or 49 percent?’ And what if he says: ‘You know, I like this campaign and stuff. I ain’t leaving’? There will then be a Trump Party.”
It looks like the Republicans are already planning to obstruct Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton if she gets elected. Gingrich said : “I think it’ll be very difficult for the country … I think their message to the Republican leadership will be, ‘You had better prepare to fight her every single day.’”
Trump broached the subject at a rally in Sanford, Florida. He said that this election is the party’s “last chance.”
The Trumpkin proclaimed : “Republicans have to finally get smart and come together. This is our last chance. This is bigger than me or any of us. It’s about our country. This is about ending Obamacare. This is about the Supreme Court. This is about rebuilding our military and taking care of our vets, strengthening our borders and keeping our companies and jobs from leaving our beloved country. This is about restoring the rule of law, saving our Constitution and keeping radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country.”
It’s funny that he’s talking about party unity when he spreads divisive, hateful rhetoric, and has for the last year-and-a-half that has split the Republican Party. It became especially bad after the infamous Access Hollywood audio leaked. He has done his best to alienate just about every group out there over the course of his campaign. Hopefully, he will lose to a Hillary Clinton landslide on November 8. Vote Blue!
Here is a news clip about the Newt Gingrich interview :
Featured image via YouTube screenshot . About Natalie Dailey
Hi, I'm from Huntsville, AL. I'm a Liberal living in the Bible Belt, which can be quite challenging at times. I'm passionate about many issues including mental health, women's rights, gay rights, and many others. Check out my blog abravealabamaatheist.com. Check out my other blog weneedtotalkaboutmentalhealth.com Connect | 0 |
Speaking at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, CNN contributor Van Jones condemned campus safe spaces, calling them a “terrible idea. ”[ At an event hosted by former Obama staffer David Axelrod, who serves at the Institute of Politics’ Director, Van Jones was asked about the increased demand from students for protection from ideas on college campuses. “There are two ideas about safe spaces. One is a very good idea, and one is a terrible idea. The idea of being physically safe on campus, not being subjected to sexual harassment and physical abuse, or something like that. Being targeted specifically … Hey, I’m perfectly fine with that,” Jones claimed. “But there is another view that is now, I think, ascendent … It’s a horrible view, which is that ‘I need to be safe ideologically, I need to be safe emotionally, I just need to feel good all the time. And if someone else says something that I don’t like that is a problem for everyone else including the administration,” he continued. Jones suggested that safe spaces from ideas contradict the purpose of a university education: “I think that’s a terrible idea for the following reason: I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take the weights out of the gym. That’s the whole point of the gym. You can’t live on a campus where people say stuff that you don’t like?” Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about education and social justice for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 0 |
Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” while discussing President Donald Trump’s tweets accusing former President Barack Obama’s administration of wiretapping Trump Tower before the election, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ( ) said Trump should apologize to Obama. Pelosi said, “It’s not just about this allegation that President Trump has made It’s about the frivolity of it all. I call him the . He’ll come up with anything to change the subject from something that’s not going well for him. ” She continued, “He comes up with these schemes, which are beneath the dignity — not only beneath the dignity of the office of the president, beneath the responsibility of the President of the United States to respect the office he serves in. ” When asked if Trump should apologize to Obama, Pelosi said, “Yes he most certainly should and to the American people,” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
When Mitt Romney traveled to Europe as a presidential candidate in 2012, he created an uproar when he wondered aloud whether London was sufficiently prepared to host the Summer Olympics. British tabloids derided him as “Mitt the Twit” and CNN declared: “Romney’s Trip Begins in Shambles. ’’ When Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey went on a trade mission to Britain, he was roundly criticized for an errant comment about vaccinations amid a measles outbreak back home. “A Vaccine for Gaffes? Chris Christie Needs It” was the headline in Commentary. Those moments seem quaint when compared with Donald J. Trump’s news conference in Turnberry, Scotland, a day after Britain voted to leave the European Union. Over the course of 40 minutes, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee made pronouncements, predictions and asides that would have set off serious backlash for almost any other candidate. But Mr. Trump seems to be graded on a different curve. Here are some of his more provocative remarks: A reporter asked Mr. Trump about the suggestion from some pundits that both he and the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, would be the biggest political beneficiaries of the “Brexit” vote. Mr. Trump agreed that Mr. Putin could gain, and could not resist pointing out that Mr. Putin has been kind to him. “I think he will be probably, because I know how he’s been scorned to a certain extent,” Mr. Trump said, adding later: “He said some very nice things about me. I think he probably is somewhat of a beneficiary. ” Traditionally, candidates for national office in the United States refrain from insulting their own leaders when they’re traveling overseas. But Mr. Trump, who has bucked almost every other tradition, made no exception for this one. “He’s constantly dictating to the world what they should do. The world doesn’t listen to him obviously,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Obama, who was against Britain leaving the European Union. “He’s embarrassed. ” Candidates also historically do not engage in politics about their own races when traveling abroad. Yet Mr. Trump described Hillary Clinton as a puppet for Mr. Obama, pointing to her support for Britain remaining in the European Union. “She’s always misread everything,” Mr. Trump said. “If he said leave, she would have said leave. She does whatever he wants her to do. You know why, but that’s O. K. ” Politicians are wary of sounding as if they’re cheering for bad economic news, something that voters tend to respond poorly to. But Mr. Trump said that the diminished pound, which in value after the referendum vote, could benefit his bottom line at Trump Turnberry, his luxury resort and golf course. “When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve been in touch with them but there’s nothing to talk about,” Mr. Trump said. Besides, he added, he would rather have advisers who are divorced from recent global events. “I think I want to use ones that haven’t been involved, take a look at what’s happened in the world,” Mr. Trump said. | 0 |
A former assistant FBI Director has slammed Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, saying that it is a “cesspool” and that the family is like an organized crime syndicate.
