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Posted on November 6, 2016 by Carl Herman
(Satire) : In an extraordinarily high-tech conference room, a wall of high-definition screens show four faces: George Bush, Sr., George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama; each about 4 feet by 3 feet in a large connected rectangle going clockwise from the top-left position. The room is dark. A male is alone in the conference room; a “Black Hat handler.” (full adult language)
Black Hat: I recommend your closest attention and obedience, because we are quite willing to sacrifice all of you.
Sr.: Fuck you. We all have dead-man switches to expose you if we go down. We’re in this together.
W: Yeah! And we’re not talking about our “switches” being dead no matter how cute and young the boys and girls are at Epstein and pedophile parties ! (and here )
Black: Fools, silence! We’re trying to help you!
Bill: “Help” isn’t in your DNA. You play our addictions, and sacrifice us if we’re not of use. But, Bush-Daddy is right: we can take y’all down just as easy as you take us down.
Black: I see. Then you’re all agreeable to end this communication now and scramble in this shit-storm without us?
Barack: No. These guys are too old, and one too stupid to care…
W: I’m not that old…
Barack: … but I’m young enough to want a future. What’s your proposal, sir?
Black: Anyone want to leave this call?
Sr.: We’re listening. We’ve kept our end of our bargain, and expect you to keep yours. Don’t threaten us. We’re all vulnerable.
Black: You all will continue your roles as former US Presidents, acting as window dressing when called. We have a minor situation to bitch-slap some Boy Scouts leaking e-mails, and will respond as appropriate.
One response is to “select” Hillary in a close “election” with our controlled voting software . We’ll monitor blow-back, and might have her “die” like Enron’s Kenny Lay with Bill following shortly of a “broken heart.”
(Black pauses the required moment as all loudly laugh at that ridiculous contradiction)
We will then control events through the cleaner puppet. Another response is to select Trump, have him play ball , or “heart attack” him.
Bill: So you’re telling us you’ve got this all under control.
Black: As usual. Nothing has changed.
W: How do we know you’ve got this managed?
Black: If you can be caught 200 times with a gay male prostitute in the White House pretending to be the highest professional media, and we can make that story “go away” down the sheeple’s memory-hole, we can manage a “few e-mails from Russia” or whatever we end up calling them.
W: (whining) And when can we stop pretending to care about these sheeple? (all 4 others roll their eyes)
Sr.: Junior, our part of the deal is to keep pretending until the population is culled to about a half-billion through conditioning water , food , air , healthcare , vaccines , war , debt , etc. Our Masters’ part of the deal is to use developing clone technology for our class to be young and live forever. We’ll alternate with ongoing sheeple-management roles as demi-Gods, while they work as our servant class.
W: Oh, yeah. So stay the course.
3 other Presidents: Stay the course.
Barack: (lighting a cigarette) You fellas have a lot less to worry about than me. As the current President, I’m the one getting heat. And if those e-mails aren’t silenced, it could get a lot hotter.
Bill: We all have blood on our hands, Barack. Hundreds of millions dead by Crimes Against Humanity . And it’ll be hotter for me than you if the billions we looted through the Clinton Foundation is exposed.
Sr.: We’re all rogue state pimps. We all get lynched if one of us goes down.
Black: If you ladies are through chatting… (pauses. The Presidents give their attention)
What you all have to do is stay on script. Go where you’re told, say what we tell you. If you fuck-up, we’ll kill you and do it without you.
Your choice has never changed, and never will: cooperate and have the riches of material existence. When we have full cloning technology, your consciousness can live in a perfect body forever.
Or, fuck with us and die.
We need a few more steps to clean this planet of 90% of the sheeple . You “Presidents” (sneers) are the principle puppets of our agents to keep the sheep waddling to the slaughter house.
Are we all in agreement for your cooperation?
4 Presidents: Yes, Sir.
4 Presidents: Hail Satan !
Scene dissolves into a modern newsroom’s broadcast:
Anchor 1: And that captured and leaked Skype call was the latest in the ongoing disclosure of how captured humanity was to total evil.
Anchor 2: Next: How public education is catching-up from their capture to graduate for Truth, Love, and Technology ! Stay tuned.
**
Similar to Emperor’s New Clothes satire, the real-world crimes are easy to explain, document, and prove: The Crimes The US is a literal rogue state empire led by neocolonial looting liars. The history is uncontested and taught to anyone taking comprehensive courses. If anyone has any refutations of this professional academic factual claim for any of this easy-to-read and documented content , please provide it. US ongoing lie-started and Orwellian-illegal Wars of Aggression require all US military and government to refuse all war orders because there are no lawful orders for obviously unlawful wars. Officers are required to arrest those who issue obviously unlawful orders. And again, those of us working for this area of justice are aware of zero attempts to refute this with, “War law states (a, b, c), so the wars are legal because (d, e, f).” All we receive is easy-to-reveal bullshit . When Americans are told an election is defined by touching a computer screen without a countable receipt that can be verified, they are being told a criminal lie to allow election fraud . This is self-evident, but Princeton , Stanford , and the President of the American Statistical Association are among the leaders pointing to the obvious (and here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here ). Again, no professional would/can argue an election is legitimate when there is nothing for anyone to count. And, duh, corporate media are criminally complicit through constant lies of omission and commission to “cover” all these crimes. Historic tragic-comic empire is only possible through such straight-face lying, making our Emperor’s New Clothes analogy perfectly chosen. The top three benefits each of monetary reform and public banking total ~$1,000,000 for the average American household, and would be received nearly instantly. Please read that twice. Now look to verify for yourself . Demanding arrests as the required and obvious public response rather than ‘voting’ for more disaster:
The categories of crime include: Wars of Aggression (the worst crime a nation can commit). Likely treason for lying to US military, ordering unlawful attack and invasions of foreign lands, and causing thousands of US military deaths. Crimes Against Humanity for ongoing intentional policy of poverty that’s killed over 400 million human beings just since 1995 (~75% children; more deaths than from all wars in Earth’s recorded history).
US military, law enforcement, and all with Oaths to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, face an endgame choice: Demand arrests , with those with lawful authority to enact it. An arrest is the lawful action to stop apparent crimes , with the most serious crimes documented here meaning the most serious need for arrests. Watch the US escalate its rogue state crimes that annually kill millions, harm billions, and loot trillions.
In just 90 seconds , former US Marine Ken O’Keefe powerfully states how you may choose to voice “very obvious solutions”: arrest the criminal leaders (video starts at 20:51, then finishes this episode of Cross Talk ): Solutions worth literal tens of trillions to ‘We the People’:
Again: The top three benefits each of monetary reform and public banking total ~$1,000,000 for the average American household, and would be received nearly instantly. Please read that twice. Now look to verify for yourself . We can quantify the end of the lie-started and illegal Wars of Aggression quickly into the trillions, and that said, it’s worth a lot more than what we quantify. Truth : a world in which education is expressed in its full potential to only and always begin with good-faith effort for objective, comprehensive, and verifiable data.
“Interview” series: | 0 |
President Obama said Friday that his wife Michelle “will never run for office.” | 0 |
Pipeline Billionaire Who Militarized Police at Standing Rock 11 Shares Email
The months long Dakota Access Keystone XL pipleine protest at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation by Native Americans and those sympathetic to protection of our water supply has been met with heavy-handed and brutal clamp down by police and national guard. Militarized goons in battle dress have stormed protector camps with LRAD sonic weapons, attack dogs , tear gas, tazers , and even live ammunition ( killing horses ), while politicians and mainstream media do their best to ignore this growing atrocity, hoping to wait it out until the protestors give up.
But, as the saying goes, Water Is Life , and the issue of life and death is at the root of this protection movement, therefore, for people concerned with life, giving up on this is simply unthinkable. The root issue justifying state oppression of the protest is capitalism, and the perception that money is more important than life itself. When the police and national guard attack U.S. citizens on private property to protect corporate interests, who are they really working for?
The corporate dream of the Keystone XL pipeline is to create a profit stream for a small number of people at the expense of the natural world and anyone in the way. At the top of this pyramid of profit is Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for the project.
So who is Kelcy Warren?
A native of East Texas and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in civil engineering, Warren worked in the natural gas industry and became co-chair of Energy Transfer Equity in 2007. With business partner Ray Davis, co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, Warren built Energy Transfer Equity into one of the nation’s largest pipeline companies, which now owns about 71,000 miles of pipelines carrying natural gas, natural gas liquids, refined products and crude oil. The company’s holdings include Sunoco, Southern Union and Regency Energy Partners.
Forbes estimates the 60-year-old Warren’s personal wealth at $4 billion. Bloomberg described him as “among America’s new shale tycoons” — but rather than building a fortune by drilling he “takes the stuff others pull from underground and moves it from one place to another, chilling, boiling, pressurizing, and processing it until it’s worth more than when it burst from the wellhead.” [ Source ]
Shockingly, in 2015 the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, appointed Warren to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission which is an insult to environmentalists working to protect Big Bend National Park and surrounding sacred tribal lands from another $770 million pipeline project .
“According to the governor’s office, the state parks and wildlife commission “manages and conserves the natural and cultural resources of Texas,” along with ensuring the future of hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation opportunities for Texans.” [ Source ]
This glaring conflict of interest has inspired Environmental Science major at UTSA and former Texas State Park Ambassador Andrew Lucas to begin a drive to have Warren removed from this environmental post. His petition is described here :
Most people may know Kelcy Warren as the man behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The Dallas-based billionaire and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners has been making headlines for fast-tracking a 1100 mile crude oil pipeline across the Midwest and under the Missouri River, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. No environmental impact assessment, no respect for cultural sites, and no regard for the local and widespread communities living along the river. A similar story is unfolding out in West Texas, where Warren’s company has split through the pristine Big Bend region with the 200 mile Comanche Trail Pipeline and nearly-complete 143 mile Trans Pecos Pipeline. These Pipelines mark the way for massive natural gas and oil developments in the Trans Pecos region.
With untold damages unfolding for cultural and environmental resources at the hands of Energy Transfer Partners, it would surprise most to know that nearly a year ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appointed Kelcy Warren for a 6 year term as 1 of the 10 commissioners who preside over Texas Parks And Wildlife… Why? Probably the $550,000 in campaign contributions Abbott received from Warren.
Read More… About the Author
Isaac Davis is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and OffgridOutpost.com Survival Tips blog. He is an outspoken advocate of liberty and of a voluntary society. He is an avid reader of history and passionate about becoming self-sufficient to break free of the control matrix. Follow him on Facebook, here . | 0 |
Britain Should Embrace Unilateral Free Trade Right Now Unilateralism is not simply a utopian libertarian ideal Louis Rouanet | Mises.org Image Credits: Iker Merodio / Flickr .
If we read the newspapers or listen to the experts, Britain faces two ways to negotiate its way out of the European Union without succumbing to the protectionists’ sirens.
The first is a deal à la Norway not only with full access to the common market, but also with full implementation of EU law and a contribution to the EU budget as is the case for every member State. The second option would be a trade treaty such as the one negotiated between the EU and Canada. However, a viable third opportunity exists: unilateral free-trade.
Contrary to what is often assumed, unilateralism is not simply a utopian libertarian ideal which cannot be reached in today’s world. Unilateral free trade is genuine free-trade. It is also the most pragmatic and efficient strategy to foster commerce and peace. Theresa May seems ready to conduct an interventionist industrial and economic policy which oddly resembles French planning as it existed in the 50s and 60s. But, the free-market policy paradigm is more likely to transform post-Brexit Britain into a flourishing economy.
Unilateral Free Trade: The British Tradition
The tradition of unilateral free trade is tightly linked to the UK. With the victory of the liberals in the 1840s, Britain became strongly committed to unilateral free trade and from 1845 to at least 1914, free trade was politically unassailable. Trade treaties, however, were seen as inherently suspicious. Sir Robert Peel, when announcing the repeal of the Corn Laws in the House of Commons in 1846, brilliantly warned:
I trust the government … will not resume the policy which they and we have found most inconvenient, namely the haggling with foreign countries about reciprocal concessions, instead of taking that independent course which we believe to be conducive to our own interests. … [L]et us trust that our example, with the proof of practical benefits we derive from it, will at no remote period insure the adoption of the principles on which we have acted. … Let, therefore, our commerce be as free as our institutions. Let us proclaim commerce free, and nation after nation will follow our example. This repeal of the Corn Laws was the result of an intense political effort, especially by Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League, who made the case for unilateral free trade. Cobden in his later years explained:
We came to the conclusion that the less we attempted to persuade foreigners to adopt our trade principles, the better, for we discovered so much suspicion of the motives of England, that it was lending an argument to the protectionists abroad to incite the popular feeling against the free-traders. … To take away this pretense, we avowed our total indifference whether other nations became free-traders or not; but we should abolish Protection for our own selves, and leave other countries to take whatever course they liked best. Some will argue that the UK soon departed from unilateral free trade with the Cobden-Chevalier treaty of 1860 which Cobden himself supported and negotiated. It is less known however that this treaty was primarily a way to avoid conflict. After Orsini’s attempt to murder Napoléon III in 1858, the emperor was convinced, by this same Orsini, to support the cause of Italian independence. This Italian question brought England to the edge of war with France. Being strongly anti-militarists, both Cobden and Chevalier looked at a trade treaty not primarily as a way to adopt free trade, but as a way to establish friendship between France and England. Gladstone, himself an ardent unilateralist, in retrospect held that “there were only two alternatives, one of them the French treaty & the other war with France.” And Cobden felt that the treaty was “God’s own method to produce an entente cordiale.”
Commercially, the treaty was an incredible success mainly because it was not supervised by bureaucrats — as is the case today with trade treaties — but by two prominent free traders. As Cobden was aware of all the dangers for real free trade contained in the negotiations of trade treaties, he proceeded very carefully. Cobden wrote in a letter to the great British free trader John Bright, “I will undertake that there is not a syllable on our side of the Treaty that is inconsistent with the soundest principles of Free Trade.” Nonetheless, Bright remained a skeptic and remarked:
Governments seem as a rule to be standing conspiracies to rob and bamboozle people, and why should that of Louis Napoleon be an exception? The more I see of the rulers of the world, the less of wisdom or greatness do I find necessary for the government of mankind. To convince Cobden of the benefits brought about by a treaty, Michel Chevalier showed that the unilateral reductions of tariffs that Bright asked for could constitute the British side of the bargain and could be extended to all other nations, thus avoiding a clear violation of British unilateralism.
Free Trade With or Without You
The unilateral free trade program is very simple: the British Parliament declares the abolition of all tariffs. To avoid a race in non-tariff barriers, the Parliament can pass a law declaring that every product which conforms to the EU norms and regulations can be sold freely in the UK. This should not be a problem since the UK still is a member of the EU. By Parliament’s act, most of the “non-tariff barrier” problem withers away without any need for regulatory harmonization. If the EU legislator considers it necessary to regulate the curvature of vegetables, so be it! But, although EU producers will be free to sell their product in the UK, the British legislator may deem it unnecessary to regulate its producers in the same absurd way.
The advantages of this approach are many. First, the UK can have free trade now instead of waiting through years of negotiations. No need to wait for bureaucrats to agree on which laws we burden consumers and producers with.
The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), for example, between the EU and Canada contrasts the expediency of unilateralism with endless negotiations. Negotiations about CETA were started in October 2008 and finished in August 2014. But for the treaty to be effective, each EU member State still has to ratify it. Worse, in some European federal member States, the treaty must be agreed upon by the local federated States. This is why Wallonia recently vetoed CETA, thus threatening the work of a six-year-long negotiation. In the case of the UK — and whether or not trade treaties are actually advancing free trade — the British economy cannot afford to wait that long for free trade.
The second major advantage of unilateralism is the message you send to Brussels. You are signifying to the EU apparatus that “with or without you, we will have free trade!” At this point, the EU will have no leverage left with the UK. The negotiation of a trade treaty, on the other hand is a hopelessly utopian solution, not only because of the obvious coordination problem between the 28 EU member States, but also because the EU has a vested interest in making sure Brexit fails. Eurocrats, starting from the contestable assumption that the UK has much more to lose than the EU, will try to concoct a deal as bad as possible for their fellow Anglo-Saxon neighbors.
Free Trade First, Negotiations Later
Still, it is possible that after having declared free trade unilaterally, the EU will decide to restrict the access of British corporations to the single market. This is a particularly valid concern in the financial sector were banks and other financial institutions need licenses to operate in the EU member States. The concern with unilateral free trade is that by respecting it, it will remove any leverage the British government has to negotiate a favorable access to other actual and potential commercial partners. Without a treaty, commercial partners, it is thought, will soon erect protectionist barriers.
Unilateral free trade, however, does not mean the UK producers will be bullied without their government being able to respond. First, by declaring unilateral free trade, the maintained strength of commercial links made will make it much easier to negotiate with the EU. To antagonize a good client would be foolish. Let’s not forget that this past decade, British exports to the EU grew much slower than exports to the rest of the world. At the same time, the UK is a major consumer of EU products and its balance of commerce with the EU was negative by about £62 billion in 2014.
But how can a country committed to unilateralism make sure other countries will not close their markets? Let us first remark that maintaining trade barriers to negotiate later with other nations is a self-defeating strategy. Sir Robert Peel, whom we mentioned earlier, said in 1842 that in the case of wine and brandy he did not reduce the duty, because he hoped that they might employ these duties “as instruments of negotiation, with a view of effecting a reduction in the duties imposed by other countries on the produce of our own country.” Such a strategy was self-defeating. Tariffs in view of a negotiation, by reducing the capacity of foreigners to produce for the British market, were destroying the very interests that wanted free trade. Peel finally admitted, in 1843, during a debate in the House of Commons, “I am bound to say that it is our interest to buy cheap, whether other countries will buy cheap or no.”
There certainly is a more efficient policy than maintaining trade barriers or threatening to raise some in order to force trade “partners” to keep their markets open. Indeed, the British government can make it clear that if the EU unfairly penalizes British interests in some sectors, e.g., finance, then the British government will work to maintain the competitiveness of the industry in question by aggressively lowering their taxes. Imagine that the EU wants to damage Britain’s car manufacturers. Then the British government should not be afraid to create a loophole and to lower manufacturers’ corporate taxes — even to zero. In an economy which was never as globalized and competitive as today, the UK would have good chances of prevailing over the EU interests.
Perhaps the EU will consider making trading conditions with the UK harder, but they would have way too much to lose if doing so means creating a fiscally ultra-attractive market just next door. In the short run, unilateralism in trade can achieve what multilateralism cannot, a quick and radical liberalization of exchanges. In the long run, unilateralism can achieve what multilateralism cannot, genuine free trade. | 0 |
Obama Goes Off on Reporter Who Dares Ask Question That Didn’t Get Pre-Approval
That case had accused him of using unconstitutional methods to crack down on illegal immigrants in and around the Phoenix area, and he had been ordered to cease and desist from those activities by a federal judge.
If convicted, Arpaio could serve up to six months in jail, though the conviction would not necessarily bar him from continuing to hold a political office. A trial date for the contempt charge has been scheduled for Dec. 6.
Arpaio’s lawyer, Mel McDonald, stated that the charge would be contested, saying, “We believe that when the final chapter is written, he will be vindicated.” Advertisement - story continues below
McDonald added that it was unlikely that Arpaio would actually be arrested and compelled to have mugshots taken, and said the sheriff intended to plead not guilty.
This is not the first time that Arpaio has run afoul of the Obama administration, and should Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton be elected, it is a near certainty that her administration would place the sheriff near the top of their target list to be taken out one way or another as well.
Arpaio’s campaign released a statement on the matter, specifically noting the timing and political nature of the charge coming so close to the election.
“The Obama Justice Department continues its efforts to influence the election for sheriff of Maricopa County. The department’s actions in the last 30 days before the election are further attempts to sabotage Sheriff Arpaio in his bid for a seventh unprecedented term as Maricopa County Sheriff,” read the campaign’s statement. Advertisement - story continues below | 0 |
Страны БРИКС дают отпор Соединенным Штатам в финансовой войне Ариэль Нойола Родригес Чтобы дать бой в финансовой войне с Соединенными Штатами странам БРИКС необходимо срочно укрепить свои партнерские отношения в сфере экономики и финансов. Новый банк развития БРИКС должен увеличить объем кредитов, то же касается и Соглашения о создании пула условных валютных резервов. Кроме того, странам-членам БРИКС необходимо как можно скорее создать свое собственное рейтинговое агентство. В целях усиления экономической сплоченности создание зоны свободной торговли разрушит тарифные барьеры и, вместе с тем, существенно расширит внешнеторговые операции между членами группы. В конечном счете, если надлежащие меры не будут приняты как можно раньше, страны БРИКС рискуют потерпеть крушение при первом же финансовом урагане.
Сеть Вольтер | Мехико (Мексика) | 27 октября 2016 français italiano Español 15-16 октября в штате Гоа (Индия) прошел восьмой саммит стран-членов БРИКС (акроним Бразилии, России, Индии, Китая и Южно-Африканской Республики). Следует отметить, что встреча состоялась в разгар глубокого кризиса мировой экономики. Тем не менее, БРИКС в очередной раз продемонстрировали свою поразительную способность превратить сложный период в удобный (с точки зрения стратегических перспектив) момент для укрепления связей между странами-членами группы.
После того, как государства БРИКС пережили свою «золотую эпоху», в последние годы темпы роста их экономики претерпевали ярко выраженное замедление. Оказавшись в такой сложной ситуации странам-членам БРИКС сейчас больше, чем когда-либо необходимо прибегнуть к помощи финансовых учреждений, которые они представили миру пару лет назад во время шестого саммита в Форталезе (Бразилия) [ 1 ].
В апреле текущего года новый банк развития выдал первые кредиты [ 2 ] на сумму более 800 миллионов долларов, а в 2017 году рассчитывает, что объем предоставленных кредитов достигнет 2,5 миллиардов долларов [ 3 ]. Также в июле текущего года эта финансовая организация осуществила знаменательный выпуск «зеленых» облигаций (англ. ’green bonds’) в юанях на сумму, эквивалентную 450 миллионам долларов [ 4 ]. Эти финансовые инструменты, увеличивая влияние китайской валюты в мировом масштабе, в то же время служат для финансирования крупных инвестиционных проектов.
Тем временем, как заявил министр финансов Индии Арун Джейтли [ 5 ], Соглашение о создании пула условных валютных резервов (англ.сокр.CRA) объемом 100 миллиардов долларов, уже готово для предоставления первых кредитных линий в целях стабилизации платежных балансов БРИКС. Поскольку Федеральная резервная система (англ.сокр. FED) Соединенных Штатов постоянно пытается повысить процентную ставку по федеральным фондам (англ. ’federal funds rate’) и, вместе с тем, взорвать новую мировую финансовую турбулентность, странам-членам БРИКС необходимо как можно быстрее увеличить объем денежных средств своего стабилизационного фонда, ведь иначе они рискуют понести серьезный ущерб из-за спекулятивных ставок крупных инвестиционных банков.
В то же время странам БРИКС необходимо открыть новый фронт борьбы, который бросит открытый вызов гегемонии Соединенных Штатов и доллара в мировой финансовой системе [ 6 ], не только через внешнеторговые операции в местной валюте, но и, например, за счет накопления резервов в юанях в центральных банках, тем более после того, как «народная валюта» (по-китайски «жэньминьби») была официально включена 1 октября текущего года в корзину специальных прав заимствования (англ. ’Special Drawing Rights’) – элитную валютную корзину, созданную Международным валютным фондом (МВФ) в конце 60-х годов [ 7 ].
В дополнение ко всему, страны-члены БРИКС способны объединиться в большой финансовый союз с мощными геополитическими звеньями, связывающими Латинскую Америку, Азию, Африку и Ближний Восток. Региональные банки развития, которые, в массе своей, сформированы периферийными странами, вполне могут послужить этой цели: Азиатский банк инфраструктурных инвестиций (англ.сокр. AIIB), банк АЛБА (Боливарианский альянс для народов нашей Америки), включая также Южный банк, который наконец-то будет запущен до конца текущего года.
Также у стран-членов БРИКС возникла насущная потребность создать собственное рейтинговой агентство, чтобы покончить с губительным господством, которое Соединенные Штаты удерживают за счет своих агентств Fitch, Moody’s и Standard & Poor’s [ 8 ]. Эти три рейтинговых агентства, хотя и проводят оценку, руководствуясь при этом критериями формального рода, действуют, в сущности, под влиянием движущей силы политического характера, то есть, как настоящие военные машины: они снижают оценку облигаций суверенного долга и, вместе с тем, резко повышают издержки на финансирование таких стран, как Греция, Россия или Венесуэла.
В экономической спаянности кроется ещё одна большая угроза, хотя бесспорно и то, что она существенно укрепилась за последние годы: с 2001 по 2005 год объем торговли между странами-членами БРИКС, взятый в соотношении с общими масштабами их внешнеторговых операций, увеличился с 6 до 12% [ 9 ]. Китай, как бы то ни было, является страной, в наибольшей степени сплочённой с остальными странами-членами БРИКС. Взаимосвязи между такими странами, как Индия и ЮАР, является, напротив, второстепенными. Та же ситуация складывается между Бразилией и Россией. В связи с этим очень своевременным является создание в ближайшем будущем зон свободной торговли между странами-членами БРИКС [ 10 ]. Тем не менее, помимо свержения тарифных барьеров между странами-участниками, группе БРИКС необходимо способствовать построению значимой объединяющей цепочки; то есть интегрировать свой производственный аппарат для стимулирования индустриализации стран с более низким уровнем развития экономики.
Подводя итог следует сказать, что на горизонте виднеется еще много трудностей, с которыми столкнутся эти пять восходящих держав. Я убежден, что в дальнейшем успех группы БРИКС будет зависеть от их способности переосмысливать и найти нестандартный подход к объединению новых измерений сотрудничества для достижения самых долгосрочных целей. В условиях новой финансовой войны, которую готовят Соединенные Штаты, группе БРИКС пришла пора снова вернуться на сцену…
Ариэль Нойола Родригес Перевод
Ольга Депутатова
Переводчик французского, испанского, английского языков с 2000 года.
Источник
Russia Today (Россия) | 0 |
Despite a brief of controversy that preceded it, a conversation between Milo Yiannopoulos, the incendiary author and lecturer, and Bill Maher, the comedian and host of HBO’s “Real Time,” on that program Friday night was a largely docile, chummy affair. There was little conflict or as both men chided the political left for avoiding or drowning out Mr. Yiannopoulos’s views rather than engaging with them. Introducing Mr. Yiannopoulos, 32, an openly gay editor at Breitbart News, Mr. Maher said: “I think you’re colossally wrong on a number of things. But if I banned everyone from my show who I thought was colossally wrong, I would be talking to myself. ” Mr. Yiannopoulos began the interview by cracking jokes about gay people (whom he said he did not hire because they did not show up to work on time) and women, and telling Mr. Maher’s audience that they were “very easily triggered. ” “All I care about is free speech and free expression,” Mr. Yiannopoulos explained. “I want people to be able to be, do and say anything. These days, you’re right, that’s a conservative issue. ” Mr. Yiannopoulos had been scheduled to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, earlier this month, on an invitation from the school’s College Republicans group. But his talk was canceled when protests against the speech turned violent and led to rioting that caused about $100, 000 in damages. In January, when Mr. Yiannopoulos gave a lecture in Seattle at the University of Washington, a man was shot during protests outside the site of the speech. He spoke in December at the University of where he mocked a transgender student while displaying her photograph during his talk. Other schools have withdrawn invitations to him in recent weeks. When it was announced on Wednesday that Mr. Yiannopoulos would be interviewed on “Real Time,” another scheduled guest, Jeremy Scahill, a journalist for The Intercept, said in a statement on his Twitter account that he was withdrawing from the show. “He has ample venues to spew his hateful diatribes,” Mr. Scahill said. “There is no value in ‘debating’ him. ” Mr. Maher followed with his own statement that said, “If Mr. Yiannopoulos is indeed the monster Scahill claims — and he might be — nothing could serve the liberal cause better than having him exposed on Friday night. ” In the interview on Friday night, Mr. Yiannopolous criticized female comedians like Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman, and he described the Democrats as “the party of Lena Dunham,” the creator and star of “Girls. ” (Mr. Maher replied: “Let’s not pick on fellow HBO stars. There are so many other people. ”) Describing himself as “a virtuous troll,” Mr. Yiannopolous said, “I hurt people for a reason. ” He said people “want to police humor” because “they can’t control it. ” “Because the one thing that authoritarians hate is the sound of laughter,” Mr. Yiannopolous said. Mr. Maher added, “And also, because when people laugh, they know it’s true. ” Mr. Yiannopolous replied, “Nothing annoys people, or amuses people, like the truth. ” They then discussed an incident from last summer, when Mr. Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter after helping rally other users to direct racist and sexist remarks at Leslie Jones, a star of “Ghostbusters” and “Saturday Night Live. ” “I didn’t understand, like, the ‘Ghostbusters’ thing,” Mr. Maher said. Mr. Yiannopoulos answered: “I wrote a bad review of a movie. Am I not entitled to do that?” After repeating some of the insults he had leveled at Ms. Jones, he said, “I simply don’t accept — I do not accept — that the star of a Hollywood blockbuster, that an is crying over mean words on the internet. Get over it. ” “What actually hurts people is, like, murder, violence,” Mr. Yiannopoulos added. “That kind of stuff. ” He added that “mean words” don’t “hurt people. ” Mr. Maher said, “Which some people would say you have incited. ” Mr. Yiannopoulos reacted with surprise. “What? How?” he asked. “I’m just saying, some people would say,” Mr. Maher answered. Mr. Yiannopoulos replied, “Well, they would be idiots. ” Speaking to his audience, Mr. Maher said, “Stop taking the bait, liberals,” and asked how they could be afraid of someone he described as “little, British, impish” and a slur for gay people. The two men shook hands, and Mr. Maher moved on to his panel discussion. But in an segment that ran after the HBO broadcast, Mr. Yiannopoulos said that transgender people were “vastly disproportionately involved in sex crime,” drawing jeers, boos and a shout of “liar” from Mr. Maher’s audience. Mr. Yiannopoulos also clashed with the comedian Larry Wilmore, another guest on the show. In remarks to Mr. Yiannopoulos that were bookended by an obscene phrase, Mr. Wilmore took offense at his Twitter trolling of Ms. Jones. “She’s a very thoughtful person and very funny,” he said. Trying to defuse the tension, Mr. Maher wryly suggested to Mr. Yiannopoulos that he shouldn’t be so quick to spar with his fellow panelists. “This is the beginning of your career,” Mr. Maher said. “People are only just starting to hate you. ” | 1 |
Media Claim Trump Transition Chaos. Trump's Way Ahead of Schedule. By: Ben Shapiro November 18, 2016
The media, desperately in search of a narrative to cast the incoming Trump administration as dangerously incompetent, are once again overplaying their hands. Instead of focusing on the nepotistic fact that Trump relies heavily on his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter, Ivanka – he invited them to a state meeting with Japan – they’re trying to claim that he just isn’t moving fast enough on appointments.
That’s nuts.
Barack Obama didn’t name his picks for Secretary of State, Defense, or Attorney General until December 1, nearly a month after the November 4, 2008 election. George W. Bush didn’t name his picks for State, Defense, or Attorney General until mid-December (December 16 for Colin Powell, December 28 for Donald Rumsfeld, December 22 for John Ashcroft). Bill Clinton didn’t name his picks for those positions until at least December 22. George H.W. Bush was the fastest off the mark – he named James Baker Secretary of State the day after the November 8 election. Ronald Reagan waited until December 11 to get started; Jimmy Carter waited until December 3.
We’re still waiting on Trump’s State and Defense picks, but he’s already out of the gate with Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. It’s November 17.
The media are so eager to bury Trump’s administration that they are falling all over themselves to do so. Instead of soberly covering potential problems with top level picks – Steve Bannon, for example, is a rotten pick , but not because he’s a racist or anti-Semite – the media keep proclaiming THE END IS NEAR. This sort of alarmism doesn’t convince Americans, who don’t really see why there’s any giant rush to appoint people who aren’t going to be formally considered by the Senate until January 20 anyway.
If this election was about repudiation of the media – and it was – the media aren’t doing themselves any favors when they promulgate fact-free narratives while simultaneously attempting to label conservative outlets “fake news.” For years, Americans have assumed that the leftist media are ladling them fake news each day. Each day, the media seem determined to prove them right. Tags | 0 |
TMZ Sports asked NBA legend Charles Barkley Wednesday to weigh in on Baltimore Orioles center fielder Adam Jones being the target of racism in Boston playing the Red Sox earlier this week. “It should never happen,” Barkley said. “I’m disappointed in the fans who [were] around those people saying those things. ” “If I was in a crowd of people and they were mistreating anybody, I would stand up for the person who was being mistreated. I would never, let’s just say hypothetically if was with a group of black people, which I am black, if they were mistreating a white person, a Jewish person or a Hispanic person, I would put an end to that sh*t,” he continued. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Pope Francis has refuted the idea of Christianity as a philosophy or political ideology, proposing rather that it is a journey of faith with its roots in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. [In his weekly “General Audience” before thousands of pilgrims Wednesday, the Pope underscored the interpersonal aspect of Christianity as faith in the person of Jesus Christ as savior and revealer of the Father. Reflecting on the witness of Saint Paul, Francis noted that Christian faith is not the outcome of a reflection of some wise person, but a simple fact that intervened in the lives of some people. Christianity, he said, “is not an ideology or a philosophical system, but it is a journey of faith which starts from an event, witnessed by the first disciples of Jesus. ” “Paul sums it up this way: Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and on the third day he rose again and appeared to Peter and to the Twelve,” the Pope said. “This is the fact: he died, was buried, is risen and has appeared. That is, Jesus is alive!” “This is the core of the Christian message,” Francis said. The Pope insisted that Christ’s resurrection was central to the preaching of the early Christian community, because it highlighted the sense that death did not have the final word. If everything were over with Christ’s death, Francis reasoned, he would have given an example of supreme dedication, but he would not move us to faith in Him. He would have been one more hero to admire. “No!” Francis said. “He died but rose again. ” Faith, he said, “is born from the resurrection. To accept that Christ died on the cross is not an act of faith it is a historical fact. Believing that he rose, on the other hand, is an act of faith. ” The Christian faith “was born on Easter morning,” Francis asserted. For his part, Saint Paul “was a persecutor of the Church, proud of his convictions he felt like a man who had made it, with very clear idea of what life was about and what his duties were. ” But, in this perfect picture “one day something happened that was completely unpredictable: the encounter with the Risen Jesus on the road to Damascus,” he said. This event revolutionized his life, and “the persecutor became an apostle. ” The reason for Paul’s ? “Because I have seen Jesus alive! I have seen the risen Jesus Christ! This is the foundation of Paul’s faith, of the faith of the other Apostles, of the faith of the Church and of our faith,” Francis said. “So, even though we are sinners — as we all are — and if our good intentions have remained on paper,” Francis said, all is not lost. Like those people mentioned in the Gospel, we can “go to the tomb of Christ, see the large overturned stone and think that God is preparing an unexpected future for me, for all of us. ” “God is bigger than nothingness, and you just need a candle to defeat the darkest of nights,” he said. Paul cried, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” In these days of Easter, we carry this cry in our heart, Francis said. “And if we are asked the reason for our smile and our patient sharing, then we can answer that Jesus is still here, and continues to live among us,” he said. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
Both butter and ghee contain almost 100% of calories from fat.
Ghee is more concentrated than butter. Gram for gram, it provides slightly more butyric acid and other short-chain saturated fats. Studies suggest that these fats can reduce inflammation, promote gut health, and inhibit cancer growth.
Ghee is also higher in conjugated linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fat that may help increase fat loss.
Ghee is completely free of the milk sugar lactose and the milk protein casein, whereas butter contains small amounts of each. Ghee is a great alternative for those who have allergies or sensitivities to these dairy components.
Heating ghee produces a lot less of the toxic compound acrylamide than heating vegetable and seed oils. Ghee also has a very high smoke point. At 485 F, its smoke point is much higher than that of butter’s which is 350 F.
Heart Health
A number of studies suggest that consuming ghee can lead to favorable changes in heart health .
In one study , ghee was revealed to increase good cholesterol (HDL) and reduce the formation of fatty deposits in the arteries. It also increased fasting blood sugar levels.
A controlled study found that ghee was the fat source responsible for the greatest increase in ApoA, a protein in HDL particles that is linked to a reduced risk of heart disease.
It is important to distinguish between ghee made from dairy and ghee made from vegetable oil.
Vegetable ghee contains 14-40% trans fats, and the rising consumption of vegetable ghee may be contributing to rising heart disease rates among Indians and Pakistanis.
Cancer
Several studies comparing ghee to soybean oil suggest that ghee may reduce the risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer.
Potential Health Issues?
Results of controlled studies show that ghee doesn’t seem to affect bad cholesterol (LDL) levels, yet people’s responses to saturated fat intake are highly variable.
People whose LDL cholesterol levels tend to increase in response to high saturated fat intake may want to limit their ghee or butter intake to one or two tablespoons per day.
Another concern about ghee is that during production at high heat, its cholesterol may become oxidized. Oxidized cholesterol is linked to an increased risk of several diseases, including heart disease.
As more research is done, we will begin to learn more about the various health benefits and side effects of ghee.
