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Prepared foods are an increasingly important part of the grocery business, delivering fat margins at a time when sales of traditional packaged foods are lackluster. But the strategy also comes with serious risks. In the clearest example yet, the Food and Drug Administration this month sent a stern warning letter to Whole Foods Market, a longtime champion of fresh and healthy foods, saying that the company had failed to address a long list of food safety issues at its food processing plant outside of Boston. Among the problems cited: condensation dripping from the ceiling near food an sanitizer used on a work surface near the preparation of a salad and a failure to separate dirty dishes from . The letter from the F. D. A. is just the latest headache to afflict Whole Foods. Over the last couple of years, the company has struggled with slower growth as competitors have gotten better at copying what it did to distinguish itself in the grocery market. Other wounds have been like last year, when the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs called it out for mispricing some merchandise based on weight. Prepared foods, which have almost double the profit margins of packaged foods sold on grocery shelves, have remained a bright spot at the company — at least for now. Such foods accounted for almost 20 percent of its sales in 2014, ringing up $2. 7 billion in revenue. But the letter from the F. D. A. is the second black eye for health issues at the plant outside of Boston, known as its North Atlantic Kitchen, and could put some of those sales in peril. Phil Lempert, an expert on grocery store operations and marketing, said that the food safety crisis at Chipotle Mexican Grill late last year should have been a call for Whole Foods and anyone else in the business of preparing fresh foods for sale. “For Whole Foods to be in this predicament, frankly, there really is no excuse,” Mr. Lempert said. “Because Wall Street has put it under such pressure to expand growth, I think Whole Foods has gotten sloppy — there’s no reason anyone should have water dripping into foods. ” Last fall, Whole Foods voluntarily recalled batches of Curry Chicken Salad and Classic Deli Pasta Salad after a sample prepared at the North Atlantic Kitchen tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes, a pathogenic strain of the bacterium. The plant is one of three preparation kitchens that help stock its stores in the Northeast, and South. (Most of the company’s foods are prepared at the stores themselves.) In February, the inspectors spent five days at the plant and then shared their findings with Whole Foods, which responded within 15 business days. The company told the F. D. A. that it had retrained employees to address most of the issues the agency raised. That response, however, failed to satisfy the F. D. A. “We do not consider your response acceptable because you failed to provide documentation for our review, which demonstrates that all your noted corrective actions have been effectively implemented,” the agency wrote in its June 8 warning letter. Whole Foods said the letter came as a surprise. The company said it had taken steps to correct the problems and would meet on Thursday with the F. D. A. to discuss what the issues are and how to address them. “What’s confusing to us is the fact that the letter identifies issues we’ve already corrected,” said Ken Meyer, the company’s executive vice president for operations. “We worked with a consultant and our own global food safety team,” he said, “to address their concerns and assumed we were in good standing with them until this letter arrived on Friday. ” Whole Foods now has about two weeks to provide evidence to the F. D. A. that steps it has taken bring the company into compliance. Otherwise, the company might have to pay the agency to reinspect the facility. Groceries have long offered prepared foods like rotisserie chickens and broccoli salad. But as business has declined in the center store, companies have upped their game, adding sophisticated meals that consumers can take home or eat in the store. Research this year from the Food Marketing Institute and Technomic found that sales of prepared foods in groceries increased 10. 4 percent from 2006 to 2014, making the prepared foods department one of the highest performers in the food business. While only 8 percent of the supermarkets responding to that survey reported sales growth of more than 5 percent, more than of them said they had growth at that level or higher in their prepared food businesses. The risk for grocery companies is that preparing food receives a higher level of scrutiny from regulators than selling food made and packaged by others. A bad inspection in one location, or reports of food illnesses, can damage an entire brand. Shares in Whole Foods fell nearly 5 percent on Wednesday. Last year, Costco recalled celery sticks and turkey dinners, King Sooper recalled curried chicken salad and Raley’s recalled its Asian Blue Cheese, Potato and Bacon salad after E. coli was found in celery supplied to all by a single supplier. Still, perhaps no company has been more aggressive about integrating prepared foods than Whole Foods. The company has long put bars and restaurants into its stores — a new store in Hawaii will have about 200 seats for shoppers to sit and enjoy a meal and a drink. “Whole Foods is one of the pioneers in providing restaurant quality meals to consumers,” said Joe Pawlak, managing principal at Technomic. Now, stores like ShopRite and Safeway are opening groceraunts, too. The oyster bar at one of the Mariano’s groceries in Chicago has become a place for a Friday night date, and a ShopRite in Morris Plains, N. J. added a atrium where people can enjoy a meal. Supermarkets tried moving into the food preparation business in the 1990s, Mr. Pawlak said, but offered too broad a menu and ended up throwing a lot of food away. “Now what’s happened over the last five or six years, they’ve hired food service professionals who understand restaurants and how items move on a menu,” he said. “That’s taken the quality up to where I can get just as good a meal at the grocery store as I can in many restaurants — and for a lot better value. ” An F. D. A. spokeswoman said the agency could not comment on whether its inspection of grocery food preparation operations was increasing. A Yahoo News analysis of the F. D. A. ’s food safety recalls in 2015 found that prepared foods accounted for more recalls than any other food category. | 1 |
BEIRUT (AP) — Syria on Friday called on the international community to “punish” Israel for an apparent missile attack on a major military airport west of Damascus, and accused the US, Britain and France of supporting the assault. [The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned the missile attack in two letters to the UN and the president of the UN Security Council, saying such an attack would not have occurred had it not been for the “direct support from the outgoing American administration and French and British leaderships. ” The ministry said the Israeli assault on the Mezzeh military airport comes as part of a series of periodic Israel attacks that started with Syria’s war in March 2011. It called on the international community to “punish the Israeli aggressor. ” The attack was the third such incident recently, according to the Syrian government. In a statement carried on the official news agency SANA, the Syrian military said several missiles were launched just after midnight from an area near Lake Tiberias. The missiles fell in the vicinity of the Mezzeh military airport on the western edge of the Syrian capital. The statement did not say whether there were any casualties. Residents of Damascus reported hearing several explosions that shook the city. The Mezzeh airport compound, located on the southwestern edge of the capital, had been used to launch attacks on areas near Damascus and has previously come under rebel fire. The Syrian army said Israel, through its attacks, was assisting “terrorist groups” fighting the Syrian government. “The Syrian army command and armed forces warn the Israeli enemy of the repercussions of this blatant attack and stress that it will continue its war on terrorism,” the statement said. On Dec. 7, the Syrian government reported Israel fired missiles that also struck near the Mezzeh airport. A week earlier, SANA said Israeli jets fired two missiles from Lebanese airspace toward the outskirts of Damascus, in the Sabboura area. The Israeli military has declined to comment on those incidents, and there was no immediate comment on Friday’s reported attack. Israel is widely believed to have carried out a number of airstrikes in Syria in the past few years that have targeted advanced weapons systems, including missiles and missiles, as well as positions of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group in Syria. The Shiite group has sent thousands of its fighters to Syria to support President Bashar Assad’s forces in the country’s civil war, now in its sixth year. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman recently reiterated his government’s position to not get involved in the Syrian war. | 1 |
With the recent news that Affordable Healthcare rates are predicted to rise in 2017, you’d expect that any even partially informed Republican presidential candidate would jump on that news and spin it into oblivion.
Not Trump, though. Nope. He was too busy plugging his new Florida resort to care.
Seth Meyers spent Wednesday’s Late Night segment, A Closer Look , focusing on the abysmal way the Trump campaign is being managed and how it, as Seth put it, “never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
While some of the segment was aimed at Trump spokesperson Newt Gingrich and his total meltdown on The Kelly File , Seth spent the better part of his time ripping Trump and his complete lack of knowledge about Obamacare to shreds.
After showing video of Trump at his new Florida resort this week saying that all of his “employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare,” Seth had this question:
“What are you talking about?! Obamacare is for people who don’t have health insurance, but your employees do get health insurance through you!!”
We’ll see if Trump answers.
Meanwhile, further proving his point, Meyers shows a clip of Trump’s resort manager clarifying to the media that 99 percent of their employees are indeed insured through the company and not Obamacare.