Appearing on a John Catsimatidis’ radio show in the wake of the FBI reopening the case into Hillary Clinton’s home brew email server, James Kallstrom made the remarks while praising GOP nominee Donald Trump as a ‘good human being’ and a ‘patriot’.
“The Clintons, that’s a crime family, basically,” Kallstrom, a 27 year FBI veteran, said. “It’s like organized crime. I mean the Clinton Foundation is a cesspool.”
“God forbid we put someone like that in the White House,” he added, referring to Hillary.
Kallstrom, a who was assistant Director of the FBI in charge of the New York office during the 1990s, knows all about crime families, having tracked down mobsters, and swindlers for years.
“It’s just outrageous how Hillary Clinton sold her office for money.” Kallstrom said.
The former FBI official, perhaps most well known for his criminal inquiry into the downing of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, said of Hillary “she’s a pathological liar, and she’s always been a liar.”
Referring specifically to the FBI investigation into her email server, Kallstrom said “The problem here is this investigation was never a real investigation.”
“That’s the problem. They never had a grand jury empanelled, and the reason they never had a grand jury empanelled, I’m sure, is Loretta Lynch would not go along with that.” he added, referring to the Attorney General.
“So this investigation was without the ability to serve subpoenas, serve search warrants, and obtain the evidence that they ended up begging for. It was just ludicrous what went on.” Kallstrom added, noting that theFBI “left so much stuff on the table”.
Kallstrom also noted that FBI Director James Comey and the rest of the top brass at the bureau were directly responsible for holding back the investigation.
“The agents are furious with what’s going on, I know that for a fact,” he said.
On Friday Kallstrom stated that he thinks “something big is going to happen” in the coming days, and that Comey “couldn’t hold onto it any longer” and had to reopen the investigation because had he not, “the locals would have stepped in,” meaning the regular FBI agents who have seen the bombshell evidence against Clinton.
The full interview can be viewed here .
The Washington Post also reported Monday that regular FBI agents have been pushing hard for the Clinton Foundation to be investigated over claims it gave favors and special access to donors.
The report notes that it was the Justice Department that shut down the line of inquiry into the foundation.
Source
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Liz Crokin of Townhall. com recently published an article titled “Why the MSM Is Ignoring Trump’s Sex Trafficking Busts” discussing the arrests of sex criminals under Donald Trump’s presidency and why it has been underreported by mainstream outlets. [Since President Donald Trump has been sworn in on Jan. 20, authorities have arrested an unprecedented number of sexual predators involved in child sex trafficking rings in the United States. This should be one of the biggest stories in the national news. Instead, the mainstream media has barely, if at all, covered any of these mass pedophile arrests. This begs the question — why? As a strong advocate for sex crime victims, I’ve been closely following the pedophile arrests since Trump took office. There have been a staggering arrests in one short month compare that to less than 400 sex arrests in 2014 according to the FBI. It’s been clear to me for awhile that Trump would make human trafficking a top priority. On October 8, 2012, Trump tweeted: ‘Got to do something about these missing children grabbed by the perverts. Too many incidents — fast trial, death penalty. Crokin then goes on to discuss the MILO controversy. As the MSM has ignored these historical arrests, they have zeroed in on casting conservative icon Milo Yiannopoulos as a monster. They claim he supports pedophilia based on comments he made in a video years ago. The reality is Milo was a victim of child sex abuse, and although he did joke about his abuse in an interview, he in no way promotes pedophilia. The opposite is true, and he addressed this controversy head on in a press conference. Not only is it normal for sex abuse victims to make light of their abuse as a coping mechanism, Milo has personally taken down and exposed pedophiles in his columns over the years. However, the mainstream media and the left ignored this information and demonized Milo. The irony of all this is that the left and MSM have been the biggest proponents of pedophilia. Salon has published articles attempting to normalize pedophilia however, to maintain their faux outrage over Milo, they deleted them. The face of the very fake news network CNN, Jake Tapper, fired off several tweets condemning Milo. For example, he tweeted: ‘My friend, a survivor of sex trafficking: “Milo straight up defended abusing 13 yr old boys … Please don’t let that be normalized’ If Tapper is so concerned with sex trafficking, why in the world hasn’t he covered the massive sex trafficking arrests that have taken place since Trump took office? It seems he, and many in the leftist media, are only concerned with sex trafficking if it can be used to destroy a conservative. Read the full article here. | 0 |
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Man, you’ve got to hand it to WikiLeaks, for being such a hero in these last seconds of the race when the truth is needed the most. A new batch of damning evidence has just dropped and this time…what was found in them has to do with Bill Clinton…AND Bill Cosby.