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GOSHEN, N. Y. — In chilling detail, a State Police investigator on Monday publicly described for the first time a walk he took on a Hudson River island with Angelika Graswald, whose remarks to him soon led to charges that she murdered her fiancé while the two had been kayaking there last year. Ms. Graswald said she felt “trapped” and had withheld her fiancé’s paddle after his kayak capsized, the investigator, Donald DeQuarto, testified during a pretrial hearing. “‘I took his paddle when he was in the water,’” Ms. Graswald had told him, Investigator DeQuarto said. The walk and subsequent questioning last spring occurred 10 days after the fiancé, Vincent Viafore, 46, disappeared into the cold waters of the Hudson, on April 19, 2015. Ms. Graswald was visiting Bannerman Island, where the couple had stopped on the day of the drowning, and ran into investigators who were searching for clues to the episode, which was still being treated as an accident. Ms. Graswald, who is 36, revealed that she had removed the plug from the kayak and sabotaged the paddle, according to Investigator DeQuarto. He added that she had also said that after Mr. Viafore capsized, and was holding onto his kayak and a dry bag for flotation, he had begged Ms. Graswald to call 911, but that she “kind of reached over and took his paddle from him and strapped it onto her kayak. ” The testimony by Investigator DeQuarto came on the fourth day of the hearing here in Goshen. The purpose of the hearing is to examine how investigators obtained their evidence, which in the case against Ms. Graswald relies heavily on her own words. Ms. Graswald and Mr. Viafore, who shared an apartment in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. set out in two kayaks from the western shore of the Hudson on a mild Sunday. They paddled to Bannerman Island, where, the police say, they spent a few hours drinking beer and taking pictures. On the return crossing, however, the boat belonging to Mr. Viafore, who was not wearing a life vest, capsized. He vanished under the choppy water, which at 46 degrees was cold enough to bring on hypothermia. For 10 days, Ms. Graswald was treated as a fiancée in mourning, while rescuers searched for the body. On April 29, investigators came upon Ms. Graswald on the island, a historic site with the ruins of a castle. Another investigator testified that Ms. Graswald, who was leaving flowers on the island for Mr. Viafore, also said that he had recently postponed their wedding. She was charged with murder the next day, after an police interrogation. Her lawyer, Richard A. Portale, is seeking to suppress a videotape of the questioning. Investigator DeQuarto testified that Ms. Graswald had also indicated that she could have pictured herself with Mr. Viafore if things had been different. “She wanted a normal life with Vincent, she wanted to get married, she wanted to have children,” he said. Investigator DeQuarto had asked her how she felt about Mr. Viafore’s death. Her response, he said, was: “Fine. Over it. ” “She felt like herself,” he testified. “She felt free. ” Prosecutors said Ms. Graswald stood to receive $250, 000 in life insurance benefits from Mr. Viafore’s death. Mr. Portale has portrayed Mr. Viafore’s death as a tragic drowning, triggered by the waters of the rough, cold river. Investigator DeQuarto also testified that Ms. Graswald was angry that Mr. Viafore had pressured her to have sex with him and another woman. Ms. Graswald, he said, had talked about Mr. Viafore’s making “sexual demands to her, how he wanted to have threesomes with other women, how he made her have sex when he wanted sex. ” Ms. Graswald, according to Investigator DeQuarto, had said her fiancé even had a third partner in mind, a woman he knew, named Tina. He testified that, according to what Ms. Graswald had told him on the island, Mr. Viafore would say, “‘Why can’t you do a threesome with Tina?’ Tina would do this, Tina would do that. It made her upset. ” Investigator DeQuarto said he had asked Ms. Graswald why she did not break up with Mr. Viafore. “She said she’s a very spiritual person, she knew he would never be gone” if she only broke up with him, he testified. “I asked, ‘Did you remove that plug so he would drown? ’” Mr. DeQuarto said, adding that Ms. Graswald had paused for a moment. “She said, ‘I guess I did. ’” He also said she had admitted tampering with his paddle. Kayaking experts have said that removal of the tiny drain plug, located on top of the kayak’s hull, would not have caused the kayak to fill with water. But they said waves splashing into the cockpit could have made it unstable. Investigator DeQuarto recalled that shortly after he encountered Ms. Graswald on Bannerman Island, she began breathing heavily and holding her stomach. She had also asked to take breaks to smoke cigarettes, he said. He said he and another officer had encouraged Ms. Graswald to be more forthcoming, pointing out that she had made inconsistent statements about her cellphone, and appeared physically agitated. Mr. DeQuarto testified that Ms. Graswald had begun her confession on the island by saying that she “wanted to be free. ” “I wanted to go on and I wanted to be myself,” he recalled her saying, adding that she had later said of Mr. Viafore: “He trapped me. ” Investigator DeQuarto said he had asked Ms. Graswald if she would come to the police station to continue talking in a more formal setting. She said she would. On the way, Investigator DeQuarto said, she expressed feelings of freedom and of wanting to buy a motorcycle to ride. And one other thing. “‘You know, when I first saw you I thought you were cute,’” Investigator DeQuarto said she had told him. “I didn’t know what to say to that. I said, ‘Thank you. ’” | 1 |
President Donald Trump praised America’s values, vowing to defend them from an increasingly dangerous world, in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday. [“America will thrive as long as we continue to have faith in each other and faith in God,” Trump said. “That faith in God has inspired men and women to sacrifice for the needy, to deploy to wars overseas, and lock arms at home to ensure equal rights for every man, woman, and child in our land. ” He vowed to protect religious liberty in America, specifically promising to get rid of the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches and organizations from endorsing and opposing political candidates. “Our republic was formed on the basis that freedom is not a gift from government, but that freedom is a gift from God,” Trump said. But Trump warned that Islamic State terrorists were specifically targeting Christians and “peaceful Muslims. ” He also mentioned that the Jewish people were under attack from terrorists. “The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out. That’s what I do,” Trump said. “I fix things. We’re going the straighten it out. Believe me. ” The president paid tribute to slain Navy SEAL Mark Owens and quoted John 15:13 to recognize his sacrifice. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” he said. Trump also used his speech to defend his decision to restrict refugees and immigration from seven Middle East countries, calling it a “necessary” step to prevent opponents of American values from entering the country. “We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation,” he said, promising to develop an immigration system to only allow people into the country who would share American values. “In the coming days, we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty and that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination,” Trump said. “We want people to come into our nation, but we want people to love us and to love our values, not to hate us and to hate our values. ” Trump spoke about his mother, who raised him with faith, and he explained that personal wealth fails to bring true happiness. “I tell you that from somebody who has had material success and knows tremendous numbers of people with great material success, the most material success,” he said. “Many of those people are very, very miserable, unhappy people, and I know a lot of people without that, but they have great families. They have great faith. ” | 1 |
Written by Jacob G. Hornberger As US officials continue to accuse Russia of meddling with the US presidential election, an accusation that they have provided no evidence whatsoever to support, let’s review some of the US government’s history of meddling with elections in others countries.1. In 1951, the democratically elected parliament of Iran elected a man named Mohammad Mossadegh to be Iran’s prime minister. Mossadegh angered British Empire officials by nationalizing British oil interests in the country.British officials then turned to the CIA for assistance. In 1953, the CIA secretly fomented a violent coup in Iran, which succeeded in ousting Mossadegh from power and making the Shah of Iran the supreme unelected dictator of the country.To fortify the Shah’s dictatorial hold on power, the CIA helped organize and train the his domestic police force, the Savak, which was essentially a combination of the CIA, the NSA, and the military. Part of the CIA’s training involved teaching Savak agents the art of torture.For the next 26 years, the Iranian people suffered under one of the most brutal and tyrannical dictatorships in the world, one that US officials fully supported and called an ally and friend of the United States.In 1979, Iranians successfully revolted against the Shah’s regime and ousted him from power. One result was not a restoration of the democratic system that had elected Mossadegh but rather another brutal dictatorship, this time a religious one. Another result is the bad relations between the Iran and US governments that continues to exist today.2. In 1951, the Guatemalan people democratically elected a man named Jacobo Arbenz to be their president. Arbenz, however, was not satisfactory to US officials, especially the national-security branch of the government, specifically the Pentagon and the CIA. The reason that US officials opposed Arbenz was that he was a socialist, and US officials considered a socialist president of Guatemala to be a threat to “national security” here in the United States.In 1954 — one year after the coup in Iran, the CIA fomented a violent military coup that succeeded in removing Arbenz from power and replacing him with one of the most brutal unelected military dictators in Latin American history, a man named Carlos Castillo Armas. The CIA had a kill list prepared for the coup, which Arbenz was able to escape by fleeing the country before Castillo was able to get him. The CIA’s destruction of Guatemala’s democratic system threw the nation into a 30-year civil war that ended up killing millions of Guatemalan people, especially many of the poor.3. In 1960 a man named Patrice Lamumba was elected Congo’s first prime minister after independence from Belgium. Lamumba spoke out against Western imperialism and refused to take sides in the Cold War, which caused the CIA to conclude that he was a threat to “national security.” The CIA orchestrated the assassination of Lamumba, which ended up taking place on January 17, 1961, just three days before President Kennedy, who liked Lamumba and who would have ordered the CIA to stand down, was to be sworn into office.4. In 1970 a man named Salvador Allende received a plurality of votes in the presidential election in Chile. Pursuant to the Chilean constitution, the election was thrown into the national congress. President Richard Nixon, his national-security team, the Pentagon, and the CIA concluded that because Allende believed in communism and socialism, he posed a grave threat to “national security” here in the United States. The CIA attempted to bribe members of the congress to vote against Allende. It also orchestrated the kidnapping of the head of Chile’s armed forces, Gen Rene Schneider, who opposed a US military coup in his country, especially since a coup would violate the country’s constitution. The kidnapping attempt on Schneider left him dead.The CIA then fomented a coup that took place on 9/11 1973 that violently ousted Allende from power and left him dead. Replacing him was army Gen. Augusto Pinochet, one of the most brutal unelected military dictators in history. By the time Pinochet’s 17-year reign of military terror came to an end in 1990, he and his CIA-supported goons had incarcerated, raped, tortured, or killed tens of thousands of innocent people — that is, people whose only “crime” was believing in socialism — with the full support of the CIA, Pentagon, Nixon, and his “national security” team.Of course, there are also the more recent support of regime-change operations that ousted democratically elected presidents that the US government disapproved of, such as in Ukraine and Egypt.And then there is the long list of countries where unelected dictators were targeted for regime change by the US national security state and, where successful, replaced with a brutal unelected pro-US dictator. Cuba, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria all come to mind.US officials need to keep in mind that when they point their accusatory index finger at Russia for supposedly meddling in the US presidential election, US officials have, at the same time, three fingers pointing back at themselves. Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation . Related | 0 |
BOYDTON, Va. — A giant Microsoft facility just outside this very small town hides behind a berm and a guard house, across the highway from the rubble of a demolished prison. Behind the berm, six unmarked hangars each hold tens of thousands of computer servers. Microsoft has cleared enough scrub trees and vines for at least 15 of these buildings, and six more are already under construction. One thing there isn’t much of at this Microsoft complex, one single computer data center, is work. Microsoft says it might have “several dozen” employees in a place like this. They are mostly elite computer workers who tend not to come from Boydton, which lost a lot of good jobs when nearby factories closed and the prison shut down. So it is in a number of small towns across the country, as technology giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft race to build networks of unprecedented size to provide services over the internet, a technology trend known as cloud computing. Local people, along with many economists and officials, often think these data centers are a key to an industrial revival. But the reality is less impressive. “I’ve worked on a lot of nuclear power plants, and these things are a lot bigger than that,” said E. W. Gregory, the head of the local electrical workers’ union. But “the first thing they put in was a guard shack and a fence. I’ve filled rooms with people looking for work. None of it lasts. ” The companies come to places like Boydton for basics like land, water and electricity. Even with low local wages, people are a item. As small as the staffs at these mammoth facilities are, companies say, perhaps a third of the company jobs will eventually be filled by robots. Google started building in eastern Oregon to be near cheap hydroelectric power on the Columbia River, and most recently it has focused on Iowa, Alabama and Tennessee. Microsoft has a center in Wyoming, and it bought a golf course as part of a complex near West Des Moines, Iowa. Amazon recently built similar giant facilities on the outer reaches of Columbus, Ohio, and Dulles, Va. “A lot of this stuff is put in rural parts of the country that used to be part of a manufacturing economy” that has gone overseas, said Bill Coughran, a partner at the venture investment firm Sequoia Capital who ran much of Google’s big engineering for eight years. “Textiles and furniture created a big power grid in the south. Then those jobs went away. ” That’s been the story for Boydton, population 430, in the middle of tobacco country a few miles from the North Carolina border. The prison across from the Microsoft center closed in 2012. A nearby Burlington Industries textile plant that employed more than 2, 000 shut in 2002. It was razed in 2012. In Clarksville, the next town over, a Russell Stover candy factory closed in 2001, taking 700 jobs. Now the building is a data center for the Department of Homeland Security, operated by a small crew from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The South Virginia tobacco economy collapsed as Americans cut back on smoking. But in 1999, Virginia used some of the $4. 1 billion it received in a settlement with cigarette makers to build lines throughout the region. The broadband drew Microsoft, along with some financial perks. Mecklenburg County, which received $2. 1 million from the state for the project, has given Microsoft 350 acres and offset personal property taxes by 82. 5 percent, according to Wayne Carter, the county administrator. Initially, Apple, which is building a big cloud center for consumers’ photos and music, wanted the Boydton site, but it went across the border to North Carolina, which promised tax breaks on its data center equipment. Not to be outdone, Virginia passed laws in 2009 and 2010 that exempted sales taxes on things like data center computer servers, software, power generators and chillers to cool all that equipment. “We’ve had six years of construction work,” said Mr. Carter. That has helped the county, he said, because even temporary workers rent houses, stay in hotels and eat in local restaurants. Microsoft did not dispute reports that it would spend $1. 1 billion on the Boydton data center, and said that “on average, data centers employ tens to several dozen people,” in a mixture of corporate and contracted positions. It declined to let a reporter tour the site. “They talked about 100 jobs, but it’s a slow process,” said Thomas C. Coleman III, the mayor of Boydton. So far, he says, the biggest impact “has been a couple of lunch tables at the Triangle gas station. ” He understates matters, but not by much. Mr. Gregory, the electrician, said his union had hundreds of applicants for work digging ditches and laying pipe, starting at $10. 88 an hour. Wiring paid $28. 59. Both jobs tended to last about six months, he said, with lots of attrition for the hard outdoor labor. Working as a security guard or as someone testing the wires inside the data center offers better money, but there are not many positions. Microsoft prefers to fly in its own specialists for some work, and it doesn’t like hiring people who have worked in other big companies’ centers, Mr. Gregory said. (Microsoft said it did not exclude candidates based on previous experience.) “We can provide a place to live, but all those contractors will move on to the next town where they’re building,” Mr. Coleman said. “You don’t know what you can count on. ” The big cloud networks are immensely profitable for the few companies who can operate these global systems. The biggest three cloud companies estimate that the global market in business computing is worth $1 trillion or more, and they are rushing to expand globally. In interviews, all said they spend more than $2 billion annually on this. “It’s phenomenal how rapidly they are growing,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written extensively on the impact of new technologies. “It is the key enabler of all kinds of technology advances, starting with the things companies do now, but lots cheaper, including outsourcing tech jobs. ” In a recent article, Mr. Brynjolfsson noted a report by the United States Council of Economic Advisers that said more than 80 percent of jobs paying $20 an hour or less could be automated. The report urged sweeping policy changes, like ending some licensing regulations for careers like hairdressing, or wage subsidies for workers, to adapt to the new economic infrastructure. For towns like Boydton, he said, “people are going to have to move to new places. ” That is hard to imagine in places where local roots go so deep. Conversations here usually start with people explaining where they are from, and what their families did here for generations. “Boydton is the quintessential quaint courthouse town,” said Leigh Lambert, the town librarian. “People from here love it. It feels like it’s always with you. ” Ms. Lambert grew up nearby, tried New York, and returned to work next to the court, which is adorned with a statue of a Confederate soldier. Microsoft initially came to a couple of town meetings, and it seemed to offer a way Boydton could come back. “Now they’re off by themselves,” she said. “We hear they have a really nice Starbucks machine. ” | 1 |
Rep. Jim Jordan ( ) talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow Thursday about healthcare reform and Obamacare repeal moving forward. [When asked about the White House working with Democrats on healthcare reform, Jordan said, “I think that would be a big mistake” Added Jordan, “I think that would be the wrong approach. The elections in 2010, 2014, and on November 8, 2016, weren’t about working with Democrats to keep in place Obamacare. They were about repealing Obamacare. ” Jordan insisted this was simply a postponement in the passing of a piece of legislation and argued that Republicans should regroup and work together to pass an acceptable bill. Having pointed out that only seventeen percent of the country backed the recently failed legislation, Jordan said he believes if they had followed standard procedure, including hearings, they could have come up with a bill supported by far more than seventeen percent of America. “We were willing to accept so much that we weren’t really doing cartwheels over in the legislation,” said Freedom Caucus member Jordan. “If we could simply point to the fact premiums are going to come down and without getting into the weeds, there are a few key regulations that have to get repealed in Obamacare in order for premiums to come down. ” “One is this mandated coverages that every policy has to offer, ” he added. “If every policy has to cover everything, it just drives up the cost. You don’t really have families being able to select the kind of insurance plan that fits their needs. So that’s one regulation that has to go. ” Jordan had previously pointed out that rates were going to continue to rise for years under the recently failed GOP plan. He also cited “community rating” as a problem because it prevents flexibility in pricing and the need for a “safety net” provision for individuals. “That’s the way you design a system that actually is brings down costs for most middle class families. In the end, that’s all we were trying to get to. And we couldn’t even get those regulations included in the repeal part of the legislation,” Jordan said. He insisted that with some simple tweaking, Republicans can still come together to pass healthcare reform more popular with America than the recent plan. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
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A bombshell report from CNBC confirms that FBI Director James Comey had in fact concluded that the government of the Russian Federation was interfering with the election, but fought to keep that information from being released to the public because it was “too close to the election.”
Instead, Comey prevented the name FBI from appearing on the statement the government ultimately made on October 7th.
This attitude stands in stark contrast to the cavalier way in which Director Comey threw a wrench into the election by writing a letter to “update” Congress on the Hillary Clinton email investigation since the FBI discovered emails that “may” be pertinent to their previous inquiries.
That announcement has drastically shifted the polling landscape of the election and given the Republican Party the final stretch ammunition that the Donald Trump campaign, sinking after weeks of sexual assault revelations, needed to bail themselves out and redirect the national narrative away from their own bad press.
The hypocrisy is astounding; it appears that the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation attempted to hide the machinations by a foreign power to interfere in the elections of the United States to protect the Republican nominee, who has a long documented history with the operatives of said foreign power and a personally profitable reason to cultivate their support.
The Director then said that he couldn’t release that information to the public – which definitely deserves to know if a foreign power is interfering with our electoral process – because it was “too close to the election” but then releases an intentionally vague and misleading letter concerning new emails that “may or may not be” pertinent to an investigation which the FBI itself had already exonerated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over?
It’s obvious that Director Comey has joined Congressional Republicans in their efforts to conduct a witch-hunt against one of our nation’s most devoted public servants and usher in the election of a treasonous sexual predator instead. | 0 |
Keywords: cavities , coconut oil , Dental health , gingivitis , Oil Pulling , Teeth
We all know about the popular and ancient practice of oil pulling, but many of us don’t understand how this practice works or how exactly it benefits our teeth! Oil pulling began in Ayurvedic medicine thousands of years ago and has achieved widespread popularity in modern society today.
But the question remains—does it help your smile? And how?
The Claims of Oil Pulling
Let’s take a look at each of these popular claims of oil pulling!
It makes your mouth healthier. By pulling out bad bacteria that can cause cavities and gum disease, oil pulling can actually make your mouth healthier and even stop chronic bad breath.
It whitens teeth. Research has not proved this, but some people claim they get whiter teeth with oil pulling. This should be considered a side effect of oil pulling (albeit a great one) rather than its main purpose.
It heals cavities. Oil pulling can remove the bacteria and plaque that cause tooth decay, but typically oil pulling alone is not enough to heal cavities. You need to stop eating so much sugar, get more vitamins and minerals (such as K, D, and calcium), and switch your toothpaste to help heal cavities with oil pulling!
It cures disease. Ancient cultures used oil pulling as a way to draw out toxins from the mouth to prevent them from affecting the body. Research doesn’t show whether or not oil pulling can help any type of disease, but research does link oral health to body health—so a healthy mouth could help you prevent heart disease , respiratory illnesses, and even cognitive decline!
What the Research Says
Now that we’ve seen the popular claims of oil pulling, let’s find out what modern research actually says about this age-old practice.
Research shows that oil pulling can actually the stop inflammation, bacteria, plaque, and bad breath associated with gum disease, therefore it may be an effective treatment for gum disease combined with a healthy diet and great oral health practices!
It can decrease the likelihood of tooth decay and reduce overall plaque content in the mouth. Oil pulling can also help prevent tooth loss and oral diseases such as oral cancer, periodontal disease, and oral thrush. Oil pulling may be able to reverse tooth decay, but only when combined with other healthy practices.
Although research hasn’t proved that oil pulling helps decrease your chances for developing chronic disease, keeping your mouth healthy and free of toxins can benefit your whole body!
The Verdict
If you want to give oil pulling a try, do this practice every day: put a tablespoon of oil in your mouth (preferably sesame or coconut) and swish it around for up to twenty minutes as soon as you wake up. Spit out in the trash, then brush and floss your teeth as normal. Easy!
The verdict is in: oil pulling can help you get a beautiful and healthy smile, but it should not replace regular brushing and flossing as your oral care routine. Practice oil pulling first thing in the morning before you eat or brush, then enjoy the benefits of a healthy smile without giving up your brushing and flossing habits! You might also like… | 0 |
Sean Adl-Tabatabai in Sci/Environment // 0 Comments
A U.S. teen has shown doctors compelling evidence that reincarnation exists after awaking from a coma and speaking fluent Spanish – a language he was never taught.
16-year-old Reuben Nsemoh survived a life-threatening head injury on the soccer pitch that put him in a coma after being kicked in the head whilst diving for a loose ball.
The English-speaking Georgia teenager left doctors utterly baffled when he awoke 3 days later speaking fluent Spanish
Could it be that Reuben was Hispanic in a past life?
Ksl.com reports:
Slowly, his English is coming back, and he’s starting to lose his Spanish fluency.
Foreign accent syndrome is an extremely rare condition in which brain injuries change a person’s speech patterns, giving them a different accent.
The first known case was reported in 1941, when a Norwegian woman suffered shrapnel injuries to the brain during a German bombing run, and started speaking with a German accent. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — As President Trump signed a sweeping executive order on Friday, shutting the borders to refugees and others from seven largely Muslim countries, the secretary of homeland security was on a White House conference call getting his first full briefing on the global shift in policy. Gen. John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, had dialed in from a Coast Guard plane as he headed back to Washington from Miami. Along with other top officials, he needed guidance from the White House, which had not asked his department for a legal review of the order. Halfway into the briefing, someone on the call looked up at a television in his office. “The president is signing the executive order that we’re discussing,” the official said, stunned. The global confusion that has since erupted is the story of a White House that rushed to enact, with little regard for basic governing, a core campaign promise that Mr. Trump made to his most fervent supporters. In his first week in office, Mr. Trump signed other executive actions with little or no legal review, but his order barring refugees has had the most explosive implications. Passengers were barred from flights to the United States, customs and border control officials got instructions at 3 a. m. Saturday and some arrived at their posts later that morning still not knowing how to carry out the president’s orders. “The details of it were not thought through,” said Stephen Heifetz, who served in the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, as well as the C. I. A. under the previous three presidents. “It is not surprising there was mass confusion, and I expect the confusion and chaos will continue for some time. ” Stephen K. Bannon, the chief White House strategist, oversaw the writing of the order, which was done by a small White House team, including Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s policy chief. But it was first imagined more than a year ago, when Mr. Trump, then a candidate for the Republican nomination, reacted to terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif. by calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. ” In the months that followed, Mr. Trump’s campaign tried to back away from the proposal, which was seen by Democrats as campaign rhetoric that would never be reality. Mr. Trump offered few details as the campaign progressed, and as he promised to protect the country from terrorists with only vague promises of “extreme vetting. ” But Mr. Bannon, who believes in highly restrictive immigration policies and saw barring refugees as vital to shoring up Mr. Trump’s political base, was determined to make it happen. He and a small group made up of the president’s closest advisers began working on the order during the transition so that Mr. Trump could sign it soon after taking office. A senior administration official said that the order was drafted in cooperation with some immigration experts on Capitol Hill and members of the “beachhead teams” — small groups of political appointees sent by the new White House to be liaisons and begin work at the agencies. James Jay Carafano, a vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation and a member of Mr. Trump’s transition team, said that little of that work was shared with career officials at the Homeland Security Department, the State Department or other agencies. There was “a firewall between the old administration and the incoming one,” Mr. Carafano said. One reason, he said, is that when the Trump transition team asked pointed questions suggesting new policies to the career officials, those questions were swiftly leaked to the news media, generating negative stories. So the Trump team began to limit the information they discussed with officials from the previous administration. “Why share it with them?” Mr. Carafano said. R. Gil Kerlikowske, who served as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection under former President Barack Obama, said that his staff had little communication with Mr. Trump’s transition team, who made no mention of a bar on entry for people from certain countries. White House officials in the meantime insisted to reporters at a briefing that Mr. Trump’s advisers had been in contact with officials at the State and Homeland Security Departments for “many weeks. ” One official added, “Everyone who needed to know was informed. ” But that apparently did not include members of the president’s own cabinet. Jim Mattis, the new secretary of defense, did not see a final version of the order until Friday morning, only hours before Mr. Trump arrived to sign it at the Pentagon. Mr. Mattis, according to administration officials familiar with the deliberations, was not consulted by the White House during the preparation of the order and was not given an opportunity to provide input while the order was being drafted. Last summer, Mr. Mattis sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration as a move that was “causing us great damage right now, and it’s sending shock waves through the international system. ” Customs and Border Protection officers were also caught unaware. They contacted several airlines late Friday that were likely to be carrying passengers from the seven countries and “instructed the airlines to offload any passport holders from those countries,” said a state government official who has been briefed on the agency’s actions. It was not until 3 a. m. on Saturday that customs and border officials received limited written instructions about what to do at airports and border crossings. They also struggled with how to exercise the waiver authority that was included in the executive order, which allowed the homeland security secretary to let some individuals under the ban enter the country case by case. One customs officer, who declined to be quoted by name, said he was given a limited briefing about what to do as he went to his post on Saturday morning, but even managers seemed unclear. People at the agency were blindsided, he said, and are still trying to figure things out, even as people are being stopped from coming into the United States. “If the secretary doesn’t know anything, how could we possibly know anything at this level?” the officer said, referring to Mr. Kelly. At the Citizenship and Immigration Service, staff members were told that the agency should stop work on any application filed by a person from any of the countries listed in the ban. Employees were told that applicants should be interviewed, but that their cases for citizenship, green cards or other immigration documents should be put on pause, pending further guidance. The timing of the executive order and the lack of advance warning had homeland security officials “flying by the seat of their pants,” to try to put policies in place, one official said. By Saturday, as the order stranded travelers around the world and its full impact became clear, Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, became increasingly upset about how the program had been rolled out and communicated to the public. By Sunday morning, Mr. Priebus had to defend the immigration ban on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he insisted that the executive order was rolled out smoothly. He also backpedaled on the policy and said that the executive order’s restrictions on entry to the United States would not apply to legal permanent residents “going forward. ” As White House officials also insisted on Sunday that the order had gone through the usual process of scrutiny and approval by the Office of Legal Counsel, the continuing confusion forced Mr. Kelly to clarify the waiver situation. He issued a statement making clear that lawful permanent residents — those who hold valid green cards — would be granted a waiver to enter the United States unless information suggested that they were a security threat. But senior White House officials insisted on Sunday night that the executive order would remain in force despite the change, and that they were proud of taking actions that they said would help protect Americans against threats from potential terrorists. That assertion is likely to do little to calm the public furor, which showed no signs of waning at the beginning of Mr. Trump’s second full week in the Oval Office. Mr. Carafano said he believed that the substance of Mr. Trump’s executive order was neither radical nor unreasonable. But he said that Mr. Trump’s team could have delayed signing the order until they had better prepared the bureaucracy to carry it out. He also said the president and his team had not done a good job of communicating to the public the purpose of the executive order. “If there is a criticism of the administration, and I think there is, I think they have done a rotten job of telling their story,” he said. “It is not like they did not know they were going to do this. To not have a cadre of people out there defending the administration — I mean, really guys, they should have done this. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Monday evening urged a federal appeals court to reinstate President Trump’s targeted travel ban, saying immediate action was needed to ensure the nation’s safety. The administration’s brief was the last in a series of urgent pleas to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, which is now set to rule on the most ambitious and disruptive initiative of Mr. Trump’s young presidency. The ruling will almost certainly be followed by an appeal to the Supreme Court. The court scheduled an hourlong oral argument for Tuesday. That gives at least another day of reprieve to foreign visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries, as well as other immigrants, who initially were blocked from entering the United States by Mr. Trump’s order. The administration’s brief largely tracked its earlier arguments that dismissing the ban outright would threaten national security and disregard presidential authority. But it also asked the appeals court, at a minimum, to reinstate at least part of Mr. Trump’s order — appearing to acknowledge the possibility that the government’s case might not be successful. “At most,” the brief said, the court order blocking the ban should be limited to “previously admitted aliens who are temporarily abroad now or who wish to travel and return to the United States in the future. ” That would allow the federal government to block people who have never visited the United States. On Monday, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the administration stood ready to reinstate the entire ban. “Once we win the case, it will go right back into action,” he said. Later on Monday night, Mr. Trump called threats “from radical Islamic terrorism is very real. ” “Courts must act fast!” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. Trial judges around the country have blocked aspects of Mr. Trump’s executive order, which suspended travel from the seven countries and limited the nation’s refugee program, but none of those cases have reached an appeals court. And none of the rulings were as broad as the one under review in the case, State of Washington v. Trump. The Ninth Circuit scheduled the oral argument in the case for Tuesday at 3 p. m. Pacific time. It is to take place by telephone, and the court said it would be on its website. Holding an oral argument by telephone in a major case is unusual. The case will be heard by Judge William C. Canby Jr. appointed by President Jimmy Carter Judge Michelle T. Friedland, appointed by President Barack Obama and Judge Richard R. Clifton, appointed by President George W. Bush. At issue is the earlier ruling, by Judge James L. Robart, a federal judge in Seattle, that blocked the key parts of Mr. Trump’s executive order. Judge Robart’s ruling allowed immigrants and travelers who had been barred from entry to come to the United States, and it inspired a harsh attack from Mr. Trump, who accused the judge of endangering national security. On Saturday, the administration asked the Ninth Circuit for an immediate administrative stay of Judge Robart’s ruling without hearing from the plaintiffs, the States of Washington and Minnesota. The court declined, instead asking for more briefs. Opponents of Mr. Trump’s targeted travel ban made three kinds of arguments in their submissions to the appeals court, saying that the ban is unlawful, that it represents bad policy, and that it is a threat to the nation’s economy. A brief from Washington and Minnesota, filed early Monday morning, said that “President Trump unleashed chaos by signing the executive order. ” Fifteen states and the District of Columbia — including New York, California, Massachusetts and Virginia — filed a supporting brief to argue that allowing the ban to stand would “cause harm to the states, including to state institutions such as public universities, to the businesses that sustain our economies, and to our residents. ” In a brief filed Saturday, the Trump administration argued that Judge Robart’s order would cause irreparable harm to national security. In response, lawyers for Washington and Minnesota said that was not plausible, because it would mean the nation had long been suffering “some unspecified, ongoing irreparable harm. ” “That makes no sense,” the brief said. “As this court has held, preserving the status quo against sudden disruption is often in the interest of all parties. ” On Monday, the Trump administration responded that the states were asking the courts “to take the extraordinary step of a formal judgment made by the president himself pursuant to broad grants of statutory authority. ” In its earlier brief, the Trump administration urged the Ninth Circuit to reject arguments based on religious discrimination, even though Mr. Trump has said he meant to favor Christian refugees. Judicial consideration of the president’s motives, the administration’s brief said, would violate the separation of powers. The states responded that “courts have both the right and the duty to examine defendants’ true motives. ” They added that the administration had taken “a dizzying number of positions” on whether the executive order applied to permanent residents holding green cards. The order itself appears to cover such people, but the administration has said it will not enforce that part of the order. Questions about permanent residents are not moot, the states’ brief said, as the administration could again change positions. Several former diplomatic and national security officials filed a declaration making a second kind of argument. “We view the order as one that ultimately undermines the national security of the United States, rather than making us safer,” it said. “In our professional opinion, this order cannot be justified on national security or foreign policy grounds. ” The officials filing the declaration included John Kerry, a secretary of state under Mr. Obama Madeleine K. Albright, who held the same position under President Bill Clinton Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser and Leon E. Panetta, secretary of defense and director of the C. I. A. under Mr. Obama. Mr. Trump’s order, the officials said, would endanger American troops and intelligence sources, disrupt counterterrorism and law enforcement efforts, damage the economy and have “a devastating humanitarian impact. ” “And apart from all of these concerns,” the former officials said, “the order offends our nation’s laws and values. ” The third front in the legal battle against Mr. Trump’s order was opened by the technology industry and other businesses. Almost 100 companies, including Apple, Facebook and Google, urged the Ninth Circuit to continue to block the order, saying it “harms the competitiveness of U. S. companies. ” The “instability and uncertainty” created by the order, the brief said, “will make it far more difficult and expensive for U. S. companies to hire some of the world’s best talent — and impede them from competing in the global marketplace. ” | 1 |
Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” wasn’t the first rock ’n’ roll song, but it was the best and brashest of the genre’s early advertisements. Released in 1956, it opens with a nimble, bendy guitar riff — a prelude to the one that would be perfected a year later, on “Johnny B. Goode” — that serves as an intrusion and an enticement. Then Mr. Berry describes the fever, “the rockin’ pneumonia,” that was soon to grip the country. “My heart beatin’ my soul singin’ the blues,” he sang. “Roll over tell Tchaikovsky the news. ” Plenty of artists would go on to cover “Roll Over Beethoven” — the Beatles streamlined and sweetened it Electric Light Orchestra distended it into an overlong, pompous shuffle with a snatch of the Fifth Symphony Paul Shaffer and his band made a sleek version as the theme to the 1992 film “Beethoven,” about a St. Bernard with the composer’s name. But those covers lacked the panache, the transgressive potential, the unexpected twists and turns of the Chuck Berry originals. Mr. Berry, who died on Saturday at his home near St. Louis, was the first true rock ’n’ roll superstar. When in his late 20s he emerged from St. Louis onto the national scene, the genre wasn’t yet codified. In its infancy, rock was hybrid music, and Mr. Berry was its most vivid and imaginative alchemist. From the through the end of that decade, he concocted a yowling blend of blues, country and rhythm blues that ended up as the template for what became widely accepted as rock ’n’ roll (though the term predated his rise). He gave it virtuoso playing via guitar work that drew on country and the blues. He made it a songwriting genre with wry, detailed lyrics that helped shape the idea of American freedom via stories of teenage abandon or adventure. He embodied the music by giving it physical language, from his signature duck walk to his coiffure, which was equal parts structure and flair. (He also was a beautician, having studied hairdressing and cosmetology when he was still playing in small bands in St. Louis in the early 1950s.) And in performance, he sold the music hard, with eyes bulging, hips swaying and a sly smile that indicated he knew just how much he was pushing the envelope. That archetype of rock ’n’ roll swagger would define the next couple of decades of global pop music. Without his twitchy, gloriously accessible songs, there would have been no Rolling Stones, no Beatles, no Bob Dylan — at least not as we know them now. While Elvis Presley, flaunting his sexuality, was making himself into the original pop star, Mr. Berry was being policed, both figuratively and literally. On songs like “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” he sang, in judiciously coded language, about pushing back against segregation. In his autobiography, he wrote that he changed a phrase in “Johnny B. Goode” from “little colored boy” to “little country boy” because he “thought it would seem biased to white fans. ” Instead, he coded a tale of racial achievement in terms he felt would be more broadly palatable. But Mr. Berry was still a successful black man in a rights world, and as such, he was a target. He was prosecuted twice under the Mann Act, for bringing a minor across state lines for immoral purpose. The first time he was convicted, but the conviction was overturned on appeal because of racial remarks made by the judge. The second time, he was convicted again, and he served more than a year and a half in federal prison. His career never quite recovered. White artists had been studying him, and were building up a version of rock ’n’ roll that no longer required Mr. Berry, nor his blackness. So if, for the remainder of his very long career, he was a bit flinty, could you blame him? The tug of war between what he was expected to provide and what he hoped to receive was constant. He was obstinate about his influence. He demanded to be paid up front for performances. He often toured with just his guitar, hiring local bands, not speaking to them and expecting them to know his music well enough to back him. (The results were spotty.) Even when he was being celebrated, Mr. Berry grated. On the occasion of his 60th birthday, Keith Richards convened an band to perform a pair of tribute concerts with him. They were filmed for a documentary, “Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll,” which began as a glowing commemoration of Mr. Berry’s talent and reach and ended up a document of his intransigence. His guitar playing and singing were electric, and so was his quarreling. Mr. Berry seemed inclined to believe that rock ’n’ roll belonged to him and no one else. In that documentary, Jerry Lee Lewis said that the first time the two met, they fought over who was the true king of the genre. And Mr. Berry had a particularly fraught friction with the white artists who benefited the most from the style he innovated. In the documentary, Mr. Richards is his leading antagonist. And many years later, Mr. Richards told a story about being backstage at one of Mr. Berry’s shows and laying eyes on Mr. Berry’s guitar, sitting in an open case. Enthralled, he began to play it, but when Mr. Berry caught him in the act, Mr. Richards recalled, he punched him dead in the face. | 1 |
WATCH: CNN Host Stuns Media, Says Clinton’s Team Thinks “She’s Nuts!”
“So to people who say you’re taking time out of swing states to go do this, you say?” Bash asked Trump.
“I say the following: You have been covering me for the last — long time,” Trump responded. “I did yesterday eight stops and three major speeches, and I’ve been doing this for weeks straight.”
“For you to ask me that question is actually very insulting because Hillary Clinton does one stop and then she goes home and sleeps. And yet you’ll ask me that question. I think that’s a very rude question, to be honest with you.” Dana Bash: Is your DC hotel opening free advertising?Donald Trump: “No, not at all” https://t.co/6OZtrfIwim https://t.co/9HHqooom8r
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 26, 2016
Ouch.
However, what Trump said was very true. Hillary Clinton’s time on the campaign trail has been, um, less than rigorous lately. She cancels rallies and barely draws anyone to the ones she holds. | 0 |
Everyone at the market in New York has summer squash now, and most vegetable gardens are brimming with it. From my perspective — which is, admittedly, somewhat fanatic — what you want when it comes to summer squash are specimens that are neither too big nor too small. Very tiny baby squashes, packed for looks more than flavor, tend to be slightly bitter and less than juicy. Oversize squashes (the ones that triple in size when ignored for a day or two in the garden) are past their prime, best fed to the chickens or tossed on the compost pile. Look for signs that the squash has been freshly picked. The skin should be smooth and glistening, free of blemishes or brown spots. As for varieties, use whatever looks best. Zucchini, whether it’s green or yellow, should be a maximum of two inches in diameter. Striped, pattypans should not exceed three inches across, or they are likely to be tough. The green squash known as Ronde de Nice is better at the size of a golf ball by the time it reaches baseball size, it is apt to be spongy and seedy inside. For the first squash of the season, I like it best simmered briefly in a little water with a good knob of butter and showered with snipped dill weed, or sautéed gently in butter or oil and finished with a touch of garlic, chopped parsley and lemon zest. It’s also lovely sliced quite thinly with a mandoline and dressed, raw, with lemon juice, capers and olive oil, then left in the salad bowl until slightly wilted. This week, with more summer squash at hand, I imagined a curried zucchini dish made with coconut milk, and garnished with shellfish to make it a bit more substantial. Steamed mussels and rings of tender squid, or perhaps a few shrimp, I reckoned, would transform this spiced squash stew into a lovely summer meal. I had good results testing this theory and compliments from fellow diners. That, it seemed, would be that. Then I made a vegetarian version, and found I liked it just as well with the shellfish omitted. It wasn’t really ambivalence — both ways were equally delicious. So I named it Summer Squash Curry, Shellfish Optional. I’ll let you decide. Recipes: Summer Squash Curry, Shellfish Optional | More Squash Dishes | 1 |
A new report shows that only seven out of 10 of Air Force planes are in good enough condition to fly. [Official statistics say that three out of 10 aircraft in the Air Force fleet are not in commission because they are getting upgraded, undergoing maintenance, inspections, or repair work, the Air Force Times reports. The problem also shows no sign of slowing down. The rate, or the way the Air Force measures how much its fleet is ready to fight or fly other measures, has been showing a steady decrease. rates for Air Force helicopters and airplanes were at nearly 74 percent in 2014. In 2015, the rate dropped to 73 percent, and in 2016 the rate dropped to 72 percent. The reason for this decline in aircraft is due to an aging Air Force fleet. Air Force leaders have said that the Air Force’s aging fleet and decline in readiness rates have been a problem for years. “Our highest investment priority is in improving readiness,” acting Air Force Secretary Lisa Disbrow said March 3 at the Air Force Association’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Florida. “The aircraft we have on the ramp are too old. We need to revitalize the fleet. ” The declining aircraft readiness rate can also be attributed to a shortage of experienced maintenance airmen to fix aircraft, although the Air Force wants to make its goal to eliminate that shortfall by the end of 2019. While the Air Force is dealing with an aging fleet on Earth, they are also training airmen for the possibility of war waged in space, Military. com reported. | 1 |
BREAKING : NEW POLL SHOWS THE MONSTER INDEPENDENT VOTE FOR TRUMP IS YUGE! BREAKING : NEW POLL SHOWS THE MONSTER INDEPENDENT VOTE FOR TRUMP IS YUGE! Breaking News By Amy Moreno October 28, 2016
Whatever you do, do not believe the LYING North Korea-style, government-run propaganda media.
They’re working for Hillary and telling you a crap-ton of LIES.
Trump is winning and winning BIG.
The MONSTER vote is alive and well and REARING IT’S BIG BEAUTIFUL HEAD in so many places.
One significant place is the “independent” vote.
Independents will decide this election.
And they’re voting TRUMP according to the latest Fox poll. @mitchellvii Trump’s monster vote will be bigger than of Reagan’s because of Indies who are as big as Dem & rep combined pic.twitter.com/B1cpwetLyY
— David Leifer (@daveleifer) October 27, 2016
Keep fighting!
Share the America First message with everyone.
This election is not about Democrat vs. Republicans – it’s Americans vs. GLOBALISTS.
We need to take our country BACK and place AMERICANS FIRST. This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
Obamas blunder. | 0 |
Let’s Be Clear – A Vote For Warmonger Hillary Clinton Is A Vote For World War 3
By Michael Snyder
If you want to see war without end, vote for Hillary Clinton. It is tremendously ironic that Hillary Clinton and the mainstream media have attempted to portray Donald Trump as “dangerous” and “temperamental”, because it is Clinton that actually has a long history of being emotionally unstable. She has a temper that is absolutely legendary, and she has been cussing out the men and women in her security detail for decades . Hillary Clinton played a key role in starting the civil war in Syria, thanks to her Libya is a post-apocalyptic wasteland today, and now she is picking a fight with the Russians before she has even won the election. Of all the candidates there were running for president this election cycle, there was nobody that was even close to as dangerous as Hillary Clinton, and if she wins the election I am fully convinced that World War 3 will begin before her time in the White House is over.
Someone that shares this opinion with me is Donald Trump. According to Reuters , Trump recently stated that we are “going to end up in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton”…
On Syria’s civil war, Trump said Clinton could drag the United States into a world war with a more aggressive posture toward resolving the conflict.
Clinton has called for the establishment of a no-fly zone and “safe zones” on the ground to protect non-combatants. Some analysts fear that protecting those zones could bring the United States into direct conflict with Russian fighter jets.
“What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria,” said Trump as he dined on fried eggs and sausage at his Trump National Doral golf resort. “You’re going to end up in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton.”
In order to have a no-fly zone in Syria, you would have to enforce it.
And in order to enforce it, you would have to be willing to shoot at the Russians.
According to National Intelligence Director James Clapper , that could have dire consequences…
Russia could shoot down a U.S. aircraft if a no-fly zone were imposed over Syria, National Intelligence Director James Clapper said Tuesday.
“I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot down an American aircraft if they felt that was threatening to their forces on the ground,” Clapper said, speaking with CBS’ Charlie Rose at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York about several national security issues.
Of course Clapper is not alone in that assessment. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Francis Dunford, says that imposing a no-fly zone over all of Syria “would require us to go to war” …
“Right now, Senator, for us to control all of the airspace in Syria it would require us to go to war, against Syria and Russia,… That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make.” ( Senate Armed Services Committee, September 22, 2016, emphasis added)
But Hillary Clinton is unwavering in her position that this is what she wants.
You see, the truth is that Hillary Clinton wants to win the war that she started in Syria. Back in 2011, she spearheaded an effort along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey to try to use the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East as an opportunity to try to overthrow President Assad in Syria. If it wasn’t for her meddling, millions of refugees would not be pouring into Europe and elsewhere, and there would be no “humanitarian crisis” in Syria at all.
Thanks to Russian intervention, the war in Syria is not too far from being over, but the Obama administration is desperate to keep it going. They understand that if Assad is victorious that all of their efforts for the last five years have been wasted, and that is why they are so determined to keep Aleppo from falling. Without Aleppo, many of the jihadist rebels that the Obama administration has been supporting won’t have anywhere to hide.
So the Obama administration has actually been considering direct strikes against the Syrian military, and the Russians have already said that they will not allow this to happen . If Obama is insane enough to order airstrikes against Syrian forces and the Russians start shooting back, that could set off a chain of events that could rapidly spiral completely out of control.
One recent survey found that current American leadership has a 1 percent approval rating in Russia right now, and the Russians dislike Hillary Clinton even more than they dislike Barack Obama. The Russians know that if Hillary Clinton is elected that it is quite likely that they will have to fight a war with us, and that is why they desperately want Donald Trump to win in November. You can see this outlook reflected in comments that Russian President Vladimir Putin recently made about the two candidates …
“Mrs. Clinton has chosen to take up a very aggressive stance against our country, against Russia. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, calls for cooperation – at least when it comes to the international fight against terrorism,” Putin said.
“Naturally we welcome those who would like to cooperate with us. And we consider it wrong, that we always have to be in conflict with one another, creating existential threats for each other and for the whole world,” Putin noted.