Watch the entire segment below:
Featured image via screen capture Share this Article! | 0 |
For two brief months, it looked as if there was a possibility of a more than $20 billion takeover that would combine the makers of Oreos and Hershey Kisses. But chocolate lovers’ hopes were dashed on Monday, when the deal discussions ended. Mondelez International, the owner of snack brands like Oreo and Nabisco, said on Monday that it was no longer seeking to acquire the Hershey Company. Hershey rebuffed a $23 billion offer from Mondelez in June, but on Monday it became apparent that they had restarted talks more recently. “Following additional discussions, and taking into account recent shareholder developments at Hershey, we determined that there is no actionable path forward toward an agreement,” Irene B. Rosenfeld, the chairwoman and chief executive of Mondelez, said in a statement. “While we are disappointed in this outcome, we remain disciplined in our approach to creating value, including through acquisitions, and confident that our advantaged platform positions us well for performance over the long term. ” Shares of Hershey tumbled almost 12 percent in trading, while those of Mondelez gained about 3 percent. Mondelez’s offer in June consisted of $107 in cash and stock for every Hershey share — a 10 percent premium at the time. Over the last few weeks, Mondelez floated an offer of about $115 a share, according to a person with knowledge of the talks. Hershey indicated that the figure had to be at least $125 to continue negotiations, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the talks publicly. That gap in pricing, as well as uncertainty surrounding the status of Hershey’s largest shareholder, were the primary reasons the bid was abandoned. A representative from Hershey confirmed that there were additional communications with Mondelez and that Mondelez was no longer pursuing a deal. She declined to comment further. The Hershey Trust Company, which wields 81 percent of the voting power of Hershey shares, has been a thorn in many of the company’s efforts in years past. That was true when Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company wanted to buy Hershey in 2002, and again when Hershey wanted to buy Cadbury eight years later. The charitable trust votes Hershey shares on behalf of the Milton Hershey School for underprivileged children, which was started in 1909 and named for the company’s founder. More recently, the trust has come under fire over corporate governance mishaps. In July, the trust reached a settlement with the Pennsylvania attorney general, which restricted the amount of time directors could remain on the board as well as their compensation. The trust’s board, which has already experienced tremendous turnover, will be reshaped as the agreement requires three trustees to step down by the end of the year. Two others will remain until the end of 2017. Mondelez had offered other concessions to make a deal work, including keeping jobs and moving the combined entity’s operations to Hershey, Pa. Mondelez also planned to keep the Hershey name. Mondelez, which was spun out of Kraft Foods in 2012, has had to contend with the wishes of its own shareholders. Two of the biggest are prominent hedge funds: Trian Fund Management, led by Nelson Peltz, and Pershing Square Capital Management, led by William A. Ackman. Mr. Peltz, who took a seat on Mondelez’s board in 2014, had been pushing for a merger between PepsiCo and Mondelez, and then a spinoff of its snack operations with Mondelez’s. He ultimately dropped this plan and recently sold his stake in Pepsi. | 1 |
You begin describing small aliens…
“They were small.”
“Ah man,” says the cabbie. “Just some little small aliens, huh?”
He seems disappointed. Wait, I changed my mind. They were big.
You begin describing the big aliens…
“They were big.”
“Wow! Big aliens,” says the cabbie. “Now we’re talking. I never heard of anything like that. What were the big aliens like? Did they have legs?” They had skin like leather.
You don’t tell the cabbie about aliens.
“That’s okay,” he says as he drives on. “Aliens! Gee. Makes sense, I guess. I never heard of nothing like aliens.” Pass the rest of the ride in silence. Come to think of it, I did see some aliens tonight. And they were big.
“Ah, that’s too bad,” says the cabbie. “Like I said, I never heard of anything like aliens before, but I was getting ready to believe you, especially if they had big, nice legs. Ones like you just described, though? Thanks but no thanks.” Pass the rest of the ride in silence. Come to think of it, the aliens I saw did have big, nice legs. Five of them!
The cabbie nods excitedly. …and these hollow black eyes. …and that's it.
The cabbie is rapt with awe. …with fearsome ivory fangs.
The cabbie signals you to keep going. …and five big, nice legs. …and that's it.
“Ah, the legs! I can picture it perfectly,” says the cabbie. “Aliens! I never heard of nothing like that before, but I can practically see those legs kicking, so nice and so big!”
The cab begins to swerve as the cabbie becomes more excited about how big the aliens’ legs were and is no longer paying any attention to the road. I'm telling the truth! The legs were big! Wait, I just remembered! The legs were small!
“Yes, those big alien legs!” the cabbie shrieks as he completely loses control of the vehicle, which goes careering up a nearby volcano. His last words as the taxi plummets over the verge and into molten lava are, “I believe you!”
Someone believed that you were abducted by aliens, but at what cost? At the cost of dying in a volcano. Start Over
“Here we are! Sister’s apartment!” says the cabbie. Great. How much do I owe you? Leave without paying.
“This one’s on the house!” says the cabbie. Thanks!
You’re outside your sister’s apartment complex, which is where your sister makes $1,111 per day working from home.
You super trust and super admire your sister. She is a master of logic and facts, and you know she’ll have a high bar for believing your story. You’ll need to remember a lot of good detail if you hope to convince her, and you’ll need to hurry, since your memory is already feeling a little fuzzy… Text your sister about the fact that you are outside and have seen aliens. Send your sister nine emails about the fact that you are outside and have seen aliens. Text your sister the "alien" emoji, the "abduction" emoji, and the "outside apartment" emoji.
Your sister answers the door immediately. She invites you to sit down on the couch and hands you a microphone with the local news channel’s logo cube on it and asks you to tell her what happened. I was abducted by aliens, and I am going to tell you all about it. Stand back, my sibling. I am going to convince you that I was abducted by aliens.
“Aliens, eh?” your sister asks. “Abducted by?” Yes, my sister, they stole me from the atmosphere, and now I'm back. Precisely. Now listen up, my sibling. Here comes the tale.
“Go ahead then,” says your sister. “Tell me a story about how aliens stole you from the atmosphere.” It began like any other night… It began right away with aliens… It began right after the aliens had left me in the forest and disappeared…
You begin your story…
“The alien light dissipated. I was alone in the forest at night.
I decided to hail a cab, so I stuck out my arm in the universal sign for ‘taxi.’ Immediately, a cab burst from the forest.
‘Where you headed?’ the cab driver asked.” I got in and told him to go to my sister's house. The cabbie got out of the cab.
“It was then I remember the cabbie got out of his cab.” Then he got back in the cab. And that's all I remember.
“So,” says your sister. “If I have your story right, you hailed a cab in the forest, and at some point the driver got out of the vehicle, and that’s all you remember.” Exactly. There's more to the story. Let me start over.
“The next thing I knew, he was back in the cab.
‘Where you headed?’ he asked me again.” I told him to go to my sister's house. He got out of the cab again.
“I believe you about the driver getting out of the car, but I don’t think you saw any aliens,” says your sister. “I’m sorry, but that’s just how I feel.”
Your sister doesn’t believe that you were abducted by aliens. You have failed. Start Over
“The cabbie floored it, and pretty soon we were driving through the city on the way to my sister’s house, which is where you live.” We arrived, and I thanked the cabbie for his service.
“When we arrived, I got out of the cab. The cabbie and I pointed at each other and waved goodbye in silence for three minutes.” And that's the end of my story.
“Well, it certainly sounds like you took a taxi from the forest to my apartment, but I’m sorry to say I’m not convinced that you saw any aliens,” says your sister. “Is that really the whole story?” Yes, that's it. There was more.
“Then I don’t believe you saw any aliens.”
Ouch. You really bungled the story about how you were abducted by aliens. You are a miserable bard of the supernatural, and your sister didn’t believe you at all. You have failed. Start Over
Your sister settles in as you begin your alien testimony…
“It began like any other night. I thought it was Guy Fawkes Night, so I was in the forest setting off fireworks by myself.” I would light the firework, run back to safety, look up, and…
“ Boom! Good riddance, Sir Fawkes!” It was so much fun, I decided to light another firework. I wasn't having fun, but I decided to light another firework.