Pop some popcorn, you’re in for a treat…
Further proof Democrats are my favorite definition of ‘stupid’
They see the truth, they know the truth, still decided to push the lie….
This latest little revolution comes from an email in which Ron Klain, Chief of Staff to Joe Biden, posited a rather obvious series of questions to Camp Cankles:
a. Is [Bill’s] conduct relevant to your campaign? b. You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused [your husband]? c. Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies? d. How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?
Well hey, and this whole time we thought the Democrats were trying to ignore Cosby! He’s getting some attention after all.
Interestingly, Jake Sullivan of Camp Cankles couldn’t come up with an answer to Klain’s question. So he punted to John Podesta.
Okay, so while the campaign is doing everything they can to target Donald Trump for his alleged nastiness, a the way back in January of this year, Clinton’s campaign was wondering how they were going to handle Hillary’s rapey chain and balls.
Not only that, at least Ron Klain noticed that Hillary was being a dastardly hypocrite on the rape issue. “b. You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused [your husband]? c. Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies?”
Hillary’s camp knew the issue would come up, sure. They were prepping their candidate for all the cannon balls lobbed her way. Because even the campaign knew Hillary couldn’t hide behind a tampon-shield for everything. Especially a “woman’s” issue. Like her husband raping the ladies.
Just goes to show even the Democrats knew Billy’s rapescapades were a problem.
YIKES! This right here is what might be going into the White House. People that don’t seek the truth, but scramble to hide it with further lies and scheming ideas.
It’s sickening…but mostly, terrifying. To have this kind of crap in the White House…spells doom. Related Items | 0 |
WAS DEFINITELY PAID TO CAUSE PANIC & CONFUSION !!!
THIS IS ALL A DIVERSION TO COVER-UP THE CLINTON’s ELECTION FRAUD & CRIMES !! | 0 |
Draining the swamp - youtube.com/watch?v=o1takU08aOI | 0 |
DALLAS — The officer was standing in a hotel cafe here when he was asked — as he no doubt had been asked dozens of times since Thursday — how he was doing. He shook his head. “Second time in 13 months,” he said. The officer was talking about what happened last year in Dallas. A disturbed man had a brazen shootout with the Dallas Police Department on June 13, 2015, driving an armored van to Police Headquarters, ramming a patrol car and opening fire on officers while poking his rifle through the van’s gun portholes. That is right: weeks before a lone gunman attacked police officers on Thursday in downtown Dallas, another lone gunman attacked some of those same police officers last year at the edge of downtown Dallas. Both gunmen used rifles. Both were mobile and created confusion about whether there were multiple gunmen. Both attacks ended in standoffs. Both gunmen were killed by the police. Both assaults spread panic in parts of the city, caused evacuations and brought a level of warlike violence to the center of the country’s city. One planted homemade explosive devices, but the other may have just threatened to plant them. The first attack began one mile from the second. The first gunman, James Boulware, 35, was white. The second, Micah Johnson, 25, was black. Mr. Boulware, who blamed the police after he lost full custody of his son after his arrest in 2013, fired nearly 200 rounds but did not kill or injure any officers. Mr. Johnson, driven by his hatred of white officers, fired perhaps just as many rounds but killed five officers and wounded nine. But there is more: Rewind the clock a few additional months from June 2015, to October 2014 during the Ebola crisis. Dallas was the site of the first three cases of Ebola confirmed in the United States. The Dallas police fought that war, too, helping to calm the first American city to contend with a widespread Ebola emergency. Officers stood guard outside apartments suspected of being contaminated, the very places many residents wanted to get far from. That line that is repeated often these days — that the police run toward danger as the public runs away from it — applies even when the danger is invisible. It is not just the horror of last Thursday. Not many police forces have been through what the one in Dallas has been through in so brief a time. That officer in the cafe came under fire last year from Mr. Boulware, just as he came under fire on Thursday from Mr. Johnson, and yet there he was the other day, in uniform and on the job. When people ask how Dallas can recover from the past catastrophic week, some of the answer lies in what officers have already been through. “It’s kind of like diamonds,” said Detective Arturo Martinez, a friend of Officer Patrick Zamarripa, one of the five officers killed last week. “The more pressure you get, the stronger you get, the more beautiful you are. No matter how much pressure you put on us, we’re just going to get better. ” Detective Martinez, 29, trained in the police academy in 2009 and 2010 with Officer Zamarripa, 32, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq. Detective Martinez said his friend “was always down to go chase the bad guy,” one of the type of officers their peers call “dope chasers. ” He added: “It’s proactive policing. They like to go out and seek the drug dealer. He was a protector. ” Detective Martinez attended a lunch the day after the shooting at the Dallas offices of the National Latino Law Enforcement Organization that was