Anyone that watched the three presidential debates could see that Hillary Clinton is absolutely seething with animosity for Russia. The thought of her finger on the nuclear trigger is almost too terrible to contemplate, but it may soon become a reality.
And even now, the Obama administration and our NATO allies are shifting forces into position for a confrontation with Moscow. This week it is being reported that NATO troops will soon be sent to Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania … Nine hundred US troops are to be sent to eastern Europe next year as America’s troubled relationship with Russia enters new, uncertain territory. A US-led battle group of NATO allied soldiers will be sent to Poland as part of the multi-nation operation. British forces will lead one of the four battle groups in Estonia, Canada will spearhead the presence in Latvia and Germany will be present in Lithuania.
In addition, Infowars is reporting that U.S. Marines will soon be stationed in Norway near the border with Russia…
After accepting a Pentagon proposal, Norway will host US Marines at a base near the Russian border as Russia deploys nuclear-capable ships to Kaliningrad.
A rotating force of approximately 330 Marines will be stationed at an airfield in the city of Vaernes, just outside Trondheim, beginning in January. Norway and Russia share an 122-mile border in the Arctic.
“The US initiative to augment their training and exercises in Norway by locating a Marine Corps Rotational Force in Norway is highly welcome and will have positive implications for our already strong bilateral relationship,” said Norwegian Defense Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide.
Most Americans aren’t aware of any of this, nor do they really care about our relationship with Russia.
But in Russia things are completely different. The possibility of war with the United States is the biggest news story over there these days , and feverish preparations are being made for a potential nuclear confrontation …
Russian authorities have stepped up nuclear-war survival measures amid a showdown with Washington, dusting off Soviet-era civil-defense plans and upgrading bomb shelters in the biggest cities.
At the Kremlin’s Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Cold War is back.
The country recently held its biggest civil defense drills since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., with what officials said were 40 million people rehearsing a response to chemical and nuclear threats.
I know that I have been writing about this over and over , but the truth is that we are on a path to war with Russia, and the election of Hillary Clinton would greatly accelerate the march toward war.
In my controversial new book , I expressed my belief that war with Russia is coming, but at the time that I wrote it I didn’t know how the election would turn out.
At this point it looks like Clinton is very likely to win on November 8th, and that would be absolutely disastrous for our relationship with Russia.
If you are reading this and you are considering voting for Hillary Clinton, please don’t do it . We simply cannot afford to have an emotionally unstable warmonger with a violent temper in the White House at this critical time.
If the American people do choose Hillary Clinton this November, I believe that it will be a choice that they will bitterly, bitterly regret in future years. | 0 |
By Les Visible on November 4, 2016 Visible Origami — Nov 4, 2016 Dog Poet Transmitting……. Welcome to Origami my dear friends. This is the number 779 posting at this blog. I don’t know what that means but it’s a lot of posts. We hope that some of them will have been of value to you. We like to talk about Love a great deal here. We spent decades studying in the Hermetic and Occult Sciences where abstruse concepts and complex schematics are the general nature of the various systems that exist in these areas of inquiry. I used to have some facility with them. I could talk about them in a knowledgeable way. Whether I actually had any real and useful knowledge is another thing. At least I could talk about these subjects as if I knew what I was talking about. Time went by and it became more and more apparent to me that knowing a great deal about certain subjects did not necessarily convey a power of operation in them. I studied palmistry for some time. I knew what all the lines and mounts, digits and bracelets and sundry meant. I knew which hand meant whatever it meant in relation to the other hand but… what I did not have was the single most important element. I did not have the intuitive feed. I studied the Tarot and esoteric astrology and various systems of mind control that hearkened back to earlier times. I studied a lot of things because I had a real thirst for arcane information but I lacked the intuitive feel in all of them except esoteric astrology and in the matter of the Tarot I did have some amount of facility in the areas where fortune telling was not a consideration. I always felt that using the Tarot for fortune telling was unfortunate behavior. Not only did it make you dependent on a method that, except in very rare circumstances, proved to be both deceptive and inefficient but… why seek to read the future when you could change the future? Meditation on the Tarot archetypes will transform your mental state and the very construction of it. This meditation will awaken the archetypes in you so that they resonate in your being with the world external to you. This doesn’t mean difficult conditions will not come upon you. What it means is that you will be on a shorter and faster track to illumination of some kind; we won’t be going into that today. I studied and I studied and I studied and I learned to parse and debate and state, within the parameters of the science and even in a comparative sense with other sciences but I didn’t know anything of value in the sense that I could apply what I had learned to real time accomplishments and achievements in the manifest in a supernatural manner. Sure, this kind of thing happens on a regular basis in my life but not because I have anything to do with it. All of this takes me back to the words of The Preacher in Ecclesiastes; “vanity, all is vanity,” and “there is nothing new under the sun.” It has taken me more years than I wish it had, to learn that only Love is worth the pursuit of it and the Love of the Ineffable is the greatest Love of all. Nothing that I have learned in all of the mystery sciences is the equal of this understanding, nor do any of them have anywhere near the value of it. Here is what I have learned, Love God. I am not speaking in a religions sense because in these times you can’t swing a dead cat in a condo closet without hitting a false prophet. False prophets come in all sizes. They are not all the equal of the Anti-Christ, whoever that might be, like The Pasto and the Anti-Pasto. A false prophet is anyone who manipulates the emotional and mental bodies of their fellows for personal gain, even if that gain is only influence, influence of this kind usually transforms into personal profit on some level. It might be material gain. It might be sexual favors. It might be psychopathic gratification of some kind and it can take place in a small country church just as easily as in a mega church or a massive television ministry. The Aquarian Age is upon us and as a result, all of the long entrenched and much- changed over time- religions are on their way out. The collective faith of humanity is being shaken to its roots and the old ways are passing away. This does not mean that the true teachings of the true teachers will pass away but they will be presented in a new light that is relative to the needs of a new age. The Aquarian Age is supposed to be The Age of Brotherhood and that tells me that the avatar will appear in the collective human heart, where a place has been prepared for it. It will not appear where the false self is occupying the space necessary for the indwelling divine to reside. One does not need to be a follower or practitioner of any particular dogma or form of ritual. One needs only to Love the divine who is one’s own higher self and the reason for this is that that higher self will draw our true self up into its aura of influence, or rather reveal itself to is as our true self. We are all divinity in the process of discovery and unfoldment and Love is the means and the mechanism that can accomplish this. As we reject and expel all of what is false and extraneous in ourselves, we make room for the indwelling divine. Once we have driven all of it out of ourselves, the divine will come forth in our hearts and reign over all things from the throne room within. I have no further use or need for occult information. I am not in the market for anything that is on the market. I can be very glib about some of these things because of a very good memory and an analytic mind that has not lost its objectivity and which doesn’t play favorites in terms of what I want people to think, that is their area of authority and has nothing to do with me but… all the glibness and capacity for articulation in the world is not going to serve the deeper needs of humanity. It might gain you followers and it might get you on some talk circuit and book signing tours and you can lecture to your heart’s content at New Age conventions and seminars and you’ll just be one more Tom Fool among all the rest of the Gleem smiling androids, who pander to the gullible the world over. It will, guaranteed, also get you in the kind of trouble for which I will run long distances to avoid. Put yourself on a pedestal or allow others to do it for you and you might as well paint a target on your back at the same time. The divine and his angels and emissaries see all of this. They see every montebank and charlatan. They see into every sincere and corrupt heart and judgments are passed concerning what phases and states you will be taken through to wake you the Hell up. I would prefer to sidestep the hard massage of Karma upon my being. Love the ineffable and everything else will take care of itself. Love the ineffable with all the intensity that you can muster and your intensity will grow and grow; “success is speedy for the energetic.” God is watching. We need to get into a fluid and continuous mindset of certitude concerning this. We need to remind ourselves through every day that God is watching. God is looking at the world through our very own eyes. We may have convinced ourselves that we alone are seeing and that we alone have access to our mind and heart but this is assuredly not the case. God is everywhere, after one fashion or another. When one has brought their heart and mind to the assurance of the endless presence of God in our being and all around us and yet magically and mystically apart as well, then we will begin to resonate with that ubiquitous presence and it will move through us in an active expression of itself. There was a saint, named St Denis , who is the patron saint of Paris. They cut off his head and he picked it up and put it under his arm and walked off with it. Do I believe this happened in the exact details given? I don’t know. What I do know is that there have been many similar stories. One similar is to be found in Autobiography of a Yogi. Look into the tales that are recorded concerning Appolonius of Tyana (the links will take you to a fuller study of his life) and many, many another unusual character, who has walked among us here over the ages. Some of them had a vast reservoir of occult knowledge and some of them were in possession of divine Love. Some had both. I would prefer to be one of those who carries the love of God in my heart and I want for nothing more. I don’t need to know all of these complexities and these complexities go on and on forever. There are just so many of them. If you have ever looked into Tantra then you have some idea of how intricate the complexities can be. I am not equal to the possession of such information. As fine a mind as I have I am a simple fellow and I can get into trouble very quickly when I get out of my depth and I have no desire to test those waters. So I say to you all, seek the source of all knowledge worth having. Seek the reservoir of immeasurable Love. Seek the source of every good and righteous thing and Love it with all the force that is possible for you and anything you do need to know will be given to you at the time you need it. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all else will be added unto you.” End Transmission……. | 0 |
Written by Daniel McAdams While Americans were obsessing about tomorrow's election, the Obama Administration launched a serious military escalation in Syria. US Special Forces on the ground and jet fighters in the air are deployed in an operation to take Raqqa from ISIS control. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford announced over the weekend that the US and Turkey agreed on a long-term plan for "seizing, holding and governing" the Syrian city. Is this the beginning of a US-recognized rival Syrian government, as Benghazi was in Libya? We discuss in today's Liberty Report: Copyright © 2016 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given. | 0 |
In one letter, Donald J. Trump ranted about the crisis of unsightly hot dog vendors on his beloved Fifth Avenue. “Having ketchup and mustard splattered all over the sidewalk,” he wrote, “is disgraceful. ” In another note, he paid flowery tribute to his young wife, whom he referred to as “my little darling. ” “You’re everything I hoped for,” he wrote. In a different missive, he offered a rare admission of weakness, declaring, “I am nothing more than a frustrated writer of little talent. ” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is a master of modern media, exploiting Twitter and television to punish his enemies, energize his allies and promote himself. But perhaps his most powerful and memorable form of communication is the ritual of a personal letter, written on embossed paper or scrawled across a newspaper clipping, signed by hand and sent from the 26th floor of Trump Tower. Churned out prolifically from a desk, they are letters of gratitude, hate, flattery and revenge, dispatched to teenage admirers and mayors, professional athletes and magazine editors. The tone can range from florid to juvenile, pleading to poisonous. Tightly clutched and prominently displayed even by those who despise him, the epistles have become keepsakes and mementos for hundreds of people across the country. Viewed as a collection from the 1970s to now, they offer an unusual archive of his emotional ups and downs. The 2009 letter that Mr. Trump sent to Mike Tollin, a movie director, makes for painful reading: It denounced a film by Mr. Tollin that explored Mr. Trump’s role in the collapse of a football league as “third rate” and “extremely dishonest. ” In a fulminating flourish, Mr. Trump wrote: “P. S. You are a loser. ” Nevertheless, Mr. Tollin had the letter framed and he keeps it on a shelf in his office, next to photographs of his family. “People come by and immediately want to see it, touch it and hold it,” Mr. Tollin said with pride. Today, as Mr. Trump tries to make peace with hostile figures in his party, the candidate renowned for his rhetorical flame throwing is deploying a conciliatory style of letter writing as his chief weapon. His handwritten overtures have started to arrive in the mailboxes of seemingly implacable foes, like Charlie Sykes, a conservative radio host in Milwaukee, who has described Mr. Trump as a “whiny, bully. ” “Charlie,” began Mr. Trump’s note, scribbled with a thick black pen on the front page of The New York Times, next to an article about skeptical Republicans warming to Mr. Trump, “I hope you can change your mind. ” Ever attuned to incentives, the real estate mogul dangled an offer: “Look forward to doing your show,” he wrote, adding, “I will win!” It did not change Mr. Sykes’s dim view of Mr. Trump. But he was, he conceded, impressed by the gesture. “Give him credit that he’s doing this,” Mr. Sykes said. “He’s willing to do some things that might be somewhat at odds with his public image. ” The letters — culled from personal and public archives — reveal Mr. Trump’s insecurities, but also his perceptiveness about power, ego and what motivates people. From early on, he seemed to intuitively grasp the potency of his praise when lavished on men. In the 1990s, Mr. Trump occasionally fawned over New York’s brash mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani. In one letter, Mr. Trump tore out a page from a magazine interview in which he had called Mr. Giuliani “the greatest mayor that the city’s ever had. ” In case Mr. Giuliani missed the homage, Mr. Trump drew two bold arrows, each pointing at the glowing passage, and reiterated the message in a handwritten note: “Rudy, you are the greatest!” he wrote, adding, “see you soon. ” There is never any question about authorship: Mr. Trump’s style of writing sounds virtually identical to his hyperbolic manner of speech, with a healthy sprinkling of the words “great” and “tremendous,” abundant displays of and claims of success or doom. In a 1985 letter to Mayor Edward I. Koch, Mr. Trump predicted New York City’s imminent downfall if a fellow real estate developer, Arthur E. Imperatore Sr. were allowed to start a ferry service between New Jersey and Manhattan. “Real estate values and taxes in New York would plummet,” Mr. Trump prognosticated darkly. “Why would anyone want to live or shop in New York?” (Mr. Imperatore started the ferry service without destroying New York’s economy.) As a writer, Mr. Trump sometimes reached, awkwardly but earnestly, for eloquence. In a 1983 letter to A. M. Rosenthal, then the executive editor of The Times and a lunch companion, Mr. Trump turned poetic as he tried to capture his reaction to an article that Mr. Rosenthal had written about returning to Poland for the first time in decades. “It is moving it is sad it is hopeful (?) it is devastating,” Mr. Trump wrote, saying that his wife at the time, Ivana, who grew up in Eastern Europe, agreed. “It truly captured the strength, the will and the soul of the Polish people,” Mr. Trump wrote. He could write with striking tenderness to Ivana, according to notes reviewed by The Times. “I adore and love my little darling,” he wrote to her in one. “I truly believe that you are the greatest,” he wrote in another. On the page, anyway, Mr. Trump was even capable of humility, describing himself as a scribe of “little talent” in a 1985 note to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, then the publisher of The Times. (Mr. Trump had an agenda: to complain about a reporter he disliked.) Mr. Trump traces his epistolary habits to his attempt to win over Franklin M. Jarman, who controlled a Manhattan department store that Mr. Trump wanted to buy in the 1970s to make way for Trump Tower. Mr. Jarman rarely replied to Mr. Trump’s letters, but he had, in fact, read them, Mr. Trump wrote in his book “The Art of the Deal,” laying the groundwork for an agreement. “The letters I wrote eventually did have an impact,” Mr. Trump said. For years, Mr. Trump sent his letters the way, by mail. But over time, members of his staff dragged him into the internet era — sort of. He still writes by hand, brandishing the favored tool of teachers’ corrections and athletes’ autographs, a black Sharpie. Now his aides often turn the letters into digital files, scanning them and sending them by email. But he refuses to let anyone else do the writing. “If I had a secretary to do them,” he said in an interview, “they wouldn’t be nearly as effective, they wouldn’t be nearly as sharp. ” Each letter concludes with his extravagant signature, which resembles a city skyline or “a seismograph,” as Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and a repeat recipient of Mr. Trump’s screeds, described it. Many of his letters targeted the famous and credentialed, but from time to time they reached the little known and uninfluential. Mr. Trump penned a letter of encouragement in 2014 to an student in Texas, John Russell Niederer, who had expressed a desire to meet him. “Work hard and be smart,” Mr. Trump told him. The letter now hangs on Mr. Niederer’s bedroom wall. “For him to take the time to send a message to somebody like me,” he said, “was really, really cool. ” A vindictive side is never far from view in Mr. Trump’s correspondence. After the basketball legend Kareem wrote a critical essay in The Washington Post about Mr. Trump’s candidacy, Mr. Trump sent him a copy of the essay with a biting message sprawled across it. “Now I know why the press always treated you so badly — they couldn’t stand you,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The fact is that you don’t have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again!” Mr. said he was flabbergasted. “It was such a petty and childish reaction, like a teenage boy responding to being turned down for a date by whining, ‘Well, nobody likes you!’ ” he said. He likened Mr. Trump’s decision to write his reply on the original article to “a dog urinating on a tree to mark its territory. ” Mr. had to get rid of the letter. “I crumpled it up real nice and tight and skyhooked it into my wastepaper basket,” he recalled, invoking his trademark shot. Others cannot let go. “I’m definitely going to keep it,” Mr. Sykes, the radio host, said of his letter. “Probably in a desk drawer. ” | 1 |
Editor’s Note: Sen. Rand Paul responded to McCain’s comments after publication of this piece. See below.] During a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Senator John McCain ( ) stated that Senator Rand Paul ( ) is “achieving the objectives of” and “working for” Vladimir Putin after Paul objected to a unanimous consent motion to advance a bill to advance Montenegro’s bid to join NATO. McCain said, “If there is objection, you are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin. You’re achieving the objectives of trying to dismember this small country that has already been the subject of [an] attempted coup. I have no idea why anyone would object to this, except that I will say, if they object, they are now carrying out the desires and ambitions of Vladimir Putin, and I do not say that lightly. ” McCain then asked for unanimous consent to advance the bill, which Paul objected to. McCain then stated, “I note the senator from Kentucky leaving the floor without justification, or rather — or any rationale for the action that he has just taken. That is really remarkable, that a senator, blocking a treaty, that is supported by the overwhelming number, perhaps 98, at least, of his colleagues, would come to the floor, and object, and walk away, and walk away. The only conclusion you can draw, when he walks away, is he has no argument to be made. He has no justification, for his objection to having a small nation be part of NATO that is under assault from the Russians. So I repeat again, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin. ” ( Daily Beast) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett, UPDATE: On Thursday, Paul’s office reached out to Breitbart asking to include the Kentucky Republican’s reaction to McCain: | 1 |
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Midday last Thursday, the price of crude oil for delivery in December touched $50, and it’s been all downhill since then. At noon on Wednesday crude oil futures touched $45 a barrel on news that inventories soared last week by the most in 34 years.
The market wasn’t expecting that. It was bad enough that the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a supply increase nine times greater than analysts and observers were expecting last week. Those market seers were betting on an increase of a million barrels. Instead the API reported the increase was 9.3 million — a miss of gigantic proportions.
On Wednesday, however, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the API’s estimate was far too low: Inventories last week jumped by 14.4 million barrels, forcing one of those observers, Bob Yawger, director of the futures division of Mizuho Securities USA, to exclaim: “You could easily make the argument that [the EIA report is] the most bearish ... of all time.” He added, “There’s nothing to support the market.”
The futures market is driven by expectations. Ever since OPEC promised in September that it would have a working plan in place by November to cut production in order to “balance” the market, crude oil futures have slowly inched up. The market managed to resist the temptation to sell off on news that the rig count in the United States was increasing, that the majors were increasing their capital expenditures for 2017, and that DUCs (wells developed but not completed) were coming into production.
What it couldn’t do was shrug off the news that Goldman Sachs, in a private memo to its customers (and revealed to Irina Slav at OilPrice.com), suggests that oil is headed for $40 a barrel: "The lack of progress on implementing production quotas and the growing discord between OPEC producers suggests a declining probability of reaching a deal on November 30."
This is the same company that “suggested” that oil could drop into the 20s late last year, which it did, touching $26 a barrel in February before rebounding.
On top of that was the distressing news — at least to those banking on higher prices and betting on that outcome — that U.S. refiners are operating at only 85 percent of capacity, especially at a time when increased demands over the holidays would usually drive prices higher.
Add to that the news that OPEC members, while meeting privately to hammer together some sort of deal to cut — or at least freeze — production, are increasing production at the same time. Iran is exempted from any participation in the proposed cuts, and is raising its production back to pre-sanction levels as quickly as it can; Iraq is demanding the same exemption as Iran, claiming that it needs increased revenues to fight ISIS; Russia is going its own way as it isn’t a member of the cartel; and Libya and Nigeria are merrily ignoring the charade, adding another 800,000 barrels to global supply last month.
The so-called “balance” of the oil markets between supply and demand is many months off, while the futures market is likely to continue its breathtaking selloff to $40 and perhaps even lower.
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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The Daily Sheeple – by Ryan Banister
An award-winning California state trooper was caught on camera fleeing the scene after crashing his patrol car into a parked vehicle and a utility pole, snapping it in half, on Thursday afternoon at 2:30 p.m.
When other officers approached and asked him to explain what happened, officer Daniel Kenney refused to get out of the vehicle. With at least three officers surrounding the front end of the car, Kenney reverses and then speeds away past a cameraman across the street.
Kenney, a state park K-9 officer, is now on paid administrative leave.
Nearly 1,000 homes and business in the area were left without power.
Officers placed Kenney in handcuffs when he eventually decided to pull over. He was taken to a hospital where it was determined that he was not intoxicated.
A man inside the parked vehicle which Kenney struck suffered minor injuries and was taken to the hospital, according to Action News Now. | 0 |
HONG KONG — Since 2010, Yu Kai has followed the ritual every year: When a new Apple iPhone comes out, he gets rid of his old one and heads to a store in Beijing to buy the latest model. This year, however, he held back. Instead of buying the iPhone 6s, he has been waiting to see what the next iPhone looks like, and he said he might even switch to a model by a different maker. In China, where Apple has been a signifier of wealth and fashion, and where many Chinese update their smartphones each year, Mr. Yu is not an outlier. Apple’s earnings report on Tuesday showed how hard it can be to keep the attention of China’s fickle and increasingly consumers. Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, said in an earnings call that sales in mainland China had fallen 11 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. Mr. Cook noted that sales had dropped from a high level: In the first quarter of 2015, sales were 80 percent higher than in the same period in 2014. But the decline announced on Tuesday is a setback for one of the most beloved brands in China. China’s young, consumers are increasingly willing, analysts say, to try phones from the many competitors — including Huawei, Meizu and Xiaomi — that seek to compete with Apple on technical specifications and aesthetics but that offer their models at a few hundred dollars cheaper. Many customers like Mr. Yu, who is 29 and consider the phone they use part of their personal identity, leading them to look at a broad range of available models. That being the case, Apple will have to fight to maintain its dominance of the high end of the market. Apple also faces other obstacles in China. Last week, the company’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies services were shut down by a Chinese regulator, just six months after they started operating. The rare by China suggests that Apple could face further pressure as the Chinese government increases its scrutiny of American companies’ operations within its borders. In the past four years, with strong demand in China for its products, Apple increased the number of retail stores in the country to 35 from just a handful, and Mr. Cook said on Tuesday that there would be 40 by the end of June. The company has also been able to tap into the enormous customer base of China’s largest wireless carrier, China Mobile, after years of talks resulted in an agreement in 2013 that brought the iPhone to the carrier. The deal contributed to Chinese consumers spending $59 billion on Apple products in the latest fiscal year. But one challenge for Apple’s sales this year is that its most recent models do not represent a big leap from the previous generation. “Everyone bought a 6 series,” Steven C. Pelayo, a technology analyst at HSBC in Hong Kong, said by email, referring to models introduced in late 2014. They “were less inclined to upgrade to a 6s, which only had very minor changes,” he added. Qu Dewei, who has been selling smartphones for four years in a technology mall in eastern Beijing, said it had been tough to sell iPhones since September, when the iPhone 6s came out. “It’s been bad since then, it’s been really bad,” Mr. Qu said as he leaned on the counter at his stall. On Wednesday afternoon, the mall where he works was largely empty. “None of the brands do really great,” he said. “But while I might sell one or two Huawei phones in 10 days, I may not even sell one iPhone 6s. ” For years, smugglers have done a brisk business taking iPhones to mainland China from Hong Kong, where they cost less. But even the illegal sellers are feeling the pressure. In interviews, four smugglers who did well a year ago said they had now quit the trade. The iPhone’s weaker sales also reflect the broader slowdown in growth in China’s enormous smartphone market. Jason Low, an analyst in Shanghai with the research group Canalys, said he expected the Chinese smartphone market to grow only 4. 7 percent in 2016. As recently as 2013, it was growing 50 percent annually. “If you look at the entire market, Apple cannot fight off so many competitors, like Samsung and local brands like Huawei and Oppo,” he said. “They’re all trying to raise the average selling price, and that will bleed into Apple’s sales flow. ” Despite the pressure, Mr. Cook said in the earnings call on Tuesday that Apple was “optimistic” about China, even if it was losing ground. There is even a precedent for an Apple recovery: In 2012 and 2013, the company’s sales growth in China slowed as competitors like Samsung offered phones with larger screens, which are very popular in China. When Apple finally released a phone with a similar screen size in 2014, its market share roared back. In many ways, the company is in a similar position today. Samsung’s Edge phones stand out with screens that have rounded edges on one side, and many in China say the camera on Huawei’s flagship model is better than Apple’s camera. That puts more pressure on Apple to pack new features into the next iPhone, which is expected to come out this autumn. For Mo Chen, a public relations professional who owns an iPhone 5, the next Apple smartphone will have to do much more than her current model for her to be tempted. She was blunt in her criticism: “The iPhone 6 and 6s are really ugly. ” Many of Ms. Mo’s and former classmates use Android phones, she said, and she is considering switching to a device by the South Korean company or to a Chinese phone made by ZTE or One Plus. “I like Apple a lot,” she said. “I use an Apple computer. But in recent years, especially after I tried my friends’ Android phones, I realized that the brand has lost a bit of its charm. ” | 1 |
Here’s more evidence that Trump did the right thing by pulling out of the UN’s Paris climate agreement. [Had the U. S. stayed in it would have been on the hook for a fair chunk of this pay demand from India. Yes, you read that right. Not billion but trillion. That’s $2, 500, 000, 000, 000 which India was expecting to be paid over the next 15 years by the Western nations — ie mainly the U. S. — as a bribe for pretending to decarbonize its economy in line with the U. N. Paris agreement. And, inevitably, it wasn’t just India that wanted its climate Danegeld. So did every other country which could qualify for developing world status. Here, courtesy of Chris Horner, is a document from U. S. climate negotiator Todd Stern. He clearly thinks it’s funny, though I’m not sure I would if I were a taxpayer having to fund it … In other words, Paris was never really about climate. It was a scheme in which rich nations were expected to shower poor nations with free money. Totally about UN socialist wealth redistribution. #IPCC pic. twitter. — Brad Rush (@OtagoGrad) June 7, 2017, This, of course, is the real reason for the widespread global outrage at Trump’s climate decision. The pigs have had their enormous trough — stamped “$$$$ courtesy of Uncle Sam” — pulled from beneath their snouts and their instinctive response is to go “Sooooooeeeeee! Soooooeeeeee!” My two favorite deranged responses so far. This one from The Nation explaining that Trump is Hitler because he sorta, kinda used a phrase vaguely like Hitler once did in one of his speeches. On September 30, 1942, shortly after the death camps began gassing Jews, Hitler declared, “In Germany too the Jews once laughed at my prophecies. I don’t know whether they are still laughing, or whether they have already lost the inclination to laugh, but I can assure you that everywhere they will stop laughing. With these prophecies I shall prove to be right. ” On June 1, 2017, Donald Trump announced that he was pulling America out of the Paris climate accord. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? We want fair treatment for its citizens and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers. We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won’t be. They won’t be. ” See the similarity? Me neither. Presumably that’s why author Sasha Abramsky has to editorialize desperately: “It’s not a direct quote from Hitler, but it’s perilously close. ” But I forget. When you’re a liberal, everyone who disagrees with you is Hitler. So I suppose to this article is only stating the obvious. Even better though, I think, is the announcement by the United Nations that it intends to reject Trump’s offer to renegotiate Paris. Here is the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) spelling it out: #ParisAgreement, a historic treaty signed by 194 ratified by 147 countries, cannot be renegotiated based on the request of a single Party. https: . — Patricia Espinosa C. (@PEspinosaC) June 2, 2017, Why is this so funny? Well it’s a bit like the Camp Commandant at Colditz Castle announcing sternly to the prisoners who have daringly escaped that under no circumstances will they ever be allowed inside the wire and back to their lumpy beds and freezing cells. President Trump has just made what successful escaping prisoners in World War II used to call a Home Run. I doubt he has many regrets about the camp guards he has left behind. | 1 |
By Lance Schuttler
On November 8th, 2016, hundreds and possibly thousands flash-mob meditations will commence at the polling stations everywhere across America. Elevate The Vote says that “this is a non-partisan participatory event that is open to everyone. It’s about the fundamental unity of human life that seems to have been so forgotten in this campaign.”
The intention is to “elevate the consciousness of every U.S. voter on election day, impacting how we feel about ourselves, politics, this election, and each other.”
“Meditation gives you an opportunity to come to know your invisible self. It allows you to empty yourself of the endless hyperactivity of your mind, and to attain calmness. It teaches you to be peaceful, to remove stress, to receive answers where confusion previously reigned.”
Dr. Wayne Dyer
While many will love this concept, some may be a bit skeptical of it having any effect. With that, we can look further at the studies that have been done on synchronized meditations and the measurable effects they did create.
What is known as the Maharishi Effect has actually been studied over 600 times, which was conducted in 33 countries and in over 250 independent research institutions. The evidence overwhelmingly correlates synchronized group prayer and meditation having extremely positive social, political and economic benefits to the world. Positive correlations for numerous health benefits to the individual were also observed and confirmed.
The most well-known study on this effect was done in 1974, which observed three different gatherings of over 7,000 people meditating each morning and evening for three consecutive weeks. The study took place in Fairfield, Iowa (December 17, 1983-January 6, 1984), The Hague, Holland (December 21, 1984-January 13, 1985) and Washington, DC (July 1-July 10, 1985). The results were astounding. According to the Rand Corporation, a think-tank based in California, “acts of global terrorism resulting in fatalities and injuries were reduced by 72%.” Time series analysis was used in this study to rule out possibilities that the reduction in global terrorism was caused by pre-existing trends, drifts in data or cycles. But how was this done then? How did it spread from a small group to a larger one?
Scientists believe this is due to a coherent resonance being created in the Unified Quantum Field by those meditating.
Going a bit further with it, we can think of a laser. Its coherent light is established by what is known in physics as the Field Effect. The Field Effect’s principle, according to the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy is “that it is not necessary to act individually on each individual constituent of a system, but that the system can be handled in one stroke at the collective level.”
The 7,000 people meditating created a Field Effect of harmonious coherence that spread throughout the collective–which in turn helped to reduce acts of terrorism (incoherent, disruptive energy).
Synchronized meditation shifts events and timelines in our Quantum Universe. Souce
If you live outside of the U.S. you can also join in by meditating with a global synchronized meditation that begins at 3pm Pacific Time (U.S.). Also, you can add to this movement even if you live in the U.S. by meditating at this time or at a local polling station. If you plan not to vote or already voted, you can also stay at home and meditate that evening. Let us all envision a world at peace, ourselves at peace and all social systems in balance and at peace.
To find out more information about the flash-mob meditations and to see or start one in your local area, visit Elevate The Vote .
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.
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Readers were unable to access the pioneering powerhouse news website Drudge Report for an hour and a half on Thursday, due to what site founder Matt Drudge says was a attack. [On Twitter Thursday night in the midst of the attack and shutdown, Drudge questioned whether the U. S. government might be behind the attack, which he said was the largest in the website’s history. Later, Drudge said the attack came from “thousands” of sources. Attacking coming from ’thousands’ of sources. Of course none of them traceable to Fort Meade … — MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) December 30, 2016, Is the US government attacking DRUDGE REPORT? Biggest DDoS since site’s inception. VERY suspicious routing [and timing]. — MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) December 30, 2016, Ace investigation reporter Sharyl Attkisson responded to one of Drudge’s tweets, bringing up the fact that Drudge has been targeted by the left as a “fake news” site as part of a wider effort to censor and discredit news organizations in the wake of the election of Donald Trump. @DRUDGE Maybe they think this is a proportional counterattack to Russia. After all they have decided @Drudge is Russian fake news, right? — Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) December 30, 2016, The disruption came the same night that the Obama administration issued sanctions against Russia over unproven allegations of hacking, a claim toward which Drudge has shown skepticism. The Drudge Report was one of the few news platforms that gave candidate Donald Trump fair coverage during the presidential primary, thereby incurring the wrath of the establishment Republicans as well as the Democrat establishment. At press time, there was no firm confirmation of who or what caused the attack. | 1 |
As I discuss in my most recent piece for Asia Times, Duterte v. United States: The Empire Slaps Back , I find the US tunnel vision concerning Asian attitudes toward engagement with China puzzling.
The big story in Asia IMO is the smaller powers trying to integrate with the PRC economically while keeping it at arms’ length militarily, but that doesn’t seem to drive the coverage I see. Perhaps as a function of that “salary depends on not understanding” Mark Twain crack, US diplos/generals/journos/wonks seem determined to ignore the centripetal forces at play in Asia with China at their heart.
There’s also a gigantic blind spot in US coverage of the Philippines. If you read the papes, everybody in the Philippines is staring anxiously out at the South China Sea for “Chizilla” to emerge and wreak havoc on a jewel of Pacific democracy.
Actually, if you read my piece, you’ll find that the forces ravaging the Philippines are poverty, inequality, social division, corruption, and the occasional megatyphoon and I have an idea the reason that Fidel Ramos championed Duterte is because he saw him as the one candidate who would focus on domestic issues and not pivot-friendly bullsh*t.
The US story is that the threat of “China rising” must be contained militarily, its economic reach reduced, and Asia should look for a “high standards” trade bloc, TPP, for its growth story instead of canoodling with the Chicoms.
However, I think the CCP read its George Kennan and realized the containment strategy worked on the USSR because the Soviets thought, incorrectly, they could cut it as an autarky. Deng knew different, enabled inward and outward investment, and now we’re looking at not only Asia but much of the world anxious at how Chinese trouble will play out in their own economies.
In my opinion, the US was only able to establish “China threat” as the top element on the Asian FP agenda temporarily, with considerable effort, and only by the active support of pro-US government officials in Japan and the Philippines who were willing to assist in engineering polarizing provocations with the PRC around the Senkakus and Scarborough Shoal.
Now the economic logic of Asian integration i.e. hoovering up the cash the PRC is willing to throw at the region is reasserting itself.
Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and now the Philippines are showing via engagement with China that their participation in any US crusade is conditional and equivocal.
These countries are not democratic and human rights garden spots, so I guess the US could summon up some “birds of a feather” grumbling about why the jefes of these regimes are willing to cozy up to dictators instead of joining the crusade to contain, isolate, and degrade the PRC regime (and heroically put their own economic well-being at risk at the same time).
And then there’s this guy:
That’s Shinzo Abe making nice with Rodrigo Duterte during Duterte’s recent visit to Japan. Actually, making the “iron fist”, the symbol of Duterte’s, shall we say, rather harsh vision of how to make Philippine democracy do the right thing “or I’ll punch the crap outta you. Or worse.”
I just love this picture. I don’t recall seeing it in US coverage of Duterte’s foray into Japan.
US tunnel vision was in full force again, focused on the fact that Duterte said he wanted foreign militaries a.k.a. the US outta the Philippines in two years.
But the big story was, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, “the dog that didn’t snarl.” Japan.
Abe reciprocated Duterte’s outreached fist, one might say, with his own, and competed with the PRC in offering various goodies to the Philippines.
Abe’s Japan, as I comment in my Asia Times piece, has a rather multi-jointed agenda.
Japan was in a pretty solid space, securitywise, if it was content to remain a security ward of the United States under the pacifist constitution. But ideology, opportunity, and necessity are driving Japan back into Asia as a security actor.
Abe, a revisionist nationalist (i.e. he rejects the victor’s justice narrative of World War II that Japan did wrong and deserved to be militarily neutered), is piggybacking on the pivot to enable Japan’s re-emergence as a full-fledged Asian power with an extensive network of relationships cum allies in East and South Asia.
China’s rise is an indispensable element in Japan’s rise.
The, let’s face it, hulking and goonish face of PRC regional engagement promotes a search for capable friends, and most Asian countries are pretty happy to have Japan in their corner—and not too upset about Japan’s return to the fray as a full-fledged military power.
Second, after the United States signed on to the “China threat” narrative as the driver for its Asia pivot (something that Kurt Campbell, Hillary Clinton, and Seiji Maehara cahooted on in 2010), the US abandoned the honest broker position it had claimed in previous decades and lined up behind Japan and provided material, operational, and diplomatic support for the expansion of Japan’s military footprint in Asia.
However, I believe that Japanese strategists regard US anti-China resolve as a wasting asset, not just subject to the vagaries of American politics and conflicting economic/fiscal/trade priorities that undercut the containment strategy, but also because the ineluctable logic of Asian growth is sidelining the US as hegemon of the anti-China alliance.
There is likely to come a day when the US faces its Suez moment and admits it’s not ready to fight a war in the west Pacific to protect US interests and sustain US prestige.
That day is unlikely to come under the Clinton administration—which has preemptively committed itself to a policy of sustaining US global pre-eminence through the application of military force as needed—and that, depending on your appetite for combat with the Chicoms 8000 miles from home, is either a good or bad thing.
But the day will probably come and if and when it does, Japan does not want to be standing there helplessly holding its daikon (as it did when Nixon went to China). Instead, it’s going to be militarily strong, probably with a Israel-style covert nuclear weapons capability it will discretely brandish, and with a strong regional network of friends and allies in East Asia.
I think a Japan-centric security regime facing China but complemented by regional economic integration is sustainable; I think a US-centric system based on forestalling economic integration and keeping allies submissive by maintaining a nuclear “umbrella” a.k.a. monopoly is not.
We may de facto be heading towards such a regime, even as the Clinton administration continues its hypernationalist bluster. There’s the nibbling away at the pivot by the smaller and weaker allies, there’s Abe with Duterte and, if I’m reading Paul Krugman’s tea leaves correctly, it appears that President Clinton may give up on TPP as an Obama pipe dream.
Not to say peace and reduced tensions are in the offing for East Asia; particularly, if I was Duterte I’d watch my back as the Clinton administration will probably seek to punish his lese majeste toward the United States much more than the lame-duck Obama administration. And, I imagine the U.S. Navy will demand more of its precious FONOPs in order to provoke the Chinese, hopefully to the point of a confrontation that feeds the security polarization narrative and fattens its budget.
But the general trend seems to be away from Hillary Clinton’s goal of “America’s Pacific Century” toward “The Pacific’s Pacific Century” and I think that’s a pretty good thing. (Reprinted from China Matters by permission of author or representative) | 0 |
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Before you applaud me for my integrity or condemn me for selling out, allow me to explain my decision to vote for Donald Trump on Nov. 8.
First, I’m writing this because I have been asked incessantly for months how I would be voting, not because I think I’m someone special or that what I do should influence you.
Second, I’m not endorsing Donald Trump. In my mind, there’s a world of difference between endorsing a candidate and voting for a candidate.
Third, I respect those in the #NeverTrump camp and share many of their concerns, including the possibility of his further vulgarizing and degrading the nation, the possibility of him deepening our ethnic and racial divides, and the possibility of him alienating our allies and unnecessarily provoking our enemies, just to name a few. Among the #NeverTrump voices I respect are columnists like David French and Ben Shapiro, bloggers like Matt Walsh and evangelical leaders like Russell Moore and Beth Moore.
Fourth, I take strong exception to evangelicals who have fawned over Trump as if he were some kind of savior figure, supporting him as if he were St. Donald. I also take issue with evangelical leaders who want us to minimize some of Trump’s failings, constantly saying, “Let him who is without sin cast the first one” (see John 8:7). This is not a question of condemning the man but rather a question of making a moral assessment as to his readiness to serve our nation.
Fifth, my decision to vote for Trump, barring something earth-shattering between now and Nov. 8, is consistent with my position, which has been: 1) During the GOP primaries, I issued strong warnings against voting for Trump while we had other excellent choices. I did this in writing , on video and on the radio, but always stating that if Trump won the nomination, I would re-evaluate my position. 2) Once Trump became the Republican candidate, I wrote that I was rooting for him to take steps in the right direction and thereby win my vote. 3) I have stated repeatedly that under no circumstances would I vote for Hillary. (For two strong warnings about Hillary, see here and here .)
So, what has convinced me that I should now vote for Donald Trump?
The culture war is not over! Gain hope, courage and practical advice in Michael Brown’s latest book, “Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide”
First, I believe that he actually is serious about appointing pro-life, pro-Constitution Supreme Court justices. When he said during the last debate that if you’re pro-life, you want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, and when he reiterated at his Gettysburg speech that he will be drawing from his list of 20 potential appointees, he helped me feel more confident that he would not suddenly flip-flop if elected.
Second, one reason I endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz was because he took on the political establishment, both Democratic and Republican, to the point of calling it the Washington cartel. Trump is an absolute wrecking ball to the negative parts of the political system (although, unfortunately, he’s been a wrecking ball to some of the good parts of the system), so my vote for him is also a protest vote.
Third, I am voting for the Republican platform, not the Republican Party, which means I’m in agreement with the platform while at the same time having very little confidence in the party as a whole.
Fourth, while I have always felt that the line, “We’re electing a president, not a pastor,” was overstated and superficial, if we rephrased it to say, “We’re electing a general to train hand-to-hand combat warriors, not a pastor,” it might have more relevance. In other words, we are not looking for Trump to be a moral reformer (even if hedoes appoint righteous judges), and, at this point, he certainly is anything but a moral example (although we pray he will be truly converted and become one). Rather, out of our choices for president, which are stark, we are voting for the one most likely to defeat Hillary and make some good decisions for the nation, not be the savior. And with things so messed up in America, the hand-to-hand combat analogy is closer to home.
Fifth, within the first few minutes of the last debate, the massive differences between Hillary and Trump were there for the world to see, she a pro-abortion radical and an extreme supporter of the LGBT agenda and he unashamedly speaking out against late-term abortions and wanting to appoint justices who would defend our essential liberties. Since I have the opportunity to vote, I feel that I should vote for Trump.