“I lit the firework, stepped back, and looked up. I expected to see a sparkling skyrocket. What I saw was…” A sparkling skyrocket, just as I had expected. A strange light in the sky.
“Yes, it was a skyrocket. My expectation was on the money.
I prepared to launch another firework into the sky. I loaded it up, sprinted back to safety, and looked to the sky again, this time expecting to see the gorgeous blue and purple firework known as the Butcher’s Delight…” And the Butcher's Delight it was. And that's when it happened.
“I was right again. In the clear sky above me, I saw the firework called the Butcher’s Delight.
I set up the last firework, drew a match, and lit the fuse. It was a quick fuse, so the firework had already launched by the time I turned around and looked up, thinking I would see the unmistakeable multicolored burst of the Salute to James Buchanan firework. But is that what I saw, looking to the skies?” Yes, it was. It was not, for that was when it happened.
“Yes, my sibling. The Salute to James Buchanan firework exploded as planned.
I applauded at the fireworks finale, congratulating myself on another successful night of fireworks even as I realized that I had bungled the Guy Fawkes date again.” Then I went home. Then I came right to you.
“Thank you,” says your sister. ”That was a very nice story about how you set off fireworks in the woods by yourself. And did you see any aliens while you were at it?” Yes. No.
“Well, I don’t believe you. You only told me about fireworks. I was expecting to hear more about aliens.”
You have not convinced your sister that you saw aliens. Wait, I didn't tell it right. Start Over
“Okay,” says your sister. “It’s too bad nothing happened with aliens.”
You have not convinced her that you were abducted by aliens. Wait, I didn't tell it right. Start Over
“A strange light appeared in the sky.” I ran, but the strange light followed me. I couldn't escape it. There was a sudden burst of futuristic light.
“Science enveloped me.” The light only got more futuristic. Then all of a sudden, I was standing on the UFO deck.
“When the light faded, I noticed that I was on a spaceship.
This part of the ship was clean and triangular.” I noticed that the spaceship had some sort of artificial gravity. I could tell immediately that the spaceship was in space.
“Okay, I think I understand that you were on a spaceship,” says your sister. “Get to the aliens, though. How about some aliens in the story? When you were on the spaceship, were there any aliens that you saw?” Yes. I don't know, but my boss from my first job was there.
“My boss from my first job was there, and he was happy to see me.” My boss said that I was dreaming, and I said “Yes, that seems right.” My boss said that I was dreaming, and I said, "No, that's wrong," but it later turned out that he was right.
“Hmm,” says your sister. “It sounds to me like instead of encountering aliens, you had a dream about seeing your boss in space. Could that be right?” Yeah, that's definitely right. Wait, I told the story wrong. Let me start over.
You were trying to get your sister to believe that you had seen aliens, but all you managed to convince her of was that you had a dream about seeing your boss in space. You failed! Start Over
“There were aliens. A crowd of them. Huge, mighty creatures with skin like leather, hollow black eyes, and fearsome ivory fangs.” The aliens were shouting at me, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. "JENCH CREV AMAMU!" the aliens shouted, but I could not understand.
“From among the aliens, a bigger alien stepped forth. I immediately realized this was their mayor of the aliens, as the alien was wearing a ceremonial mayoral jacket.” The mayor took out a device.
“The mayor reached out and put the device over my eyes.
Suddenly, I could hear everything differently.” The mayor then seemed to speak to me in English.
“‘Welcome to my UFO,’ said the mayor. ‘You are now wearing language glasses. They allow you to understand anything that we say in our language, but be careful: It doesn’t work the other way around. If you want to learn how to talk like us, you’ll need to visit the Language Room and earn a diploma from the language guide.’” I told the mayor that I understood. I told the mayor that I didn't understand. I asked the mayor to explain who the aliens were and what their purpose was.
“‘I don’t know what you’re saying, but I’m going to assume you asked who we are and what our purpose is.
‘To do that, I will need to tell you how the world works. In the universe, there are three kinds of things. First, there is us. We are called people. You can tell we’re people by inspecting our beautiful ivory fangs and big, thick legs. It’s obvious.
‘Second, there is God. God is special, secret, and far away, and there is only one of him. And we need to find him so that we can hold hands forever. We don’t know where God is, but we are looking for him.
‘Last, there is rocks. Rocks is everything else. Planets are rocks. Spaceships are rocks. Since you are not a person, you are probably also a rock…unless of course you are God. But that’s very unlikely and illegal.’” I asked the mayor how to find out if I am a rock or if I am God.
“‘I still can’t understand you, but here’s the deal. I’m going to retreat to the observation deck and look at the majesty of space for a while. Go to the Language Room, learn our language, then come find me and we’ll see if we can find a use for you.’” The mayor left, and I was alone with the crowd of aliens.
“In the spaceship’s deck, the crowd of aliens was talking excitedly about God and about the kinds of dances they would do together when they found him at last.” I left the deck area and went south into the hallway.
“In the Language Room, a man was standing on a small, circular stage.
Above him hung a giant banner that read ‘LANGUAGE TUTORIAL FOR ENGLISH SPEAKERS.’” He began the tutorial.
“‘Welcome to this free alien-language tutorial for English speakers!’ said the man. ‘If you are viewing this in hologram form, it means our captors have determined I am no longer necessary, and that they have mercifully killed me and freed me from my didactic prison. Right on!’” I waved my hand through him to confirm that he was a hologram. I continued watching the presentation.
“He was not a hologram.
‘Ha! Not yet! I wish!’ he said. ‘Please sit down, and let’s get this presentation over with!’” I sat back down and kept watching the presentation.
“‘Let’s begin with the most basic grammatical element of the language: the word CREV,’ the man began.
He gestured in the air beside him, where the word CREV appeared in red light.
‘CREV is a verb that roughly translates as “to be about to point at something.” If you want to communicate effectively with the aliens, it’s an extremely important word to know.’” "CREV," I managed to say. "CREB," I blurted stupidly.
“‘For example, to announce that I am ready to point at something, I would begin with the word AMAMU, which means “me,” then I would say, “CREV,” then I would say what I am pointing at.’
‘Like this: AMAMU CREV MERYL STREEP.’” I looked where the man was pointing. I knew then that the man was pointing at Meryl Streep.
“‘Hello!’ said Meryl Streep. ‘I am definitely a hologram.’” "AMAMU CREV MERYL STREEP," I said as I pointed at the Meryl Streep hologram.
“‘Very good. The next word we’re going to learn is important, but be aware that it is very politically charged. I am of course talking about the controversial word CREVV, and you must be very careful with it. It’s a slur that means “bad alien” and is extremely insulting to use in any situation but language tutorials.’” "CREVV," I said. I nodded solemnly. I asked the teacher for an example of the bad word in context.
“‘Here is an example of CREVV used in English context: Oh God. The aliens are killing me. Why did I say CREVV? Why didn’t someone teach me not to say CREVV? I shouldn’t have said CREVV.’” I said, "Okay." I said nothing.
“‘CREVV,’ I said.
No sooner had the word left my lips than a fearsome ivory fang had pierced my vulnerable stomach and sent everything inside me all over the place.” I was dead.
You wrap your story about the aliens
“Ah. So…you died?” your sister asks. Yeah. Wait, I didn't tell the story right. Let me start over.
“Hmmm. I…doubt it,” says your sister.
You told a story about how you got abducted by aliens and died, but your sister doesn’t seem convinced.
No one believed you! You failed. Wait, I didn't tell the story right. Start Over
“‘At this point, you’re almost conversant in the language. You just have a couple more words to get through. I am now teaching you the word JENCH. It means “God.”’” I said, "JENCH."
“Finally, ‘The word BRIDE is the equivalent of the English word “um.” When you say the word BRIDE, it means that you have forgotten how to speak, and you are trying to remember.’” I said, "BRIDE."
“‘This concludes this first and only module of alien language for English beginners. Thank you for learning with me. Get out there, start speaking the language, and remember: If I’m not already dead, please find someone who will kill me!’