organized as a way for officers to get together, talk and decompress. He was out of uniform, in a crisp blue shirt and cowboy boots. It had been only a few hours since he left his friend’s bedside at the hospital. He had changed shirts. He had walked into the hospital room and stood over the body of his friend, angry, sad, in disbelief. “I took my shirt off and I cleaned his face off,” Detective Martinez said. “I didn’t like all the blood on his face. I didn’t want to see him like that. ” On Monday night, Detective Martinez was part of the sea of blue at a candlelight vigil outside City Hall. Everyone’s hands were sticky by the end of the event from the dripping wax. Another officer, Officer Jorge Barrientos, walked up to the detective. They embraced. Officer Barrientos’s left hand was wrapped in a bandage. He is one of the wounded. Officer Barrientos was with Officer Zamarripa and other officers who had been spread out across the intersection of Main and Lamar Streets before the gunfire rang out. Officer Barrientos, a veteran of the department, chose his words carefully and slowly. “I took a round to the hand and I took some shrapnel to the chest,” he said. He was about 10 feet from Officer Zamarripa when shots rang out. “We were taking fire,” Officer Barrientos said. “I saw my buddies go down and I did my best to try and save them and evacuate them from the scene so that they could have a chance of surviving. ” He put pressure on Officer Zamarripa’s wounds. But he used only one hand, he said. “I’m helping Zamarripa but at the same time, I have my gun out on the other hand, trying to help make sure that we can stop the threat,” he said. In the chaos of the moment, Officer Barrientos was a lot like his city. Wounded. But fighting. | 1 |
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Some worrisome news is breaking across the nation where most Americans are now preparing to deal with a major spike in their already astronomical healthcare costs. The AP is reporting that healthcare premiums are about to rise an average of 25% across the country, even as many American families are already struggling to pay their current premiums.
Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama’s health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday. That’s sure to stoke another “Obamacare” controversy days before a presidential election.
Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.
Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.
“Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period,” said Larry Levitt, who tracks the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Fox News took the time on Monday to hammer House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her lies that Obamacare would make it easier for most Americans to get healthcare and that it would keep prices more “affordable.”
Pelosi’s definition of affordable seems to be the exact opposite of what it actually means, because instead of slowing our rising healthcare costs, prices have actually been climbing higher, faster !
Administration officials are stressing that subsidies provided under the law, which are designed to rise alongside premiums, will insulate most customers from sticker shock. They add that consumers who are willing to switch to cheaper plans will still be able to find bargains.
“Headline rates are generally rising faster than in previous years,” acknowledged HHS spokesman Kevin Griffis. But he added that for most consumers, “headline rates are not what they pay.”
Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) wants to hear the Obama administration and their Democrat allies apologize for the disastrous plan, because thus far it seems to have hurt the average American far more than its helped. “We’ve reached this point because ObamaCare is built on the lie that Washington’s bureaucrats are smart enough to plan health care for millions of Americans. At every turn — whether it’s CO-OPs collapsing, premiums skyrocketing, or big insurers bailing — the American people have paid the price. More spin won’t solve this — it’s time for the White House to admit that this law isn’t working.”
The people of Arizona woke up to even scarier news on Wednesday when they learned that their premiums would be rising by 116% this year!
However, in Arizona, unsubsidized premiums for a hypothetical 27-year-old buying a benchmark “second-lowest cost silver plan” will jump by 116 percent, from $196 to $422, according to the administration report…
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the Affordable Care Act a “failure.”
“Arizona families are demanding affordability, accessibility and choice when it comes to their health care – not the expensive, restrictive and poor quality care that has been forced upon them by Obamacare,” McCain said in a statement. “Until President Obama and Congressional Democrats wake up to the law’s failure, and until we repeal and replace it with solutions that encourage competition and put patients back in charge, the Washington-knows-best approach will continue to unfairly burden the Arizona families it was supposed to help.”
Meanwhile, it seems that Hillary Clinton hasn’t gotten the memo about how bad Obamacare has been or about how much it’s hurt our economy, because she’s still out there running victory laps for the abysmal failure. "You know, before it was called Obamacare, it was called Hillarycare." #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/TfalVkgAgO
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 12, 2016
Somebody should probably tell her that the majority of Americans hate Obamacare and would prefer seeing it repealed.