Sixth, Trump continues to be drawn to conservative Christians, and not just ones who tickle his ears. One of my dear friends has spent hours with Trump and members of his family, and he has told me that in 55 years of ministry, no one has received him as openly and graciously as has Trump. Yet my friend continues to speak the truth to him in the clearest possible terms. While I am not one of those claiming that Trump is a born-again Christian (I see absolutely no evidence of this), the fact that he continues to listen to godly men and open the door to their counsel indicates that something positive could possibly be going on. It also indicates that these godly leaders might be a positive influence on him if he were elected president.
Seventh, although I’m quite aware that a president could do great harm or good to the nation, I’m far more concerned with what we as God’s people do with our own lives and witnesses, and for me, the state of the church of America is much more important than the state of the White House. In that context, I echo the words (and warning) of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”
So, in sum: 1) My hope is in God, not Donald Trump, and I do recognize that either Hillary or Trump has the potential to do great harm to America; 2) My urgent call is for us as followers of Jesus to get our own act together so we can be the salt and light of the nation; 3) I will continue to urge all believers not to vote for Hillary Clinton, whose policies will certainly do us great harm; and 4) Ultimately, the most effective way to defeat Hillary is to vote for Trump, while also praying that God will use him for good , not for evil.
In the end, if Trump gets elected and fails miserably, I will be grieved but not devastated. If he does well, I will rejoice.
Either way, though, my vote is just that: a vote. My greater role is to live a life pleasing to God with the hope of advancing a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution. Receive Michael Brown's commentaries in your email BONUS: By signing up for Michael Brown's alerts, you will also be signed up for news and special offers from WND via email. Name * | 0 |
November 14, 2016
The stop-motion children’s favourite, is under threat from the newly elected President for using his trademarked name. Mr. Trump has turned litigious after his planning permission was blocked, for golf resort in neighbouring Camberwick Green.
Explained Town Hall clerk, Mr Troop: ‘Several landowners around Trumpton and Camberwick Green refused to sell their land to Trump. And he’s made their lives misery, in some cases he’s even cut off their water supply and blocked their roads.’ Local windmill owner Windy Miller has been in dispute with Trump over the sale of land around Colley’s Mill and the Trump Corporation’s aggressive tactics appear to have taken their toll on the normally affable Miller. ‘It’s terrible what they’ve done to Windy,’ says Mr Troop. ‘He’s a broken man. Now he spends his days getting wrecked on home brew cider and firing his shotgun at anyone who comes within 100 yards of his windmill. Peter the Postman has had to visit Dr Mopp several times to have shotgun slugs removed from his rear end’.
However, not everyone in Trumpton is hostile to the billionaire property developer. Local carpenter Chippy Minton believes that just as Trump is set to bring radical change to America he can do the same for Trumpton. ‘The people are fed up with the career politicians at the town hall. Unless you’re an immigrant or disabled they don’t want to know, bloody do-gooders. Everyone knows there’s too much immigration from neighbouring towns. We’re going to build a wall around Chigley and make Chigley pay for it’.
‘There’s even a Mexican family moved in to Trumpton,’ continued Minton. ‘They seem nice but this type of immigration is diluting our local institutions. Take our world famous Fire Brigade for instance. Now it’s ‘Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Ramirez’. What’s that all about!?’ | 0 |
This article was written by Kurt Nimmo and originally published at his Another Day in the Empire site.
Editor’s Comment: Here we are back to one of those people that just seems to know something we don’t know… well it isn’t really the fact that he suggested Donald Trump won’t keep all his campaign promises. People aren’t that much in the dark. It’s the way he phrased it, and nurtured the idea, as something soft and malleable.
Kissinger is more than willing to break in Trump, as one would a horse, and shape him towards the kind of president that international banksters and geopolitical hotheads can be proud of. By that time, you might not recognize President Trump as the fiery campaigner who defeated Bushes and Clintons with ease, but that just shows the crafting and development that went into the project, mostly behind the scenes… you might even find that Kissinger and Trump are old pals (see above).
Kissinger: Don’t Expect Trump to Keep Campaign Promises
by Kurt Nimmo
Elder statesman, Rockefeller confidant, and master war criminal Henry Kissinger told the globalist Fareed Zakaria voters are not going to get what was advertised with Donald Trump.
“One should not insist on nailing [Trump] into positions that he had taken in the campaign,” Kissinger told Zakaria .
Keeping campaign promises made to voters is counterproductive, according to Kissinger.
Kissinger argued that it is counterproductive to demand absolute consistency from presidential administrations, particularly in the face of fluid international situations.
Commending Trump on the effectiveness of his campaign tactics, the former secretary of state added: “The art now would be to develop a strategy that is sustainable, that meets the concerns that have appeared during the campaign but that can be linked to some of the main themes of American foreign policy.”
In other words, Kissinger and the elite expect Trump to carry the torch and continue the Bush-Obama agenda of never-ending war.
Donald Trump appears eager to please. He is considering neocons for his cabinet and his national security adviser is an anti-Islam ideologue.
This article was written by Kurt Nimmo and originally published at his Another Day in the Empire site. Please visit and support his site. | 0 |
To some they are emblems of delight, reminders in steel of unbreakable connections. To others they are barnacles encrusting a beloved landmark. They are the love locks, padlocks placed on the Brooklyn Bridge by lovers to signify their bond. This fall, after cutting away tens of thousands of the locks, whose sheer weight engineers say could damage the bridge, the New York City Transportation Department began a deterrence campaign to keep the besotted from further festooning: A $100 fine is to be assessed for the illicit act of adoration. Unlike other signs in the city, like those that menacingly forbid parking and threaten the arrival of tow trucks, the warnings are gentle and humorous. One features a picture of a bagel with what appears to be smoked salmon and a schmear. “NO LOCKS, YES LOX,” it says. On Monday, a post beneath one of these signs had nearly 20 locks attached to it. The tradition dates back to about 2009, according to the Transportation Department, which removed over 11, 000 locks in 2015. The laborious removals, it said, cost over $100, 000 a year. Lovers have likely been inspired by the locks on Rome’s oldest bridge, the Ponte Milvio, and on the Pont des Arts in Paris. In both cities, the authorities have long battled the heavy locks that daily encrust their bridges the symbol persists despite strong warnings against the practice. New York’s version seems grittier: In recent years people have tied hair bands, shoelaces and even headphones to the bridge, the department said. But it is risky for the bridge, an architectural marvel completed in 1883, and the world’s first suspension bridge. In September, a wire holding up a light snapped under the weight of the locks. “This is a global phenomenon,” Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, said. “There are so many ways to express your love — hold hands, take a beautiful picture, have a beautiful dinner. ” Leaving locks and other flotsam on a bridge should not be one of them, she said. But Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, thinks simply telling tourists and others who visit the bridge not to leave the locks behind will not work. Instead, he has proposed putting up a wall, at the base of the bridge perhaps, where people can position their locks. “We have to roll with it,” he said. “There is a lot of hate going on right now. ” (Ms. Trottenberg said the idea was being considered, but that it would be a lot of work to periodically cut those locks, too.) As part of the deterrence initiative, the city has also asked publishers of several guidebooks, including Lonely Planet and Fodor’s, to let readers know the practice is forbidden. Jordan DuMars, 24, a dancer who lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, snapped her lock on the bridge with her boyfriend last April, after seeing it suggested online as a cheap adventure. “They have that fence in Paris,” she said, “and it just seemed like a cool way to celebrate us being together. ” When she returned a few months later with visitors to show off the lock, it was gone. “I looked all over, and I was kind of bummed,” Ms. DuMars said. “I get it because of engineering and science, but it does kind of bum me out that they cut off our lock. ” Ms. DuMars said that if she were to get married, she would probably risk the fine and put another padlock on. But she would be O. K. if she did not get the chance. “It doesn’t mean that my love for my boyfriend will go away,” she said. “We are still locked down to each other. ” Henry Perahia, who served 14 years as the city’s chief bridge engineer before he retired in 2014, said there were several reasons not to put a lock on the bridge. For one, the concentration of locks sometimes makes it difficult for maintenance workers to gain access to parts of the bridge. The process of removing locks, which is done with bolt cutters, is risky for the cars below a lock can slip from a worker’s hands. Above all, it is the weight. “An older bridge isn’t built with this much extra capacity, to hold that weight,” Mr. Perahia said. “Sometimes sentiment has to be weighed against a potential danger. ” He added: “As a sentiment I send my wife flowers. They’re lighter. ” | 1 |
Former CIA operative and 2016 presidential candidate Evan McMullin took to Twitter and CNN on Wednesday to defend rogue intelligence agents who break the law to leak classified information, saying President Donald Trump “presents a threat to the country. ”[In response to President Trump’s tweets earlier Wednesday, in which he alleged that elements of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency were engaged in “Russia” political operations, McMullin tweeted: By oath, intelligence officials’ first duty is to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.. ” https: . — Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) February 15, 2017, So, the real scandal isn’t that the President of the United States of America appears to have been by America’s greatest adversary? https: . — Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) February 15, 2017, The obvious implication was that McMullin believes that intelligence and law enforcement agents are entitled to break the law based on their own views that the President of the United States is a threat to the Constitution and in cahoots with Russia. Mcmullen reiterated his views on CNN, where he purported to speak for the concern of the agents doing the leaking: “I’ll tell you what their concerns are. There concerns are that Donald Trump presents a threat to the country because of his — what they see as his relationship with Vladimir Putin and the relationship of his team to other Russian intelligence officers. ” McMullin cited a New York Times report indicating that Trump campaign aides had contact with Russian intelligence — without also noting that the same report indicated there was “no evidence” that the “Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election. ” He went on to make the very claim denied by the Times article, telling Baldwin Trump “ran a campaign that was assisted by a foreign adversary — our greatest foreign adversary. ” Pressed by host Brooke Baldwin as to whether there were “too many leaks,” McMullin said that intelligence officers were bound by an oath to defend the country and the Constitution against “domestic and foreign enemies. ” That included “a security threat coming from the White House. ” An obviously sympathetic Baldwin then asked McMullin: “Are any of these people you’re talking to just even worried about him even getting intel briefings, period?” McMullin said that they are — and seemed to admit, in the process, that he is speaking with intelligence officials who may be leaking information. During the presidential campaign, McMullin was a leader in the “NeverTrump” movement, consisting of conservatives who rejected Trump as the Republican Party nominee. Though he hoped to flip Utah, among a few other states, to Hillary Clinton by relegating Trump to third place, Trump won in that state and elsewhere. On Tuesday, Weekly Standard Bill Kristol expressed similar sentiments, and appeared, in theory, to endorse a coup by the “deep state” against the “Trump state. ” Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state. — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 14, 2017, Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
BERLIN — She faced down a euro crisis that turned into an existential crossroads for the European Union. She confronted a Russian land grab in Ukraine. Virtually alone among her peers, she welcomed into her country roughly a million migrants who flooded across Europe’s borders. Having made that fateful decision, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany now faces what nearly all here are calling the toughest passage of her 11 years in power, after a terrorist attack on Monday in Berlin left 12 people dead. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility, and the authorities are searching for a Tunisian man with Salafist ties. The attack has rendered the chancellor, whose party has already suffered defeats in bellwether votes this year, still more vulnerable as national elections approach in 2017. A defeat for Ms. Merkel could have global consequences. With populism on the rise across Europe, Ms. Merkel has been seen as a bulwark against illiberal democracy. If she is weakened, and if next spring’s election in France produces a populist president, the already weak European Union could be badly, even fatally, wounded. “This is even more worrying than terrorism, strange though that may sound,” said Jacqueline Boysen, a biographer of Ms. Merkel who has known her since the 1990s. “Terrorism is terrible and frightening, but our political future is so uncertain. ” After Donald J. Trump won the election in the United States, she noted: “We don’t know what will happen in America, and what, for instance, Trump might do with Russia and China. Europe is not even taken into consideration, and that is really worrying. ” For now, Ms. Merkel’s main worry is at home, where the newspaper Bild tried to catch the national mood on Wednesday with a huge headline: “Angst!” or “Fear!” Inside, the commentator Nikolaus Blome analyzed in greater depth, writing that it was up to politicians and especially Ms. Merkel to get a grip on terrorism. “That will be tough: She cannot count on the trust and confidence she long enjoyed but which is now not as certain as it was even two years ago,” he wrote. “She is certainly not the only one to blame. But many people in the country project their anger, their fear, on Angela Merkel, on her personally. So it will become her toughest test. And the end is wide open. ” Ms. Merkel has openly mused about her reluctance to run for a fourth term. But a sense of obligation — not just to her party and to her country, but also to Europe as populist forces gain pace — seemed to outweigh the obvious: Almost any democratic leader would be vulnerable to a desire for change after three terms in power. If she wins a fourth term, Ms. Merkel will rival her political patron, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, for longevity in office. She, more than anyone, is aware of the odds. At a party congress where delegates signaled their unhappiness with her decision to admit roughly a million migrants, many of them Muslim, she demanded support: “You must, you must help me. ” Earlier, after her party lost two state elections in September, she even said she wished she could turn the clock back many years and revisit many aspects of immigration policy and security on Europe’s external borders. That all reflected the danger she feels from the Alternative for Germany, which was established in 2013 as an party but which swiftly pivoted in 2015 to an platform that has now propelled it into 10 of Germany’s 16 state legislatures. Alternative for Germany has steadily eaten into the market share of Ms. Merkel’s mainstream, conservative Christian Democratic Union. This week, Alternative for Germany’s leaders wasted no time in blaming Ms. Merkel and her policies for the Berlin attack. More ominously for the chancellor, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the Bavarian sister party to her Christian Democrats, demanded a complete overhaul of immigration and security policy. Ms. Merkel, who still needs Mr. Seehofer’s party to back her run next year, has not responded, allowing others to criticize the Bavarian leader for seeking to make hay out of a terrorist attack. Nonetheless, her cabinet on Wednesday swiftly passed an array of measures, first announced in August, to bolster domestic security, including extensive video surveillance of a kind common in Europe but rare in Germany, where memories of Nazi and Communist tactics mean citizens jealously guard their right to privacy. Ms. Boysen saw the reaction as typical of Ms. Merkel. “She was never someone who let herself be guided by polls,” Ms. Boysen said. “Of course, that plays a part, but she is pragmatic. With this attack, she now has a new task to tackle. That is how she thinks. ” Ulrich Speck, a German analyst in Brussels for a think tank, Real Instituto Elcano, also argued that Ms. Merkel would simply deal with the new situation in an increasingly unpredictable world. He cited her statement after Mr. Trump’s election in which she laid down conditions — including respect for everyone — for cooperating with the new president. Domestically, Mr. Speck said, Ms. Merkel can draw on the continuing support for helping migrants. But, he noted, the attack on Monday had opened her to mounting criticism and lent her a rare impression of fragility. “The feeling that someone is there who is managing it for us has gone,” Mr. Speck said, echoing Mr. Blome’s assessment of the chancellor’s rapport with voters. “People are looking more closely, and there is a very vocal minority where there is really an mood,” Mr. Speck said. But, he added, “I think she has the compass to sense where the middle is. ” However, Jackson Janes, an American expert on Germany with a think tank, the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, predicted that “she is going to have a real tough year. ” Uncertainty abroad — in Europe and beyond — will help scramble German politics, too, he said. That might mean that more parties clear the 5 percent hurdle to get into Parliament in next year’s elections, making it harder to form a viable coalition under Ms. Merkel, even if she and her party finish first. Daniela Schwarzer of the German Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, agreed that “this is clearly a very difficult time,” amplified by the danger of terrorist attacks that have increased in frequency in Germany this year. “Merkel, or anyone else, will only be able to maintain the level of support moderate politicians used to have if they demonstrate some kind of vision about where things are going,” she said. Otherwise, she added, support could veer toward “others who have a vision — . ” Another danger is the prospect of Russian interference with Germany’s elections, as noted by the head of the country’s foreign intelligence service, Bruno Kahl, and by Ms. Merkel. “It is known that cyberattacks take place that have no other purpose than to provoke political uncertainty,” Mr. Kahl told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “A kind of pressure is being exercised on public discourse and democracy here, which is unacceptable. ” Ms. Merkel, in separate remarks about a hacking that left 900, 000 Germans without telephone and internet service recently, said that “such cyberattacks, or hybrid conflicts as they are known in Russian doctrine, are now part of daily life, and we must learn to cope with them. ” In addition to informing citizens, she said: “We cannot allow ourselves to be unsettled by this. We must simply know that this exists, and learn to live with it. ” | 1 |
posted by Eddie To some extent, we all read faces all of the time. When we look at someone who is new to us, we unconsciously assess them and form opinions about them, but in addition to this instinctive form of face reading, there are far more detailed methods—for example, like Chinese face reading, which we’ll be exploring in this article—with rules and regulations that have been carefully worked out over a long period of time. The best exponents of this skill are undoubtedly the Chinese, because they specialize in this form of divination. In common with all other serious forms of divination, this is a deep and difficult subject to master, but I’ll just dip into the subject in order to introduce you to a fascinating skill. Way back in the past, school curriculums often included physiognomy, along with palmistry, until the time of Henry VIII, when puritanical religions came in and outlawed these ancient science and interests. Three Major Areas of the Face In the Chinese face reading tradition, they call the forehead area down to the eyebrows Heaven, and this is associated with the early years of one’s life. The middle section of the face, from the eyebrows down to the base of the nose is called Human, and this is associated with the middle years of life. The lower section, from the base of the nose down to the bottom of the face is termed Earth, and this is concerned with old age. Any part of the face that is scarred, malformed, dented or discolored suggests a problem with the aspect of the subject’s life associated with that segment of his face. Grey or black marks, whether they are a permanent feature or just a temporary situation, denote problems that are themselves either temporary or permanent depending upon the type of dark mark. Even if the discoloration is caused by a trick of the light, it will mean something to a Chinese face reading specialist. As in every other form of divination, intuition also plays a part. In the ancient science of chinese face reading, the face is divided into three main areas. Heaven Positive: If this area is clean, clear and well defined, the person will have a good start in life with good parents and a useful education. Negative: Scarring, dents or discoloration here indicate a troubled childhood and a poor education, according to Chinese face reading philosophy. The problems will be worse for a man if the disfigurement is on the left, while for a woman if the disfigurement is on the right. A wide forehead is generally considered beneficial, but in a woman, a very wide forehead suggests poor personal relationships. The lines on the forehead offer a good deal of information, some being lucky and others unfortunate. Human Positive: The middle section of the subject’s life will be happy and productive, with stability in relationships and success in the career . Negative: This brings unhappiness, a lack of success at work and poor relationships. A human section longer than either of the other two sections suggests a determined and self-disciplined personality, according to Chinese face reading masters. Earth Positive: This indicates a happy old age with good relationships with children and grandchildren, along with prosperity and comfort. Negative: This denotes an unhappy and poor old age. The Thirteen Divisions of the Face Chinese face readers further divide the face into 13 sub-sections. Here is a very simplified form of the 13 -section reading, starting from the top of the face and working downward. The 13 divisions of chinese face reading. 1. Tien Chung If this is clean and clear, the subject will have a happy childhood and youth, a good relationship with the parents; the subject’s parents will live to a ripe old age. If it’s marked or misshapen, there will be unhappiness during youth, and poverty or discord in the childhood home. Veins, dark marks and so forth here suggest accidents and sudden losses of money or prestige. A widow’s peak suggests that the father may die before the mother does. 2. Tien Ting This also refers to the parents and background, but it relates more to the mother than the father. Negatively, a marked area suggests that people won’t believe the individual when he is telling the truth. 3. Ssu K’ung A good complexion here suggests a fortunate and successful life , whereas discolorations tell of a bad patch in the subject’s career, according to Chinese face reading philosophy. 4. Chung Cheng If dented, the intellect will be low. If scarred, bumpy or sporting a mole, the subject will be impatient and largely unable to bring his plans to fruition, due either to bad public relations skills or to bad luck. He will also find it hard to make and keep friends. 5. Yin T’ang Chinese face reading masters suggest that if this area is healthy, the subject will receive an inheritance and he will succeed in business. Eyebrows that meet or almost meet denote failure, bad luck and a lack of respect from other people. Marks, scars and black moles can indicate anything from adoption to illness and failure, or even a term of imprisonment. Wrinkles or creases between the eyebrows are all right if the subject is over forty years of age, otherwise they denote difficulties, tension and even a jealous nature. 6. Shan Gen Grayness here denotes illness, whereas a green patch at the side indicates adultery. A mole suggests stomach problems, emigration or imprisonment! 7. Men Shang Moles here suggest stomach trouble, relationship problems or possibly an ill partner. Darkness here denotes a sick child. 8. Shou Shang A high bony nose suggests failure in business. Moles and discolorations signify a sick husband and difficulties with females. 9. Chun T’ou The tip of the nose should be full in shape and clear of marks, hairs and blackheads for good fortune. 10. Jen Chung This is the grooved area between the base of the nose and the mouth, which is called the filtrum, or the falin line. If the base of the groove is wider than the upper and the indentation neither too deep nor too fl at, the subject will have healthy children and will achieve a high level of wealth and status in life. If it’s wider at the top and shallow, the subject will have trouble in having children. His nature will be sour and he will have bad manners. Relationships will be difficult. If this area is bent, the subject will be childless, deceitful and unpopular. A straight line marked down the middle of the groove denotes children late in life according to the science of Chinese face reading. 11. Shui Hsing The mouth should be reasonably full, with a pinkish color and upturned corners to ensure prosperity, good health and a happy marriage. 12. Ch’eng Chiang If this area is dark in the morning, the subject should avoid traveling over water during the course of that day. A man who has a hairless gap beneath his lower lip or a person of either sex who has a discoloration or scar in this area must be careful of their diet, because the stomach may be weak. 13. Ti ko The chin should be rounded, slightly protuberant and strong in appearance. A sharp chin is unlucky and a chin that points to the side belongs to someone who holds grudges. Any scarring or discoloration denotes money losses and possibly the loss of an inheritance. This can also predict family sickness and accidents. This article on Chinese face reading is from the book: Body Reading, Plain & Simple by Sasha Fenton Source: | 0 |
Central Bank sees Russia’s moving up in Doing Business rating as good sign October 27, 2016 TASS Doing business in Russia , banks , ranking Russia moved up to the 40th position in the Doing Business-2017 rating. Source: Getty Images
The Central Bank sees Russia’s moving up in the Doing Business rating as a good sign, Deputy CEO of the Central Bank Vladimir Chistyukhin told reporters.
"That is a very significant leap and a very positive sign for us. It shows that the efforts we made in many fields, in particular in corporate management were not in vain," he said.
Earlier this week it was reported that Russia moved up to the 40th position in the Doing Business-2017 rating, which is annually prepared by the World Bank.
In 2012, Russia ranked 124th in that rating.
In his May decrees issued in 2012 President Vladimir Putin set the task for the country to reach the 20th position in the rating of the World Bank by 2018.
In 2016, Russia was on the 51st place in the Doing Business rating.
However the methods of calculation of the World Bank’s rating changed earlier this year. Taking into account these changes Russia could have been on the 36th place already in 2015. | 0 |
Only tanks with an APS could have stood a chance, doesn't help that the Iraqis have an export model either. | 0 |
Former Officer Peter Liang will not serve any time in prison for fatally shooting an unarmed man in a Brooklyn housing project stairwell two years ago, but was instead sentenced on Tuesday to probation and community service. The sentence — in one of the most divisive police misconduct cases in recent New York City history — came just moments after the judge took the unusual steps of ruling that the shooting was essentially an accident and reducing the jury’s verdict on manslaughter charges to the less severe criminally negligent homicide. Though the Brooklyn district attorney’s office promised to appeal the ruling, the sentencing was a decisive move in the politically contentious case that highlighted concerns over police accountability, especially in black neighborhoods, but never neatly fit the narrative of other killings by officers around the country. It is rare for police officers even to be charged and brought to court in shooting cases while this one resulted in a guilty verdict at a trial this winter, the sentencing was deeply disappointing to the family of the victim, Akai Gurley. As Justice Danny K. Chun of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn imposed five years of probation and 800 hours of community service, Mr. Liang sat still at the defendant’s table showing little emotion. Behind him, the benches were packed with Mr. Gurley’s loved ones. When the hourlong hearing came to an end and it was clear that Mr. Liang would not serve time in prison, Hertencia Petersen, Mr. Gurley’s aunt, stepped into a hallway shouting: “There is no justice! Akai Gurley’s life didn’t matter!” Mr. Gurley died on Nov. 20, 2014, when his heart was pierced by a ricocheting bullet that Mr. Liang had fired while on a night patrol in a dark stairwell in the Louis H. Pink Houses in the East New York neighborhood. In February, a jury convicted him of manslaughter and official misconduct, rejecting his testimony that the gun had simply gone off in his hand and finding that he had failed to help Mr. Gurley as he lay dying on a landing. Before the sentence was issued, Mr. Gurley’s girlfriend, Melissa Butler, who was with him when he died, told Mr. Liang that even today, she was still in pain and needed the solace of justice. “You took a piece of me,” she said. “You took a piece of my heart. ” Moments later, Mr. Liang himself stood and turned toward Ms. Butler and the others, apologizing for having killed a man they loved. “The shot was accidental,” he said. “My life has forever changed. ” It was at that point that Justice Chun announced that he was going to reduce the manslaughter verdict, saying there was no evidence that Mr. Liang was even aware of Mr. Gurley’s presence in the stairwell. “This was not an intentional act,” the judge said. “This was a criminally negligent act. As such, I find incarceration not necessary. ” Just minutes earlier, Paul Shechtman, the former officer’s lawyer, had said much the same thing, telling Justice Chun that while other police officers in recent years had maliciously hurt and killed young black men, Mr. Liang “is not them. ” After the hearing, District Attorney Ken Thompson released a statement saying he planned to appeal Justice Chun’s decision to reduce the jury’s verdict — an unusual move from a man who all along has taken a Solomonic approach to the complicated case. From the start, Mr. Thompson faced enormous pressure to pursue an indictment against Mr. Liang, who killed Mr. Gurley the same year that Eric Garner died during a police arrest on Staten Island. As Brooklyn’s first black district attorney, Mr. Thompson had vowed to bring a heightened sense of social justice to the borough’s communities of color. But after the conviction, Mr. Thompson issued a letter recommending that Mr. Liang should not serve time in prison. The letter referred to Mr. Gurley as “a completely innocent man who lost his life for no reason,” but also said Mr. Liang had no prior criminal history and posed no threat to public safety. In court on Tuesday, Justice Chun said that Mr. Thompson’s recommendation was “entirely and completely appropriate. ” He added that on that November night two years ago, shooting Mr. Gurley was “probably the last thing” on Mr. Liang’s mind. Speaking after the hearing, Mr. Shechtman said he was pleased with the sentence and understood the disappointment of Mr. Gurley’s family. “We have very mixed emotions,” Mr. Shechtman said. “But this is a good day for Peter Liang in a year and a half when there haven’t been many good days. ” As word of the sentence made its way onto the street, dueling groups of protesters erupted into chants and debate. About 60 people, waving signs and shouting, gathered around Ms. Petersen, Mr. Gurley’s aunt. “Another black man has been murdered by the hands of the Police Department and the officer is not being held accountable,” she said. “This right here is not the end. We’re going to continue to fight until we get justice. ” Across the street, another crowd massed in support of Mr. Liang, who is of Chinese heritage. “Accident does not mean crime,” Helen Zhu said. “Chinese are no more silent. We just want justice — justice for all. All people’s lives matter. ” | 1 |
GERMANY: Syrian Muslim invader shouting “Allahu Akbar” disrupts church wedding, gropes statue of Virgin Mary A newlywed couple claims their big day was ruined when a Muslim illegal alien burst inside the church shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and then started tearing down wedding decorations, laughing wildly, and fondling a statue of the Virgin Mary. ( Maybe he had a ‘sexual emergency?’ ) Karmel Church in Duisburg UK Daily Mail (h/t Brenda K) Groom Marcel Lohbeck, 35, and bride Friederike were celebrating their wedding with 90 guests in the Karmel Church in Duisburg, a city in western Germany . Lochbeck said: ‘At the beginning of the ceremony, a man with a thick jumper and a hat on came into the church and sat in the back row. ‘Shortly afterwards, he stood up and wandered around the candles. He laughed in a disturbing manner and then fondled the statue of Mary. ‘He had been speaking in Arabic and partly English. He then started destroying the flowers and kept shouting “Allahu Akbar”.’ Police officer Ludger A., 57, the uncle of the groom, reportedly tried to intervene along with the church sexton. The officer said: ‘We tried to calm the Syrian Muslim invader.’ After the man again refused to leave the church, there was a fight in which the police officer got slight injuries to his face. Yet he managed to restrain the man until his colleagues from the Duisburg police could arrive. After a medical examination, the 23-year-old Syrian was taken to a psychiatric hospital. Well, at least he didn’t destroy the statue and urinate on it as Muslims did HERE : | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, was still in the running to become his secretary of state despite their bitter differences during the campaign, as he narrowed his choices and planned an announcement next week for the crucial post. “We had some tremendous difficulty together, and now I think we’ve come a long way,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Romney in a telephone interview on NBC’s “Today” show, where it was announced that Time magazine had named the its “Person of the Year. ” Mr. Trump said the selection process and highly publicized flirtation with Mr. Romney was not intended to torment a campaign nemesis but rather to find the right person to serve as the nation’s chief diplomat. “It’s not about revenge, it’s about what’s good for the country, and I’m able to put this stuff behind us,” Mr. Trump said. Nearly a month after his stunning election upset ended a bitterly divisive presidential race, Mr. Trump flatly refused any responsibility for the rifts, saying, “I’m not president yet, so I didn’t do anything to divide. ” But in the interview with Time, Mr. Trump repeated some of the harsh talk that marked his unorthodox campaign, and he declined to criticize or contradict President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who has called President Obama a “son of a whore” and has been accused of waging a campaign of extrajudicial killings of thousands of people suspected of being drug dealers. Told that his promises to crack down on undocumented immigrants who kill and rape Americans echo Mr. Duterte’s talk about annihilating drug dealers and users, Mr. Trump did not dispute the comparison. “Well, hey, look, this is bad stuff,” he told Time. “They slice them up, they carve their initials in the girl’s forehead, O. K.? What are we supposed to do? Be nice about it?” He also rejected the conclusion of United States intelligence officials who had said Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails released on WikiLeaks, saying he thought that conclusion was driven by politics. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe they interfered,” Trump said of the Russians. The interview came as Mr. Trump continued to fill out the ranks of his administration with loyalists who will play pivotal roles. He told donors at a private at the restaurant Cipriani in Manhattan that Terry E. Branstad, the governor of Iowa and an early supporter of his campaign, would be the United States ambassador to China, a crucial post managing a complex relationship that Mr. Trump has indicated he is willing to shake up even further. Mr. Trump also said he would have more “big announcements” on personnel on Wednesday and Thursday. Another contender for secretary of state, he said on “Today,” is Rex W. Tillerson, the president and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, whom he called a “great, great gentleman” who has “built a tremendous company over a period of years with great style. ” He said he had ruled out “in my own mind” other prominent candidates who have been considered for the post — a group that includes Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former C. I. A. director Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and John R. Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations — but he declined to say which ones. One day after picking a fight on Twitter with Boeing over the cost of developing the next generation of Air Force One, Mr. Trump said he had spoken to officials at the company and would insist on a aircraft or cancel the contract. “We’re going to work it out, but you know that’s what I’m here for,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m going to negotiate prices, and the planes are too expensive, and we’re going to get the prices down, and if we don’t get the prices down, we’re not going to order them. ” He also explained his apparent decision in June, divulged by a member of his transition team on Tuesday, to sell all of his stock holdings, a move he said he made to avoid “tremendous” potential conflicts of interest in the event he won the election. “I don’t think its appropriate for me to be owning stocks when I’m making deals for this country that maybe will affect one company positively and one company negatively,” Mr. Trump said. Time magazine’s article branded him the president of the “divided states of America,” a characterization Mr. Trump denounced as “snarky. ” “When you say divided states of America, I didn’t divide them,” Mr. Trump told NBC. “They’re divided now, there’s a lot of division, and we’re going to put it back together, and we’re going to have a country that’s very well healed. ” In the interview with Time, he suggested he was willing to moderate some of his campaign stances and adjust others to appeal to a broader portion of Americans. Mr. Trump, whose campaign was fueled largely by promises to build a wall on the country’s southern border and deport those who came in illegally, said he would like to find an accommodation for the undocumented young people — often referred to as Dreamers — who were brought to the United States as children. After Mr. Obama took executive action to create a program granting them legal status, many of those who came forward to register now worry that they could be easily found and deported. “We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Mr. Trump told Time. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in land because they don’t know what’s going to happen. ” On economic policy, Mr. Trump suggested that a major new infrastructure and tax package could serve as stimulus — “You have to prime the pump” to create jobs and accelerate growth, he told Time — just as Mr. Obama’s $787 billion economic recovery package was intended to do when he took office in 2009. Mr. Trump told NBC that he had developed a tight rapport with Mr. Obama, with whom he has had a “very good dialogue” about policy ideas and personnel choices. “I take his recommendations very seriously,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Obama. | 1 |
A jury in St. Louis has awarded a California woman over $70 million in her lawsuit alleging Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder of giving her cancer.
This lawsuit is raising concerns about the health ramifications of the extended use of talcum powder.
The trial began on September 26th, 2016 after Deborah Giannecchini of Modesto, California was diagnosed with ovarian cancer back in 2012. Her suit accused Johnson & Johnson of “negligent conduct” in making and marketing baby powder that is hazardous to human health.
There have already been two other lawsuits this year in St. Louis, ending in jury verdicts worth a combined $127 million. $72 million was awarded in February to relatives of a woman in Alabama who died of ovarian cancer, and a $55 million award was given to a South Dakota survivor in May. Yet there were two others in New Jersey that were thrown out by a judge who said there wasn’t enough reliable evidence that talcum powder leads to ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer, an often fatal but relatively rare form of cancer accounts for about 22,000 of the 1/7 million new cases expected to be diagnosed in the U.S. this year.
About 2,000 women have filed similar suits, while lawyers are reviewing thousands of other potential cases.
Although there are studies that claim that the use of talcum powder is safe, there is other research that connects talcum powder to ovarian cancer. Case studies have indicated that women who regularly use talcum on their genital area face up to a 40% higher risk of developing ovarian cancer.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies genital use of talcum as “possibly carcinogenic”, and yet the National Toxicology Program, made up of parts of several different government agencies, has not completely reviewed talcum yet.
Talcum is mainly used in a variety of products like paint and plastics, but since at least 1894, it has also been used in cosmetics and personal care products to absorb moisture. Talcum is the softest of minerals and it is mined from deposits from around the world and crushed into a white powder.
Prior to this recent verdict, the two previous St. Louis verdicts were the first talcum powder cases in which money was awarded.
This is not the first time Johnson & Johnson has been targeted by health and consumer groups over the ingredients in its products. In 2012 the company agreed to eliminate 1,4-dioxane and formaldehyde from all products by 2015.
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We Are Change
ISIS encouraged attacks on U.S. polling stations in a message they posted to the internet earlier in the week.
Now it seems that ISIS might be carrying out those threats it’s been reported that an active shooter is around the Azusca, California polling station.
One person has been reported killed, Four reported injured according to the LATimes, but this number may climb this is an active shooting situation the shooter is said to be heavily armed and anyone near Azusca California is advised to seek safety.
Update: One person has died as a result of the shooting near a polling station in Azusa; at least 3 others injured https://t.co/XB9VWafNWp pic.twitter.com/9kHlI22PSV
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 8, 2016
(THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS STORY, AND WILL BE UPDATED AS NEW INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.)
The post BREAKING: Active Shooter Azusa, CA Polling Station, Multple Injured 1 DEAD (LIVE BLOG) appeared first on We Are Change .
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Montag, 21. November 2016 Bayern-Fan plötzlich RB-Leipzig-Fan Köln (dpo) - Manch einer hätte ihn fast nicht wiedererkannt: Seit diesem Wochenende ist Dennis Langner (24) aus Köln plötzlich bekennender Fan von RB Leipzig. Nach Angaben seiner Kollegen war der Bürokommunikationskaufmann, der heute erstmals im Leipzig-Trikot und -Schal auf der Arbeit erschien, zuvor glühender Anhänger des FC Bayern München. Auf seine überraschende Wandlung angesprochen erklärt Langner: "Ich soll ein Bayern-Fan gewesen sein? So ein Quatsch! Niemals würde ich diese Münchner Gurkentruppe unterstützen." Langner reckt stolz einen RB-Leipzig-Schal in die Höhe, an dem noch das Etikett baumelt. "Ich freue mich einfach nur, dass mein Team Tabellenführer ist. Darauf ein Red Bull!" Dass Langner nichts für den FC Bayern München übrig hat, scheint zu stimmen. Immerhin quillt die Mülltonne bei ihm zu Hause vor Fanartikeln des verhassten Vereins aus München nahezu über. "Die anderen sind doch nur neidisch auf mich, weil mein Team so erfolgreich ist und ich so viel Ahnung von Fußball habe", erklärt der 24-Jährige die Gerüchte über seine angebliche frühere Bayern-Anhängerschaft. "Mein Lieblingsspieler bei Leipzig? Puh… Ja, also, die Nummer 10 find ich sehr gut. Der ist richtig stark. Oh, Sekunde, hihi, da kommt ein Köln-Fan." Langner grüßt einen Kollegen: "Na, Becki? Hat der FC wieder verkackt? Mönsch, das tut mir aber leid. Also mein Verein hat gewonnen!" ssi, dan; Foto: Shutterstock | 0 |
Era of Wisdom October 27, 2016
Brandon Turbeville took a trip to Lebanon, and almost made it to Syria last month, to report on what is really going on.
He observed no chemtrails in Lebanon. He said food is generally cheaper there than in the United States, and it is some of the the most flavorful food he has ever eaten.
Upon arriving back in the United States, he noticed a sickly, tired, generally unwell state of being in Americans, compared to the people who seemed full of life in Lebanon. He described feeling ill for days trying to re-acclimate to the “American diet.”
This is part two of the interview, part one can be found here .
He observed no chemtrails in Lebanon. He said food is generally cheaper there than in the United States, and it is some of the the most flavorful food he has ever eaten.
Upon arriving back in the United States, he noticed a sickly, tired, generally unwell state of being in Americans, compared to the people who seemed full of life in Lebanon. He described feeling ill for days trying to re-acclimate to the “American diet.”
Brandon Turbeville is a journalist with Activist Post , and he has his own website which you can find her e. He is also the vice editor and a contributor at Era of Wisdom , and you can find an excellent interview with Brandon and James Corbett of the Corbett Report at this link .