With that, the teacher handed me a diploma with some inscrutable symbols on it and ushered me out of the Language Room.” I left the Language Room and went back out to the ship hallway. I went east.
“I was in the ship corridor to the south of the first room.” I went north. | 0 |
The National Security Agency (NSA) continued to collect the phone records of U. S. citizens, despite a law change which limited the practice, according to a report. [“The report from the office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first measure of the effects of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which limited the NSA to collecting phone records and contacts of people U. S. and allied intelligence agencies suspect may have ties to terrorism,” reported Reuters on Tuesday. “It found that the NSA collected the 151 million records even though it had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to spy on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, in addition to a handful identified the previous year. ” “The NSA has been gathering a vast quantity of telephone ‘metadata,’ records of callers’ and recipients’ phone numbers and the times and durations of the calls — but not their content — since the September 11, 2001, attacks” they continued, adding that “On Friday, the NSA said it had stopped a form of surveillance that allowed it to collect the digital communications of Americans who mentioned a foreign intelligence target in their messages without a warrant. ” In April, a report published by the Intercept revealed that the NSA had spied on civilians using blimp in Maryland. “Back in 2004, a division of the NSA called the National Tactical Integration Office fitted a diameter airship called the Hover Hammer with an eavesdropping device,” reported the Intercept, adding that “The agency launched the airship at an airfield near Solomons Island, Maryland. ” “Unsurprisingly, privacy groups have expressed concerns about the prospect of the blimps being used domestically to spy on Americans. However, military officials have often been quick to dismiss such fears,” they continued. “In August 2015, Lt. Shane Glass told Baltimore broadcaster WBAL that the JLENS blimps being tested in Maryland were not equipped with cameras or eavesdropping devices. The same cannot be said, it seems, of the NSA’s Hover Hammer. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
Behind the headlines - conspiracies, cover-ups, ancient mysteries and more. Real news and perspectives that you won't find in the mainstream media. Browse: Home / US Air Force Command Apologizes for Flying Close to Russian Jets over Syria Essential Reading Who Really Murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman? By wmw_admin on February 28, 2015
Revelations that a US soldier was the killer would have jeopardised public support for the “War on Terror”. Hence a frame-up was required. A Joe Vialls classic recovered. “Holocaust” declared 7 years before there was a “Holocaust” By wmw_admin on December 13, 2014
The New York Times was already reporting of Jewish persecution and an ongoing “Holocaust” in May 31, 1936 9/11 Masterminds – Explosive Connections By wmw_admin on October 7, 2011
This brilliant video investigation reveals more incriminating evidence on those behind 9/11. Includes stunning revelation on Bush cousin Jim Pierce’s role. Highly recomended The Lady, The Queen and what it really means By wmw_admin on December 28, 2009
Every picture tells a story and with some photos and a few words Paul Powers shows us what was hidden in the background when Queen Elizabeth II met pop sensation Lady Gaga The Life of an American Jew in Racist Marxist Israel Part I By wmw_admin on July 2, 2007
Jack Bernstein was a rarity, an American Zionist who ‘returned’ to Israel, not for a holiday but to live and die in Israel building a Jewish nation. What makes him almost one of a kind, however, was his ability to see through the sham of Zionism The Illuminati Chronicles Part II By wmw_admin on November 28, 2007
A Short History of the New World Order Part II By [email protected] Aug. 10, 1973 – David Rockefeller writes an article for the “New York Times” describing his recent visit to Red China: “Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also […] Affidavit of Richard Tomlinson By wmw_admin on February 14, 2008
“I firmly believe that there exist documents held by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) that would yield important new evidence into the cause and circumstances leading to the death of the Princess of Wales.” Reincarnation and the Early Christians By wmw_admin on January 7, 2009
Reincarnation was an integral part of early Christianity (as was strict vegetarianism. Ed.). Near Death.com explores what it refers to as the “secret teachings of Jesus” and how all traces of it and Christian Gnosticism were later erased The Essene Gospel of Peace I By wmw_admin on April 26, 2007
Based on texts found in the Vatican library and the Royal Library of the Hapsburg’s and dated to the first century AD, the following is considered by some to be the real words of Christ Holocaust, Hate Speech & Were the Germans so Stupid? – Updated By wmw_admin on March 23, 2011
The brilliant examination of the ‘Holocaust’ by Anthony Lawson has since been censored on the basis of a false Copyright infrigment. But as Lawson explains, this just another attempt to stiffle freedom of expression | 0 |
The financial situation of many middle class American households is strikingly unstable, according to a new report from the Harvard Business Review. [The Harvard Business Review finds that there is increasing trend of financial vulnerability for lower and middle class American households. According to the report, households experienced an average of five months per years in which household income increased or decreased by more or less than 25 percent. Our first big finding was that the households’ incomes were highly unstable, even for those with workers. We counted spikes and dips in earning, defined as months in which a household’s income was either 25% more or 25% less than the average. It turned out that households experienced an average of five months per year with either a spike or dip. In other words, incomes were far from average almost half of the time. Income volatility was more extreme for poorer families, but middle class families felt it too. The report’s authors, Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider, claim that income volatility is the result of shifts in the labor market, such an increasing amount of laborers who rely on income from commissions, tips, and hourly work. The study claims that household spending was just variable as income. Factors such as car repairs, college tuition bills, and healthcare contributed to the volatility of household spending. We found that monthly spending was just as volatile as income. On top of regular expenses, emergencies arose frequently: Cars needed repair, roofs needed fixing, tuition bills came due, and people got sick. In addition, the rising relative costs of health care, housing, education, and transportation stretched budgets and cut into the slack available to buffer shocks, especially with the stagnation of real wages for most workers. In 2015 and families devoted about of their earnings to housing, and they have seen housing prices rise 25% — 50% since the . The cost of a bachelor’s degree from a public college has risen by from 2003 to 2014. The Affordable Care Act, which was designed to reduce health care costs for lower and middle class Americans, has only further complicated spending. Health care costs have continued to grow, leaving lower and middle class households with plans with high deductibles, which means large expenses during their trips to the doctor. Morduch and Schneider argue that financially instability is in itself a form of economic inequality. They suggest that employers look to restructuring some of their practices, such as scheduling policies, so that lower and middle class American workers can ultimately find economic stability. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com, | 1 |
The Passion Behind Standing Rock Protest October 29, 2016
Police arrested more than 140 Native American and environmental protesters challenging an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, a project touching the raw nerves of water and global warming, reports Dennis J Bernstein.
By Dennis J Bernstein
The months-long struggle to stop the Dakota Pipeline near the territory of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota has raised passions among Native American activists and environmentalists who have clashed with police trying to sweep the protesters aside.
To explain the intensity of the resistance, I interviewed Bill Means, co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and chairman of the International Indian Treaty Council, which has supported the North Dakota pipeline protests.
In late August, the Treaty Council joined forces with the local tribes of The Standing Rock Sioux and appealed to the United Nations to intercede and take formal action in support of the their fight against the construction of the Dakota pipeline over sacred Indian lands. Native American activist Bill Means
“We specifically request that the United States Government impose an immediate moratorium on all pipeline construction until the Treaty Rights and Human Rights of the Standing Rock Tribe can be ensured and their free, prior and informed consent is obtained,” stated Standing Rock Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault, and the Treaty Council, in their joint appeal to U.N. human rights officials. They requested actions by four U.N. human rights Special Rapporteurs citing “ongoing threats and violations to the human rights of the Tribe, its members and its future generations.”
The interview preceded this week’s latest round of arrests.
Dennis Bernstein: Bill Means, your work with the American Indian Movement as a co-founder and your knowledge of the treaties, and how many times are broken, and how they’re broken by the United States government, has always been enlightening and important. I know you are monitoring Standing Rock, and have taken an active stand, as a current board member of the International Indian Treaty Council.
Why don’t you just say first what it signifies at this point, in the struggle. And then some of the things that come to mind in terms of what you’ve been observing about it.
Bill Means: Well, first of all the overall struggle against global warming is really the backdrop to Standing Rock. And that’s the reason why I think so many people around the world, and the tribes all over America, are beginning to find affinity and support and solidarity with the people at Standing Rock, because it represents this world-wide struggle for sacred Mother Earth. So having that backdrop we’ve got various types of good news, and some sad news.