In a summer that saw many insurers drop out of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges, Americans’ support for the healthcare law continues to be slightly more negative than positive. Now, 44% of Americans support the law, also known as Obamacare, and 51% disapprove of it — similar to what Gallup measured last November.
51% disapprove of Obamacare (or Hillarycare if you prefer), even worse about 1/3 of Americans say the law has actually HURT them, and long term most Americans think the law will end up either hurting their families or not making any difference at all.
Hopefully, the Trump campaign is paying attention and will begin hammering away on Obamacare. This is a winning issue for Republicans, and it could be the issue that helps us win in November.
Article reposted with permission from Constitution.com shares | 1 |
The bad news had been building for months at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even as crowds poured into shows on Hellenistic kingdoms and fashion, the Met’s deficit was approaching $40 million and had forced the buyout or layoff of some 90 employees. An expansion into a satellite building cost millions of dollars more than expected. A new Met logo and marketing plan were rolled out at great expense — and greeted with ridicule. Then, last month, a new $600 million wing was postponed by several years, frustrating the Met’s efforts to become a serious player in the competitive field of Modern and contemporary art. Tension inside the Met, the country’s largest art museum, is running so high that when curators and conservators recently wrote a letter protesting compensation cuts, the museum’s leaders chose not to show it to trustees for fear of leaks and bad publicity. Those who wanted to see the document had to go to the office of the Met’s general counsel and read it under observation. After enjoying boom years, one of the most cultural institutions in the world is now struggling with missteps and the perils of overreaching at a time of uncertain resources. While many museums face financial and competitive pressures, the Met’s troubles are magnified, given its stature on the world stage. How can a behemoth like the Met, the thinking goes, possibly stumble? Some curators and trustees have zeroed in on Thomas P. Campbell, the Met’s director and chief executive since 2008, as well as the board that has backed him. The anguish can be intense, given the love that all involved have for the Met. “It’s a tragedy to see a great institution in decline,” said George R. Goldner, who in 2014 retired after 21 years as the chairman of the Met’s drawings and prints department and has since served as a consultant to the museum. “To have inherited a museum as strong as the Met was 10 years ago — with a great curatorial staff — and to have it be what it is today is unimaginable. ” Several people inside the museum, most of whom spoke anonymously for fear of losing their positions, said the Met under Mr. Campbell had tried to do too much too fast: overhiring in the digital department overspending on an additional building, the Met Breuer, and on rebranding overdrawing from unrestricted endowment funds to cover costs emphasizing Modern and contemporary art at the expense of core departments and pursuing the new wing before the financing was in place. Instead, the Met should have been contracting, given falling revenue from its retail stores and admission fees and rising expenses. At the same time, some hope that by reckoning with its troubles, the Met is poised to turn a corner. “We’re getting to the same page,” said Keith Christiansen, the chairman of the Met’s European paintings department. “One benefit from all this: It’s brought the departments together with the administration to sit down at a common table, and that’s something. Now what do we do to move forward and make sure the mission of the museum is not compromised?” Efforts to right the ship have been difficult and painful. In addition to staff cuts, curators were asked to curtail spending for shows and acquisitions. The Met stages nearly 60 exhibitions a year, far more than most museums, but now expects to reduce its exhibitions to about 40 a year. Instead of moving forward with the architect David Chipperfield on a wing intended to help attract art and money from contemporary collectors, the Met has been forced to prioritize the replacement of its aging skylights and roof above the European paintings galleries. In an interview, Mr. Campbell acknowledged that the museum had “been through a trying year. ” “My colleagues have every right to feel upset,” he said. “At the same time, one has to step back and look at the success of the institution. ” To be sure, most agree that the museum’s expansive collections and ambitious exhibitions remain strong. The recent Kerry James Marshall survey at the Met Breuer was widely judged a success, though some critics say the museum’s first retrospective of a living black artist would have been even more momentous in the hallowed main building. In addition, the museum’s attendance has increased to about seven million visitors a year, including the Cloisters. The Breuer, which opened in March, has drawn 557, 000 visitors, exceeding projections. “We’ve got a whole Modern art collection in the Breuer we didn’t have before,” said Hamilton E. James, a Met trustee. “Attendance is at records critical acclaim has never been as good. An awful lot of wonderful things have gone on. ” Moreover, Met officials say, many cultural institutions have been grappling with a structural deficit — when costs exceed revenues, despite a strong economy. The Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum, for example, also recently offered buyouts — though they did not then move to layoffs. The New York Philharmonic has delayed the tentative date for opening its $600 million rebuilt hall to get a better sense of its cost. And the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is struggling to raise nearly half the $600 million needed for its expansion. While the Met charged Mr. Campbell with strengthening the museum’s Modern and contemporary art activities, his focus on the Met Breuer and new wing has been controversial. Why try to compete with the new Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, some ask, instead of sticking to what the Met already does best? Mr. Campbell said he had aimed “to sustain an environment in which scholarship could flourish and be the engine of our program, as well as to expand our audiences, to digitize the institution and to revisit what it is to be an encyclopedic museum. ” “We’ve made remarkable progress, but these things are flexible, and they need modulation,” he added. “In the same period, we have had to balance our