This article ( “Kindest People You’ve Ever Met”: American Journalist Describes Lebanon, Syrian Attitude After Trip ) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Era of Wisdom.org . This entry was posted in propaganda . Bookmark the permalink . ← “The Fed Failed ….” And that Changes Everything David S
If you can find it, I would highly recommend watching the PBS series Rick Steve’s Europe – specifically his shows on Iran. What becomes clearly obvious is that when war is sought by the powers that be, and the powers that profit from death and destruction, the propaganda machine goes into full demonization mode. As can be seen in the show, the people of Iran are warm, wonderful people, just like Americans, who simply wish to live their lives in peace, and would likely be much happier if not for the horrible government they have to live under (just like Americans – and I am not distinguishing between democrat and republican in my condemnation – they are BOTH THE SAME). When war is sought, EVERY member of the target group becomes Hitler or worse. The same was done with the Japanese, the Germans, the Italians, and for decades the Soviets. But really, who is the most horrible of the horrible in any society? The government of course. But the government is RARELY the target of the bombs, the missiles, or the occupation and destruction. But hey, they’re just Huns, Gooks, Chinks, Japs, Rag heads, sand niggers, camel jockies, etc……right??? So who cares how many of them get blown to pieces. Well of course that is how Halliburton, Lockeed, the banksters, the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex, etc. want you to think, and thankfully the boot-licking compliant mainstream media is more than happy to paint whatever horrible picture of the country as is needed to engender those feelings. Donate | 0 |
Doors at many Macy’s, Sears and J. C. Penney stores may still be open, but some of the jobs they once supported are starting to vanish. General merchandise stores shed 34, 700 jobs in March, the government announced Friday, the single most disappointing figure in a generally disappointing jobs report. After hitting a low point during the recession in December 2009, the retail sector has reliably been churning out more jobs. Though the Labor Department’s monthly employment summary provides only a snapshot of the labor market, this is the second month in a row that retail payrolls have registered substantial losses — a possible sign that larger structural changes are in the works. “ and technology have absolutely changed the rules of the game and given massive amounts of power to the consumer,” said Simeon Siegel, a retail analyst at Nomura. “There is a mentality now. People walk around with their phones in their hand to tell them the best model and the best price. You don’t need as many people walking around trying to convince you to buy a sweater. ” The vitality of the retail sector has been muscled out of the spotlight lately by a focus on manufacturing jobs, which President Trump sees as crucial to the revival of the middle class, particularly in the Midwest and the South. But retail outlets still employ millions of Americans and serve as an entry point into the labor force, especially for those with less education and fewer skills. Remember that while General Motors was once the single largest employer, today Walmart is. Yet even Walmart is having to contend with a sea change in the way people shop. The company, for instance, has been closing smaller stores in rural areas, according to Barbara Denham, a senior economist at Reis, a real estate data and analytics firm. Jack Kleinhenz, the chief economist at the National Retail Federation, does not discount the magnitude of the transformation that is occurring in retail, but cautioned that the monthly job figures are also highly subject to temporary vagaries. “One of the challenges we have at this time of the year is the quirkiness of seasonal forces,” he said. An unexpectedly warm February and snowy March and the late arrival of Easter could have elbowed the numbers in an uncharacteristic way. The retail employment number, he said, does not necessarily “translate into backsliding of retail sales. ” Diane Swonk, the chief executive of DS Economics in Chicago, agreed. The falloff in hiring “is not a reflection of a consumer than can’t spend, but rather of how they spend,” she said. “Retail is one of the largest employers in the country, and it’s going to go through a pretty massive secular restructuring. We shop differently now, and no one has the right model. ” Most shopping is still done in person rather than online, but shopping patterns are shifting. Ms. Swonk mentioned research that shows consumers like to buy online but return things to stores. “Clearly, it’s just not one or the other, not just bricks or clicks,” she said. But the marketplace is rapidly changing and retailers “are not sure what the endgame is. ” may cause a drop in retail jobs, but a rise in warehouse, distribution and transportation jobs. At the same time, consumers have not only been changing how they shop, but what they buy. Ms. Denham noted that while the entire retail sector ended up down nearly 30, 000 jobs, the restaurant industry showed a gain of 20, 000 in March on top of steady previous growth. “There’s been a shift in consumer spending from things to experiences,” she said, “that’s why restaurants are doing so well. ” | 1 |
A generation of young women is discovering a new way to get buzzed — no illicit substances required. Instead, all that’s needed is a good pair of clippers and some nerve. “Ever since I shaved my head, I really bloomed,” said Alana Derksen, a Toronto resident, whose buzz cut frequently draws admiring comments from her more than 21, 000 Instagram followers. “It’s given me this confidence I never had. ” Ms. Derksen had wanted to shave her head for years but refrained out of fear of how her “conservative” family would react. Then, late one night last summer during a tense trip home, she finally gave in to the impulse, cutting off her hair in her parents’ bathroom and using a Bic razor to finish the job. Now, she said, she’s so used to her bald head, which she maintains with electric clippers, she has nightmares about her hair growing back. Even her parents have come around on the shorn ’do. “At first they thought there was something wrong with me,” she said. “Now they love it. ” Regardless of parental approval, it seems more and more women are taking up the clippers to make a statement — sartorial or otherwise. “I’ve definitely noticed this trend on the streets recently,” said Andrea Donoghue, who owns Laurel, a private studio in the East Village. “I think it’s a trickle down from what’s been happening in fashion lately. ” Models like Ruth Bell, whose career took off after she got buzzed for an Alexander McQueen campaign last year, have helped popularize the style. High fashion has always had an appreciation for a shaved head, but this time even brands like Zara and Forever 21 embraced Ms. Bell. “A client of mine recently came in with a picture of Ruth from a Zara campaign,” Ms. Donoghue recalled. “Before, it was more punk,” said Tamy Glauser, 31, whose nearly buzz cut predates her modeling career. “Now, people are starting to think maybe a shaved head is actually really chic and elegant. It’s not just for skinheads. ” Ms. Glauser has walked the runway for Louis Vuitton for the last five seasons, and credits the designer Nicolas Ghesquière’s stamp of approval for helping to change the fashion industry’s view on bald women. Fashion has always had a symbiotic (some may say parasitic) relationship to subculture. So while the buzz cut is more visible than ever within the fashion community, the trend is undeniably rooted in the street. Take ’s recent Futurewise issue: One of its four covers features a buzz cut on the model Lina Hoss, but inside the issue, which was envisioned as “a global portrait of youth, opinion and style in 2016,” you can spot many more on the teenagers by the publication. “Individuality and androgyny are certainly not a new thing in fashion, but the trend has swung back around due to a larger gender conversation,” said Alastair McKimm, the fashion director at . As awareness of the transgender community dawns in the United States, and as the English language grapples with new gender pronouns, millennials (sometimes called the generation) are placing greater importance on expressing their identity through clothing, makeup — and, yes, hair. “A girl with a buzz cut is like Jaden Smith wearing a skirt,” Ms. Glauser said, referring to Will Smith’s son, who has publicly challenged gender norms through fashion. Ms. Glauser says that people often make assumptions about sexual orientation based on appearances, “but the two have nothing to do with each other. ” “I think it’s good for society to see people going against what we’ve all been taught is the way we’re supposed to dress for our sex and our orientation,” she said. “You realize there’s no right or wrong. ” Even for women who take up the clippers for completely unrelated reasons, the experience can prompt realizations about gender norms. “The first time, it was an impulsive decision,” said Mackenzie Jones, 20, who has kept a shaved head since she was 15, when a bad breakup inspired the act. “But when I look back now, I think I did it — without knowing it at the time — because it was the ultimate rejection of the male gaze. ” Besides the obvious convenience and the aesthetic appeal, Ms. Jones said, she has stuck to the shorn style because, particularly when she was younger, it helped filter out potential suitors who weren’t “on my level. ” (Plenty of guys, she adds, are into the look.) Dressing for one’s self, not one’s paramour, has been a theme in fashion for several seasons now, with the rise of athleisure and the growing importance placed on personal comfort. Unsurprisingly, those values have spread from our clothes to our hair. “Women are moving away from that long, pretty bohemian vibe that was happening for so long and starting to take more risks,” Ms. Donoghue said. “They’re not afraid to not look pretty. ” Before taking the plunge, Ms. Donoghue recommends that buzzers visit a salon to get a professional’s opinion. “Some head shapes are better for the style than others,” she said. For those with unfortunately shaped heads, there is still hope: Ms. Donoghue said there are slight variations on the cut, like a “subtle fade,” in which the hair “hugs the nape and hairline a little tighter and then gradually fades into a round shape,” which tends to be more flattering. or not, what Ms. Donoghue can’t prepare clients for is the ensuing feeling of exposure — and liberation. “A lot of women are very attached to their hair,” Ms. Jones said. “When I was in a bad relationship, my hair was like this mask. Once it’s all gone, you don’t have anything left to change. You have to look yourself in the face and deal with it. It’s really transformative. ” Which is why, regardless of how mainstream it becomes, the buzz cut will always be more than just a hairdo. | 1 |
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon W hen astute political commentary from a half century ago eloquently describes the current political conundrum it means we’ve been stuck in a bad place for a long time. Do we really want Malcolm’s observation to apply four or eight or twenty years further into the future? It’s that time again, it’s presidential election season, and as we hear every four years, THIS is the most important presidential election of our lives. The fact that you’ve heard that before should tell us something. It should us that in presidential years, many old things becomes new again, often because so much of what we’re told IS new is really pretty old. Malcolm X has been dead now a half century, dead for more years than he was ever alive. But since at least one of the tricks and traps deployed to fool, frustrate and neutralize our grandparents’ right to vote hasn’t changed much we might want to listen carefully to what Malcolm’s words in the aftermath of the 1964 presidential election. “ If Johnson had been running all by himself, he would not have been acceptable to anyone. The only thing that made him acceptable to the world was that the shrewd capitalists, the shrewd imperialists, knew that the only way people would run toward the fox would be if you showed them a wolf. So they created a ghastly alternative. And it had the whole world — including people who call themselves Marxists — hoping that Johnson would beat Goldwater.” Like today’s Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was a truly reprehensible and frightening figure, who had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned racial discrimination in public accommodations, and who favored the use of nuclear weapons to defoliate the Vietnamese countryside. Also like Donald Trump, Goldwater never really stood a chance of winning the election. Goldwater the wolf was buried beneath a Johnson landslide, carrying only 6 out of the 50 states. Republican officeholders are running away from Donald Trump not because he’s a racist bufoon but because he’s expected to lose states Republicans are accustomed to winning. The fox, Lyndon Baines Johnson went on to start a war in Indochina that killed three million Vietnamese alone. LBJ defoliated the Vietnamese countryside with millions of tons of Agent Orange instead of nukes, causing hundreds of thousands of hideous and gruesome birth defects that continue to this day. The wolf and the fox this year are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump is a real estate con man, a racist and a hyper-entitled sexual predator who talks about building walls and banning Muslims. Fortunately for us all, Trump has never been in government. Hillary has scarcely ever been out of government. She’s fronted for Wal-Mart, executed bloody regime change in Libya, brought US troops to Ukraine on the Russian border, and publicly itches for a showdown in Syria. Thanks to Wikileaks there is copious evidence that Hillary’s public stands on a wide range of issues from charter schools to so-called trade agreements, to fracking and social security stand in stark contrast to the promises she makes to the powerful. Just as it worked 52 years ago, the overwhelming defeat of her wolvish opponent will give Hillary the appearance of a mandate. But the margin of Hillary’s victory provides those of us on the left an unprecedented opportunity. It means there is no need for those who imagine themselves on the of jobs, justice, peace and the planet to ride to Hilllary’s rescue and ensure the defeat of Donald Trump. Trump has already beaten himself. This election is our best chance to break out of the decades-old two party trap and build a new political force, a new political party. The Green Party is the only peace party, the only party that stands for people and planet over profit, and our only opportunity to vote our hopes, not our fears. It’s time to choose. We vote Green and build Green, we can consign the political conundrum Malcolm X eloquently described a half century ago to the garbage can of history. Or we can vote for Hillary, and Malcolm’s words will be as applicable four or eight years or twenty years from now as they have been for the last fifty. For Black Agenda Radio I’m Bruce Dixon. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP CLICK HERE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and the co-chair of the GA Green party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached at [email protected] [3] . Note to Commenters Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. 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A New Jersey mother was charged with endangering the welfare of a child after her son fatally shot his brother while playing with a gun, the authorities said. Officials with the Essex County prosecutor’s office said the mother, Itiyanah Spruill, 22, of East Orange, N. J. was arrested on Saturday and was also charged with a weapons violation. Bail was set at $310, 000, and she was being held at the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark. East Orange officials said the older boy had been playing with his mother’s gun in the family’s apartment shortly before 11 a. m. on Saturday when he shot his brother in the head. The younger boy died a few hours later at University Hospital in Newark. Ms. Spruill was home when the shooting occurred, the authorities said. Thomas S. Fennelly, chief assistant prosecutor, said that the shooting appeared to have been accidental and that the legal ownership of the gun was under investigation. The brother was released into the custody of a family member, he said. | 1 |
Betty Jo Shelby drew her gun and warned the man to stop walking. But Terence Crutcher continued moving toward his S. U. V. which he had left in the middle of the road, the driver’s side door open and the engine running. He was mumbling to himself, but his hands were raised in the air. Moments later, Officer Shelby fired a single shot, leaving Mr. Crutcher dead in the street. She told investigators she believed he had a weapon. But he was unarmed. Prosecutors indicted her on Thursday on a charge of manslaughter. In many ways, the shooting, which took place in Tulsa, Okla. was a familiar one: A white police officer. An unarmed black man shot dead. A disturbing confrontation captured on video that prompted outrage across the country. But this time, the officer firing the deadly shot was a woman, a rarity in fatal police encounters. “That is an anomaly,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a policy group. “One of things we know from our work on developing training is that the skills that women use in these situations — primarily communication and engaging with the person — are enormously effective in defusing potentially volatile encounters. ” Police officers kill about 1, 000 people each year, according to data collected by Philip M. Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who uses figures from the Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only a handful of those shootings are by female officers. Mr. Stinson’s analysis shows that since 2005, there have been 77 police officers charged with manslaughter or murder for an shooting. Only three of those, including Officer Shelby, were women. The other two were not convicted. Beginning in the 1990s, police departments started recruiting women more aggressively as they sought to minimize the use of excessive force. There are now more than 100, 000 female law enforcement officers in the nation, members of a group that has risen to the highest ranks in Houston, Minneapolis, Seattle and other big cities. The reasons female officers kill less often than their male colleagues has been the subject of only limited research and attributed to a variety of factors. Most notable is that they are represented in only a small percentage of police forces — about 15 percent of departments nationwide, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. Other explanations range from the relative dearth of women who work some of the most dangerous police jobs, such as gang details, to an explanation that is common, though unproved: that female officers are more diplomatic and less confrontational than their male counterparts. But most current female officers interviewed said those stereotypes did not play out in the field. “We have some men that are the first ones we would put in with difficult people because they are such good communicators,” said Jacqueline Luthcke, who is chief of the Ridgewood, N. J. Police Department. She and other female officers pointed to size as one of the only ways that gender might alter their approach to the job. “They don’t have the physical edge in encounters with citizens so, instead, they defuse the situation from the beginning, put more effort into trying to talk their way out of the situation than to try to resort to physical force,” said Jane Castor, a retired chief of the Tampa Police Department. But prosecutors accuse Officer Shelby, 42, who has been on the force for five years, of acting more aggressively than the male officers around her. Officer Shelby was arrested, booked and bonded out on Friday morning at the county criminal justice center. In court documents, Officer Shelby is accused of overreacting to Mr. Crutcher’s refusal to follow her commands and of fearing for her life although she saw no evidence that he was armed. Officer Shelby’s “fear resulted in her unreasonable actions,” and even though Mr. Crutcher was not responsive to her and was walking away from her, she became “emotionally involved to the point that she overreacted,” prosecutors allege in court documents. Although she was armed with a Taser at the time, she pulled out her firearm. A male officer who stood next to her used his Taser on Mr. Crutcher. In a video capturing the shooting, Officer Shelby can be heard shouting, “Shots fired!” Her husband, who is also a Tulsa police officer, was observing from a police helicopter, although it was not clear whether he knew his wife had fired the fatal shot. Female officers say that civilian subjects often react differently to them because of their gender. And the mere presence of a male officer can sometimes be enough to provoke someone, experts say. “I can remember countless incidents where everything would be under control and a male police officer would show up and, all of a sudden, that tension and that testosterone — not saying the male officers did anything inappropriate — but it’s all it takes,” said Ms. Castor, who was an officer for 31 years. But Chief Kristen Ziman of the Aurora, Ill. police said that being a female officer can cut both ways when it comes to using force. “I learned very quickly in my career that I couldn’t rely on my physical strength to effect an arrest like my larger male counterparts,” she said. “Instead, I learned to ‘talk’ people into handcuffs by using human influence and communication skills. ” But she added, “Some females of small stature may be quicker to use force because their opponent is larger and able to physically overtake them. ” When Penny Harrington, who went on to become the country’s first female police chief of a major city, joined the Portland, Ore. Police Department in 1964, women had to wear plain clothes and carry their service weapons in their purses. At that point, female officers in Portland were not allowed to do street patrols. But as more women joined the force in the 1970s, many male officers argued that women were emotionally unfit for the job and would be more likely to resort to lethal force because they were smaller and would be unable to overpower subjects through other means. Research on the subject has ranged from being inconclusive to showing that the opposite is true — that women are less likely to use force, even controlling for their relatively low representation among police forces. The handful of cases in recent years included Lisa Mearkle of the Hummelstown, Pa. police, who in February 2015 tried to pull over a driver for an expired inspection sticker. The driver, David Kassick, 59, sped away. After the subsequent chase ended, Officer Mearkle said she gave repeated commands for Mr. Kassick to raise his hands, but he did not. She initially fired a Taser, and then shot him twice in the back. Officer Mearkle was charged in the killing, but was acquitted by a jury. | 1 |
BEIJING — The ominous images in the video pile up, set to darkly urgent music. Refugees fleeing failed uprisings in the Middle East. Western diplomats and politicians cast as puppet masters of subversion in China. Chinese lawyers abjectly confessing to subversion in show trials. Protests erupting in Hong Kong. “ ‘Color revolution’ has already succeeded in pushing many countries into the flames of war and schism, and its devilish claws are reaching into China,” one of the subtitles in the video reads. It goes on to say: “Embassies in China are at the forward command, combining forces to promote ‘street politics.’ ” The video, which spread on the internet this week, has been widely promoted online by public security offices that oversee the police, including an office of the central Ministry of Public Security. But who ordered its production is unclear. An earlier version surfaced online in August but disappeared from the internet, only to resurface in its current version. Attempts to contact the makers, whose working name, Gewuzhijian, appears at the end of the video and also on Weibo, a Chinese social media service, went unanswered. The video is a phantasmagoria of the Communist Party’s nightmares of Western subversion. The video does not have an official title, but it has been promoted online under the question “Who most wants to overthrow China?” “Color revolution” is the party’s thumbnail term for these fears, and the video, while shoddily made, offers a vivid lesson in how threats to party control — real or imagined — that can seem unrelated to outsiders are often seen inside the party as calculated moves in a grand plot, orchestrated from Washington, to bring it down. The term “color revolution” first gained currency in China to describe antigovernment insurrections in former Soviet bloc countries, which Chinese officials have said were coups inspired by the United States. The party says such uprisings are a template of Western plans for China. This conspiratorial worldview is more than bombast. It is a longstanding theme that has gained greater official credence under President Xi Jinping. That perspective has threaded through the trials of Chinese lawyers and rights advocates convicted and sentenced on subversion charges this year. It was echoed in a meeting this month about strengthening ideological controls in Chinese universities. A law governing foreign nongovernment organizations that takes effect on Jan. 1 was also partly motivated by fears of foreign subversion. “The first option for hostile forces infiltrating us is our education system,” the Chinese minister of education, Chen Baosheng, said in remarks published this month. “To wreck your future, first of all they wreck your schools. ” China has been exposed to the world through trade, travel and the internet, and its citizens are in many ways increasingly sophisticated. Even so, party propaganda remains deeply bound to the view that China faces not just disparate critics and foes, but a closely meshed conspiracy that unites those forces. The video is an especially feverish dose of that worldview. It says plotters and subversives are “stirring up mass incidents and using social tensions as a point to break through and serve as the fuse for ‘color revolution.’ ” They are, the video says, “using foreign nongovernmental organizations to nurture ‘proxies’ and to establish a social basis for ‘color revolution.’ ” Hong Kong, in particular, is depicted as a bridgehead for Western subversion in China. The law professor Benny Tai, the media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, the student leader Joshua Wong and others are lined up as among those “making Hong Kong into a base for ‘color revolution.’ ” The video also refers briefly to booksellers from Hong Kong who were abducted and taken to mainland China last year, prompting an outcry in Hong Kong, which is supposed to have substantial legal autonomy as a Chinese territory. The video says the booksellers, who specialized in lurid and wildly imaginative accounts of China’s political elite, had “traduced the images” of party leaders. Under Mr. Xi, who assumed power four years ago, such videos have become an important part in the party’s propaganda arsenal. “Silent Contest,” produced by China’s National Defense University and issued in 2014, was even more breathless in its depiction of Western threats. But the new video ends on a reassuring note. The dark images and language give way to swelling melodies and images of a bright dawn over the Great Wall. There are pictures of smiling people and of muscular People’s Liberation Army troops. “Thoroughly expelling ‘color revolution’ from China will be a long war,” the video warns. But at the end it declares, “If there is war, we will answer the call. ” | 1 |
The Supreme Court said Friday it will hear a case regarding transgender students’ right to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.
The justices will hear the case sometime next year.
At issue is whether a Virginia high school student is allowed to use the boys’ bathroom. NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports:
“Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old senior in Gloucester County … came out as transgender when he was a freshman in high school. The school principal allowed him to use the boys’ bathroom, until some parents complained, and the school board adopted a policy that required students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their biological sex, or a separate single-stall restroom office.”
So Grimm, who has been taking hormones and has grown facial hair, sued the school board. In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit agreed that his case could proceed. Gloucester County then petitioned the court, and in August, the justices ruled 5-3 that the school board did not have to follow the lower court’s order. Justice Stephen Breyer said he voted to stay the lower court order as a “courtesy” to maintain the status quo while the court considered whether to hear the lawsuit. | 0 |
Print
Students at the University of California, Berkeley held a day of protest on Friday to demand the creation of additional “safe spaces” for transgender and nonwhite students, during which a human chain was formed on a main campus artery to prevent white students from getting to class.
The demonstrators were caught on video blocking Berkeley’s Sather Gate, holding large banners advocating the creation of physical spaces segregated by race and gender identity, including one that read “Fight 4 Spaces of Color.”
Protesters can be heard shouting “Go around!” to white students who attempt to go through the blockade, while students of color are greeted with calls of “Let him through!”
Students turned away by the mob are later shown filing through trees and ducking under branches in order to cross Strawberry Creek, which runs underneath the bridge.
Protesting students went on to march through the Berkeley Student Union, chanting and disrupting students who are studying. | 0 |
Propaganda Alert
Ex-NATO Chief: We Need US As World's Policeman By Dominic Waghorn SKY " - The man who led the West's most powerful alliance through most of the Obama administration has told Sky News that the President has not done enough to prevent conflict.
Former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen says America's next commander-in-chief must do more to lead the world. In an interview, he explained: "I think President Obama has been too reluctant to use military force or threaten to use military force to prevent conflicts in the world.
"We need America as the world's policeman. We need determined American global leadership."
His criticism carries more weight in the closing days of the US election campaign, and reveals the frustration of a man tasked with running the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation during the Obama years.
Regardless of who wins the presidency in less than a week's time, Mr Rasmussen said the US has no choice but to return to the path of greater interventionism.
"Superpowers don't get to retire. Look around you will see a world on fire. Syria torn by war and conflict. Iraq on the brink of collapse. Libya a failed state in North Africa. Russia attacking Ukraine and destabilising Eastern Europe. China flexing its muscles, the rogue state North Korea threatening nuclear attacks.
"All that requires a world policeman to restore international law and order."
Mr Rasmussen also expressed deep concerns about what Donald Trump might do to the world should he win the presidency.
"It might be very dangerous, of course," he said. "We don't know what will be the concrete policies of a Trump administration - but if his statements were to be taken at face value, I consider it could be very dangerous for the world."
The Danish politician's aspirations for greater US global leadership are not shared by millions of Americans, it seems.
They have supported a candidate who has advocated that the US intervenes less in foreign affairs and withdraws more.
On the campaign trail, Mr Trump has said America cannot carry on being the world's policeman.
Whether or not Mr Obama could have done more to prevent conflicts is the focus of intense debate in Washington.
Some blame him for the turmoil roiling the Middle East. Others say he has skilfully managed its fallout, and greater US involvement would only have made matters worse.
Aaron David Miller, who has advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on foreign policy, says even superpowers are limited in what they can achieve - as America's next president will discover.
He said: "(I think) the notion that Mrs Clinton or Mr Trump will somehow be able to come up with comprehensive fixes for the world's problems or America's is an illusion.
"Our constitution talks about creating a more perfect union. Nowhere in the document does it say it is the objective of the American policy to create a more perfect world.
"That does not mean we need to abandon the world. We can't. But it does mean particularly in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan we need to take a very hard look at what American interests are, and figure out the most effective and smart way of protecting them." | 0 |
You are here: Home / US / The BRUTAL Truth About Islamic Law The Left Wants to Hide The BRUTAL Truth About Islamic Law The Left Wants to Hide October 27, 2016
Robert Gehl reports that the terrorist behind the massacre at the Orlando gay bar is the child of Afghan migrants.
That particular group – Afghan migrants – are among the most committed to sharia law, according to .
In fact, almost all Muslims from Afghanistan support the Islamic code -99 percent. Of all the majority-Muslim countries surveyed, Afghanistan had the most pro-sharia.
Immigration from the Middle East is on the rise, but nothing can match the immigration from Afghanistan. While the number of green cards issued to residents of Middle Eastern countries rose by 32 percent, the number issued to Afghan migrants rose a whopping 379 percent, Breitbart is reporting .
Hillary Clinton has made clear that under a Clinton Presidency, these numbers will grow substantially higher. Based on the minimum numbers Clinton has put forth thus far, the U.S. will resettle 730,000 permanent migrants from the Muslim world during her first term alone.
According to NBC, the suspect’s family says the terror attack may have been motivated by Mateen’s hatred for the LGBT community. Mateen’s father says his son was angry over the sight of two men kissing.
At his Friday speech at the Faith and Freedom Summit, Donald Trump addressed Clinton’s plan to import migrants that hold beliefs that are antithetical to Western liberal values.
“Hillary will bring hundreds of thousands of refugees, many of whom have hostile beliefs about people of different faiths and values, and some of whom absolutely and openly support terrorism in our country,” he said. “We don’t need that. We have enough problems.”
Florida now leads the state in resettling refugees. In 2013, 43,184 were accepted by that state. While most of these refugees settling in Florida arrive from Cuba, many arrive from Middle Eastern countries. According to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, the next largest countries to resettle in Florida are (in order) Iraq, Myanmar (Burma), the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Colombia, Afghanistan, Jordan, Pakistan, Syria, and Palestine.
According to data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 91.4 percent of recent refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps and 68.3 percent of recent refugees from the Middle East are on cash welfare. | 0 |
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WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve is waiting for more information about the Trump administration’s economic plans, just like everyone else. After its first policy making meeting of the year, the Fed said on Wednesday that its economic outlook remained essentially unchanged since its previous meeting in December. The nation’s economic expansion has continued, with little sign in the latest data that it is flagging or accelerating. And as expected, the Federal Open Market Committee, which makes monetary policy, left the Fed’s benchmark interest rate unchanged. The question is what comes next. Fed officials said in the weeks before the meeting Wednesday that their uncertainty about the outlook had increased. President Trump has proposed significant shifts in economic policy — including changes in taxation, regulation and trade — that could affect growth. “The statement is written such that the F. O. M. C. will be able to adjust monetary policy as needed in response to the fiscal and trade policies of the administration,” said Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays. At its December meeting, the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate for just the second time since the financial crisis. After the increase of a quarter point, the rate now ranges from 0. 5 percent to 0. 75 percent, still very low by historical standards. Low rates encourage borrowing and contributing to faster economic growth. By raising rates, the Fed is gradually reducing the force of that stimulus. Fed officials predicted in December that they would raise the benchmark rate three times this year. But they have cautioned that changes in fiscal policy could alter those plans. If Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans seek to increase growth, for example by cutting taxes or spending a lot on infrastructure and the military, the Fed could raise rates more quickly. If Mr. Trump’s policies weigh on growth, the Fed could move more slowly. The only hint of those pressures in the Fed’s latest statement was a mention of increased public optimism about the outlook for the nation’s economy. “Measures of consumer and business sentiment have improved of late,” it said. Fed officials are watching fiscal policy makers closely because the Fed has concluded that the American economy is growing at something close to the maximum sustainable pace, meaning that, in the Fed’s view, faster growth would probably lead to higher inflation. Changes in fiscal policy are most likely to have a gradual impact, however, so the tension between the Fed and fiscal policy makers may play out mostly in coming years. “The committee is probably still in a mode as far as fiscal policy is concerned,” said Kevin Logan, chief United States economist at HSBC. The Fed’s assessment of economic conditions remained upbeat. The latest data showed “the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity has continued to expand at a moderate pace,” the statement said. “Job gains remained solid and the unemployment rate stayed near its recent low. ” Fed officials spoke in similarly optimistic tones in the weeks before the meeting. “All in all, things are looking good,” Patrick T. Harker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, said in . “We’re starting 2017 off on a good foot. ” But seven years of tepid growth have not restored the economy to full health. The unemployment rate stood at 4. 7 percent in December, a level most Fed officials regard as nearly normal. Other labor market measures, however, remain weak. Wage growth is tepid, and the employment to population ratio for people 25 to 54 was 78. 2 percent in December. The Fed’s preferred measure of price inflation, the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ index of personal consumption expenditures, rose by 1. 6 percent in 2016, the strongest performance in more than two years. But inflation remains below the Fed’s goal of a 2 percent annual pace — a goal the Fed has not achieved since 2011. The vote to leave rates unchanged was unanimous, the Fed said. And the tempered language of the statement led investors to mark down the modest chance of a rate increase at the Fed’s next meeting, in March, from about 20 percent before the February statement to about 18 percent afterward, CME Group said. Janet L. Yellen, chairwoman of the Fed, will have a chance to elaborate on the central bank’s economic outlook and policy plans when she delivers a semiannual report on monetary policy to Senate and House committees on Feb. 14 and 15. In the meantime, the Fed is the rare corner of official Washington where nothing is happening. Contrasting a lively week at the White House and on Capitol Hill with the Fed’s announcement, Michael Feroli, the chief United States economist at JPMorgan Chase, declared the Fed’s headquarters “the most boring spot in Washington. ” | 1 |
SAVANNAH, Ga. — A few years back, the manufacturer JCB held a job fair in the glass foyer of its sprawling headquarters near here, but when a throng of prospective employees learned the next step would be drug testing, an alarming thing happened: About half of them left. That story still circulates within the business community of this historic port city. But the problem has gotten worse. All over the country, employers say they see a disturbing downside of tighter labor markets as they try to rebuild from the worst recession since the Depression: They are struggling to find workers who can pass a drug test. That hurdle partly stems from the growing ubiquity of drug testing, at corporations with big human resources departments, in industries like trucking where testing is mandated by federal law for safety reasons, and increasingly at smaller companies. But data suggest employers’ difficulties also reflect an increase in the use of drugs, especially marijuana — employers’ main gripe — and also heroin and other opioid drugs much in the news. Ray Gaster, the owner of lumberyards on both sides of the Carolina border, recently joined friends at a retreat in Alabama to swap business talk. The big topic? Drug tests. “They were complaining about trying to find drivers, or finding people, who are and can do some of the jobs that they have,” Mr. Gaster said. He shared their concern. Drug use in the work force “is not a new problem. Back in the ’80s, it was pretty bad, and we brought it down,” said Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation. But, she added, “we’ve seen it edging back up some,” and increasingly, both employers and industry associations “have expressed exasperation. ” Data on the scope of the problem is sketchy because figures on job applicants who test positive for drugs miss the many people who simply skip tests they cannot pass. Nonetheless, in its most recent report, Quest Diagnostics, which has compiled data since 1988, documented an increase for a second consecutive year in the percentage of American workers who tested positive for illicit drugs — to 4. 7 percent in 2014 from 4. 3 percent in 2013. And 2013 was the first year in a decade to show an increase. John Sambdman, who employs about 100 people in Atlanta at Samson Trailways, which provides transportation for schools, events, tour groups and the military, must test job applicants and, randomly, employees. Many job seekers “just don’t bother to show up at the place,” he complained. Just on Thursday, Mr. Sambdman said, an applicant failed a drug test. In August, Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia promised to develop a program to help because so many business owners tell him “the No. 1 reason they can’t hire enough workers is they can’t find enough people to pass a drug test. ” That program is still under discussion. When job seekers contact Georgia’s Department of Labor, which provides some recruitment services to employers, the state would like to begin testing them for drugs individuals who test positive could receive drug counseling and ultimately job placement assistance, Mark Butler, the state labor commissioner, said in an interview. “Obviously, it’s not an easy process, and it would be costly,” Mr. Butler said. “But you’ve got to think: What is the reverse of that?” People needed to fill jobs are turned away, and, he added, “it’s pretty much a national issue. ” In Indiana, Mark Dobson, president of the Economic Development Corporation of Elkhart County, said that when he went to national conferences, the topic was “such a common thread of conversation — whether it’s in an area like ours that’s really enjoying very low unemployment levels or even areas with more moderate employment bases. ” In Colorado, “to find a roofer or a painter that can pass a drug test is ” said Jesse Russow, owner of Avalanche Roofing Exteriors, in Colorado Springs. That was true even before Colorado, like a few other states, legalized recreational use of marijuana. In a sector where employers like himself tend to rely on Latino workers, Mr. Russow tried to diversify three years ago by recruiting white workers, vetting about 80 people. But, he said, “As soon as I say ‘criminal background check,’ ‘drug test,’ they’re out the door. ” While the employers’ predicament is worsened by a smaller hiring pool, the drug problem for those that require testing is not as bad as it once was. “If we go back to 1988, the combined U. S. work force positivity was 13. 6 percent when drug testing was new,” said Dr. Barry Sample, Quest’s director of science and technology. But two consecutive years of increases are worrisome, he said. A much broader data trove, the federal government’s annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health, reported in September that one in 10 Americans ages 12 and older reported in 2014 that they had used illicit drugs within the last month — the largest share since 2001. Taken together, Dr. Sample said, his data and the government’s indicate higher drug use among those who work for employers without a program than workers who are tested, though use by the latter increased as well in 2013 and 2014. Testing dates to the Reagan administration. The 1988 Workplace Act required most employers with federal contracts or grants to test workers. In 1991, Congress responded to a deadly 1987 train crash in which two operators tested positive for marijuana by requiring testing for all “safety sensitive” jobs regulated by the Transportation Department. Those laws became the model for other employers. Some states give businesses a break on workers’ compensation insurance if they are certified as . Here at the main yard of Gaster Lumber and Hardware, faded certificates and signs (“Drugs Don’t Work Here”) attest to its certification as a workplace since 1994. Mr. Gaster’s human resources director, Chuck Keller, said that status reduced workers’ compensation payments for its nearly 50 employees by 7. 5 percent in Georgia and 5 percent in South Carolina. The savings, about $4, 000 this year, offset costs of about $2, 500 for laboratory and testing and related requirements. “We’re always short of drivers,” Mr. Gaster said, “and drug testing is part of it. ” Terry Donaldson, 53, who was tested when he started 20 years ago, supports the policy: “If they want to have a good job, the drugs got to go. ” So it was for some of his new . Britt Sikes, 38 and a single father to three young girls, lost his teeth to methamphetamine and used marijuana since he was 8 — until three weeks before taking the test for his $ job as a Gaster door installer. “I’m a recovering drug addict myself, and to raise my girls, I had to learn to leave it alone,” Mr. Sikes said. Kevin Canty, 55, said that in his experience, “most people can’t pass the drug test because they don’t want to pass a drug test. ” “They want the job,” he added, but “they still want to be in that lifestyle. And they have to choose. ” One of the newest hires, Frederick Brown, 34, said, “I come from a society where drugs is common — marijuana, weed, it’s common,” and people who cannot pass a drug test seek work at McDonald’s. Most restaurants do not test. “I asked for this job,” Mr. Brown said, calling it a blessing. “I already knew what I had to do — you know what I’m saying?” | 1 |
America’s Rocky Road to Raqqa Though the U.S. has no legal right to operate inside Syria, Official Washington is boasting about its plans to liberate Raqqa from ISIS. But another problem: the battle plan makes no sense, says Daniel Lazare.
By Daniel Lazare
In her final debate with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton promised that the United States and its allies would follow up the offensive against ISIS-occupied Mosul with an assault on ISIS headquarters in Raqqa in neighboring Syria. Last week, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter assured the press that an offensive was on the way.
“It starts in the next few weeks,” Carter said . “That has long been our plan and we will be capable of resourcing both,” i.e. dual assaults on Mosul and Raqqa. President Barack Obama delivers a statement on confronting the terrorist group, Islamic State, in Syria, on the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 23, 2014. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)
“We think this is the right moment to begin pushing in Raqqa,” a Pentagon spokesman added on Monday. “There is a plan in place to begin this.”
Except that the more the administration assures the public that an assault is just around the corner, the more distant it seems to become. In fact, it looks more and more like an assault on Raqqa won’t occur at all. The reason is simple. The strategy is half-baked even by U.S. standards.
The effort to take back Mosul is off to a dangerous enough start as it is. The problem is not the military campaign, which seems to be making good progress as Iraqi troops enter the city for the first time in two years . Rather, it is the larger political setting.
Powerful cross-currents are at work involving the Iraqi army, Turkey, Iranian-backed Shi‘ite militias known as Popular Mobilization Forces, or Al-Hashd al-Shaabi, and the Kurdish Peshmerga. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman president, has unsettled the Iraqis by claiming that Mosul lies within his country’s traditional sphere of influence and by vowing to protect the city’s Sunni population against revenge by Al-Hashd for anti-Shi‘ite atrocities committed by ISIS (also known as ISIL, Islamic State, and Daesh).
Unfortunately, Erdogan’s fears are not unfounded since Al-Hashd has already been accused of atrocities in Tikrit and Fallujah while at least one militia leader has sworn to take vengeance in Mosul as well. Clinton’s Slog Deeper into the Big Muddy .”]
Although the Iraqi government has promised that the militias will confine their activities to the city’s outskirts, the Iraqi army is seen as hardly less threatening since its Shi‘ite flags are now ubiquitous . Mosul residents also feel threatened by the Kurds since they remember all too well when the Peshmerga took over in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion, sparking a wave of looting that stripped the city clean .
Shi‘ite militia members similarly remember when they clashed with the Kurds in the central Iraqi town of Tuz Khurma as recently as April and are leery of coming into contact with them as well.
Leery ‘Allies’
So everyone is leery of everyone else, which means that the more such forces converge on Mosul, the greater the risk that years of accumulated fears and hatreds will reach a critical mass and explode. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, at the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 20, 2016 (UN Photo)
Erdogan is meanwhile refusing to abandon a military beachhead that he maintains in the small town of Bashiqa a few miles to the northeast, while Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is threatening that Turkey will be “ dismantled ” if it tries to mount a full-scale invasion.
“We do not want war with Turkey,” Abadi said, “and we do not want a confrontation with Turkey. But if a confrontation happens, we are ready for it. We will consider [Turkey] an enemy and we will deal with it as an enemy.”
Turkey’s reply has been to continue massing troops, tanks, and other military hardware on the Iraqi border just 90 miles to the north. On Wednesday, it piled on yet more abuse as Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu demanded of Abadi, “If you have the strength, why did you surrender Mosul to terror organizations?”
But as dangerous as all this is, the situation some 280 miles to the west around Raqqa in Syria is even worse. As the U.S. tries to assemble a force capable of taking on ISIS, it finds itself picking its way through a list of contenders that is little short of dizzying.
In addition to Syria, Russia and Turkey, the list includes the so-called Free Syrian Army; Kurdish People’s Protection Units known as the YPG; Sunni Arabs who have joined with the YPG in an umbrella federation known as the Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF; plus the same Iranian-backed Shi‘ite militias in Iraq that have lately begun threatening to cross the border and join in the assault on Raqqa as well.
Also dizzying are the local animosities. While Turkey gets along well with Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq, the story is very different in northern Syria, where the left-leaning YPG is dominant. Since the YPG’s parent body, the Kurdish Democratic Union, is allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been leading an insurgency inside Turkey since the 1980s, Erdogan sees the militia as no better than Islamic State and possibly even worse.
The YPG feels the same way, describing Erdogan and ISIS as nothing less than brothers under the skin. The YPG is hostile to the Free Syrian Army since it took part in last summer’s Turkish incursion into northern Syria, whose primary goal was to prevent Kurdish militia units in northeastern Syria from hooking up with fellow YPG fighters in the northwest. The FSA, meanwhile, is not only anti-YPG but anti-U.S. even though its Turkish sponsors are nominally pro.
Thus, Free Syrian Army members erupted in anti-American chanting when a convoy of U.S. commandoes showed up in the Turkish-occupied town of Al-Rai in mid-September, forcing the Americans to flee .
“Christians and Americans have no place among us,” one militant shouted . “They want to wage a crusader war to occupy Syria.” Another called out: “The collaborators of America are dogs and pigs. They wage a crusader war against Syria and Islam.”
This is one of the groups that Washington classifies as “secular” and “moderate.” Still, Washington’s hope is that the various factions will put their differences aside long enough to “liberate” Raqqa. The prospect seems unlikely especially since fighting between the Turkish-backed FSA and the YPG seems to be spreading.
Turkey Killing Kurds
On Oct. 20, Turkish jets and artillery pounded YPG-SDF positions northeast of Aleppo, killing as many as 200 fighters. Since then, the two groups – Turkey and the Free Syrian Army on one side, the YPG and anti-Turkish Arabs of the SDF on the other – have been engaged in a struggle for control of ISIS-occupied Al-Bab, 20 miles or so south of the Turkish border and roughly the same distance northeast of Aleppo. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Photo credit: Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom / ABr)
If Turkish-FSA forces take Al-Bab, then Kurdish hopes of linking up their forces in northeastern and northwestern Syria will have been dashed. The FSA would then be in a position to push east to Raqqa, which would mean a clash with both the main body of the YPG and ISIS. Or, as the often perceptive Moon of Alabama website suggests , it could instead wheel about and attempt to relieve its fellow Salafists besieged in Aleppo.
That would mean a head-on collision with Syrian government forces and exposure to Russian jets, a point that a Syrian government helicopter drove home last week by bombing Turkish-FSA forces engaged in combat with the YPG.
Internecine warfare like this can only benefit Islamic State, an undisputed expert at using its opponents’ differences to its own advantage. This is why it was able to put down roots in Syria in the first place – because the U.S. was too busy trying to topple Bashar al-Assad to worry about an Al Qaeda offshoot that Obama famously dismissed as nothing more than “ a JV team .”
It’s also why Islamic State was able to establish bases and supply lines in Turkey – because Erdogan was more concerned with fighting Assad and the Kurds to concern himself with what his fellow Sunnis were up to. A northern Syrian and Iraqi landscape torn by infighting is perfect for a hyper-violent Sunni-Salafist group skilled at playing one group off against another.
The White House dimly senses that it has gotten itself into a mess, which is why officials turn vague and inscrutable whenever reporters press for details concerning a reported assault on Raqqa. The problem, as the U.S. officials see it, is that Erdogan remains unalterably opposed to the YPG-SDF even though it is the only ground force capable of fighting Islamic State. Hence, it is impossible to take Raqqa without alienating a fellow member of NATO.
“We do not need terrorist organizations like the PYD-YPG,” Erdogan says he told Obama in an Oct. 26 phone call , referring to the militia and Kurdish Democratic Union. “I said, ‘Come, let’s remove [Islamic State] from Raqqa together. We will sort this out together with you.’ We have the strength.”
The U.S. doubts that Erdogan does have that capability yet is unable to say no. The upshot is talks, negotiations, and growing delays. Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria expert at the neocon Institute for the Study of War, grouses that the administration is “stalling” while, on the other side of the debate, foreign-policy “realists” wonder why the administration is rushing ahead with a strategy that it knows won’t work.
Skeptical Analysis
In a hard-hitting analysis in the conservative but often skeptical National Interest, Daniel L. Davis, a retired army colonel and Afghan veteran, points out that whereas a national army, well-armed militias, U.S. ground and intelligence forces, and “resupply lines through friendly territory” are all in place in northern Iraq, “none of those things exist” with regard to Raqqa. The political problems, he adds, are even more daunting. Map of Syria.
When Kurdish units liberated the ISIS-occupied town of Manbij in August, Davis notes, grateful residents told YPG members, “You are our children, you are our heroes, you are the blood of our hearts.” Yet the YPG’s reward was to be denounced as terrorists by Erdogan and instructed to leave by the U.S.
“What possible assurances could the United States give to the Kurds,” Davis writes, “that upon successful liberation of Raqqa, the Turkish army isn’t going to turn on them? Why would the Turks bomb the Kurdish troops one day and then work with them the next, or allow the Kurds to maintain a presence after liberating Raqqa? There is no recognizable logic in these unsubstantiated hopes.”