Of course, the very good and healthy news is we had the first baby born on the base of the Missouri River, at the Sacred Stone Camp at Standing Rock, which was beautiful. Born with the midwives there, and all the attention and support of the community. The women came forward and brought this new life here into this world at Standing Rock. So we hope that this young child will have a Mother Earth that she can be proud of, that she can grow up in that’s clean, and has clean water, and so that represents the future.
Also developing was the fact that our good friend and colleague, Miss Amy Goodman, had her case thrown out … by a federal judge in Bismarck, North Dakota. Where he said that she’s a journalist, doing her job, and she shouldn’t have been charged with these type [of] charges in the first place, and completely threw the charges out. So that’s a good development, as well as several other people she was arrested with. So I think that’s a beginning to turn the table on the illegal use and manipulation of the law to prevent legal, shall we say, dissent, to prevent people that are protesting legally and peacefully from their acts of courage. So that was good news, on that front.
And then, of course, we have the ongoing problem that people have recorded …, massive trucks, semis carrying pipe. And so they are anxiously and quickly trying to get as much pipe laid towards the Missouri River as humanly possible, before there’s any type of interruptions of specific places they can’t go, which we know right now is being held up from crossing under the Missouri River. And we’re hoping that this extends itself out to other areas. The #NoDAPL water Protectors took non-violent direct action by locking themselves to construction equipment. This is “Happy” American Horse from the Sicangu Nation, hailing from Rosebud. August 31, 2016 (Desiree Kane, Wikipedia)
And so right now the company, the DAPL, Dakota Access Pipeline people are, where they can, they’re still building as fast as they can without any regard to the restraining orders or any regard to the federal authorities that asked them to quit and to cease and desist from building until the tribe, and other proper authorities have been, shall we say, counseled with, have been involved in some type of negotiation on [these] whole various issues of treaty rights, water rights, environmental issues. And so there’s plenty of law that needs to be settled but yet the Dakota Access pipeline continues to be built.
So we have in the face of these positive developments, we have yet to see the company cease and desist in the other areas.
DB: Bill, let me ask you to … step into that role for a moment and talk about the stand that the council has taken and the significance in history in terms of this stand, and this place, that we’re talking about in North Dakota.
BM: Well, first of all to give you a larger picture, the Missouri River, as you know, covers about four states, and bisects the state of South Dakota from north to south, I should say north-west to south-west. Also, including North Dakota, and Montana, and Iowa, and a little bit of Nebraska. So, having said that, you get that picture in your mind, they built at least four dams on the Missouri River that are directly built on Indian treaty land.
See, in our treaty of 1868 and 1851, those two treaties significantly for time immemorial set the borders of the Great Sioux Nation on the east bank of the Missouri River. And the 1851 treaty was even past east of the Missouri River. So you see those treaties being violated from the beginning of building all these dams. Because the dams are built on federal reservations and flood, primarily, federal Indian land.
So there’s many communities, including Standing Rock, which was flooded by the Oahe Dam, built in Pierre, South Dakota, in that region, which flooded not only Standing Rock but Cheyenne River Reservation. And then you have Yankton Reservation flooded twice, once by the Gavins Point Dam, and another time by the Fort Randall Dam. […] There’s a famous act known as the Pick-Sloan Act of federal government that was passed back in the ’40’s that allows these dams to be built.
And so we have a situation where [there is] the continued violation of treaty rights and water rights. The water, by treaty, belongs to Indian people. Now, Indian people have the philosophy that the water belongs to everyone. But we have to maintain these treaty rights and these water rights. And there’s a famous case in the water rights that says, “All the water necessary for the survival of Indian people should be granted in any kind of negotiation, should be under the jurisdiction of the Indian tribes.” And that was a famous case up on the Milk River in Montana. And so it’s called the Winters Doctrine of Federal Indian Water Law. So that’s kind of a doctrine that’s been there for many, many years.
Now, in spite of that, the government began to develop these dams on the Missouri River, and […] the Missouri River was never litigated, that is, the water was never divided up like it is, say, on the Colorado River over further west. And so, since their water rights have never been litigated, the water has not been quantified like who owns what drop of water, who owns this bank, who owns that bank, has not been decided.
And so, in our mind, in the federal law’s mind, we still have authority over the Missouri River, not only by treaty but by federal Indian water rights. So that’s the idea and the legal fight for Indian people. And that’s how Standing Rock got involved because of all these dams being built on the Missouri.
And there’s also the issue not only of the environmental issues, in which the federal government is required by law to do what they call environmental impacts statements, environmental impact study, which is supposed to give warning. [But] they’re supposed to give the impact of these massive development projects on the people. Not only Indian people, but non-Indian people.
So a lot of these rules and regulations are either being trampled on by the corporate entities or ignored by the federal government, or given some kind of a lip service to state government, or what they call the Public Utilities Commission. So this is kind of the backdrop, where we have state and federal authorities negligent throughout this process, historically, and even today, in protecting the rights of not only American Indians, but American citizens. So this is why we fight. Activists carry the American Indian Movement flag at a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Flickr John Duffy)
DB: We saw their struggle at Wounded Knee, many of their struggles, but a big one at Wounded Knee. Bill also is on the Board of the International Treaty Council, and they’re working with the local tribes in this struggle. And, Bill, can I ask you to just talk a little bit about the stand that the Treaty Council has taken and how you’ve been working with the local tribes legally, if you will?
BM: Ah, yeah, we’ve been working in two areas. [First] helping them to organize through the National Lawyers Guild– legal defense for those water protectors that are being charged with various crimes as they do their legal, and peaceful, protests to the pipeline. So that’s one area that’s very important. And we want to give kudos and strength to the National Lawyers Guild for lending that support, and other lawyers both that work for the tribe and others.
Another area that’s significant is that the International Indian Treaty Council along with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe filed [a] human rights complaint with the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, as part of the United Nations under the Human Rights Laws and Protocol that the United States has agreed to as being part of the United Nations.
Here we’ve presented the evidence of which I’ve talked about–federal/state regulations, treaty rights, water rights that are facts in law–and presented those human rights as human rights violations in the struggle of Indian people to maintain clean water, and access to clean water, and drinking water. So we presented to specific, what they call, repertoires. These are people that study the issues, internationally in the Human Rights Commission. And those special repertoires, or the issues they’re studying, of course, is the special repertoire on water, the special repertoire on indigenous peoples, the special repertoire of sacred places.
As you know, in Syria and in other wars around the world, these armies, these militants, these people have destroyed many, many graves, artifacts, in an attempt to promote their way of life. And so this has become an international issue. […] The DAPL pipeline in particular has destroyed graves already. And so all these issues, whether it’s water, whether it’s the rights of Indigenous people, are now being studied by the United Nations. And the United States has to answer these questions as party to these human rights treaties that they signed.
So, we have pressure being exerted internationally by the United Nation’s human rights system. While all these other issues are going on both locally, in the courts from the water resisters, as well as the water protectors, as well as the tribe itself in federal court. So we have a court case going against various federal agencies, and now some negotiations are taking place with the Department of the Army which handles Corps of Engineers, which governs the river ways and waterways of America. Also, we have involved the Department of Interior and the Department of Justice. So we can tell from those various words that they have significant interests in these issues.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is totally within the Department of Interior. And, of course, the Department of Justice is supposed to be protecting us, the Indian people, the American people from these corporate carpetbaggers, and these corporate interests that continue to ignore the laws of the United States and treaty laws.
So, here we have three agencies now involved in trying to carry out negotiations and what they call “consultations” with the tribes and the local communities of non-Indians who are also protesting.
DB: There’s a couple things in terms of the terminology I want you to expand on, but first of all, in terms of the graves… you say that sacred grave sites, burial sites have already been destroyed. Who would have been in those graves?
BM: Well, these ancient sites, some of our ancestors were buried along the river, as you know, we have a saying in our language which goes “water is life.” So in respect for the life, many times historically our people were buried overlooking the river, overlooking the water. And that attachment goes back centuries, in our culture the role of water [is] as the first medicine to our people. And the role that water plays in humanity, and its need for purity. Its need to allow our people to grow, to live.