expenditures and our income. In light of that, we’re certainly doing some recalibration on the goals we’ve set ourselves. ” Some critics say Mr. Campbell has been out of his depth — a tapestry curator thrust into the large shoes of the legendary Philippe de Montebello, with no experience running a major institution. (Mr. de Montebello did not have chief executive in his title until 22 years into his tenure as director.) Moreover, Mr. Campbell, by many accounts, has handled the economic crisis by hunkering down in a defensive crouch rather than reaching out to unite the staff — and the full board — behind his efforts. Internal critics say he failed to appreciate the upheaval caused by the turnover of of the curatorial leadership through departures and retirements. They describe the pervasive sense that institutional memory is going out the door and the fear that the Met’s mission to educate through scholarship has been overshadowed by its desire to attract millennials through social media. Mr. Campbell said internal relations was often a challenge at the Met, with its more than work force, and acknowledged that he could do better. “I’ve tried very hard to open up communications — bringing people into briefings, in town hall meetings,” he said. “I wouldn’t say we’ve got it right yet, but we’re heading in the right direction. ” “I myself need to evolve my thinking and my interactions,” he added. “We’ve identified those issues and taken steps to move forward in a very collective manner. ” The Boston Consulting Group, hired a year ago pro bono to help with the Met’s restructuring, was asked this month to interview staff members and trustees about their concerns because the museum recognized “that morale was challenged,” said Daniel H. Weiss, the Met’s president and chief operating officer. “It’s really important that people feel empowered to say what they think. ” When Mr. Weiss, formerly the president of Haverford College, came to the Met last year, he set out to cut $31 million from a $332 million annual budget. He said Mr. Campbell had been open to making the changes required. “We have gone through a significant and difficult time,” Mr. Weiss said. “Tom has been very supportive. ” Daniel Brodsky, the museum’s chairman, said that Mr. Campbell and Mr. Weiss had taken appropriate steps toward financial stability and that he and his fellow trustees had not lost confidence in Mr. Campbell’s capacity to lead. “Tom is a very bright person, and the board supports him,” he said. Mr. James, the trustee, said many of the Met’s struggles “were beyond the control” of a chief executive. “You get bumps in the road, and you have to deal with them. “The leadership team of Tom and Dan — I view it very much as a partnership,” he added. “Dan brings a discipline and a businesslike approach. ” Still, the Met’s current retrenchment inevitably looks like a repudiation of much of Mr. Campbell’s original agenda. He has been forced to let go many of his key hires, and his timetable for the new wing has been disrupted. The Breuer — the Whitney’s former Madison Avenue home, where the Met has an lease — was to be a temporary hub for the museum’s Modern and contemporary activities during construction, so the new wing could be unveiled in 2020, on the Met’s 150th birthday. The wing is also a linchpin of Leonard A. Lauder’s transformative gift of Cubist artworks, valued at more than $1 billion, which needs a worthy exhibition space. But Mr. Campbell said he had not given up on his main goals to bolster contemporary art at the Met and broaden the audience in a technological age. “I love the Met, I love the work I’m doing here,” he said, “And I’m very committed to seeing all of these many projects through. ” | 1 |
An armed employee at Cleveland, Ohio’s Convenient Food Mart, crept up behind an armed suspect and foiled a robbery attempt. [The incident occurred in the Stockyards district around 10:45 pm Saturday. According to Cleveland. com, the suspect, Frederick Thornton, walked into the business wearing a surgical mask, pointed a gun at the clerk, and demanded money. He allegedly became aggravated with the clerk’s pace and “smacked his gun against the register,” demanding the money be handed over quicker. Banging against the register and screaming at the clerk caused enough noise that a working in the back of the store noticed the commotion, retrieved a handgun, and went out to intervene. The video shows the employee sneak up behind Thornton and put the gun against his back. Thornton then spun around. The two began to wrestle for control of the guns. An employee came out from behind the counter, took away Thornton’s gun and fired warning shots into the air. Thornton then put his hands in the air at the sound of gunfire and asked the employees “not to shoot. ” While one employee held Thornton at gunpoint, the second armed employee ran outside to see if any accomplices were waiting on Thornton to exit the store. Police soon arrived, arrested Thornton, and charged him with “aggravated robbery. ” Store owner Haytham Mustafa expressed pride in the way his employees handled the situation. He said, “Thank God no one was hurt. They really handled it well. They didn’t go overboard and didn’t hurt anyone. That’s what we wanted to do — hold him and let the law deal with him. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0 |
Chart Of The Day: Since 2009 Recovery For The 5%; Stagnation for the 95% | 0 |
In an unusual move, a federal judge in Washington State granted a nationwide emergency order on Friday night blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting immigration travel, declaring the order unconstitutional. The Trump Justice Department can now appeal the order on an expedited basis. [Washington Attorney General Robert Ferguson filed suit against the president and the U. S. Department of Homeland Security in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on behalf of his state and the State of Minnesota, alleging that the order violates the U. S. Constitution and multiple federal statutes. The plaintiffs asked for a temporary restraining order to halt the order on an emergency basis. In its amended complaint, the plaintiffs argue that “practices that discriminate against any of [Washington’s] inhabitants because of race, creed, color, or national origin are matters of public concern that threaten the rights and proper privileges of the State and harm the public welfare, health, and peace of the people. ” Washington argued that roughly 7, 280 aliens in the Evergreen State are from countries impacted by the president’s order, and that the state has legal standing to litigate over possible economic detriments that companies within the state would endure as a result of the order. The lawsuit argued that