Davis is correct. But, then, there is no recognizable logic in the Obama administration’s intervention in Syria in general. Why insist that Assad step down, for example, when the only effect will be to clear a path for Al Qaeda and Islamic State straight through to the presidential palace in Damascus?
Why back a Turkish incursion into northern Syria when the only result is to infuriate Kurds who are the only effective anti-ISIS fighting force that the U.S. has on its side? Why insist that the U.S. wants a democratic solution to the Syrian civil war when the countries backing the anti-Assad forces, i.e. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab oil monarchies, are some of the most undemocratic societies on earth?
None of it makes sense. But since the Israelis, Turks and Saudis all want Assad to go, the Obama administration feels that it has no choice but to comply. How else can it keep a fractious empire together if not by catering to its client states’ whims and desires?
When empires are strong, they can afford to say no. But when they are weak and over-extended, they do as they are told. This is why the U.S. is frozen with regard to Raqqa. It can’t disappoint its allies by calling an assault off, and it can’t push ahead with a plan that doesn’t add up. So it dawdles.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace). | 0 |
by Jon Rappoport, Activist Post :
“If Donald Trump can help her [Hillary] heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing to do.” —Kellyanne Conway, former Trump campaign manager
Donald Trump achieved two great things in his presidential campaign: he stopped Hillary Clinton from occupying the White House, and he ran against the media by attacking them mercilessly.
Everything else is up for grabs. We will see.
Already, he has made some “errors.” The appointment of Mike Pompeo as CIA director is a bad move. Pompeo, as a congressman, introduced the Dark Act, which now prevents the states from requiring GMO labels on food. And he favors the death sentence for Edward Snowden.
Multiple media outlets are reporting that Trump will not attempt to prosecute Hillary Clinton. This is on the level of lowering the window shades for a vampire as dawn breaks. Hillary was certainly guilty in the email case, and the Clinton Foundation is a pay-for-play money laundering operation of global proportions—a private and parallel State Department, in which cash is the only standard for “diplomacy.” And these charges are mere low-hanging fruit on the Clinton crime family tree.
Pursuing justice is supposed to be a Trump hallmark.
Politics in the Matrix is a tap dance and a shuffle. Deals and compromises are made all the way along the line. Washington and its media allies suck their very life juices from those deals. Like some fungus, they thrive in the dark every-day corruption of This traded for That. In many ways, Trump exclaimed he was above the game. The deals he was going to make would all be on the side of benefiting America—so he has a price to pay for asserting he was most definitely a different character on the political scene.
That unbridled assertion was what drove huge numbers of people to show up at his rallies all over the country. They wanted an outsider who had a serious ax to grind with Washington and the media. They wanted him to be angry and outraged—because they were, too. They didn’t want a great healer, because justice comes before healing.
Many of them had felt the effects of Globalism and its grotesque trade treaties. They were out of work, and he was going to bring back jobs. But that wasn’t their only motivation. They knew their jobs had been stolen by anti-American elites, and they wanted the sword of justice to fall on those elites. They knew Hillary Clinton was an arch-Globalist.
For these millions of Trump supporters, forgiving and forgetting and moving on isn’t presidential. It smells bad. They were never part of the glazed-over New Age crowd, and they aren’t now. The cheese-glob “coming together” isn’t in their lexicon. They don’t view anger as a character defect or a “compensatory” response that traces back into early childhood. They want bad people to pay for their crimes.
Hillary Clinton would be at the top of their list. Helping her heal is a sick joke. They want her in prison where she belongs. They know her constant vapid calls for “national unity” during the campaign were a straight-out con, a cover for her lust for power.
They see nothing redeeming about her. It’s simple: she fights the good and embraces evil. Therefore, she should be punished.
Doing so would set an example and a course for the Trump administration: we don’t back away, we don’t back down. We aren’t separating “campaign talk” from presidential action. We’re not trying to make that phony distinction.
If Trump prosecuted Hillary to the full extent of the law, then of course the owls would come out hooting: he’s vengeful; he can’t let go; he’s mean; he’s spiteful; he’s a cruel sadist; this goes beyond any civilized sense of propriety befitting a real leader.
Yes? And? So?
So what?
Is Trump the same man now that he was when he was campaigning?
Even asking that question seems naïve, because of course we know all politicians rearrange themselves after they win a victory. But Trump portrayed himself as very, very different. He stood on that difference. He celebrated it. He reveled in it. He took great pleasure in it.
Now, he has to pay the price.
His supporters don’t want to hear some garbled nonsense about how prosecuting Hillary would create a giant distraction from the job of leading the country. Trump’s whole campaign was a distraction from politics as usual. That’s what gave him strength.
Prosecuting Hillary Clinton now would be counter-intuitive and outrageous, and therefore it would be the most Trumpian thing Trump could do.
It would give him more support from his millions of people.
And it would be right and correct and it would deliver justice where justice has been needed for a very long time.
And when the whole host of sordid details about Hillary’s crimes came spilling out into the light, people who pride themselves on being in the camp of the “beautiful and virtuous” would realize who they have been defending.
It would provide a valuable lesson, and the price of admittance to that show would trump the decades of waiting America has endured in the case of The People vs. Hillary Clinton.
This case has now been canceled.
Donald Trump achieved two great things in his presidential campaign: he stopped Hillary Clinton from occupying the White House, and he ran against the media by attacking them mercilessly. Failing to prosecute Hillary is not a great thing. It is a very bad thing. | 0 |
Hillary’s So Pissed At FBI, But Here’s The 1 Person Who Really Screwed Her Posted on October 31, 2016 by Rebecca Diserio in Politics Share This
Hillary Clinton and all of her supporters are freaking out over FBI Director James Comey’s recent re-opening of the email scandal investigation, saying he has new information coming from a forgotten Huma Abedin laptop. Hillary is so pissed, she has been on a tirade, blasting Comey and Donald Trump, but she forgot one thing — and that is the one person who really screwed her. Hillary Clinton is pissed off.
Poor Hillary Clinton, since stepping into the White House back in 1992, she has imagined herself sitting in the Oval Office as the one with all the power. She has conspired and broken laws, killed men in Benghazi, and lied about their deaths, but now, it looks like its all for nothing.
If only she could live in reality for 20 seconds, she would realize the one person who screwed her was staring back at her in the mirror. Everything that has happened is because she decided or rather insisted that all her crimes involving her own home based server be covered up.
She was warned when she became Secretary of State that all emails having to do with government business must go through the “dot gov” system. She had to take a class on how to handle classified documents, and after the class, she had to sign a document confirming that she understood all of her work emails must stay on the “dot gov” system.
Why? Was this just a stupid rule that had no real life consequences? No. People’s lives are at risk. Our troop’s movements are in those emails. The information about CIA spies, who are risking their lives in foreign countries, are in those emails. Who needs a class to understand what is at stake?
So, how can she get pissed off about this investigation and say over and over “it was a mistake, there is no case with the FBI”? A mistake? A mistake is an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong. Intentionally going against all protocols and putting the lives of others in danger is a crime. Hillary Clinton in August 2015
Here’s what Rush Limbaugh said:
“They’ve nominated somebody that’s under constant FBI investigation, and there are four different investigations into the Clinton Foundation. Do not doubt me when I tell you that within the inner circles of the Democrat Party, they are very worried about this. Even if she gets elected, they’re very worried about it, because of what it portends for her presidency. This woman is corrupt. She and her husband are constantly engaged in things that place them under investigation, for 30 years .” [via Rush Limbaugh.com ]
Hillary is so pissed off, but for those of us who have suffered through watching her tear apart this nation, sell influence to foreign entities in the “pay for play” scandals, leave our men in Benghazi to die while blaming it on a video, and lie under oath numerous times, well, we couldn’t be happier.
American women have no business voting for Hillary as the first woman American president. What kind of a legacy is that for our daughters and granddaughters? How will those women who backed her and voted for her ever explain that the first woman president was the biggest criminal ever to hold that office?
She is a monster, and I’m tired of her supporters crying now that it’s falling apart. The only person to blame is Hillary Clinton, and anyone who can’t see her clearly is delusional. No one made her commit crimes that she needed to cover up with a home based server. Put her in prison, where she belongs, and throw away the keys. | 0 |
Inmates were holding two people hostage at a Delaware prison on Wednesday night in a standoff that began in the morning and left at least one prison employee injured, officials said. The hostages were taken at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, near the town of Smyrna, between Wilmington and Dover. It is the state’s largest prison, with 2, 500 inmates in and units. At a news conference on Wednesday night, officials revealed that a total of 27 inmates had been released by the but it was unclear whether they had been held against their will and how many inmates remained. Officials said four staff members had initially been taken hostage. Early accounts put that number at five, though officials said one person had not been accounted for at first but was later found to be safe. Robert Coupe, the secretary of the Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security, said at the news conference at about 8:15 p. m. that the authorities were communicating with the inmates via a radio belonging to a correctional officer. Inmates also have access to television and may have been watching a live broadcast of the news conference, he added. At 10:32 a. m. “a correctional officer made a radio call for immediate assistance from within C Building, which houses over 100 inmates,” Sgt. Richard Bratz of the Delaware State Police said at a news conference earlier on Wednesday. The building houses inmates who are making the transition to medium security. Other correction officers responded to the distress call, and the prison was placed on lockdown, but inmates took four employees hostage. At about 2:40 p. m. one hostage was set free and taken by ambulance to a hospital, Sergeant Bratz said, “with injuries. ” Eight inmates were released at 5:20 p. m. Shortly before 8 p. m. another staff member and 19 inmates were released. Their conditions were not immediately known. The News Journal newspaper reported that a woman had called its newsroom, stated that she was a hostage and haltingly read a statement that she said had been given to her by the inmates, complaining of mistreatment. She said the prisoners had forbidden her to give her name, and when asked how many inmates were holding her, she said she did not know because “they’ve got my face covered. ” Officials declined to discuss specifics of the inmates’ demands. Mr. Coupe said that once the takeover was resolved peacefully, “a dialogue can start then. ” Scores of law enforcement officers in riot gear, with armored vehicles, gathered around the prison’s buildings. Sergeant Bratz said officials were in contact with the but he gave no details about their demands or the progress of negotiations. “We are doing everything we can to ensure the safety of everyone involved,” he said. As a precaution, the Department of Correction placed all of the state’s prisons on lockdown. On a rural road along the prison perimeter, Carla Vereen was waiting in her car for news of her husband, who has worked in the prison as a corrections officer for 16 years. Ms. Vereen said she had not heard directly from her husband or from the prison authorities since the hostage crisis began. Also waiting was a former inmate, Rollin Lee Laub, who said he was not surprised to hear the reports that some inmates had taken hostages. “They took everything from these guys so they had nothing but idle time, which is the devil’s workshop,” said Mr. Laub, who was released from the prison in 2014 after serving almost 40 years. | 1 |
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Amanda Delekta, a sophomore at the University of Michigan and political director of the College Republicans, was ecstatic when her candidate, Donald J. Trump, won the presidential election. But her mood of celebration quickly faded when students held an evening vigil on campus — to mourn the results — and her biology teacher suspended class on the assumption, Ms. Delekta said, that students would be too upset to focus. She was outraged. “Nobody has died,” Ms. Delekta said. “The United States has not died. Democracy is more alive than ever. Simply put, the American people voted and Trump won. ” She circulated an online petition and accused the university president of catering to the liberal majority by suggesting that “their ideology was superior to the ideology of their peers,” as she put it, when he sent out an email publicizing the vigil and listing counseling resources for students upset by the election. Three days later, she was invited to meet with the president in his office. “I was completely shocked that he even read the letter,” she said. “That was definitely a new thing. It was very exciting. ” Conservatives and liberals on campuses across the country have been clashing throughout the campaign — and throughout this year of protest. But the conflict has gained new intensity since the election, and students, faculty and administrators say they expect tension to get worse once the presidential baton is passed on Inauguration Day in January. Conservative students who voted for Mr. Trump say that even though their candidate won, their views are not respected. Some are adopting the language of the left, saying they need a “safe space” to express their opinions — a twist resented by protesters. Administrators are struggling to maintain a balance between political factions. But some college presidents have entered the fray with statements that seem more sympathetic to the left, in some cases provoking a backlash. To Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, and a veteran of student protests in the 1960s, it all seems familiar — and a possible harbinger of conflict to come. Dr. Gitlin said that the ’60s, about which he wrote an influential book, were often seen as a radical decade, but that it was more accurate to call it a polarized time. Conservatives were strong on campus, particularly in the early part of the decade, he said, and it was only later that the academic culture came to be viewed as majority liberal. “I was at Michigan for two years in ’63 to ’65, so I can tell you there was a very widespread movement,” Dr. Gitlin said. For conservative students like Ms. Deletka, the messages from university officials, seemingly assuming that everyone on campus was upset about the election result, were particularly offensive. At Columbia, the provost, John H. Coatsworth, sent out an email on Nov. 21 that began, “The presidential election has prompted intense concern for the values we hold dear and for members of our community who are apprehensive about what the future holds. ” The day after the election, Biddy Martin, president of Amherst College in Massachusetts, called for tolerance and acknowledged that some people might be rejoicing. But she also said in a speech on campus: “In the mirror we see virulent forms of racism, misogyny, homophobia and other ills and we see them celebrated by some as though the expression of our worst impulses were the definition of human freedom. ” Amherst also saw a bit of a controversy surrounding a professor who was singled out for his views. The professor, Hadley Arkes, an emeritus professor of political science, pulled out a bottle of champagne in his political science class to celebrate Mr. Trump’s election. An editorial in The Amherst Student newspaper criticized him for bringing alcohol to class, and suggested that college officials hold him “accountable” for supporting a candidate the paper’s editorial board thought was bigoted, homophobic and misogynist. “There are students on this campus whose lives and civil liberties will be compromised in the next four years,” the editorial said. “Not only does Amherst’s nonpartisan stance invalidate their struggles, but brash and insensitive political partisanship creates irreparable scars. ” Dr. Arkes said that he had offered students in his class a spectrum of ways to express their feelings postelection. For students who were grieving, he recited the Kaddish, the Jewish mourner’s prayer. For those who were celebrating, he quoted Churchill about not gloating: “In victory, magnanimity. ” Finally, in what he said was intended as a comic gesture, he pulled out the champagne. But mindful that he might be accused of offering an alcoholic beverage to underage students, he did not uncork it. Now it seemed, he said, that some people just could not take a joke. “There is no urbanity or humor — or the wit to deal with challenge, grave or light,” he wrote in an email. “They can respond only in ‘boilerplate,’ quite predictable reflexes — so predictable that I did predict it easily. ” The mood is muted at more conservative campuses, students and professors said. Erika Meitner, a creative writing professor at Virginia Tech, said that there was a strange quietness on her campus, and that she was not sure whether to think of it as détente or the calm before the storm. Ms. Meitner said that as a leader of small poetry seminars, she knew a lot about her students’ private lives. So she has been struck by how they have kept their reactions to the election to themselves. “It’s really weird, because I know all of their breakups,” she said. “I know when their cat died, because they write poems about this. ” Tim Sands, the president of Virginia Tech, was one of the rare college presidents who explicitly suggested in his postelection message that students might have a range of emotions about the outcome, or as he put it, be experiencing feelings “from vindication to shock, from outright fear to enthusiasm. ” Michigan students say that before the election, attitudes were less intense. “It was more like friendly banter, little side comments, but it wasn’t really serious,” said Anna Giacomini, an elected representative to the student government for the liberal arts college at the university. Now tensions are heightened. According to a campuswide message from Mark Schlissel, the university’s president, bias incidents have been reported. A student walking near campus was threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab. Other students were accused of being racist for supporting Mr. Trump. A few days ago, Ms. Delekta and two fellow Republican students sat down at a local restaurant, Sava’s, to talk about the campus mood with several students with views. The conversation soon grew tense as the students were unable to agree on almost anything. Ms. Delekta described how she had been offended when a classmate wondered why as a “white female,” she had not voted for Hillary Clinton. She resented what she saw as identity politics on campus. “My identity is so much more than my race and my gender,” Ms. Delekta said. “We’re all so much more similar than we think. ” She was able to separate Mr. Trump’s policies from his personal attitudes toward women, she said later. “I’m not electing a grandpa or a babysitter,” Ms. Delekta said. Ibtihal Makki, a senior in a pink hijab who is studying biopsychology and neuroscience and is chairwoman of a student government diversity committee, objected to conservatives on campus saying they needed safe spaces to express their views. “To turn around and say that they need safe spaces after their candidate won I think is ironic and hypocritical,” Ms. Makki said. In the past, she added, conservatives did not understand the need for safe spaces, “because they never needed it, because they don’t have any of the identities that made them feel that way. ” White conservatives like Ms. Delekta, Ms. Makki said, are not as vulnerable as someone with dark skin or who is wearing a hijab, because she cannot be identified as a conservative by any outward signs. Another student, Maryam Ahmed, said she had been one of about 1, 000 students who marched in the campus vigil the day after the election. She said the marchers were positive but feared for their safety. Her friends were passing on text messages — which turned out to be false — warning that white militias were going to invade the streets of Ann Arbor. “There was definitely a divisiveness that came on campus postelection,” she said. “The election was like a needle poking into a bubble. ” She said she was hopeful the climate would improve, but added: “I could be wrong. It could get worse. ” When Ms. Delekta met with Michigan’s president, Dr. Schlissel, she brought Enrique Zalamea, president of the College Republicans, along with her. They proposed a kind of unity campaign for campus, in which students would march with signs saying, “I am a Wolverine,” to stress their similarities. And they suggested some sessions on inclusivity and diversity. Dr. Schlissel told them that it was too early for such activities, and that they should allow a period first, Ms. Delekta said. She was deeply disappointed. “That’s not my personality,” she said. Dr. Schlissel declined to comment on the mood on campus, but a spokeswoman, Kim Broekhuizen, said Ms. Delekta’s account of the meeting was accurate. Still Ms. Delekta was heartened by the meeting, seeing it as a sign that conservatives might be invited into the fold. She is hoping to score tickets to the inauguration, the beginning of a new era, she believes, for better. But she will not be surprised, she said, if tensions flare anew. “It’s going to be right back in the media,” she said. “I think people are going to start to get worked up again, whether it be in excitement or frustration and fear. ” | 1 |
Sonntag, 20. November 2016 Stiftung Warentest benotet Planeten Erde mit "Mangelhaft" Berlin (Archiv) - Großer Schock für Erdnutzer: Wie die Stiftung Warentest am Mittwoch mitteilte, hat der Planet Erde in einem ausführlichen Test auf Bewohnbarkeit, Sauberkeit und allgemeinen Nutzen lediglich die Note "Mangelhaft" erreicht. Demnach sei der Planet für eine Besiedelung durch den Menschen kaum bis gar nicht zu empfehlen. "Bereits seit Jahren erreichen uns Berichte empörter Nutzer, die mit ihrem Gesamterlebnis auf dem Planeten Erde in höchstem Maße unzufrieden sind", erklärte eine Sprecherin der Stiftung auf einer Pressekonferenz. Besonders erschreckend sei dabei die Vielzahl unterschiedlichster Defizite und teils hochgefährlicher Fehlfunktionen, die auf ein bereits ab Werk mangelhaftes Produkt hinweisen. Vernichtend: Urteil der Stiftung Warentest "Im Test haben sich vor allem der hohe Salzwassergehalt, das nahezu ständige Auftreten von Naturkatastrophen und die Anwesenheit ziemlich nervender Wespen als größte Schwächen der Erde erwiesen", so die Sprecherin. "Zudem sterben ständig Menschen, weil die Erde gegen elementarste Sicherheitsbestimmungen verstößt." So seien 97 Prozent aller Canyons, Klippen und Schluchten nicht ordnungsgemäß abgesichert. In den meisten Gewässern fehlen Tiefenangaben sowie ausgewiesene Nichtschwimmerbereiche. In die Gesamtnote von 5,1 ("Mangelhaft") seien jedoch noch deutlich mehr Mängel eingeflossen. So enthalte die Erde zahlreiche, nicht deklarierte Inhaltsstoffe, die teilweise Allergien hervorrufen, sowie alle erdenklichen gefährlichen Chemikalien, die oftmals krebserregend oder gar radioaktiv seien. Nicht zuletzt könne die planeteneigene Gravitation Gelenkbeschwerden und Verschleißerscheinungen hervorrufen. Harte Kritik übte die Stiftung Warentest auch am Hersteller der Erde, der sich derzeit an einem unbekannten Ort aufhält und jegliche Beschwerden enttäuschter Kunden über sein Produkt unbeantwortet lässt. Angebracht sei mindestens eine Stellungnahme und gegebenenfalls eine koordinierte Rückrufaktion, so die Forderung der Warentester. Bis dahin rate man vorsorglich jedem davon ab, die Erde privat zu nutzen. ssi, dan; Hinweis: Erstmals erschienen am 15.8.14 Artikel teilen: | 0 |
WASHINGTON — They agreed just a week ago to the terms of a House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. But now some of the panel’s Democrats are warning that they may pull their support for the inquiry if it becomes mired in politics. When that might happen is unclear, and Democrats know that the current moment of even tentative comity on the panel may offer their best chance for scrutinizing links between people close to President Trump and Russian officials. Still, Democrats are bracing for fights over subpoenaing witnesses and documents — including, possibly, Mr. Trump’s tax returns — since Republicans have balked at an outside, independent inquiry into what intelligence officials say was an unprecedented intrusion into an American election by a foreign power. “I’m not going to be part of a show that is not a serious effort to do an investigation because this is really serious,” said Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California. “If it’s not a legitimate and comprehensive and investigation, why would we be party to it?” Ms. Speier said the committee’s Democrats — all nine of whom were interviewed by The New York Times — would not hesitate, “under certain circumstances,” to pull their support. Democrats are already wary of moves by the committee’s chairman, Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, to undercut the purported Russian connection. Mr. Nunes has belittled news stories about the Russian links of Mr. Trump’s associates and has pledged — along with Senator Richard M. Burr, the North Carolina Republican who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee — to examine Mr. Trump’s accusations, made without evidence, that President Barack Obama ordered surveillance of Trump Tower. Mr. Nunes was a prominent supporter of Mr. Trump’s campaign and served on the administration’s transition team. So far, some Democrats on the House panel said, Mr. Nunes had been receptive to many of their requests in the inquiry. “Most of us would agree that there’s no way we’re participating in any form of or whitewash, so we will walk away if the moment requires,” said Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut. “But we’re certainly not there yet. ” Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat, said it was unclear whether the panel could conduct a credible investigation, ideally resulting in a single, bipartisan report on its findings. Along with Mr. Nunes, Mr. Schiff is among the Gang of Eight congressional leaders who receive classified intelligence briefings. “If we get to the point at any time where I feel we can’t do that, where there are legitimate lines of investigation that are being walled off, then I will say so,” Mr. Schiff told reporters this week. Democrats expect the first major test of the investigation — and Mr. Nunes’s stewardship — to come on March 20, when the committee holds its first public hearing. An initial list of invited witnesses included James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director James R. Clapper Jr. the director of national intelligence under Mr. Obama and Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general who was fired by the Trump administration after refusing to defend the president’s first travel ban. Absent from the witness list was Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, who resigned after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Though Mr. Nunes emphasized it was only an early list, he referred to Mr. Flynn as “a tangent,” portraying him as more of a victim of the intelligence leaks Mr. Nunes is seeking to investigate than a target of the inquiry. “From everything that I can see, his conversations with the Russian ambassador, he was doing this country a favor, and he should be thanked for it,” Mr. Nunes said. Mr. Nunes may need to tread cautiously to avoid the perception of crossing the line from impartial moderator to advocate. He has said the issue of whether Trump Tower was under surveillance during the campaign was well within the scope of the inquiry, and has denied that he added it after the president demanded that Congress investigate. With a tight smile, Mr. Schiff said he welcomed the opportunity to disprove Mr. Trump’s accusation. But some Democrats fumed at the idea that the panel’s work could give credence to it. Should the issue not be put to rest quickly, Ms. Speier said, “it would call into question the entire investigation. ” Several Democrats said they expected their desire to compel certain witnesses to testify to stoke friction among Republicans. But a flash point could come if Democrats press to subpoena Mr. Trump’s tax returns, a move that could scuttle the entire inquiry. Democrats have favored an outside, independent investigation, but many of them see the panel’s inquiry as the best they can do. And they are keenly aware that by pulling their support, they would sacrifice their roles in an investigation some see as among the most important of their time in public service. “It’s a big jump to pull out of this investigation, no matter how bad it is,” said Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois. “Because whatever truth you can bleed out of this thing, the better off you are. ” | 1 |
Afghanistan — As Taliban fighters push toward the southern city of Lashkar Gah, members of Afghanistan’s elite forces are trying to hold their ground here, about 10 miles from the city, the capital of Helmand Province and a critical link in the defense of the entire region. The Afghan government’s need to rely on the special forces, highly trained for commando raids, to guard the perimeter of the city exposes a stark reality. As Helmand, the largest province in Afghanistan and the center of its opium production, endures intense enemy fire this summer, the regular police and army forces have failed to stand firm, raising the possibility that the Taliban could overrun Lashkar Gah. “The police, as soon as they were inflicted with some casualties, gave up about 27 posts one after another without a fight, and our posts were surrounded by surprise,” said Col. Nematullah Khalil, the commander of the Afghan Army’s Third Regiment, 215 Corps, whose soldiers are trying to help the special forces hold the line in in the Nad Ali district. “The enemy planted a lot of mines wherever they reached, and that slows us down. ” Lt. Col. Mohammad Omar Jan, the police chief of the Nad Ali district, rejected that assessment. The army is blaming the police to cover up its own weakness, Colonel Jan said, adding that the army was responsible for ’s security because his forces were busy trying to secure the district governor’s compound. “The police are fighting in the front line and suffer heavy casualties more than any other forces,” he said. In the scorching heat on the front lines near members of regular police and army units looked tired on a recent day as they gathered in small clusters, resting in the shade of some buildings’ mud walls. The main road that separates the Afghan forces from the Taliban, who have been striking more forcefully and relentlessly this fighting season, is heavily mined. The cornfields around the largely abandoned homes look calm, but at night the forces regularly clash with the Taliban. The troops have managed to retake only about a mile in the 10 days since they lost much of the area, said Colonel Khalil, the Afghan Army officer. The entire area held by government forces in Helmand has shrunk in recent months. Four districts, including Musa Qala and Nawzad, that were the focus of thousands of American and coalition troops during the 2010 surge are under Taliban control. Frequent airstrikes and reinforcements are required to keep many of the other 10 districts, some only nominally in government control, from falling. While Afghan officials insist that Lashkar Gah will not be lost, their strategy seems unsustainable against an enemy that has proved to be mobile and resilient. Defending the district centers that have not fallen to the Taliban has required a delegation of senior generals and officials from Kabul to shuttle back and forth to monitor developments. On Thursday morning, the senior generals led the fighting, pushing their ground troops and calling in strikes by Afghan and American aircraft to fend off Taliban advances on the district center of Nawa, just south of Lashkar Gah and one of the safest places in Helmand until recently. The Taliban fire, including mortar barrages, damaged the government buildings and demolished the watchtowers. On returning to Lashkar Gah, the generals remained in emergency mode, constantly on the line with troops in other districts, urging them to hold their ground. The Taliban fighters, many of them retreating from Nawa, shifted to exert pressure on the center of the neighboring district of Garmsir. The generals rallied some commandos and then piled into helicopters to save Garmsir. Another team was busy trying to clear the main road to Kandahar Province, which had remained blocked for a week because of Taliban mines and check posts, officials said. Sultan Muhammad, the police chief of Maiwand District, who participated in the road clearance, said that the authorities had defused as many as 100 roadside bombs, and that teams were continuing to clear more even as they were being engaged by the Taliban. Late on Sunday, the convoy of the provincial police chief, Gen. Aqa Noor Kentoz, struck a roadside bomb. The general and three of his guards were wounded, a spokesman for the provincial governor said. Why are the Afghan forces, who local security officials say outnumber the insurgents at least five to one and receive air support, struggling so badly in a strategic province? Helmand was a center of President Obama’s surge, in which tens of thousands of American and coalition troops were sent to try to secure the area, with hundreds of NATO military advisers still aiding the Afghans in the province. Some of the most senior members of the original Taliban are from Helmand, but they now operate from across the border in Pakistan, enabling them to move back and forth, often out of the reach of coalition forces. Beyond its symbolic value, Helmand remains a focus of their attacks not only because it is the gateway to other southern provinces, but also because its fields produce the highest amount of opium in Afghanistan and its vast deserts sit on the main opium trade route. Increasingly, the Taliban have come to resemble a drug cartel as much as an insurgency, relying heavily on the profits from the opium trade to fund their fight. Complicating the situation, officials in Helmand say, local strongmen are using their influence to plant their own men in provincial security jobs in outposts on the route. Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahman, the deputy interior minister, said more than 90 percent of the police officers in Helmand were residents of the province and thus vulnerable to meddling and conflicting loyalties. For example, if a commander is replaced because of incompetence or abuse, security officials say, he is apt to take hundreds of his men with him, leaving a hole in the area’s defense. Political ties can also undermine security. When the brother of a powerful lawmaker who served as the security chief of the Garmsir district was fired recently over allegations that he was involved in the drug trade, the lawmaker organized protests in Lashkar Gah and Kabul. (One of the lawmaker’s nephews remains the head of counternarcotics in the province.) Moreover, military goals pale compared with the allure of financial gain. “The most important thing for the forces in Helmand is their own interests and business in the province — they are trying to get the amount of money which they have been told,” said Muhammad Jan Rasulyar, a former deputy governor of Helmand, referring to the widely held belief that commanders in lucrative posts pay who help them get such jobs. “Differences between government authorities in Helmand made the Taliban stronger in the province, and this is the main reason for the increasing of conflicts. The authorities ward off each other instead of the enemy. ” The army itself has struggled to recover after suffering a record number of casualties in Helmand last year. Gen. Murad Ali Murad, the deputy chief of the army staff, said senior officers had tried to use the winter months to rebuild the 215 Corps. But the relentless pace of the fighting, in Helmand and in other parts of the country, derailed their efforts. New recruits with little experience were thrown into battle. “All of a sudden, the threats in Helmand increased and there was need for those forces to be used in the field, and we felt their deficiencies,” General Murad said. “We felt their lack of equipment and experience in the battlefield. ” Conversely, the Taliban seem to be growing in their actual fighting capability, or in their psychological hold over a struggling foe. Afghan commanders, security officials and fighters say the insurgents are physically tough and use goggles, snipers and sophisticated weapons. This phase of the war pits insurgents who plant mines and then swiftly disappear against an armed force that is lured into traps while chasing the insurgents. This happens even as the soldiers are supported by aircraft that can rain down fire that makes the holding of any area costly for the Taliban. But more than anything, it is an uneven fight between insurgents prepared to attack and die, and soldiers who would flee to live. It is also a story told by the disparity in the unverified number of casualties provided by Helmand’s governor, Hayatullah Hayat. In the most recent two weeks of fighting, 210 Taliban fighters were killed and 40 were wounded, compared with 15 dead and 35 wounded for the Afghan forces, the governor said (though other local officials have suggested that the casualties to Afghan forces could be much higher). | 1 |
WASHINGTON — For years, they have lurked in the web’s dark corners, masking themselves with cartoon images and writing screeds about the demise of white culture under ominous pseudonyms. But on Saturday, in the wake of Donald J. Trump’s surprising election victory, hundreds of his extremist supporters converged on the capital to herald a moment of political ascendance that many had thought to be far away. In the bowels of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, three blocks from the White House, members of the movement gathered for what they had supposed would be an autopsy to plot their grim future under a Clinton administration. Instead, they celebrated the unexpected march of their white nationalist ideas toward the mainstream, portraying Mr. Trump’s win as validation that the tide had turned in their fight to preserve white culture. “It’s been an awakening,” Richard B. Spencer, who is credited with coining the term said at the gathering on Saturday. “This is what a successful movement looks like. ” The movement has been critical of politicians of all stripes for promoting diversity, immigration and perceived political correctness. Its critics call it a rebranded version of the Ku Klux Klan, promoting violence and suppression of minorities. Intellectual leaders of the movement argue that they are merely trying to realize their desire for a white “ ” where they can be left alone. Mr. Trump, with his divisive language about immigrants and Muslims, has given them hope that these dreams can come true. “I never thought we would get to this point, any point close to mainstream acceptance or political influence,” said Matt Forney, 28, of Chicago. “The culture is moving more in my direction. ” Emboldened by Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, Mr. Forney said he expected people openly associated with the white nationalist movement to run as candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. The rise of populism and the decline of political correctness, he said, present a rare opportunity. Robert Taylor, 29, described the conference as a “victory party. ” Mr. Taylor was a committed libertarian, he said, working for Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns and even moving to New Hampshire for a project organized by the . If Hillary Clinton had won the election, he said, he would have advocated secession. “I thought I had all the right answers and had read all the right books,” he said. “I heard about the movement, and it just lit a fire in me. ” Mr. Taylor said that with Mr. Trump, “we have breathing room we have a little time. ” Mr. Trump has shrugged off any suggestions that he has connections to the . But his views on immigration and his “America First” foreign policy have captivated members of the movement. His appointment as chief strategist of Stephen K. Bannon, who has called Breitbart News, the website he long ran, a platform for the has reinforced the notion that the incoming president is on their side. The white nationalist embrace of Mr. Trump was on display Saturday at the gathering, which was the annual conference of a group called the National Policy Institute. Guests nibbled on chicken piccata while discussing ways to reorient America’s demographics. Many of the attendees, who were mostly white men, wore red “Make America Great Again” hats. emblazoned with Mr. Trump’s face sold quickly. While the enthusiasm inside the conference was evident, the resistance to the remains powerful. A recent surge in hate crimes and reports of verbal and physical assaults on minorities are putting new pressure on groups that promote racism. Many sites will not host their events, and some of their members have had their social media accounts suspended in response to vicious trolling of Jewish journalists and critics of Mr. Trump. A large group of protesters marched around the Ronald Reagan Building, which, as a federal property, could not decline to host the conference. “These people have their right to freedom of speech, but the values they represent don’t represent America,” said Jon Pattee, 48. “I characterize them as the arm of the white movement. ” Republicans who are more mainstream are also unlikely to accept the movement’s more provocative ideas. “They have to grow up and start shedding some of their more controversial elements,” said Erick Erickson, a conservative blogger and commentator who has been critical of Mr. Trump. “I don’t think they will ever be accepted wholeheartedly in the Republican Party. ” Nonetheless, leaders said they planned to use their newfound influence to pressure Mr. Trump to take more “heretical” policy positions, such as a moratorium on net immigration for the next 50 years. White Europeans, Mr. Spencer said, would be given preference. “In the long run, people like Bannon and Trump will be open to the clarity of our ideas,” said Jared Taylor, the founder of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Spencer, who has become the face of the derided NATO as “clumsy and ineffective. ” He called for friendlier relations with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and for the deportation of undocumented immigrants, drawing chants of “build that wall. ” “I think moving forward the as an intellectual vanguard can complete Trump,” Mr. Spencer said. “We can be the ones who are out front, who are thinking about things that he hasn’t grasped yet. ” Although leaders say they want to become more politically active, it remains unclear how they will react to being more closely aligned to the establishment or what they will do if Mr. Trump starts to moderate his views. His outreach to during the final months of the campaign angered some of his white nationalist followers, raising concerns among them that Mr. Trump might not be so different after all. “It’s a fleeting moment of optimism,” said Al Stankard, 29, of Baltimore, who goes by the pseudonym Haarlen Venison online and was handing out his novel, “Death to the World. ” Mr. Stankard said he thought it was unlikely that Mr. Trump would be able to do things like end affirmative action, even though he believes that the sympathizes with the plight of “white racists. ” He predicted that Mr. Trump might disappoint white nationalists in the same way that President Obama disappointed some of his supporters by failing to bring postracial unity to the nation. “These are fantasies,” Mr. Stankard said. | 1 |
Tweet Widget by Leah Fried
When the Chicago Teachers Union goes on strike, it doesn’t walk alone; Movement 4 Black Lives organizations have their back. And, when young Black activists campaign against police terror, the teachers union is with them. When it comes to the school-to-prison pipeline, the teachers and Black Youth Project 100 are on the same side. In Chicago, Teachers and Black Lives Matter Activists Partner to Build a Bigger Movement by Leah Fried
This article previously appeared in Labor Notes .
“Teachers joined protests led by Black Lives Matter and Black Youth Project 100, to disrupt the lucrative Christmas shopping season.”
Extracting wins from the boss has never been easy—and union membership hovering at a low 11 percent isn’t making it any easier. But a good way to boost our numbers and power is to partner with people who are organized in other ways, building a broader movement as we build our unions.
For several years the Chicago Teachers Union has put incredible effort into building unity—not only among its members, but also with parents and neighborhood groups. The results were on display in October as hundreds of volunteers worked daily in the lead-up to a possible strike.
Parents spoke at press conferences, painted banners, handed out leaflets, distributed T-shirts and yard signs, and talked to other parents. My son’s elementary school was one of many where parents and kids joined teachers in an early-morning picket.
One vehicle was the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, an alliance of dozens of unions and 60 community organizations—including the Chicago chapters of Black Lives Matter and Black Youth Project 100.
Natural Allies
Alliances take work, but they can be built on natural connections. “Many of us have either worked or been students in the Chicago Public Schools, or have partners who work for CPS,” said Aislinn Pulley, a leader in the Black Lives Matter chapter.
That meant members already understood why public schools are worth fighting for. “A man named Ronald Johnson, who was killed by the police two years ago, had five children who are CPS students,” said Kofi Ademola, another chapter leader. “They are in the care of their grandmother, who lives in poverty, and that family is directly impacted by the attacks on public education in our city.
“The layoff of 1,000 teachers and plan to hire 1,000 more cops was a clear example of the divestment in our communities. They go hand in hand.”
The understanding goes both ways. The teachers union has made racial segregation and school underfunding central issues in its contract campaigns.
District administrators pay lip service to restorative justice, a disciplinary approach that looks for solutions instead of shunting kids into a school-to-prison pipeline. But it’s the union that has pushed for the funding required to make these programs work.
CTU and a student group got a grant in 2013 to pilot restorative justice in four schools. In the new tentative agreement, the teachers have won funding to add restorative justice coordinators in 20 to 55 schools.
In the run-up to the possible strike, the Black Lives Matter chapter spearheaded organizing a Freedom School to offer parents a safe place to send their kids while teachers were out on the picket lines. Chicago State University agreed to donate its space. Planned activities would include a youth town hall.
The Same Values
In August the Movement for Black Lives, an umbrella organization that includes Black Lives Matter and other groups, released a policy platform, workshopped with activists from its hundreds of member groups around the country.
The platform declares the movement’s support for workers' right to organize unions. It calls for jobs programs, expanding labor laws to protect domestic workers, farm workers, and tipped workers, no Trans-Pacific Partnership, the renegotiation of anti-worker trade agreements, and the rewriting of tax codes so the wealthy pay their share. Unions have much in common with these values.
Last November, after allegations emerged that the city had covered up video of a police officer killing African American teenager Laquan McDonald, CTU voted to support an elected police-accountability council in Chicago. Teachers joined the protests that followed, led by Black Lives Matter and Black Youth Project 100, to disrupt the lucrative Christmas shopping season. Marchers shut down the Magnificent Mile on Black Friday, chanting, “No justice, no profit.
That’s the kind of partnership Ademola would like to see more of: “How do we amplify each other’s message and work together to target the oligarchs that fill the politicians’ war chest?” | 0 |
Power Grid Vulnerability/ Dreams & Music Power Grid Vulnerability/ Dreams & Music Benjamin Dancer , Craig Webb
In the first half, teacher and writer Benjamin Dancer , the Director of Public Relations for the Colorado EMP Task Force (Peter Pry's organization), discussed the vulnerability of the US power grid. He explores the threat in his new novel in which a villain tries to sabotage the grid with a sophisticated cyberattack. Mass casualties would likely occur if the power grid goes down for an extended period, with increased sanitation issues, he noted. Dancer also pointed out that the approximately 100 nuclear facilities in America are dependent on electricity to run safely. While they do have emergency generators that run on diesel, once that fuel is depleted, we could be looking at multiple Fukushima situations, he cautioned.