And so, this is one of the areas that historically our people were buried and then, as this pipeline goes, there’s even a federal act for that called American Indian Graves and Historical Preservation Act. And in that federal law, federal entities and companies are supposed to consult and they’re supposed to work with Indian tribes when they come across these ancient burial grounds. Activists protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Flickr John Duffy)
And so, these go back for many centuries, some of these burial grounds, as well as fairly modern day areas. So rather than consult, they generally just go through and destroy them. Or when they do consult, their way of consulting is they call the local state university, have the anthros come out, dig up the bones that are left and haul them off to the university, in total disrespect for our culture, for humanity, for our way of life.
And so, this is a problem that has [been] seen time and again with these pipelines, these development projects, in and around the Missouri River, especially because water being life, there’s a lot of, shall we say, generations that have grown up around that river, and continue to live in those areas. So that’s why it’s important. It would be akin, I guess, like if we went in and started digging up maybe some famous cemetery. You know, what if we went to say the National Military Cemetery, in Washington, D.C. and started digging them up.
DB: …over there at Arlington, where they have the ceremonies every year.
BM: Yeah, if we went there and started digging them up, or maybe to the Cathedral of Saint John, in New York. And where they have their burial ground, outside there in New York, we go there and start digging up and say we want to look for the size of the heads, or we want to study the white man, in these Indian universities and Indian colleges. People would be outraged. But, yet, when it’s Indian people calling for justice for destroying our culture, and our historical artifacts, and our graves, somehow we get ignored. Somehow we get a dual standard of justice when it comes to Indian people.
And so, we have to make this resistance in order to send a message to America that, “We’re still here as Indigenous people.” Not only here in America but wherever the minerals, wherever the clean water still exists, that’s where Indigenous people are today, all over the world.
DB: And, to put this in the political context, obviously there’s a presidential election going on. Have any of these candidates expressed any sympathy for the Indigenous community for this case against destroying sacred burial grounds and digging up graves, so that universities can study the bones? Has anybody stepped forward? Have you been impressed by any of the politicians?
BM: Ah, no not at all. As a matter of fact, Donald Trump said there’s a war on coal, and that he’s going to stop that war. Now, coal is probably the most devastating form of energy production that we have in America, or in the world. So that gives you an idea about his concern about Mother Earth. Hillary, on the other hand, has only paid lip service to Indian issues. We haven’t heard her come out on the DAPL pipeline, or any other pipeline. She did say that she changed her position on the XL pipeline, which President Obama stopped, along with some white ranchers in Nebraska, and Indian people that worked together–what they called the CIA, Cowboy and Indian Alliance, which is getting stronger by the day, where white people and Indian people have come together–to protect their land.
And so, the candidates, they haven’t even voiced a public statement, for sure. And it only comes out when asked maybe in a local rally or something, then they give basically lip service, and talk about window dressing on the issue.
DB: Before we let you go, and this is something I’ve really been wanting to speak with you about. I think one of the most powerful parts of this movement is that the Indigenous community is really taking the lead. They’ve really come together and opened the door in a way that white people and all people can sort of come in and be a part of it. But the fact is, that… and the power is, we now refer to the protestors as water protectors, or water resistors, this is through the Indigenous communities vision of life which is really a vision in the context of global warming, it’s the only vision that can save us. People gather in Seattle to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, September 2016. (Flickr John Duffy)
BM: Exactly right. I think that what Indigenous people have to offer the world is the fact that we have to build our policies and our governments around the future of Mother Earth. And so whether you’re left or right, we all have to live on the Earth. Whether you’re left or right, you have to drink water, water that is pure.
And, so these basic issues of human life are what Indigenous people have been calling for respect, all these years. It’s only when we protest that it brings this issue into the forefront of the rest of the world, where they decide hey, maybe this global warming does have an impact on Indigenous people, because it’s impacting us. Whether that’s in Europe, whether that’s in the United States, Latin America. The pollution has gotten so bad that it’s beginning to affect our daily lives. And so, until you respect Earth itself, and the power of Mother Earth, then you will never respect the future of our future generations, and those who come after us.
The Indian philosophy of life is that we have to look seven generations ahead when we make these decisions about development, about exploitation of natural resources, about all these extractive industries. What harm does that do to our Mother, the Earth? And what is the impact on the future generations? So that’s the philosophy that’s beginning to come out in terms of political variations in government policy around the world, is that we really have to, no matter what form of government you have, you have to be able if you look at Mother Earth as the leading policy, as the primary very function of government – just protect the Earth, not corporations. And so, until we can do that then I think we’re in a losing battle.
And we hope that these types of struggles, which we have no intention of changing because it’s going on all where Indigenous people are around the world, which is now 400 million Indigenous people who still speak their language, still have their traditional government, still have their culture and language. These are the people who are protecting the Earth. And we hope to enlarge that Earth protective family, to include each and every American, each and every citizen living on Mother Earth. Native American activist Leonard Peltier’s FBI headshot (Wikipedia)
DB: Bill, it’s almost a tradition with us in terms of remembering Leonard Peltier. Now, last we spoke you gave President Obama an F for keeping his promises in terms of really making a difference in the Indigenous communities of North America. Do you think, and what would you say, do you think he could raise his grade from and F to a D or a C, if he decided to take a courageous action and finally, finally free Leonard Peltier?
BM: Yes, I think he really could because Leonard Peltier represents the treatment the United States government has given to Indian people throughout the history of this great country. And so until we can deal with the basic issues of human rights and justice, then I think Indian people will always be on the bottom rung of the ladder of social justice. And so I think it’s up to President Obama, before he leaves to try to take this one act of clemency, in which everyone will be able to sit down at the table and say, “Leonard Peltier is finally free. He’s going home. He’s going to see his children, for the first time in 41 years.” And we hope and we pray that that happens before the president goes out of office.
Dennis J Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom . You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net . | 0 |
Big Pharma Targets Profits in Rare Diseases All of the world's most expensive drugs are used to treat uncommon conditions Image Credits: StockSnap/Pixabay .
One might think Big Pharma garners most of its profit peddling pills for more well-known diseases, but new research shows that pharmaceutical companies are instead searching for the next “big thing” in rare diseases.
Big Pharma’s profit margins continue to rise considerably with rarer diseases, simply because they can charge more for the pills than they do for medication for more common ailments.
The search for the next money-maker within rare diseases has actually halted some of the advancements for more common ailments, which may explain why they still haven’t discovered a cure for some of the most common diseases affecting the world’s population.
In 1983, the Orphan Drug Act started to incentivize the creation of drugs for rarer diseases to ensure that those suffering from uncommon conditions were not neglected in new scientific research simply because the drugs weren’t as profitable.
Because of the incentives, which include reduced taxes and reduced or waived regulatory fees, over 500 new drugs for uncommon diseases have hit the market since the law was introduced.
For common illnesses, Big Pharma can get still turnover big profits while not charging a fortune for the drug. For example, Liptior (atorvastatin), which is used to regulate cholesterol, generates a sales profit of $131 billion with the prescription only costing patients around $2 per day.
But with rare diseases, prices must be kept high in order to keep Big Pharma in business. This means that while those with uncommon illnesses may benefit healthwise from the new measures, their pocketbooks are in for a hit.
For example, the cystic fibrosis drug Kalydeco by Vertex costs individual patients $311,000.
Gilead’s Sovaldi, used to treat Hepatitis C, cashes in at $84,000 for a paltry 12-week course of medication.
And Soliris, used to treat rare blood conditions, costs the patient a whopping $400,000 per year.
The list of the 10 most expensive drugs that are currently manufactured are all created to treat “orphan” or uncommon illnesses.
Thanks to these laws that allow Big Pharma to charge these insane amounts of money, they can use those who suffer from rare diseases as their cash cows.