President Trump’s executive order violated a host of constitutional rights and federal statutes. While this included typical claims relating to Fifth Amendment due process and equal protection, it also included what many legal scholars consider weak claims, such an insisting that the order amounts to an unconstitutional establishment of religion, and that it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). A temporary restraining order (TRO) is one of the most extreme measures a federal court can take, often issued without full briefing, argument, and other central elements of judicial process. As such they are very rare, reserved for situations where the court cannot even go through an accelerated legal process to grant a preliminary injunction. Judge James L. Robart issued the order orally at the end of this afternoon’s court hearing in Seattle, declaring that the plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of ultimately prevailing on the legal merits of the case, that without the TRO the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm, and that issuing the TRO is in the public interest. The brief notation posted on the court docket after the verbal order specifies that a written order will be filed later, providing greater detail. In the meantime it is not entirely clear which of the ten counts Judge Robart — who was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush — thinks the executive order violates. The U. S. Department of Justice can immediately appeal this ruling to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, though it will be difficult to do so before Judge Robart releases his written opinion. If that San appeals court affirms the order, then the federal government can seek an emergency stay from the U. S. Supreme Court. The case is Washington v. Trump, 2: . Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski. | 0 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 by # 1 NWO Hatr Published on Oct 27, 2016 by Truthstream Media The oligarchy runs our society with Problem – Reaction – Solution. If anything, these leaks have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the two-party system is an illusion and the whole construct is one huge pay-for-play corporate sham. Obamacare was always meant to destroy the private health care system and usher in single-payer, government run socialist medicine. It was designed that way… and it’s “working”. Share this: | 0 |
First Lady Melania Trump became the breakout star of President Donald Trump’s first trip abroad, stunning fashion industry observers by wearing only the highest quality in high fashion. [From visits to Saudi Arabia to Israel to Brussels, the former model First Lady set her sights on an extensive wardrobe made only for the most discerning of fashion tastes. In Reem Acra, to Ralph Lauren, to her love for Dolce Gabbana, Melania Trump took the world by storm with her style, channeling an elegance and grace that perhaps hasn’t been seen since former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Saudi Arabia, As Melania departed with her husband for the administration’s first foreign trip, the First Lady stunned in a Max Mara knit sweater and Hervé Pierre leather skirt. American Vogue deemed the look Melania’s “most ensemble since she became First Lady. ” When Melania arrived in Saudi Arabia, she opted for a flowing black jumpsuit by Stella McCartney coupled with a striking, gold Saint Laurent belt made of python to cinch her thin frame. The belt could be viewed as a nod to the Trump family’s famous opulent gold apartment in Trump Tower in New York City. During the trip, Melania changed into a Ralph Lauren Collection dress, paired with gold bangles and Manolo Blahnik heels as she visited the American International School in the country. At night, while in Saudi Arabia, Melania stuck to the fashion houses she wears the most. During one occasion, the First Lady donned a vibrant purple Reem Acra gown with a flowing cape to match her famous tousled locks. On her last night in the Islamic country, Melania was the image of grace and power during her husband’s speech to Saudi leaders as she wore a white Dolce Gabbana paired with a ruffled black blouse and Manolo Blahnik black pumps made of snakeskin. Israel After departing Saudi Arabia, Melania stepped off Air Force One in Israel in an Michael Kors cinched with a matching white belt and black sunglasses. Melania paired the monochromatic look with a red and white version of the Manolo Blahnik heels she wore in Saudi Arabia, which matched her husband’s tie. The Israeli press hailed Melania as “a statuesque former model with impeccable taste and a figure on which even a potato sack would look sophisticated. ” For her dinner look in Israel, Melania went back to her roots with a sultry, somewhat transparent slip Dolce Gabbana that covered most of her long legs. At the Holocaust memorial, Melania wore a white and sleeveless dress by designer Roksanda, whom the First Lady famously wore for the Republican National Convention. To top the look off, Melania wore Manolo Blahnik heels and no jewelry, besides her wedding ring. Melania remained in the ensemble as she departed Israel, adding only her dark shades. Rome, Italy, For her trip to Rome, Italy, Melania gave a nod to one of her favorite Italian fashion houses, Dolce Gabbana, as she wore a black with gold brocade details on the collar and sleeves. The First Lady is friends with Stefabo Gabbana, who has previously praised Melania for her elegant style. In a visit to meet Pope Francis, Melania worked with Dolce Gabbana, again, on a stunning black that showed off a beautiful round collar, framing the First Lady’s face. The look was paired with a black lace Mantilla and black Manolo Blahnik stilettos, sticking to the Vatican dress code. In an Instagram post, Gabbana thanked Melania for wearing his creation. For departing Italy, Melania looked like a true as she boarded Air Force One with square black sunglasses, a Dolce Gabbana black lace dress, matching black Manolo Blahnik heels along with a black purse with silver clasps, a rarity for the First Lady. Brussels, Belgium, Sticking with the coat and looks for the trip, Melania walked out of Air Force One in Brussels, Belgium in a blue and white gingham belted coat from the Michael Kors Collection and matching dress underneath. The First Lady wore gingham Manolo Blahnik heels which also matched the look. | 1 |
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Dopo aver chiamato gli italiani a votare Sì al referendum, ingerendosi nella nostra politica nazionale col complice silenzio dell’opposizione parlamentare, il presidente Obama ha confermato al «buon amico Matteo» che con l’Italia gli Usa hanno «patti chiari, amicizia lunga».