Meteorologist Sandy McDonald briefly joined the conversation to talk about his paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change. He proposes developing a widespread wind and solar program across the continental US with the energy transmitted over an underground high voltage direct current line, that would be protected from solar storm damage. His proposal brings both the right and left political spectrums together, by connecting the issue of sustainability with the existential threat posed by our power grid's vulnerability, Dancer commented. Besides hardening the grid, another option would be for the US to choose a more sustainable population size that would not be so dependent on electricity for its food sources, Dancer added. | 0 |
ORLANDO, Fla. — As doctors treated the horrific injuries of victims shot in the Pulse nightclub massacre here, a mistaken report of a gunman nearby forced officials to briefly lock down the emergency room the medical staff shoved heavy machines against the doors, creating a makeshift barricade in a treatment bay. Emergency room physicians ran low on tubes needed to reinflate the lungs of patients shot in the chest. The doctors scrambled to make sense of gunshot wounds because paramedics had rushed victims in with no time to assess their conditions. The hospital’s emergency preparedness manager, asleep at home, received an urgent email but did not respond until awakened by text. But of the 44 patients brought to Orlando Regional Medical Center with gunshot wounds in the early hours of June 12, 35 survived. The Pulse nightclub massacre has put Orlando on a growing roster of places — Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Newtown, Paris, San Bernardino — forced to confront attacks with injuries comparable to those in war zones. More will become clear over time, but Orlando’s response is already beginning to provide lessons on the challenges, large and small, of dealing with mass shootings, as well as what went right and what went wrong, what can be anticipated and what cannot. And it is raising hard questions about how to act when medical priorities and law enforcement ones can seem to be at odds. Across the nation, and the world, the realization that mass killings are the new normal has been gradually sinking in. On Friday, the National Academy of Medicine in Washington published a discussion paper — titled “Health and Medical Response to Active Shooter and Bombing Events” — that details best practices to help communities become better prepared. It warns that many are ill equipped for a “surge in major trauma cases. ” Orlando, a major tourist destination, had worked hard to prepare. In March, Orlando Regional Medical Center, the only major trauma center in Central Florida, staged a realistic, “active shooter scenario” simulating a school massacre that had left 500 wounded. Fifty agencies, including the F. B. I. participated in the exercise. High school students in ghastly makeup flooded 15 hospitals. The Pulse shooting — which killed 49 and wounded 53 — turned the March drill into a reality for scores of doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, paramedics and pathologists. Wrenching questions remain: Could more lives have been saved if the police had stormed the nightclub earlier? Did terrified victims bleed to death waiting for help to arrive? The Orlando experience validated what experts in emergency medicine had long known: The faster victims can reach the hospital, the more likely they are to survive. Of the 49 victims, just nine died in the trauma center — and they died minutes after arriving, hospital officials said, which suggests they had been mortally wounded. The Pulse survivors owe their lives in part to a grim coincidence: The trauma center is just a few blocks from the nightclub. Given that, Orlando may not be a perfect model for what could happen elsewhere. “Because of the proximity, we felt that more lives had been saved than if it were anywhere else,” said Eric Alberts, the hospital’s emergency preparedness manager. Mr. Alberts, 39, who previously ran emergency operations at Disney World, said the active shooter drill in March, which he organized, had proved “very similar” to the Pulse massacre. Even so, said Dr. William S. Havron, a trauma surgeon who spent the night operating on victims, “I don’t think anybody can ever be fully prepared for something like this. ” Dr. Chris Hunter, an emergency room physician and the director of the health services department for Orange County, Fla. which includes Orlando, was on an overnight shift at a hospital 20 miles away when he received a text that thrust him into supervising the response. He made a fast decision: Orlando Regional Medical Center was going to Status Black. That designation meant the trauma center’s emergency room would be closed to all but the shooting victims and others with serious injuries. People with sprains, sore throats or earaches would be sent elsewhere. “We never do that,” Dr. Hunter said. Outside Pulse, about 80 paramedics were furiously trying to cope with the carnage. Working with two cellphones and a radio because he could not leave his nighttime post, Dr. Hunter tried to track the paramedics to let the emergency room know when the next patients would arrive. ambulances were making round trips. Paramedics usually radio ahead to the emergency room with each patient’s condition so doctors can prepare. But at Pulse, there was not always time for that. And the police and bystanders were also driving victims to the hospital. “It was great for the patients, but hard on the staff,” said Dr. Gary A. Parrish, the director of the emergency department. Dr. Havron, the trauma surgeon, had just drifted off to sleep after feeding his son when he received the call. When he arrived at the emergency room, he could not enter it was locked down with the mistaken report of a gunman. He called a colleague, who told him to go upstairs to the operating room. Dr. Havron performed six operations that night. Experts know that good communication is critical in managing a crisis. But as more patients arrived, many unconscious and without identification, Mr. Alberts, the emergency preparedness manager, missed his first alert about the Pulse shooting, an email at 2:21 a. m. he was at home asleep. “That was one of the glitches we found that didn’t really work too well,” he said. It was not until 3:42 a. m. that he was awakened by a text from his boss. On Mr. Alberts’s orders, the hospital activated an emergency plan, moving patients around to make room for victims in the intensive care unit. Supervising the response from a command center, he confronted other challenges, not life or death, but still vexing. A donor sent 50 pizzas Mr. Alberts had them thrown out, fearing a terrorist’s poison. Foreign consuls showed up, demanding a list of patients’ names that could not legally be released he politely referred the consuls to the State Department. Digital fingerprinting failed to identify an unconscious patient an inkpad worked. Casualties came to the hospital that night in two waves, the first around 2 a. m. shortly after the shooting started. The second wave, victims who had been trapped in the club with the gunman, arrived around 5 a. m. after the police had blasted through a wall in the club and killed him. Dr. Havron and five other trauma surgeons at the hospital performed 28 operations that night. Of the 44 patients brought to the trauma center, eight died in the emergency room within minutes of their arrival, another died on the way to the operating room and 35 were admitted. As of Sunday, four remained in critical condition. “Everybody that made it to the operating room is still alive,” Dr. Havron said. But Dr. Jay Falk, the academic chairman of emergency medicine at the trauma center, warned that if there had been twice as many casualties, they might have overwhelmed the system. This is a problem the hospital will have to address, he said, adding, “We have to rethink that. ” Across town, at Florida Hospital Orlando, victims with less serious injuries began arriving around 3 a. m. Eventually there would be 12 of them. Most had been shot in the arms or the legs one had been trampled. The patients were awake and stable, and F. B. I. agents were eager to question them. Lorinda Stahley, the nurse manager for the emergency department, approached the victims gingerly. But, she said, “They were all ready and willing to be interviewed. ” Four needed surgery. Dr. Brian Vickaryous, an orthopedist and former Army surgeon who operated on combat injuries in Iraq, performed the operations. Each bullet he pulled out went to the F. B. I. Angel Santiago, 32, of Philadelphia, was one of his patients. Mr. Santiago had been trapped in a bathroom in the club, lying in a pool of blood. He had been shot in the legs he could see a bullet hole in the chest of his friend, who was sweating profusely. The two grew weaker as they waited, desperately, for the police to arrive. “By the time I got to the hospital, they said my blood pressure was very low,” Mr. Santiago said. “I was dizzy, cold they gave me two units of blood to try to stabilize me. ” He later learned that his friend, sent to another hospital — presumably Orlando Regional Medical Center — was in critical condition. He survived. Of the 50 who died, including the gunman, 39 died inside the club. Two more were found on the street outside. Those numbers, along with accounts like Mr. Santiago’s, raise agonizing questions about whether more lives could have been saved if the standoff had ended sooner, and whether some victims had bled slowly to death. Dr. Vickaryous, like many medical professionals here, did not want to law enforcement. “We have a saying in medicine: ‘The is . ’” he said. The dead were brought to the Orange County morgue, which upgraded its capacity in 2010 to store as many as 150 bodies, with a plane crash or a tornado in mind. Dr. Joshua D. Stephany, the county medical examiner, supervised the autopsies and performed some himself. “I don’t think anyone had prolonged suffering,” he said in an interview. Autopsy reports could help explain how victims died, by describing the wounds. But no details have been released because the investigation is in progress. Analysis of bullets like the ones Dr. Vickaryous removed from victims may eventually answer another difficult question: whether some people were caught in the crossfire and shot by the police, said Dr. Jan Garavaglia, Dr. Stephany’s predecessor. The response to the massacre is already generating debate in academia. Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said there was little doubt that more of the injured would have survived if they had been rescued sooner. But he also urged against judging the police, because the gunman had boasted that he had bombs and accomplices. Both claims were lies, but no one could be sure at first. As to whether victims had died quickly or suffered, it depends on where the bullets hit, Dr. Redlener said. Here in Orlando, officials are just beginning to evaluate their response, even as they continue to care for patients, plan funerals and tend to their own emotional trauma. Mr. Alberts, the emergency preparedness manager, has had two debriefings with his medical team. At the Orlando Fire Department, Chief Roderick S. Williams, who supervised many of the paramedics first on the scene, is planning to “tell others our lessons learned. ” Fire chiefs from New York Aurora, Colo. and Boston — cities that have also confronted traumas — have already reached out to share their information. “As the next city to experience a horrific event like this,” Chief Williams said, “we have to pay it forward. ” | 1 |
Making the most of the fractured political and media landscape, 20th Century Fox created a group of fake news sites as part of a viral marketing campaign for its new film “A Cure for Wellness. ” The sites displayed ads for the movie and slipped references to its plot alongside stories about divisive topics like abortion, vaccines and President Trump. Fox used at least five fake news sites designed to look like local news media — The Sacramento Dispatch, Salt Lake City Guardian, Houston Leader, NY Morning Post and Indianapolis Gazette — to stir online outrage and drum up interest in the movie, which was produced by New Regency Productions and is to come out this week. It used other fake sites to promote the film as well, including one designed to resemble HealthCare. Gov and another for a fake bottled water company. Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox acknowledged their role in the fake news operation in a statement on Tuesday. “A Cure for Wellness is a movie about a ‘fake’ cure that makes people sicker,” the statement said. “As part of this campaign, a ‘fake’ wellness site, healthandwellness. co, was created and we partnered with a fake news creator to publish fake news. ” A Fox spokeswoman, Daria Vogel, declined to answer questions on Tuesday, including whether the companies were using any other fake news sites to promote their film or whether they had used similar methods to promote movies in the past. The company is owned by Fox Entertainment Group, which also owns Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. “A Cure for Wellness” was directed by Gore Verbinski and stars Dane DeHaan and Jason Isaacs, who in the past have both made jokes online about the phenomenon of fake news. The film opens on Friday and has received mostly negative reviews. One critic, Joe Dziemianowicz of The Daily News, described its plot as “preposterous gothic nonsense. ” The five sites known to be part of the fake news campaign were taken down after the story was reported by BuzzFeed News on Tuesday. Users who entered their URLs were redirected to the film’s official website, but archived versions of some of their articles remained available online. The stories they published hit the viral sweet spot that has made fake news such an online force, even though most of them were not related to the movie. Some were shared thousands of times on social media by users who appeared to believe that they were factual news stories, and others were reposted by partisan websites like Red State Watcher. A partial list of headlines published by the movie studio’s campaign: • “Utah Senator Introduces Bill to Jail, Publicly Shame Women Who Receive Abortions” • “BOMBSHELL: Trump and Putin Spotted at Swiss Resort Prior to Election” • “LEAKED: Lady Gaga Halftime Performance to Feature Muslim Tribute” • “Trump Refuses to Provide California Federal Support in Midst of Natural Disaster, Cites Sanctuary Cities” • “California Legislature to Consider Tax Rebates for Women Who Get Abortions” Lynn Walsh, the president of the Society of Professional Journalists, said in an email that corporations had a responsibility to engage in “the ethical and responsible sharing of information no matter the intent or purpose. ” “In this country, we have the right to speak and publish information freely, and that’s a good thing,” Ms. Walsh said. “But if someone or a company is publishing incorrect information and trying to make it pass as actual news, we think that content should be properly labeled and very explicit that it is not true and does not contain actual facts. ” Those are guidelines that 20th Century Fox and New Regency Productions did not follow. “This absolutely crosses the line,” added Bonnie Patten, the executive director of the consumer watchdog TruthinAdvertising. org. “Using a fake news site to lure consumers into buying movie tickets is basically a form of deceptive marketing. ” One story published as part of their campaign claimed that Mr. Trump had issued a ban on the vaccine for the measles, mumps and rubella. The report was published on The Houston Leader and debunked by the website Snopes, which called the site “one of a series of fake news sites that masquerade as real news sites by emulating the appearance of newspapers. ” Another story falsely reported that the American Medical Association had recognized a form of anxiety or depression, “Trump Depression Disorder,” that it claimed affected one third of the country. It urged readers “to tweet #cureforwellness to raise awareness of the growing epidemic. ” Some of the film’s fake marketing websites remained active on Tuesday night, including the health and wellness website and the website for the fake bottled water company, which claimed to source its product from a Swiss village (that does not exist). The website designed to resemble HealthCare. gov (it is called HealthCureGov. com) also remained active. Ms. Vogel, the Fox spokeswoman, declined to explain why those websites had not been disabled. A phone call to the purported office of healthandwellness. co went unanswered, and emails to six people listed as its “managing editors” bounced back as undeliverable. | 1 |
Representative Doug Lamborn, R, CO, has introduced a pair of bills to eliminate the federal tax dollars that fund the budgets of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). [Upon the filing of H. R. 726 and H. R. 727, Lamborn said congressional Republicans need to prove they take fiscal responsibility seriously. “American taxpayers do not want their dollars funding superfluous government programs just because that is the way things have always been done,” Lamborn wrote on his congressional webpage. The Coloradan introduced the bills to “permanently defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio. CPB received $445 million during Fiscal Year 2016, and this money could be put to better use rebuilding our military and enhancing our national security. ” Lamborn insisted that with a $20 trillion national debt, cuts must be made since these broadcasting services have been able to pick up funding from private sources in the past, cutting the tax dollars flowing into their coffers now is a good start at reducing government spending. Rep. Lamborn, though, took pains to say that this proposal isn’t about the content aired by either of these broadcasting services. “This is not about content, as CBP certainly airs some quality programs,” he wrote, “the point is that it is perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet and not on the financial shoulders of the American taxpayers. ” Lamborn noted that the savings to the taxpayer could reach upwards to $500 million annually. NPR features a webpage that breaks down its expenditures, but a recent assessment found that NPR receives about about 40 percent of its $166 million budget from the federal government, or about $66 million from taxpayers annually. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. ” | 1 |
■ The Senate Judiciary Committee, in a vote, sent the nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch for the Supreme Court to the full Senate for consideration. ■ Democrats now seem to have the votes to filibuster Judge Gorsuch’s nomination. ■ But Republicans will most likely vote to change Senate practices later in the week so that Judge Gorsuch could be approved with a simple majority vote. ■ The tenor of the Judiciary Committee strongly suggests that the full Senate debate on Judge Gorsuch will be even more contentious. With an announcement from Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, during the Judiciary Committee’s hearing to vote on Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, Democrats found their 41st vote in support of a filibuster, sending the body hurtling toward a bitter partisan confrontation this week. Read more » As senators began revealing their votes on Monday, partisan acrimony predominated. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the committee’s chairman, accused Democrats of searching in vain for credible reasons to vote against Judge Gorsuch. “This nominee that we’re voting on today is a judge’s judge,” he said. “He’s a picture of the kind of justice we should have on the Supreme Court. ” Mr. Grassley suggested that some attacks in recent weeks from Democrats, which have included criticisms of the spending push from outside groups supporting Judge Gorsuch, defied the country’s values. “This is America,” he said, “where people can spend their money where they want to spend it. ” Taking her turn next, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s top Democrat, criticized Judge Gorsuch’s record on workers’ rights and his reluctance to answer questions. She did thank Mr. Grassley for overseeing the hearings fairly. Ms. Feinstein also reminded the public about the treatment last year of Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the seat left by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. Republicans refused to even consider Judge Garland during a presidential election year. “In my view, this is not a routine nomination,” she said at the top of her remarks. In his own comments, Mr. Grassley expressed no regrets. “I believe then and I believe now that we took the right course for the Senate and for the court,” he said. From the hearing’s opening moments, lawmakers took turns lamenting the state of the Senate, holding forth on the present divisions but appearing resigned to the institutional upheaval that awaits this week. Few sounded as aggrieved as Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the body’s member. He first suggested that Republicans’ treatment of Judge Garland last year had convinced Judge Gorsuch that “this committee is nothing more than a partisan rubber stamp,” allowing the nominee to evade straightforward questions during his hearings. He said that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, had “promised to use whatever tactic is necessary to get his way, to make sure that Donald Trump’s nominee is confirmed, even if that means forever damaging the United States Senate. ” “Now, I respect this institution as much as anyone. I never expected to be here long enough to become the dean of the Senate,” Mr. Leahy said. “I’ve devoted myself to the good the Senate can accomplish. But I cannot vote solely to protect an institution when the rights of Americans are at risk. Because I fear that the Senate I would be defending no longer exists. ” As the committee continued debating Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, Republicans received a modest lift outside the hearing room: Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado said he would not join fellow Democrats in filibustering the nomination. He urged Republicans against the nuclear option, changing the rules to allow Judge Gorsuch to be approved on a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes now required. “Neither Republicans nor Democrats are blameless for where things stand in our politics and on this nomination,” Mr. Bennet said in a statement, which did not reveal his voting intentions on Judge Gorsuch’s nomination itself. “But at some point, we need to take the long view and stand up for our institutions. ” What happens next will most likely be up to Republicans. And their intentions seem clear. “What I can tell you is that Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed this week,” Mr. McConnell told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press. ” Practically, this will almost certainly require Republicans to change Senate practice and elevate Judge Gorsuch on a simple majority vote. The strain has already compelled leaders from both parties to adopt the tone of hostage negotiators — and the senatorial tic of leavening criticism by calling opponents “friends. ” “Our Republican friends are acting like, you know, they’re a cat on the top of a tree and they have to jump off, with all the damage that entails,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, told “Meet the Press,” urging Mr. Trump to submit a new judge. “Come back off the tree, sit down and work with us. ” Mr. McConnell chose to forgo analogies. Judge Gorsuch will get his new robes, he suggested, and “how that happens really depends on our Democratic friends. ” | 1 |
A white football player from Idaho will not face jail time, after being accused of raping a mentally disabled black student with a coat hanger. [John R. K. Howard, 19, will instead serve out the punishment initially handed down by the courts in October of 2015, when he received a probation and 300 hours of community service. The courts decided against prison time, after a judge accepted a plea deal which allowed Howard to plead guilty and still maintain innocence. That plea, also known as the Alford plea, technically allows the client to continue maintaining innocence while acknowledging that the evidence against them is serious enough that the jury could find them guilty. The victim’s family have not spoken publicly, but according to the Independent, are “furious” at the court’s decision. The victim relayed the harrowing details of the rape during the trial of one of the other accused rapists, Tanner Ward. “After practice I was in the locker room, and one of my friends, he told me to come here, and I went over to him and gave him a hug,” the victim said during testimony obtained by the Guardian. “He told me to give him a hug. He had his hands out like he was going to give me a hug. And I gave him a hug, and he signaled for one of my other friends to come over. ” At that point, the rape commenced. The victim described his feelings during the rape, saying, “Pain that I have never felt took over my body. I screamed, but afterwards, I kept it to myself. ” The assailant, Howard, faced the charge of forcible sexual penetration by a foreign object, a charge which was later reduced. According to the Independent, “ … following negotiations between the defence counsel and the State Attorney General’s office — in which the state prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Casey Hemmer, claimed the attack was not racially motivated and did not constitute a sex crime — the felony rape charge was dropped and replaced by a lesser charge of felony injury to a child. ” The victim, aged 17 at the time of the attack, qualified as a minor. The judge also referred to the attack as “bullying. ” As for the racial component of all this, the Independent reports, “Legal documents filed by the family in a separate case suing the school and district officials claim before the attack, the victim was “taunted and called racist names by other members of the team which names included ‘ ’ ‘chicken eater’ ‘watermelon’ and [the ]“. The family’s lawsuit against the school states that coaches on the football team encouraged players to toughen the victim up, presumably through fighting or hazing, and that coaches confronted the victim before the trial, convincing him to repudiate his own statement. During that episode, another coach recorded the conversation. According to the victim, “I just started telling a bunch of just lies because I wanted my friends back. ” The victim has attempted to commit suicide multiple times since the incident occurred in late 2015. Meanwhile, should John Howard violate his probation, he will face a possible prison sentence of up to ten years. However, according to the Independent, even this could get thrown out since Judge Stoker entered “a withheld judgement at the final hearing. ” Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 1 |
Media Blackout: Hundreds Of Black Teens Attack Temple Students, Police And A Horse (Video) Media Blackout: Hundreds Of Black Teens Attack Temple Students, Police And A Horse (Video) October 27, 2016, 6:24 pm by Guest Author Leave a Comment 1
By: Renee Nal | New Zeal Still photograph of Temple university attack
In a story that predictably did not make the mainstream media, and with video surveillance very difficult to find, a massive mob of black teens viciously attacked white Temple University students, police officers and even a police horse in Philadelphia on Friday night.
And their apologists are in full force.
In the limited local coverage this story did receive, the race aspect was generally avoided. It is way past time to take back the media, and fill it with truth-tellers, not apologists.
“More than 150 teens, spread out in groups of 20 or 30, descended upon the campus at around 8:30 p.m. Friday — wreaking havoc for nearly two hours before eventually dispersing,” according to NBC 10 . Temple News reported that “multiple students were hurt and businesses had to close Friday evening due to a ‘flash mob’ of nearly 200 minors that flocked North Broad Street near Main Campus, police said.”
But there is a reason for all of this horror, according to Solomon Jones of Philly.com . It evidently boils down to the socialist Gulag-wide Bulletins from Sovereignty Unbound We respect your privacy, time, and inbox. Track us Down @GulagBound Like the Gulag There are many important matters that Gulag Bound itself is not treating on a daily basis. For that reason we suggest The Globe & Malevolence and the sites shown under "Key Links in our Chains," below. Your Daily Intelligence Brief MattSkosh on Secret Service Agents Pay a Visit to Anti-Obama Artist Sabo Tags activism Agenda 21 anti-American revolution authoritarianism Barack Hussein Obama II candidate eligibility collectivists & propaganda communisty organizations corruption crisis strategy Democrat finance & banking fraud George Soros globalism - NWO global Marxist-fascist movement government domination of resources history illegal immigration Islam Islamism jihad jihadism Israel kleptocracy labor unions Marxism Marxofascism Marxstream media Military Mitt Romney Obamacare health control Occupy Wall Street race-baiting/racism Republican Right of Private Property Russia Sovereignty Tea Party terrorism U.S. Congress U.S. Constitution U.S. Presidency (POTUS) United Nations (UN) video violence voting youth & education Sabotage What good will it do, to protect the United States of America, or our presumed interests against the aggressiveness of China, Russia, or Islam, if, partially in fear of these threats, we lose our free and independent nation to the stealth imperialism of transnational and global governance? As America threatens to shatter, we must see how a semi-covert, global, cartel collective and their NWO in the USA ("progressive" neo-Marxists and neo-fascists corporatists, updated with 21st Century techniques and technology) intentionally perpetrate this sabotage, while we patriots try to prevent it. Have a look around our camp, as we struggle to survive. - your tour guide Archives Militarization in America About DHS militarization, see the new, breakthrough analysis from James Simpson, " Police Militarization, Abuses of Power, and the Road to Impeachment " and our earlier, "Marxist President’s Military Exercises in These U.S. Cities; Yours One?"
About the trajectory of this, we must pray, communicate, keep calm, and do not become the first to engage. If it comes to it, do not even respond in kind, until after the after the first times that extreme, anti-American violence is done by them. It calls for an attitude of self sacrifice -- first cheek, second cheek, then no more.
And speak out about the potential and strategic "sense" of the Obama/NWO's DHS carrying out false flag missions of violence, blaming it on American patriots, perhaps upon our militia movements.
We are in a real war, right now (of which others and I have been trying to alert fellow Sovereign Citizens for years) and the prime war is for the minds, hearts, and wills of the American People. We are opposed by an anti-American insurrection using any means of power (see Gramsci, Frankfurt School) including government power, as they are granted that opportunity. | 0 |
Enthusiasm for cancer immunotherapy is soaring, and so is Arie Belldegrun’s fortune. Dr. Belldegrun, a physician, Kite Pharma, a company that could be the first to market next year with a highly anticipated new immunotherapy treatment. But even without a product, Dr. Belldegrun has struck gold. His stock in Kite is worth about $170 million. Investors have profited along with him, as the company’s share price has soared to about $50 from an initial price of $17 in 2014. The results reflect widespread excitement over immunotherapy, which harnesses the body’s immune system to attack cancer and has rescued some patients from death. But they also speak volumes about the value of Kite’s main scientific partner: the United States government. Kite’s treatment, a form of immunotherapy called was initially developed by a team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute, led by a longtime friend and mentor of Dr. Belldegrun. Now Kite pays several million a year to the government to support continuing research dedicated to the company’s efforts. The relationship puts American taxpayers squarely in the middle of one of the hottest new drug markets. It also raises a question: Are taxpayers getting a good deal? Defenders say that the partnership will likely bring a lifesaving treatment to patients, something the government cannot really do by itself, and that that is what matters most. Critics say that taxpayers will end up paying twice for the same drug — once to support its development and a second time to buy it — while the company reaps the financial benefit. “If this was not a cancer treatment — if it was for a new solar technology, for example — it would be scandalous to think that some private investors are reaping massive profits off a invention,” said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, an advocacy group concerned with access to medicines. The debate goes squarely to one of the nation’s most vexing challenges: rising health care and drug prices. Kite is one of a growing number of drug and biotech companies relying on federal laboratories. Analysts expect the company to charge at least $200, 000 for the new treatment, which is intended as a therapy for patients. While the law allows the government to demand concessions from its partners, the government has declined to do so with Kite and generally disdains the practice. Insisting on lower prices, federal researchers say, would drive away innovative partners that speed the process and benefit patients. But with the government doing so much pivotal research, others say that the private sector cannot afford to walk away. “The market is so reliant on the knowledge and that comes out of the government and academic labs,” said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, director of the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law at Brigham Women’s Hospital in Boston. Price curbs, he said, “would not suddenly lead to a total abandonment of this pipeline. It couldn’t possibly. ” Drug makers would be especially unlikely to turn away from immunotherapy, where the promising science has set off a “gold rush mentality,” according to Mark Edwards of Bioscience Advisors, a company which tracks pharmaceutical licensing deals. The National Institutes of Health, the parent agency of the National Cancer Institute, currently has about 400 cooperative research agreements with companies, and licenses hundreds of patented inventions for development. Kite executives and national health officials characterize their partnership as a model arrangement in a system established by Congress three decades ago. The system has given birth to the cancer drug Taxol, the AIDS drug Prezista, two cervical cancer vaccines and a widely used test for H. I. V. infection, among other innovations. Kite’s first drug, called could help thousands of patients each year in the United States with certain blood cancers. If it succeeds, it could generate sales of $1 billion to $2 billion annually, according to Wall Street analysts, making it among the most lucrative drugs to come from government research. But the government’s share of any Kite success would be modest, much lower than some academic research groups have wrangled in immunotherapy deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Federal officials counter that the reward to the taxpayer is not money but the drug itself. “This is exactly the way things should work,” said Dr. Steven Rosenberg, who has led the surgery branch at the National Cancer Institute for 42 years and led development of Kite’s drug. Such partnerships, he said, are “absolutely essential or many discoveries will not see the light of day. ” Moreover, government officials say, companies in such deals must take significant financial risks and expenditures on their own, without any guarantee that the drug will be approved. Kite says it has spent more than $200 million on research and development, including running larger clinical trials than those conducted by the cancer institute, and recently spent about $30 million to build a factory that will be able to make treatments for up to 5, 000 patients a year. Setting the price of the drug, Dr. Rosenberg said, “is for the marketplace. ” Like many business deals, this one began with a personal relationship — in this case between Dr. Rosenberg and Dr. Belldegrun. After finishing medical school in his native Israel, performing surgery in helicopters for the Israeli armed forces, and completing residency at Brigham Women’s Hospital, Dr. Belldegrun became a research fellow for Dr. Rosenberg at the N. C. I. It was 1985, and Dr. Belldegrun was put to work on a new project of Dr. Rosenberg’s — extracting immune cells from cancer patients, multiplying them in the laboratory, and putting them back in. “He was one of the more outstanding fellows to come through,” said Dr. Rosenberg, 76, who is widely considered a cancer research luminary. When the fellowship ended in 1988, Dr. Belldegrun became a prominent surgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles, but the two men stayed in touch. Eventually, Dr. Belldegrun, 67, got the entrepreneurial bug. He a biotech company, Agensys, which was acquired by a bigger company for more than $500 million. He was also involved with Cougar Biotechnology, which developed the prostate cancer drug Zytiga and was acquired by Johnson Johnson for $1 billion in May 2009. A month later, Dr. Belldegrun formed Kite with a group of colleagues and investors to pursue cancer immunotherapy. That same month, a Florida marine contractor named Eric Karlson, whose ’s lymphoma was advancing despite four prior treatments, became the first patient treated by Dr. Rosenberg with what would eventually become . The treatment entailed removing some of Mr. Karlson’s immune system T cells from his blood, genetically engineering them to recognize and fight his cancer, multiplying the T cells to huge numbers in the laboratory and transferring them back into his body. After two such treatments, Mr. Karlson remains alive and eight years later. Kite initially thought it would pursue an approach to immunotherapy known as cancer vaccines, but in 2010, Dr. Belldegrun visited Dr. Rosenberg and was shown the of Mr. Karlson and of a second patient. Dr. Belldegrun was bowled over. “I had no doubt that this is going to be a drug and, more than that, it will become a platform for multiple products,” he recalled. “We never looked back. ” Over the next two years, the National Cancer Institute worked out a deal with Kite that was signed in 2012. It was the first of eight contracts between the government and the company that generally take two forms. In one type of contract, Kite licenses patented inventions and agrees to pay the government royalties, roughly 5 percent of sales of any commercial product arising from a particular patent. However, there is no such license specifically for because the underlying treatment was not patented by the N. C. I. so royalties will be minimal. Officials say the agency did not apply for a patent because the treatment was similar to what others had been developing. Also, at the time the treatment was first created, in 2007, immunotherapy was considered to have dim commercial prospects. “Back then, we didn’t even think about commercial aspects,” said Dr. James N. Kochenderfer, a scientist at the agency who designed the treatment when working in Dr. Rosenberg’s group. Under the second type of contract, known as a cooperative research and development agreement, Kite provides money to the N. C. I. to support research. Kite is now paying $3 million a year to Dr. Rosenberg’s lab and has provided $7. 5 million to it in total since 2012. Based on its regulatory filings, Kite is paying $7. 8 million a year for research agreements and licenses in total, with at least $4 million of that going to the cancer institute and the rest to academic or corporate partners. The taxpayer has invested, too. Dr. Rosenberg estimated that the government has spent roughly $10 million over the years on what has become . He said Kite’s $3 million a year is about equal to the taxpayer funding in that area and has helped speed research. These days, researchers from Kite and the cancer institute, typically including Dr. Rosenberg and Dr. Belldegrun, confer by conference call every other Thursday for 90 minutes. Kite employees have spent long periods at the N. C. I. learning how to manufacture the therapy and how to treat patients in advance with chemotherapy. “We shouldn’t underestimate the value and the importance of N. I. H. not only to Kite but to the whole field of engineered therapy,” Dr. Belldegrun said. When Kite signed its first deal with the cancer agency, he said, it “tapped into six years of monumental work that they had done. ” Some immunotherapy competitors marvel at the company’s coup in tapping into the agency’s expertise. “They got 20 years of research all together in one scoop,” said Dr. Carlos Paya, chief executive of Immune Design, which is pursuing a different approach. But government officials say few, if any, other companies were interested in the technology at the time Dr. Belldegrun came calling. Dr. Rosenberg said that before Kite, a few companies, including Johnson Johnson, had looked at an earlier version of his technology but were wary because treatment involved processing each patient’s cells. technology available to be licensed to companies is posted on the website of the National Institutes of Health. And when the agency intends to grant a license to a particular company, it publishes that in the Federal Register, inviting public comment and possible competing offers. Both steps were taken in the case of Kite, officials said. Kite did not get everything the cancer institute has developed in the field. Some other companies, including Opus Bio and Bluebird Bio, got rights to some products, in part because the companies had special expertise that the agency’s researchers desired. But Kite seems to have gotten the balance of them and N. C. I. technology accounts for the majority of its pipeline of possible products, though the company is diversifying. Dr. Rosenberg professes no interest in the business side of the Kite relationship. He does not own stock in any company, even Kite, though he could get up to $150, 000 a year in patent royalties if some of Kite’s efforts pay off. Dr. Belldegrun, in contrast to his mentor, has commercial flair. He is known for his sharp business suits, lives in the neighborhood of Los Angeles, and seems as comfortable on Wall Street or in high society as in the operating room. Kite’s relationship with the N. C. I. is an important part of its appeal to investors. In some presentations, Dr. Belldegrun has shown a photograph of himself with Dr. Rosenberg in their younger days. And he persuaded Dr. Rosenberg to speak at Kite’s first big meeting for investors in June 2015, the only time he has ever spoken to Wall Street. In emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Knowledge Ecology International, Dr. Belldegrun praised Dr. Rosenberg’s talk and sent him copies of investment reports from the conference written by Wall Street analysts. “Thank you for making the effort to come to NY,” Dr. Belldegrun wrote. “I heard only raving reviews about your presence and presentation. ” The reliance of private companies on research goes well beyond obvious cases like Kite. In many instances, companies work with universities or medical centers that, in turn, have been funded from the $32 billion annual budget of the National Institutes of Health. Kite’s two main competitors, Novartis and Juno Therapeutics, for instance, derived similar immunotherapy treatments largely from academic institutions, developed at least in part with government funding. Novartis has a relationship with the University of Pennsylvania, and Juno with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Children’s Hospital. “For the most important drugs you’ll see some involvement,” said Bhaven Sampat, an associate professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. He was one author of a study that found that 9 percent of all drugs approved between 1988 and 2005 were based directly on a patent held by the public sector. But 47. 8 percent of the drugs relied at least indirectly on some federally funded research. The figures were higher for more medically important drugs: 17. 4 percent had a direct patent, while 64. 5 percent had at least an indirect influence. These figures are up sharply from before the 1980s. Such partnerships and licensing deals were encouraged by the 1980 and Acts, and the 1986 Federal Technology Transfer Act. The laws are credited with the biotechnology industry. But from the beginning, some people questioned whether taxpayers were getting a bad deal. Perhaps the drug developed from a cooperative research and development agreement — the cancer drug Taxol — was the subject of several congressional hearings in the early 1990s that investigated whether the drug’s maker, Squibb, charged too much and whether the government recouped enough of its investment. In the end, the pricing was left unchanged. The N. I. H. argues that if it imposes pricing restrictions, it won’t get partners. In fact, in 1995, it struck from its negotiating tactics a goal that prices be “reasonable. ” “Companies will not take technologies from us if we say the government will decide in the future what the price will be,” said Mark Rohrbaugh, who ran the technology transfer office at the institutes from 2001 to 2013 and is now an adviser to the agency. After the “reasonable price” clause was struck, he said, there was a threefold increase in partnership deals. The N. I. H. can collect royalties from successful products to help offset the costs of the research, but so far these royalties have been small, amounting to an estimated $135 million in the last fiscal year from 870 licenses, with the bulk of the money coming from a small number of drugs. “We’re not preoccupied with financial value,” Dr. Rohrbaugh said. “Our mission is treatment of people and improving public health. ” In that regard, the government’s bet on a small company like Kite, which might have seemed risky, appears to be paying off so far. Dr. Belldegrun has largely delivered on promises to raise money, assemble an experienced staff, build the factory, conduct clinical trials and begin to apply for regulatory approval. Once considered the underdog to Novartis and Juno, Kite might be the first reach the market. Academic centers and companies often drive harder bargains in licensing technology. In some cases, academic centers own a stake in a company they license technology to, allowing them to reap a financial windfall if the company does well. Both the Hutchinson cancer center and Sloan Kettering have owned stock in Juno and are entitled to substantial payments — up to $350 million and $150 million — if Juno’s stock reaches certain levels. The N. I. H. does not take equity positions in companies to avoid an appearance of a conflict of interest. So to critics of the government deals, drug prices are crucial to understanding taxpayer value. After all, they ask, is a drug truly widely available — which is what the government says is its measure of success — if it costs too much for some people? Rachel Sachs, an associate law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and expert in innovation policy, said the government had every right to seek price concessions. She noted that the government, through Medicare and Medicaid, was effectively buying its inventions back from itself. “The public is paying for the research and to the extent that many people, if not most, will pay through public insurance, we’re paying again,” she said. Hillary Clinton, in her campaign for president, promised to set new rules for federal support of research so that Americans “get the value they deserve” for the money taxpayers spend in supporting research. It is not clear how Donald J. Trump will approach these issues he has said he favors reducing health care costs, but Republicans, who control Congress, too, have opposed a government role in price setting. One mechanism to control pricing already exists. It is called rights, and it lets the N. I. H. take back control of a patent on an invention made with federal funding if the drug is not being made available to the public on reasonable terms. The tool has gone unused. Earlier this year, Knowledge Ecology International and another advocacy group, the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment, petitioned the agency to exercise rights on Xtandi, a prostate cancer drug that was developed by federally funded researchers at U. C. L. A. It said the price in the United States of about $129, 000 a year, two to four times that in other developed countries, meant the drug was not reasonably available. The effort was supported by other public interest groups and some Democratic members of Congress. U. C. L. A. made more than $500 million by selling its royalty rights to the drug. But the N. I. H. declined to exercise its rights on Xtandi, arguing that it was not qualified to judge whether a drug’s price is reasonable and that a high price does not mean a drug is not being made available to the public. “N. I. H. has made it clear that its job is not to decide prices of drugs, period,” Dr. Rohrbaugh said Kite says it has not decided what to charge for but Dr. Belldegrun hinted that Kite’s therapy might be relatively expensive because ideally it would be a single treatment that would cure the patient, not a drug that would have to be taken continuously. He added that Kite would take steps to make sure that everyone who needed the drug could get it. Meantime, the relationship between Kite and the National Cancer Institute is expanding to develop treatments for other cancers, including one technique Dr. Rosenberg thinks could be used to attack solid tumors like colon, breast and lung cancer. “The potential for broad applicability is huge,” he said. That could mean many lives saved and maybe more drugs for Kite and its investors, with the American taxpayer right in the middle of the deal. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah described terrorism as a “satanic ideology” during his meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. [During the brief remarks in front of reporters, referred to terrorism calling it “a satanic ideology” and “an evil one that terrorizes innocent civilians,” according to Nadia Bilbassy, the senior White House correspondent in Washington D. C. for Al Arabiya TV and MBC TV. The official White House translation of the remarks said that referred to “an evil ideology. ” “I’ve had a deep appreciation and admiration of your unique personality, especially as you are standing very strong in the field,” he said, “to counter this satanic ideology that is claiming innocent lives, that is bringing devastation to communities and nations, and that is terrorizing innocent people. ” Sisi promised Trump, “you’ll find me supporting you very strongly and very earnestly in finding a solution to the problem of the century. ” Trump committed to fighting terrorism with continuing the conversation he started with the Egyptian president during a visit in New York in September. “We will fight terrorism and other things and we’re going to be friends for a long, long period of time,” Trump said. | 1 |
A few hours after her father’s news conference on Wednesday at Trump Tower, Ivanka Trump posted a notice on her personal Facebook page officially announcing that she was taking a “formal leave of absence” from all management and operative responsibilities at her fashion brand and that she would be stepping down from her role at the Trump Organization. She would, she wrote, be spending the next few months concentrating on settling her children into their new lives in Washington and exploring how she could “determine the most impactful and appropriate ways for me to serve our country. ” This follows earlier decisions to separate her personal social media accounts from those of her brand. Yet in one meaningful area, Ms. Trump and her brand are harder to divide: That is, her wardrobe. After all, the same day she announced she was separating Ivanka Trump the person from Ivanka Trump the brand, The Daily Mail announced she had worn an Ivanka Trump coat to her father’s news conference. Then it offered a box and link. In case, you know, anyone wanted to buy the garment. That turned out not to be true — according to a spokesman for Ms. Trump, the coat was by Joseph Altuzarra — but the confusion around woman and product made for some uncomfortable optics, and it raises the question: What does it mean to separate individual from company where fashion is concerned? On the one hand, there’s something ridiculous about suggesting that Ms. Trump not wear whatever clothes are in her closet, and as the founder of a fashion brand that bears her name, presumably part of her job has been to promote said brand by wearing it — to, in effect, demonstrate her belief in her own products. So she probably has a lot of such products within reach. And it’s not her fault if some media outlet chooses to point out that she looks good and tells people how they, too, can look good. On the other hand, her brand is clearly built on her image: Not just her name, but her face, and what she represents. It’s selling the promise that women who wear her clothes can get a piece of her gold dust — and now that this gold dust is visible in the corridors (and news conferences) of power, that is only going to be more true. Every time she is pictured in an Ivanka Trump outfit, it is bound to give a boost to the Ivanka Trump brand. Whether or not they are technically linked. It’s unclear whether Ms. Trump would benefit from that financially, as specifics about her monetary relationship with her brand were not included in her statement. But even if she is selling her part of the company, for a prominent member of the first family to be seen to be endorsing a brand with her own name on it is a complicated proposition. And an endorsement is exactly what an appearance in an item of clothing has become. This is a time, like it or not, of obsession with the wardrobe selections of anyone in the public eye, especially women in the public eye (their clothes are more interesting than men’s, after all). And though she has repeatedly said that she will not take a formal role in the new administration, Ms. Trump is emerging as the female face of her father’s inner circle. Simply consider the news conference, where she was the only woman from the immediate family in attendance. There’s a reason The Daily Mail did not get into the specifics of what her brothers wore. She is smart enough to know that any time she steps out of her door, someone is going to try to snap a picture and parse her clothes. You can argue that Ms. Trump is not an elected official, and thus to demand that she recuse herself from all products associated with her name is unfair punishment. You could say that if she wears, for example, an Alexander McQueen dress, as she did on election night, she is giving that brand a boost, so why shouldn’t she do the same for her own brand? You can point out that there is precedent because she wore her own line numerous times during the campaign, including to introduce her father at the Republican National Convention — but then, the latter choice was not without controversy. In part, the resulting brouhaha was, of course, because her brand then promoted that appearance with its own “get the look” link, as it famously did, without her knowledge, when she wore her bracelet during her family’s appearance on “60 Minutes. ” Presumably that won’t happen any more. But brands need personalities to succeed, at whatever price point, and those personalities derive most easily from, well, a person. A scenario in which Ivanka Trump the brand removes Ms. Trump utterly from its identity is hard to imagine. Though to be fair, the brand’s website is adorned with images and line drawings of many different kinds of women and not with Ms. Trump, so it may be possible. Either way, this is another illustration of the multiple complicated issues that are going to arise with a member of the first family who also had designs on being a fashion brand. There’s really no playbook for this, as the Ivanka team — figuring it out as it goes along — is quick to remind. In which case, the clothes question should be the next piece of the puzzle to be solved. | 1 |
Break the Silence or Support Self-Determination? In Syria, the Answer Should be Obvious Submitted by Danny Haiphong on Tue, 11/01/2016 - 19:14 Tweet Widget by Danny Haiphong
Syria is “the target of one of the greatest misinformation campaigns in recent history.” The author regrets that left analyst Eric Draitser has contributed to the confusion. Draitser criticizes leftists who firmly support the Syrian government. Danny Haiphong counters that “the left must act with uncompromising dedication to the principle of self-determination in every case where US and Western imperialism wages wars of neo-colonial plunder.” Break the Silence or Support Self-Determination? In Syria, the Answer Should be Obvious by Danny Haiphong
“To claim that the left in the US should fight for ‘peace’ and at the same time oppose the Syrian government is an intentional attempt to remain neutral in a time of war.”