Drugs for rare diseases will account for 19% of pharmaceutical branded drug profits by the year 2020. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 0 |
Home / #Solutions / Crisis of Conscience? Obama Frees Scores of Drug Offenders from Prison, Including 42 Lifers, Days Before Election Crisis of Conscience? Obama Frees Scores of Drug Offenders from Prison, Including 42 Lifers, Days Before Election Matt Agorist October 28, 2016 1 Comment
“Prison is for rapists, thieves, and murderers. If you lock someone up for smoking a plant that makes them happy, you’re the fucking criminal.” – Joe Rogan
Washington D.C. — The timeless words of Joe Rogan seem to be taking their toll on the consciences of American politicians. To kidnap and lock people in a cage for a personal choice and action that harms no one, is an evil act. Some politicians are figuring this out — or at least pandering to public demand. Either way, the result is the same.
Despite largely continuing the drug war and drastically increasing raids on medical marijuana facilities as compared to his predecessor, Barack Obama has somehow managed to dupe people into thinking he was pro legalized pot. And now, as his reign comes to an end, he seems to be reversing course.
Over the years, Obama has blown a lot of smoke (pun intended) when it came to his views on the war on drugs. He’s played Mr. Nice Guy while his heavily militarized government task forces have laid waste to the rights and property of peaceful people trying to help their fellow man by growing medical marijuana.
Under Obama, police in America, through the federal 1033 program , have acquired MRAP’s, grenade launchers, and even Apache attack choppers; most of which have been used enforcing immoral and unethical drug laws. However, no one, not even the almighty Barack Obama, can stop an idea whose time has come.
The people have spoken, and politicians who continue to call for the imprisonment of non-violent individuals for their personal choices are being exposed for the vile and obstinate tyrants they are.
Apparently this notion has made it to the ear of his majesty, Barack Obama. In a recent show of humanity, he’s freed several dozen more non-violent drug offenders.
According to Reason Magazine , this latest batch of commutations raises Obama’s total so far to 872, nearly all of them involving nonviolent drug offenders. That is more commutations than were issued by his 11 most recent predecessors combined. According to the White House , the 688 commutations since the beginning of 2016 are “the most ever done by a president in a single year”—not surprising, since Obama’s commutations have been strikingly backloaded, with 79 percent coming during his last year in office and 98 percent in the second half of his second term. He shortened just one sentence during his first term.
As the chart shows below, either Obama’s conscience is weighing on him or political pressure is is winning.
According to a report from Reason:
Obama clearly is trying hard to make up for lost time. In a speech on Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said there will be “many more [commutations] to come.” Wednesday White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said Obama is committed to “using his clemency authority through the remainder of his time in office.” If he maintains this month’s rate in November, December, and January, his total will be around 1,500. If he picks up the pace, he could still reach the “thousands” predicted in 2014.
Even 2,000 commutations would represent just 6.9 percent of the 29,000 or so petitions Obama has received , making him slightly more merciful than Richard Nixon by that measure. That nevertheless would represent a huge improvement from where Obama stood just six months ago.
Any time the state admits it was wrong, and innocent people are freed from their cages of oppression; it’s a win for freedom. If one life is spared the horrid fate of being caged like an animal for possessing or ingesting a plant that grows from the ground, this is good news.
However, there are tens of thousands of non-violent drug offenders locked in steel cages across this country, many of them are in for possession alone. The slow and rusty cogs of the bureaucratic leviathan can’t turn fast enough. For every non-violent drug offender the president frees, five more are thrown in. Why? Locking up drug users has proven to be quite the profitable venture.
It is much easier to walk out on the street corner and shakedown a teenager who may have an illegal plant in his pocket than it is to examine the evidence in a rape or murder case. The so-called “Private” Prisons know this and have subsequently found their niche in this immoral war on drugs.
The term Private Prison is a farce from the get-go.
A truly Private prison would not be solely funded by taxpayer dollars. These Private prisons are nothing more than a fascist mixture of state and corporate, completely dependent upon the extortion factor of the state, i.e., taxation, as a means of their corporate sustenance.
A truly Private prison would have a negative incentive to boost its population for the simple fact that it is particularly expensive to house inmates. On the contrary, these fascist, or more aptly, corporatist prisons contractually require occupancy rates of 95%-100%.
The requirement for a 95% occupancy rate creates a de facto demand for criminals. Think about that for a second; a need or demand for people to commit crimes is created by this corporatist arrangement. The implications associated with demanding people commit crimes are horrifying.
Creating a completely immoral demand for “criminals” leads to the situation in which we find ourselves today. People, who are otherwise entirely innocent, are labeled as criminals for their personal choices and thrown in cages. We are now witnessing a vicious cycle between law enforcement, who must create and arrest criminals, and the corporatist prison system that constantly demands more prisoners. The police and prison corporations know that without the war on drugs, this windfall of money, cars, and houses — ceases to exist.
If you want to know who profits from ruining lives and throwing marijuana users in cages, we need only look at who bribes (also known as lobbies) the politicians to keep the war on drugs alive.
Below is a list of the top five industries who need you locked in a cage for possessing a plant in order to ensure their job security. Police Unions: Coming in as the number one contributor to politicians for their votes to lock you in a cage for a plant are the police themselves. They risk taking massive pay cuts and losing all their expensive militarized toys without the war on drugs. Private Prison Corporations: No surprise here . The corporatist prison lobby is constantly pushing for stricter laws to keep their stream of tax dollars flowing. Alcohol and Beer Companies: These giant corporations hate competition, so why not pay millions to keep a cheaper and far safer alcohol alternative off the market? Pharmaceutical Corporations: The hypocrisy of marijuana remaining a Schedule 1 drug, “No Medical Use Whatsoever,” seems criminal when considering that pharmaceutical companies reproduce a chemical version of THC and are able to market and sell it as such. Ever hear of Marinol? Big pharma simply uses the force of the state to legislate out their competition ; which happens to be nature. Prison Guard Unions: The prison guard union s are another group, so scared of losing their jobs, that they would rather see thousands of non-violent and morally innocent people thrown into cages, than look for another job.
What does it say about a society who’s resolute in enacting violence against their fellow human so they can have a job to go to in the morning?
The person who wants to ingest a substance for medical or recreational reasons is not the criminal. However, the person that would kidnap, cage, or kill someone because they have a different lifestyle is a villain on many fronts. When does this vicious cycle end?
The good news is that the drug war’s days are numbered, especially seeing that it’s reached the White House, and they are taking action, even if it is symbolic. Evidence of this is everywhere. States are defying the federal government and refusing to lock people in cages for marijuana. Colorado and Washington served as a catalyst in a seemingly exponential awakening to the government’s immoral war.
Following suit were Oregon, D.C., and Alaska. Medical marijuana initiatives are becoming a constant part of legislative debates nationwide. We’ve even seen bills that would not only completely legalize marijuana but deregulate it entirely, like corn.
As more and more states refuse to kidnap and cage marijuana users, the drug war will continue to implode. We must be resilient in this fight.