Non c’è dubbio che i patti siano chiari, anzitutto il Patto atlantico che sottomette l’Italia agli Usa. Il Comandante supremo alleato in Europa viene sempre nominato dal Presidente degli Stati uniti d’America e sono in mano agli Usa tutti gli altri comandi chiave.
Dopo la fine della guerra fredda, in seguito alla disgregazione dell’Urss, Washington affermava la «fondamentale importanza di preservare la Nato quale canale della influenza e partecipazione statunitensi negli affari europei, impedendo la creazione di dispositivi unicamente europei che minerebbero la struttura di comando dell’Alleanza», ossia il comando Usa. Concetto ribadito dal segretario della Nato Stoltenberg nella recente tavola rotonda sulla «grande idea di Europa»: «Dobbiamo assicurare che il rafforzamento della difesa europea non costituisca un duplicato della Nato, non divenga una alternativa alla Nato». A garanzia di ciò c’è il fatto che 22 dei 28 paesi della Ue (21 su 27 dopo l’uscita della Gran Bretagna) fanno parte della Nato sotto comando Usa, riconosciuta dall’Unione europea quale «fondamento della difesa collettiva».
La politica estera e militare della Ue è quindi fondamentalmente subordinata alla strategia statunitense, su cui convergono le potenze europee i cui contrasti d’interesse si ricompattano quando entra in gioco il loro interesse fondamentale: mantenere il predominio dell’Occidente, sempre più vacillante di fronte all’emergere di nuovi soggetti statuali e sociali. Basti pensare che l’Organizzazione di Shanghai per la cooperazione, nata dall’accordo strategico cino-russo, dispone di risorse tali da farne la maggiore area economica integrata del mondo.
Nel quadro della strategia Usa/Nato – documenta la Casa Bianca – l’Italia si distingue quale «saldo e attivo alleato degli Stati uniti». Lo dimostra il fatto che «l’Italia ospita oltre 30 mila militari e funzionari civili del Dipartimento Usa della difesa in installazioni dislocate in tutto il paese».
Allo stesso tempo l’Italia è «partner degli Usa per la sicurezza globale», fornendo forze militari e finanziamenti per una vasta gamma di «sfide»: in Kossovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libia, Siria, Baltico e altrove, ossia ovunque è stata e viene impiegata la macchina da guerra Usa/Nato.
Un ultimo fatto conferma quale sia il rapporto Usa-Italia: stanno per arrivare alla base di Amendola in Puglia, probabilmente l’8 novembre, i primi due dei 90 caccia F-35 della statunitense Lockheed Martin, che l’Italia si è impegnata ad acquistare.
Il costo della partecipazione dell’Italia al programma F-35, quale partner di secondo livello, è ufficialemente quantificato nella Legge di stabilità 2016: 12 miliardi 356 milioni di euro di denaro pubblico, più altre spese per le continue modifiche al caccia che ancora non è pienamente operativo e necessiterà di continui ammodernamenti. Nonostante ciò – conferma Analisi Difesa – l’Italia avrà una «sovranità limitata» sugli stessi F-35 della propria aeronautica. Una legge statunitense vieta che i «dati di missione» (i software di gestione dei sistemi di combattimento dei caccia) siano comunicati ad altri. Saranno dunque gli Usa a controllare gli F-35 italiani, predisposti per l’uso delle nuove bombe nucleari B61-12 che il Pentagono schiererà contro la Russia, al posto delle attuali B-61, sul nostro territorio «nazionale». | 0 |
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