Imperialism's war on Syria may be the most important question on the order of the day for those fighting for a world free of exploitation and oppression. Syria is currently the battleground of imperialism's last gasp of life. In nearly six years, Syria has been turned into a site of intense struggle between the forces of resistance and imperialism's forces of reaction. It has also been the target of one of the greatest misinformation campaigns in recent history. The imperialist countries and their media lackeys have sewed deep confusion about the true character of the war being waged on Syria. Nowhere is this confusion greater than in the United States, and it appears someone I deeply respect has been overtaken by it.
In a recent issue of CounterPunch, Eric Draitser dives head deep into the confusion . He criticizes what he deems as two critical problems with the left's stance. Draitser first criticizes the pro-imperialist left for their decision to align themselves with the foreign-sponsored terror groups in Syria, which have been labeled "revolutionaries" or "rebels" by the imperialist countries. He then goes on to criticize leftists who have positioned themselves firmly in support of the Syrian government.
It is his criticism of the "pro-Assad left" that needs further examination. Draitser reveals his deep confusion when he asks:
"Will you continue to delude yourselves by refusing to accept the plainly obvious truth that no state or group has the best interests of Syrians at heart?"
Draitser's question assumes that the Syrian and Russian governments are equally to blame for the chaos in Syria. Their bombs are assumed to be prolonging the war and committing atrocities against the Syrian people at the same rate of the imperialists. If this is not the case, he doesn't state otherwise in the piece. In fact, Draitser sets out to prove true what has already been proven false by a wide range of independent and corporate media sources.
“The imperialist countries and their media lackeys have sewed deep confusion about the true character of the war being waged on Syria.”
First, Draitser claims that the war on Syria began as a genuine protest against "neo-liberal" reforms instituted by the Syrian government. This narrative is popular among the liberal-left media as well as the white left generally. However, those who make this claim rarely specify what neo-liberal reforms were made or how the confrontation all of a sudden became violent. Stephen Gowans reviews numerous reports from the corporate media that describe the uprising in March of 2011 as immediately violent, ill-supported, and ultimately insignificant in the midst of reforms from the Syrian government that were broadly supported by the Syrian people. At the same time as the violent uprisings, thousands of Syrians were protesting in the streets in support of President Assad.
Furthermore, reports from the city of Daraa during the 2011 uprisings confirmed the presence of armed "rebels" who had freshly arrived from their US-NATO backed destruction of Libya . These "rebels" have since infested the country through various channels of the Syrian border. Each group possesses a fundamentalist Wahhabi ideology and receives varying degrees of assistance from the Gulf monarchies, Israel, Turkey, NATO, and of course, the US. This is confirmed in Draitser's article. Yet he still reinforces the claim that a popular uprising started the war even though Assad possessed broad support in 2011 .
The truth is that the war on Syria has little to do with neo-liberalism or popular discontent. It has been acknowledged by UN sources that despite reforms, the Syrian economy remains highly regulated and socialist in character . Syria's own form of socialism has brought many benefits to the Syrian people. Healthcare and education are rights guaranteed to all citizens . Syria also possesses a secular government where Muslims, Christians, and all religious and ethnic groups lived peacefully prior to the war. Syria is thus a poor example of neo-liberalism. What economic struggles that do exist in Syria have largely stemmed from the harsh sanctions imposed by the US in 2004.
“The war on Syria has little to do with neo-liberalism or popular discontent.”
Furthermore, Draitser cites numerous sources that support regime change to smear the Syrian government and, by extension, the Syrian people. One of the sources receives much of its information from the White Helmets. The White Helmets have long been exposed as an NGO that works directly in service of imperialism's regime change operation in Syria. The organization receives approximately 33 million in funds directly from the US and UK governments. Eva Bartlett recently visited Aleppo and witnessed many White Helmet workers sporting arms and fighting among the terror groups .
Draister also cites a source from the New York Post . The Post article relies heavily on documents collected by the dubious Center for International Justice and Accountability. This purported "international law" NGO is run by a consortium of corporate lawyers, former or current Amnesty International staffers, and various other servants of empire. The organization specializes in "transitional justice." In other words, the Center for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) provides a legal framework for regime change on behalf of its imperial funders. Draitser claims no group involved in the war has the interests of the Syrian people at heart yet cites directly from an organization dedicated to the promotion of war in Syria.
The NGOs and their partners in the corporate media have worked together to distort the reality on the ground. Aleppo is case and point. A ceasefire was brokered by all parties in late October that was supposed to allow Syrians to escape safely from East to West Aleppo. However, the humanitarian corridors were repeatedly shelled by the Nusra Front , the US-backed Al Qaeda affiliate . The media decided to ignore this and report instead that the ceasefire’s failure was due to the withholding of aid by Russia and Syria . This is but one example of many where the Syrian government has been blamed for the rebel-sponsored terror inflicted on Syrian people.
“His analysis uses an abstract, moral argument to violate Syria's self-determination.”
After five years of war on Syria, it is a wonder how anyone could believe a word that comes from the mouths of the imperialist countries. They lied about the origins of the conflict. They have continuously blamed the Syrian government for events that have all been traced back to the armed proxies they support. This includes the Houla Massacre , the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, and the so-called starvation of Madaya . Aleppo is no different. The Syrian city has been under constant siege from NATO-backed terrorists. The terrorists are holding nearly 250,000 Syrians hostage in the Eastern side of war-torn Aleppo. This has been verified by journalists on the ground such as Vanessa Beeley .
These facts seem not to matter in Draitser's newfound assessment of Syria. His analysis uses an abstract, moral argument to violate Syria's self-determination. Calling those who unequivocally support the Syrian government "fetishists" assumes that the US left should take a position different from that of the Syrian people. Actual Syrians supported Bashar Al-Assad, and thus the Syrian Army, with 88.7 percent of the vote in the 2014 elections. To claim that the left in the US should fight for "peace" and at the same time oppose the Syrian government is an intentional attempt to remain neutral in a time of war. As Howard Zinn brilliantly stated, one cannot be neutral on a moving train.
And the imperialist war against Syria is moving dangerously toward a World War III scenario. Hillary Clinton will be elected the next President of the United States and has repeatedly expressed that she will pursue a no-fly zone once in office. A no-fly zone would place Russian and Syrian military assets at risk of US-sponsored bombs and thus the world at risk of a global military confrontation not seen since World War II. How convenient it is then that Draitser should rebuke his former anti-imperialist stance in place of a stealth form of regime change. The world is on fire, yet Draitser has interpreted the situation as a chance to distort an already highly misunderstood situation .
“Draister's conclusions ultimately reinforce the Western assumption that the left must come to the rescue and save the Syrian people from their plight.”
Positions such as Draitser’s are ultimately shaped by the material conditions of an imperialist empire in crisis and decline. White supremacy has been a principle condition of US imperialism since its inception. The war machine and white supremacy are deeply connected. The peoples and nations on imperialism's hit-list are routinely depicted in a manner that justifies the need for US and Western military medicine. This notion has trickled down to the day-to-day actions of ordinary people, including what currently passes as the "anti-war" movement in the US today.
Draister's conclusions ultimately reinforce the Western assumption that the left must come to the rescue and save the Syrian people from their plight. Indeed, the Syrian people need allies and the left must be organizing toward an end to the war. But an end to the war cannot be achieved unless the left supports the will of the Syrian people. At the moment, this means the US left must align itself with the Syrian government and its allies. The left must act with uncompromising dedication to the principle of self-determination in every case where US and Western imperialism wages wars of neo-colonial plunder. Syria should be no exception.
Of course, this critique should not be seen as a personal attack on Draitser himself. His body of work reflects a deep commitment to the struggle against war and Empire. He has often taken positions on international questions that are deeply unpopular with the US imperialist order. However, when mistakes are made, the left has a responsibility to correct them. There is too much at stake. Failure to step up in defense of Syria means another regime, change scenario similar to what happened in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya. Draitser's piece is a study into the path that all genuine anti-imperialists should avoid.
But what is the correct path forward? Imperialism is the unquestionable cause of the war in Syria, so imperialism must be the primary target of an anti-imperialist movement. The US and its allies are risking world war over Syria’s destruction. On the other side, the Syrian and Russian governments (along with Iran and China) are doing as much as they can to find a peaceful solution to the conflict that also respects Syria’s national sovereignty. It is without question that this is the side where the left ought to be in the continued struggle to end the war once and for all. Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at [email protected] | 0 |
Posted on April 15, 2013 by Christian Zionist | 15 Comments
Whether this article is true or not, it is worth the read. I knew we were headed towards communism when the American electorate chose Clinton, not once, but twice. I knew because I’d gone to high school with Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, and I knew her politics. It frightened me, but I thought we could recover. With the election of Obama, not once, but twice, we are now truly a communist nation. There are barely any threads of the Republic left to grab onto and the nation still sleeps. If we don’t awaken the “sleeping giant” soon, the Gulags of Russia will become an American reality. KJLN
A Russian government official bragged that Barack Obama was a KGB operative and that his presidency had been planned since birth, an American physicist and government contractor reports. Tom Fife, an American computer networking specialist and international businessman, reported the alarming facts about the Kremlin’s connection to Barack Obama. The boast from a Communist Party official reportedly occurred during a business trip to Russia,16 years before Barack Obama was ushered into the presidency of the United States. “It was like an elastic band snapping all the way from 1992,” Fife shakily admitted, upon recall of the exact moment he realized the Communist official had been telling the truth.
“It was a very, very scary feeling.”
Fife, a physicist and computer engineer, had been traveling to Russia for a joint venture with a state-owned company when the shocking revelation was revealed to him. After several business meetings, Fife and his partner were invited to the company owner’s home at the end of the journey for a farewell dinner.
The owner’s wife was a Communist Party official and was “climbing two ladders”, as Fife puts it, one ladder being the KGB and the other being the traditional Russian society and business ladder. As the evening wore on, the female Communist official became increasingly agitated over a perceived slight and her emotions spilled over.
“You Americans like to think you’re so perfect!” she snarled. “Well, what if I told you that very, very soon you’re going to have a black president… and he’s going to be a Communist!”
The KGB operative was not finished. As she had now dropped this bombshell on the entire gathering, she felt compelled to continue.
“His name is Barack,” she sneered. “His mother is white and his father is an African black. He has gone to the best schools, he is what you would call ‘Ivy League’.”
Fife recalls being stunned and shocked at the words flowing from the Communist’s mouth as she continued to rattle off an incredibly precise set of details about this Communist operative who was to supposedly become president of the United States.
The Communist official then stated that he was from Hawaii, but would very soon be elected to the Chicago state legislature. This has turned out to be an eerily prescient prediction, as Barack Obama was not elected State Senator until 1996, a full 4 years afterwards, as he took Alice Palmer’s seat.
In 1992, Obama had recently graduated from Harvard Law School and accepted a position as a Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. Perhaps the most shocking revelation is how deep the Soviet Communist network has embedded itself into American political and educational culture. A quick review of Obama’s political “career” shows a track that was inexplicably greased, from his tuition payments at Columbia and Harvard, to a position at UOC Law School, to his eventual electoral “victories” at the Illinois State Senate, United States Senate, and U.S. Presidency.
Barack Obama’s parents ostensibly met in a Russian language class. This could have been where his mother was recruited by Barack Obama Sr, who could have already been working undercover for the KGB. In order to brainwash the child from an early age, they surrounded him with diehard Communists and fellow KGB agents, such as Frank Marshall Davis, a known Communist Party USA official. The Soviet KGB directly funded the CPUSA. This would fit directly into what the Russian Communist said about ‘Barack’, boasting “He has been raised to be an atheist and a communist.”
“He will be a blessing for world communism,” Fife recalled her saying, after getting over the initial shock of hearing the current president was a KGB agent. The creepy prediction stayed with the physicist upon his return to the United States, although he paid it no mind until he began to hear of a swiftly rising political star named Barack Obama. When Fife learned that this same Barack was running in the2008 presidential election, everything snapped into place and he knew he had to tell someone. Today, Fife admits that it deeply disturbs him and that he has never been able to shake the ominous feeling of foreboding about what comes next, now that the KGB official’s prediction has come true.
“It never leaves you, having someone tell you that they’ve engineered the takeover of your country,” he admits. “It’s really quite scary.”
See also Dr. Eowyn’s May 24, 2010’s post on this, “ Obama, A Sleeper Agent For World Communism .” Rate this: | 0 |
At least a NAACP members, including the organization’s national president Cornell William Brooks, were arrested Tuesday night during a demonstration in protest of Republican senator Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s Attorney General nominee. [“We are asking the senator to withdraw his name for consideration as attorney general or for the Donald Trump, to withdraw the nomination,” Brooks said, CNN reports. Brooks and the other protesters occupied Sessions’s Alabama office for more than six hours before police removed and arrested them. The @NAACP @AlabamaNAACP are occupying the Mobile office of @jeffsessions — untill he withdraws as a AG nominee or we’re arrested. @tvonetv pic. twitter. — Cornell Wm. Brooks (@CornellWBrooks) January 3, 2017, “We were clear today: We want others to participate in acts of civil disobedience,” Brooks told ABC News. “This is a matter of ongoing opposition to someone with a clear, rights record in Senator Session. ” The six protesters were taken to jail. A court date has been set for January 30. Civil disobedience is 1 way for citizens to honor the rule of law. We were arrested to support a @TheJusticeDept for everyone. #stopsessions pic. twitter. — Cornell Wm. Brooks (@CornellWBrooks) January 4, 2017, Brooks said Senator Sessions’s “disregard for voter suppression” and his support of “the myth of voter fraud” are among the reasons the civil rights organization publicly opposes his nomination as attorney general. A Selma, Army veteran, Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump’s candidacy. The tapped the former U. S. attorney to serve as attorney general in November. The NAACP Tuesday coincided with the publication of an open letter signed by a group of 1, 226 law professors opposing Sessions’s nomination. “In 1986, the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a bipartisan vote, rejected President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of . S. Attorney Sessions for a federal judgeship, due to statements Sessions had made that reflected prejudice against African Americans,” the letter says. “Nothing in Senator Sessions’ public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge. ” Senator Sessions has vehemently denied the allegations, as Breitbart News investigative reporter Julia Hahn notes, citing his record of supporting civil rights initiatives in Alabama and his efforts to bankrupt and dismantle the the Ku Klux Klan in the state through civil litigation. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
Project Veritas Action has just released a new video relating to the investigations of Hillary Clinton’s private email servers.
In December, 2010, US Department of State IT Systems Administrator Cindy Almodovar reported that she met with Huma Abedin for thirty minutes regarding emails at the then unknown, but now notorious, @clintoneail.com site. Here’s is the text from that email exchange:
From: Almodovar, Cindy T
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 11:17 AM
To: SES-IRM_Tech
Cc: SES-IRM_FO-Mgt
Subject: Meeting with Huma
I met with Huma for about 30 minutes to go over mail issues.
She gave me some examples listed below, but also, things are inconsistent. But issue #1 is of an e-mail which was sent to her twice this morning, did get received on but was not delivered. See details below.
I have a contact for the @clintonemail site, his name is Bryan Pagliano and he actually now works for State, but he apparently set all of this up.
Huma sent several tests from her clintonemail account to Lona and myself – they were received. But there are many messages and responses not received.
o She sent a message this morning from her state.gov account to [email protected].
§ Recipient responded, but she didn’t get the response. I found that the response arrived and is on as “submitted to Categorizer†at 6:47 this morning.
§ It was resent at 7:11 am by sender to huma, received and also “submitted to Categorizer†on
o On 12/14, [email protected] sent a message to [email protected] and [email protected] at 10:03 pm. The subject line was blank. Huma received at Clinton address, but Lona did not receive on her state.gov account.
Cindy Trodden Almodovar
S/ES Supervisory Systems Administrator
S/ES-IRM POEMS Help Desk
U.S. Department of State
Phone: 202-647-8328 | Fax: 202-647-8191
As a result of subsequent investigations regarding Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. State Department reported the following:
From the unclassified May 2016 State Department report ESP-16-03:
Two staff in S/ES-IRM reported to OIG that, in late 2010, they each discussed their concerns about Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account in separate meetings with the then-Director of S/ES-IRM. In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system. According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.
The director referred to in OIG report is John Bentel. In 2010, he was the State Department employee who managed IT security issues for the top echelon of the department. He told FBI investigators those conversations back in 2010 never occurred. In March of 2016, Bentel refused to answer questions from Senate investigators and asserted his Fifth Amendment right 87 times during a deposition for a civil lawsuit related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
While it seems clear Ms. Almodovar knew about the @clintonemail.com server in 2010, there is no indication that the FBI, Washington Post or New York Times have interviewed her. The Washington Post clearly knew of the aforementioned section in the OIG report, but neglected to follow through on questioning.
Since there was no indication that either the mainstream media or the Justice Department was questioning Almodovar, Project Veritas Action sent a journalist as her about the truth of the issue. Here’s a partial transcript from that interview:
PV Journalist: I’m working on a story. I’m interested. I want to know the truth and I want to know if you’re one of the people who came, who went to John Bentel and said they were concerned about Hillary’s private server.
Almodovar: I don’t know anything about that.
PV Journalist: You weren’t involved in that at all?
Almodovar: You’ve got to stop this because this is like harassment.
PV Journalist: This will be the last time you see me. I just want to know the truth. I’m interested. I want to know if the FBI has talked to you.
Almodovar: No they haven’t.
PV Journalist: They haven’t at all‌
‌PV Journalist: I’m sure reporters and people have been coming to your door.
Almodovar: No. No one has come to the door. You’re the first one.
“Even though her name stands out in the emails released by the FBI, no one from the FBI ever spoke to Aldomovar,†said Project Veritas Action founder James O’Keefe. “No one interviewed her or made any attempt to get to the bottom of what information she might have about this case that is so important to national security. It made us wonder… who else the FBI neglected to talk with.â€
Source
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By Asra Carlone, Natural Blaze If you’ve been looking for easy ways to prepare hearty, warming dinners this fall, here are some meals waiting just for you. They are simply clean food or real... | 0 |
Don’t let the media tell you that the anti-Donald Trump, anti-democratic and anti-American violence occurring across the nation is isolated or limited or really nothing to report on .
Because it most certainly is.
The mainstream media has just been too busy reporting on some of the stupid or decades-old comments Donald Trump makes to report on them.
Or maybe they’re so in the tank for the Left, they are willing to ignore what’s right in front of their face – like the undercover video showing Hillary operatives staging and inciting violence at Trump rallies.
Some events the media simply can’t ignore – like the firebombing of a Republican Party headquarters in North Carolina. That was universally labeled an act of “political terrorism,” which it clearly was.
But the truth is, there are many more examples of this kind of violent hatred across the country. Our friends at Lifezette have compiled some of the most notable examples that you may not have been told about. They get local media coverage, but barely make it into the national news: On Oct. 15 in Bangor, Maine, vandals spray-painted about 20 parked cars outside a Trump rally. Trump supporter Paul Foster, whose van was hit with white paint, told reporters, “Why can’t they do a peaceful protest instead of painting cars, all of this, to make their statement?” Around Oct. 3, a couple of Trump supporters were assaulted in Zeitgeist, a San Francisco bar, after they were allegedly refused service for expressing support for Trump, GotNews reports. “The two Trump supporters were attacked, punched, and chased into the street by ‘some thugs’ that a barmaid called out from the back.” Lilian Kim of ABC 7 Bay Area tweeted a photo of the men, in which one was wearing a Trump T-shirt and the other was wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” shirt. On Sept. 28 in El Cajon, California, an angry mob at a Black Lives Matter protest beat 21-year-old Trump supporter Feras Jabro for wearing a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. The assault was broadcast live using the smartphone app Periscope. On Sept. 26 at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, as the first presidential debate was about to get underway, a woman wearing Trump campaign apparel was assaulted while heading to a debate watch event. “Nobody, regardless of race, gender, or political party, should feel unsafe because of the way they look or what they wear when they walk on campus,” the Minnesota Federation of College Republicans said in a press release. On Aug. 19 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Trump supporters had to run a gauntlet of angry protesters to get into a Trump fundraiser at the Minneapolis Convention Center. When they left after the event they were hit, pushed, and spit on. On Aug. 13 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 68-year-old cancer survivor Vester Bullock was beaten at a garage sale because he wore a Trump pin on his hat. The assailant “slammed his arms, walked up to me and said, ‘My wife told me I shouldn’t trust a God-damn Republican,'” he said. The man complained the staple gun Bullock sold him didn’t work. “I told him ‘I’ll give you your money back,'” said Bullock. “But he kept calling me all kinds of names.” The man punched Bullock in the jaw so hard he lost a tooth. On Aug. 12 in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, two women assaulted pro-Trump activist Tim Treadstone after a Trump rally. “This blonde girl grabbed my iPhone and threw it as hard as she could to the pavement,” he said. “And before I could pick it up, the brunette who was throwing the food at people punched me in the head. My glasses and my hat flew off. There were claw marks on my neck.” Last week, the two women were formally charged with assault and battery. The night of the rally, Treadstone and a group of Trump hat-wearers were denied service at a popular Mexican eatery. Customers began screaming at the Trump backers and throwing food at them. Earlier, at the West Hollywood rally, “a can of Monster energy drink, eggs, and dog feces were also thrown at pro-Trump demonstrators,” according to Breitbart News. “The can of Monster hit one man on the back.” On Aug. 3 in Bloomfield, New Jersey, an assailant attacked a 62-year-old man who was walking down the street wearing a pro-Trump T-shirt, local police said. “The motorist inquired why [the man] was wearing the shirt, directing profanities at him,” a police spokesman said. “The [victim] continued to walk away as [the] motorist followed him.” The motorist hit the man several times with a crowbar, causing injuries to his arms, hands, and thighs, On June 18, 19-year-old British national Michael Sandford tried to take a gun from a Las Vegas police officer during a Trump rally. Sandford was arrested and reportedly said he intended to use the gun to kill Trump. Unlike most of the anti-Trump attacks, this event was widely reported by the media. On June 2, in San Jose, California, rioters assaulted a group of attendees leaving a Trump rally. Fourteen of those attacked have filed a class-action lawsuit against the city and Mayor Sam Liccardo. The attendees “were victimized by being forced by armed police to walk into a riot in full swing where many were assaulted while police looked on,” said their lawyer, Harmeet K. Dhillon. In San Jose, protesters also threw eggs, a tomato, and a bottle at Rachel Casey, a 29-year-old Trump supporter they cornered outside a hotel. “I knew if I was to touch one of them or I was to grab one of the flags they were waving in my face that they would have attacked me or beaten me with those flag poles that were metal,” Casey told Breitbart News. “I just kept a straight face, I don’t know how. I just knew if I touched one of them I would get hurt. Luckily someone let me in that hotel, finally, someone finally opened the door.” On April 28, in Costa Mesa, California, anti-Trump demonstrators threw rocks at moving cars. One bloodied the face of a Trump supporter who was driving away after the rally. About 20 people were arrested. On March 12 at the Dayton, Ohio, airport, Black Lives Matter supporter Thomas Dimassimo rushed the small stage where Trump was speaking, an attack that received widespread media attention. He was tackled by Secret Service agents before he could reach the GOP candidate and was later charged with disorderly conduct and inducing panic. Before the attack he tweeted: “I’ve had about all I can take from the violent trump ralliers. Saturday im [sic] going to check my people and spit on their false king.” After his release from jail, hours later, he tweeted: “F**k you b**ch @realDonaldTrump[.]”
This is but a sampling of the violence that has occurred by the left against Republicans, conservatives and Donald Trump supporters.
So anyone who suggests that there would be violence after any contested elections needs to turn their eyes squarely on Hillary Clinton and her supporters. | 0 |
Rajoy aparece en un Delorean para llevar a los españoles una hora atrás en el tiempo "DEBEMOS VIAJAR AL PASADO PARA RESTABLECER EL EQUILIBRIO", HA DICHO viajes en el tiempo
Gritando que no hay tiempo que perder y que todos los españoles deben desplazarse al pasado, el recién investido Presidente del Gobierno, Mariano Rajoy, ha irrumpido en la madrileña Puerta del Sol montado en un coche marca Delorean al que ha animado a subir a todo el mundo, según han explicado varios testigos. Su aparición ha tenido lugar a las 2:55 de la madrugada.
En cinco minutos, según el Gobierno, todos los españoles deberán subir al coche del presidente a fin de poder viajar al pasado y poder llevar a cabo el cambio de hora anual que debe efectuarse hoy.
“¡Rápido, subid, no hay tiempo para explicaciones!”, ha gritado Rajoy, según las fuentes.
Despeinado y con más tics nerviosos de lo habitual, Rajoy se ha mostrado muy agitado, han explicado los testigos. Al parecer, se le veía desorientado y pronunciando frases inconexas como “Rápido, se va a cerrar el agujero de gusano”.
El Gobierno también advierte que una vez todos los españoles se hayan desplazado al pasado “es absolutamente imprescindible que nadie toque nada”. Si un español se encuentra consigo mismo en el pasado “es conveniente evitar el encuentro” y es imprescindible no advertir a nadie sobre lo que ya sabemos del futuro “especialmente el hecho de que Rajoy al final ha sido investido”.
Rajoy ha configurado su máquina del tiempo para viajar tan sólo una hora, a las dos de la mañana, pero ya ha advertido que “no soy mucho ni de twitter ni de máquinas del tiempo y no prometo nada”.
“Soy el Dr. Mariano Rajoy. Estoy en el estacionamiento del Centro Comercial Bazar Amigo. Es sábado, 29 de octubre de 2016. 2:58 a.m. Este es el experimento temporal número uno”, ha declarado Rajoy, grabadora en mano.
Finalmente, el político ha señalado boquiabierto al reloj de la plaza: las manecillas se movían hacia atrás por el cambio de hora. “¡Salven el reloj de la torre! ¡Salven el reloj de la torre!”, ha gritado Rajoy temiendo que el icónico reloj de Puerta del Sol estuviera estropeado, según los presentes.
Cuando las manecillas han marcado de nuevo las 02:00 a.m., Rajoy ha vuelto a bajar del Delorean, eufórico, gritando: “¡Lo he conseguido! ¡Lo he conseguido!”. Siempre según los testigos, ha agarrado a Dora la Exploradora por la pechera de su disfraz, y le ha preguntado: “Dime, joven del futuro: ¿Quién es el Presidente del futuro?”. Cuando Dora le ha respondido “Mariano Rajoy”, éste ha reído, sorprendido: “¿Rajoy? ¿El registrador de la propiedad? ¿Y quién es Vicepresidente? ¿Una mujer?”. | 0 |
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to expand a state of emergency in southern Mindanao to the whole country should the Maute group, a terrorist organization that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) expand its killing spree beyond the island. [Duterte, who arrived home from an abbreviated trip to Russia Wednesday, elaborated on the implications of martial law on the island. The president suspended the writ of habeas corpus and announced that police would no longer require a warrant on the island to arrest anyone suspected of being a member of the terrorist group. “Checkpoints will be allowed. Searches will be allowed. Arrest without a warrant will be allowed in Mindanao,” Duterte explained. “And I do not need to secure any search warrant or a warrant of arrest. If you are identified positively on the other side, you can be arrested and detained. ” “Anyone caught possessing a gun and confronting us with violence, my orders are shoot to kill. I will not hesitate to do it,” he vowed. “If I think that you should die, you will die. If you fight us, you will die. If there is an open defiance, you will die. ” “Anyone now holding a gun, confronting government with violence, my orders are spare no one, let us solve the problems of Mindanao once and for all. Do not force my hands into it,” he added. Duterte added that he was mulling an order to allow civilians to use their legally purchased guns against Maute terrorists and carry them publicly to deter violence. Duterte added the rare warning that he would not allow police to abuse human rights with impunity. “I will assure you I am not willing to allow abuses. Government is still running, the Congress is functioning, and the courts are open for citizens to seek grievance,” he assured residents. These clarifications followed comments on the flight back from Moscow, where he compared himself to predecessor Ferdinand Marcos, who also declared martial law. “I was asked how I would deal with terrorism. I said I’d be harsh. I told everyone, ‘do not force my hand into it,” he told reporters in a Facebook Live video posted by Presidential Communications Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson. In that video, Duterte said he hoped to be able to lift the martial law order as soon as possible but could not guarantee a swift end to the crisis in Mindanao, where he currently resides. “If it would take a year to do it then we’ll do it. If it’s over in a month I’d be happy,” he said. Mindanao is home to a large Muslim population and has birthed multiple Muslim insurgencies, particularly the Abu Sayyaf and Maute group. The Maute group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015 after its leaders established the “Khalifa Islamiah Mindanao” (“Mindanao Islamic Caliphate”) in 2012. Maute and Abu Sayyaf operate independently of each other despite their allegiance to ISIS, though they have pledged to aid each other. The bond between Maute and Abu Sayyaf apparently triggered the wave of violence that spread throughout the island this week. Philippine police raided the home of Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, triggering a rapid response from Maute jihadists, who stormed Marawi city, beheaded a local police chief, freed more than 100 jihadists at a local prison, and took a priest and Catholic believers praying at a local church hostage. Witnesses say Maute fighters have raised the Islamic State flag over the city from local mosques and burned down numerous Catholic and government buildings. In addition to freeing an estimated 107 jihadists from a Mindanao prison, the Maute terrorists reportedly stole government vehicles to use in bringing the fugitives to their stronghold in Marawi. For months, Duterte has warned that the collapse of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq would present a danger to the Philippines. “Once the terrorists of the Middle East are deprived of the land area, the real estate area where they can sleep,” Duterte warned in November 2016, “they will wander to other places and they will come here and we have to prepare for that. ” Should ISIS surface in the Philippines, Duterte said then, “forget about human rights. ” “I will not just simply allow my people to be slaughtered for the sake of human rights that’s bullshit,” he added. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter. | 1 |
The Great Wall Street/Washington Con Job: Part 5 of The Recovery Which Never Happened By David Stockman. Posted On Friday, October 28th, 2016 In Part 4 of this series we introduced the idea that the US is now in a Say's Law Economy, which is being dragged down by a Keynesian ball and chain. That is, the traditional credit channels of monetary transmission are now broken and done owing to Peak Debt and the Fed-induced mutation of the money and capital markets into gambling casinos. You need to login to view this content.
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David Stockman's Contra Corner is the only place where mainstream delusions and cant about the Warfare State, the Bailout State, Bubble Finance and Beltway Banditry are ripped, refuted and rebuked. Subscribe now to receive David Stockman’s latest posts by email each day as well as his model portfolio, Lee Adler’s Daily Data Dive and David’s personally curated insights and analysis from leading contrarian thinkers. | 0 |
It is the unofficial soundtrack of basketball, a noise consistently heard but rarely considered — shoes squeaking on the hardwood. Squeaks are the background rhythm to the game. But that sound is also one of the enduring mysteries of sports, and presents a question that gets scientists talking: Why do basketball shoes squeak? To understand, it may help to consider violins and the California spiny lobster. Sheila Patek, a biologist at Duke University, is an expert in spiny lobsters, among other oddities of the animal kingdom, and several years ago discovered that some species of the clawless crustaceans do something utterly unusual. To scare away predators, they rub a smooth, rubbery protrusion at the base of each antenna against the smooth, hard part of their heads. The result is an audible squawk. The spiny lobster became the first known example among animals of the phenomenon, a deeply studied principle of science and engineering. It is when two relatively smooth or flat surfaces become repeatedly stuck and unstuck by the forces of friction, creating a vibration that becomes a noise. It is why brakes and doors squeak on dirty hinges and why wipers chatter on dry windshields. It is why a finger sings on the rim of a wine glass or screeches on the outside of an inflated balloon. And it explains how the bow of a violin, sticking and slipping almost imperceptibly as it crosses the string, creates sound. “If you’ve ever played a violin, you have to push down and slide at just the right combination to get these two surfaces to stick and slip across each other,” Patek said. “And on each slip it makes a little burst of sound. And that’s the same thing for a spiny lobster. ” And, it now occurs to her, the same goes for something else, something more widely seen around Duke than a spiny lobster. “A basketball shoe!” she said with a laugh. In big arenas, like those of the N. B. A. the squeaking is mostly overpowered these days by the cacophonous, noise intended as entertainment and disguised as excitement. (The Knicks, deep into the experimental part of their losing season, recently played a first half against the Warriors with only ambient noise, telling fans to “enjoy the sounds of the game. ” Steve Kerr, the Warriors’ coach, said the atmosphere was “weird,” and a player, Draymond Green, called it “pathetic. ”) But the squeaks will be heard, loud and clear, during the early parts of the N. C. A. A. men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. Some teams tip off on neutral courts far from home, where the crowds are reverent or unmoved. Pep bands play only during timeouts, and most sites do not add artificial noise during play. Perhaps unrealized at home, there are stretches when squeaking shoes and the occasional barking of coaches comprise most of the noise in the arena. Few stop to consider just what it is that they are hearing when shoes squeak. Even fewer have researched the topic. Martyn Shorten, who has a biomechanics consulting firm in Portland, Ore. and works mostly with athletic shoe manufacturers, is one of them. He presented his findings to the American Society of Biomechanics in 2006, and it remains a resource in the industry. “The herringbone structures of the shoe outsole are induced to vibrate at their natural frequencies by contact with the surface,” Shorten and his research partner Xia Xi concluded. Those vibrations become sound — quick, squeaks. To fans, they are noise. To players, they are necessities. “When we’ve tested shoes and they didn’t squeak, it comes up with our players and our testers,” Leo Chang, senior design director at Nike, said. “The squeak is reassurance to a lot of players. They listen for it. It gives them that audio sense of reassurance that they’re sticking. ” The squeak means that they are not just sticking, but sliding. It is a complex, wonky bit of science, deeply researched and best explained by a battery of experts — from shoe designers to rubber scientists, mechanical engineers to acoustic experts, even a biologist familiar with spiny lobsters. They agree that at the core of a basketball shoe’s squeak is the phenomenon — the same principle studied by engineers for its clattering effect on machinery and by seismologists for the way tectonic plates stick and slip to cause earthquakes. When you write on a blackboard and the chalk squeaks? . When you drive a car slowly around a corner in a parking garage and the tires squeal? . In basketball, Shorten said, it “tends to happen when the foot first contacts the ground and when the shoe is lightly loaded and moving quite quickly. ” On the foot’s way to stopping, or to twisting or springing to the next step, the sole’s intricate designs stick, then slip, then stick. It might feel like an instant stop, but the rubber sole is designed for flexibility. Too much grip in basketball is jarring on the body, Nike’s Chang said. Not enough traction is dangerous, too. “I see the squeak as the perfect signal that you’ve got the right amount of slip and grip,” Chang said. That makes sense to Judit Puskas, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Akron who recently won the Charles Goodyear Medal for her expertise in rubber. She described the “magic triangle” of rubber technology — rolling resistance (its ability to slip) traction (stick) and wear. Changing one can impact the others. The quest is to find balance, whether in designing tires or basketball shoes or anything else with rubber components. “The sole makes sure you can stop, but also move quickly, which are two competing requirements,” Puskas said. “You want the rubber to stick enough that you can stop, but you don’t want to stick too much that you can’t move. ” The chirp signals balance, but it does not explain how the sound is produced — usually when a player makes a quick stop or a sideways cut. Greg McDaniel is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Boston University, where he runs the sound and vibration laboratory. The basic rule for creating sound is compressing air, McDaniel said. “If you wave your hand through the air, you don’t hear it,” he said. “Why? Because you haven’t compressed air. The air sloshes around like water sloshes, and the air has enough time to get out of the way before you compress it. ” But in the tiny, vibrating spaces under and within a rubber sole, the air gets compressed. “That compressed air sucks in neighboring air, causing it to expand, and that expanding air compresses neighboring air, and you get this ” McDaniel said. “That’s an acoustic wave. The rubber’s moving, and as it moves it is compressing air. And it compresses air at the same frequency of the vibrations. ” Shorten’s experiment tested two basketball shoes with herringbone designs, and they measured between 5 and 6 kilohertz — a squeak at the high end of the spectrum for human hearing. The basketball hardwood creates not just the perfect frictional foil for rubber soles, but a surface that deflects sound so well that it can carry through an arena. The squeaks are such an ingrained part of basketball that Nike once created a commercial around them. But Nike has also designed shoes that barely made a sound. “It’s down to the geometry of the traction,” said Chang, who designs all the shoes for Kevin Durant, among others. “A lot of the herringbone and the more of geometry tend to give you a little more squeak, versus the more nub, of geometry, which tends not to. ” Midway through the N. B. A. finals last year, Cleveland’s LeBron James changed shoes to Nike’s Soldier 10. Its nubby sole design was virtually silent. Those discrepancies gave Patek, the Duke biologist, an idea. Could the squeaks be personalized, tuned so that each player had his or her own sound? McDaniel said that shoe sounds probably could be individualized (and probably already are, if unintentionally) but the frequency range of the squeaks is so narrow that they likely would sound the same to most listeners in the crowd. Until then, fans will just have to appreciate the squeaks for what they are: a persistent reminder that, for as much as the game evolves, there is one part of its tradition that will not be silenced. | 1 |
Police officers in the United States are on brutalizing minorities, accuses Ice Cube in the latest single off of his Death Certificate: 25th Anniversary album. [The song “Good Cop Bad Cop” sees the California rapper paint the picture of America as being filled with crooked cops targeting minorities, falsifying police reports, planting evidence, and doing anything they can to “send another young brother” to jail. “Black Lives Matter, it’s not chit chatter. Cause all they wanna do is scatter brain matter. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. A nine is terrible in your face,” Cube raps. The political track sees Cube question if a “good cop” is “just a fantasy. ” The song’s hook also presents a racially charged scenario that sees the “black police showin’ out for the white cop” and the “white police showin’ out for the black cop. ” In an interview this week with Apple’s Beats 1 Radio host Zane Lowe, Cube described “Good Cop Bad Cop” as a “F*ck tha Police 2017,” and explained why he decided to release the updated take on the controversial 1988 song. “We had done ‘F*ck tha Police’ so many years ago,” he said of the N. W. A. song. “With the emergence of Straight Outta Compton the movie, we realized that it’s still the same thing that’s going on. We needed a more version of the community talking to the police and to the authorities. ” Despite how the song seems to broadly brand law enforcement officers as racist, Cube says it is an appeal “to the good cops to turn in the bad cops. ” “That’s the first line of defense for us is for good cops to get the bad apples out of the bunch. Because they’re sucking all the respect that police used to have is being sucked away by these bad apples,” he said. Last year, however, Cube said he would not stop performing the enforcement song “F*ck tha Police. ” In that same Beats 1 Radio interview, Cube also said President Donald Trump’s policies are hurting poor people the same way George W. Bush’s did. “The same weight under a Trump Administration is starting to feel the same way as it did when daddy Bush was in the White House,” the rapper said. “It was the weight of all those policies geared against poor people who were trying to pull themselves up. I feel like that same attack is happening against the most poor and vulnerable people. That same ugliness is starting to rear its head again. ” Ice Cube is scheduled to appear on Friday’s episode of HBO’s Real Time as a replacement for Sen. Al Franken, who cancelled his appearance after host Bill Maher’s use of a racial slur on the show last week. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s suspended president, Dilma Rousseff, took the stand on Monday at her impeachment trial in the Senate, delivering a defense to prevent her final removal from office. “Don’t expect from me the obliging silence of cowards,” Ms. Rousseff, 68, said in a withering attack on her opponents at the start of her testimony. She argued that she was innocent of the charges against her — that she manipulated the federal budget to mask the extent of Brazil’s economic problems — and described herself as the victim of a conspiracy to oust her. Reflecting the rising sense of divisiveness in the country, protests against Ms. Rousseff’s ouster emerged in various cities as she took the stand. Demonstrators shut down parts of Avenida Paulista, one of São Paulo’s main thoroughfares, as Ms. Rousseff was grilled by senators on Monday night. The vote on whether to convict Ms. Rousseff, who was suspended from office in May, is expected as early as Tuesday or Wednesday. Her opponents need of the Senate, or 54 votes, to convict her. If she loses the vote, as is widely expected, Michel Temer, the interim president and former vice president, will be president until the end of the current term in 2018. Ms. Rousseff compared her plight to those of other Brazilian presidents hounded by their opponents, including João Goulart, a leftist toppled in a military coup in 1964 that opened the way for a dictatorship. In her testimony, she also compared the impeachment effort to the suffering she endured in her youth, when agents from the dictatorship arrested her for her involvement in an urban guerrilla group. She was repeatedly tortured while she was imprisoned in the early 1970s. Ms. Rousseff said the impeachment proceedings amounted to a new type of coup, evoking the rupturing of Brazilian democracy in the 1960s. Responding to that assertion, Senator Ana Amélia Lemos, an opponent of Ms. Rousseff’s, expressed respect for the leader’s personal history. But Ms. Lemos also insisted that Ms. Rousseff had broken the law by manipulating the budget to conceal mounting economic problems. “We’re not here to judge your biography, but rather the actions practiced in your government,” Ms. Lemos said. Ms. Rousseff contended that she had done nothing illegal. “If the political contract with the people is broken, then any contract can be broken,” Ms. Rousseff said, arguing that her ouster would heighten the risks of investing in a country where presidents can be toppled with ease. Of the four Brazilian presidents elected to office since democracy was reestablished in the 1980s, she is the second to face impeachment. In 1992, Fernando Collor de Mello resigned before the Senate could convict him on corruption charges. Mr. Collor de Mello resurrected his political career and is among the senators trying Ms. Rousseff, despite being under investigation over claims of pocketing huge bribes in the graft scandal around the national oil company, Petrobras. Ms. Rousseff alluded to the fact that she remains rare among major Brazilian political figures: She has not been accused of illegally enriching herself, in contrast to a broad array of legislators seeking her ouster. “This process,” she said, “has been marked from start to finish by a blatant misappropriation of power. ” | 1 |
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