If doing drugs bothers you, don’t do drugs. When you transition from holding an opinion — to using government violence to enforce your personal preference, you become the bad guy. Don’t be the bad guy. Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter and now on Steemit Share geneww1938
The best way to stop illegal dealers and drug use is to stop trafficking by the criminal cartel behind our government. When was the last time we heard of a drug bust that disrupted street consumption ! The elitist’s cartel derive billions from international trafficking to wit: Google “Bush, Clinton drugs Mena Airport AK”. Social Trending | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The other day, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, decided to lecture Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Senate Republicans, Mr. Grassley said, were not to blame for the partisan deadlock over President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. The real culprits? The chief justice and his colleagues. Mr. Grassley’s delivered on the Senate floor, was in response to an analysis in this column last month of the chief justice’s stance as Senate Republicans refuse to consider the nomination. Chief Justice Roberts has said, for instance, that partisan confirmation hearings feed a false public perception that justices cast their votes “as Democrats and Republicans,” rather than as neutral arbiters of the law. Mr. Grassley offered a different take. “The chief justice has it exactly backwards,” he said. “The confirmation process doesn’t make the justices appear political. The confirmation process has gotten political precisely because the court has drifted from the constitutional text and rendered decisions based instead on policy preferences. ” “Physician, heal thyself,” Mr. Grassley told the chief justice. Mr. Grassley did not list the decisions that troubled him. But he did say that only two members of the court, presumably Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. “stick to the constitutional text and vote in a consistently conservative way. ” Mr. Grassley’s logic, if that is the right word, was that conservative decisions are apolitical but that liberal ones are partisan. As for Chief Justice Roberts, Mr. Grassley said, “a number of his votes have reflected political considerations, not legal ones. ” Again, the senator did not say which votes he was talking about, but they probably included ones rejecting challenges to the Affordable Care Act. Chief Justice Roberts has said that the president’s two previous nominees, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were “extremely well qualified for the court. ” Yet they were confirmed almost strictly along party lines, he said in remarks in Boston 10 days before Justice Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13. “That doesn’t make any sense,” Chief Justice Roberts said. “That suggests to me that the process is being used for something other than ensuring the qualifications of the nominees. ” There is truth on both sides, said Lee Epstein, a law professor and political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis. “I think Grassley may be right,” she said, “to blame the court for the increasing role of ideology, as opposed to qualifications and other factors, in Senate confirmation proceedings. ” She added that politics had played a significant role in Supreme Court decisions since at least the 1950s. “But Chief Justice Roberts is also right,” Professor Epstein said. “Political science research shows that Americans are less likely to support the court when it is portrayed as a political body — as it is during confirmation proceedings — and not a legal body. ” Chief Justice Roberts has said nothing in public about the confirmation process since Justice Scalia died. He has been silent on the nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland. Mr. Grassley’s remarks, made on April 5, seemed calculated to make sure that Chief Justice Roberts stays quiet notwithstanding exhortations from constitutional scholars that he speak up. “That’s a political temptation that the chief justice should resist,” Mr. Grassley said. But there is precedent for measured intervention by a chief justice in a clash over the nature and future of the Supreme Court. Consider another chief justice’s response to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan. In 1937, unhappy with Supreme Court decisions striking down New Deal programs, Roosevelt announced a plan to add justices, saying the current ones were overworked. The plan was defeated after a letter from Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes to the Senate rebutted Roosevelt’s charges in mild language backed by detailed figures. “The present number of justices,” Chief Justice Hughes wrote, “is thought to be large enough so far as the prompt, adequate and efficient conduct of the work of the court is concerned. ” Chief Justice Roberts may also have views about whether the present number of justices on his court — eight — is adequate. He certainly admires Chief Justice Hughes, as he made plain in remarks in November at New York University’s law school. “One of the greatest crises facing the Supreme Court since Marbury v. Madison was F. D. R. ’s plan,” Chief Justice Roberts said, “and it fell to Hughes to guide a very unpopular Supreme Court through that showdown against America’s most popular president since George Washington. ” “There are things to learn from it,” Chief Justice Roberts said. James F. Simon, the author of “F. D. R. and Chief Justice Hughes,” said he saw parallels between the two historical moments. “I think Hughes would have been frustrated and annoyed by the present Senate Republicans’ vow to ignore their constitutional obligation to consider Garland’s nomination,” Mr. Simon said. “I suspect that Roberts shares those feelings. Both Hughes and Roberts put great value in protecting the court’s integrity. ” The key difference, Mr. Simon said, is that senators had asked for Chief Justice Hughes’s views. “Should the Senate Judiciary Committee make a similar request to Roberts, I think he would probably respond, giving a carefully worded nudge to the committee to consider Garland,” Mr. Simon said. “But I don’t see Grassley reaching out to the chief justice. ” | 1 |
Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Beyond the Melting Pot, 2nd Edition
Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1970.
Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City was written in 1963 and revised in 1970, but its critique of American assimilation mythology is as relevant as ever. Co-authors (((Nathan Glazer))) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan note that the term âmelting potâ itself was popularized by the London-born Russian Jew (((Israel Zangwill))), who in his play of the same name wrote:
âAmerica is Godâs Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming⌠Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians â into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.â
What should surprise literally no one familiar with Hebrew duplicity is that (((Zangwill))) himself was a zionist, that is to say he wanted a territorial nation-state for Jewish people established somewhere in the world (and preferably with few extant inhabitants, which is why he opposed the choice of Palestine). It would appear then that (((Zangwill))) did not really believe in his melting pot in a universal sense. And neither do the authors of Beyond the Melting Pot, who describe 1960s New York as a very identitarian place, one of both conflicting and allied power-blocs rooted in ethnic affinities. One may be left wondering if any âAmericansâ even lived in New York apart from a trickle of WASP transplants, given how the co-authors slice what were the cityâs five largest ethnic groups. They literally have an entire section dedicated to naming the Jew, who at the time populated a fourth of the city. Is that America? Will it become America?
And now to burst your bubble. (((Glazer))) and Moynihan were both liberals and sociologists, though contemporary liberals and sociologists would probably hate them. (((Glazer))) was a staunch anti-communist (and sometimes even labelled a neoconservative), while Moynihan was infamous for a report he put together while Assistant Secretary of Labor that criticized dindu family structure (high rates of bastardy) and was skeptical of providing welfare to single mothers (a toxic incentive). Critics accused the so-called Moynihan Report of âblaming the victim,â a leftist retort that has since become increasingly common. While he was the 12th American ambassador to the United Nations, Moynihan gave a speech before the General Assembly denouncing a resolution which had declared zionism to be a form of âracism.â Not very endearing for the current year. And while a senator in the 1980s, he predicted that ethnic nationalism and the slumping economy of the Soviet Union would become existential threats to communism in Eastern Europe, and criticized Reaganâs overhyped fears of its expansion. The co-authors of Beyond the Melting Pot were clearly liberals of an older stock than one is used to reading.
And that more than anything else is what makes this book so fascinating. Beyond the Melting Pot tells us a lot of things we on the Alt-Right already know, but the writers are not on our side. It tells us about the alliance between elite WASPs, Jews, and blacks in politics. It tells us how Jews have been heavily involved in liberalism, socialism, labor movements, psychology, higher education, government and politics, and the civil rights movement relative to their size, and how almost all of American Jewry traces through New York. It tells us how Jews didnât want religion added to the US Census because they didnât want anti-semites to be able to track their numbers or influence. It tells us how liberals donât view âWhite Americansâ as an identity group but are willing to concede that, say, Irish, Italian, or Polish people exist. It tells us how earlier Northern European migrants such as Scots, Welsh, Dutch, Germans, and Scandinavians had a much easier time assimilating into an (Anglo) American identity and losing their old ethnic consciousness. It tells us that blacks and Hispanics use the most welfare per capita and are less industrious than Whites and Jews, in addition to having very different family structures. It tells us that White Catholics have produced very little intelligentsia in New York and the United States despite their large share of the population (though your author is part of an aspiring post-Catholic intelligentsia).
I am not deducing these or gleaning these points from the text. They are the text. This is what a sociology book on the ethnography of New York written by a pair of older school liberal academics has to say.
Perhaps most surprising is the co-authorsâ stance that there are positive elements to the formation and existence of ethnic communities and neighborhoods, and that the government should not try to destroy such communities through aggressive integration programs. To some extent, this is just realism regarding the conditions of New York. It is purely descriptive, then and now, to say that ethnic neighborhoods exist where one group predominates. But even that is refreshing coming from authors of the left, for whom it is so often the case that race and ethnicity are social constructs and therefore neither real nor of value. It is further than that even, as (((Glazer))) and Moynihan do not merely recognize identity-based communities exist, but suggest they are beneficial in some ways and not necessarily products of âracism.â Can you imagine the Department of Housing and Urban Development suggesting that âsegregated communitiesâ are not âracist,â and that the government doesnât need to break them up in the name of integration? What would Julian Castro do?
(((Glazer))) and Moynihan do believe in the false idols of equality and integration, but they arenât totally stupid about it. They know that building (implicitly Afro-Latino) public housing in a middle-class neighborhood always triggers White flight once the colored population hits critical mass, and results in ethnic succession rather than integration. They donât have radical solutions for tackling the structural problems of ethnic diversity in a society. They tend towards gradual economic improvement as the solution, but as we all know, the United States by and large for most people is not a land of social mobility anymore, nor is it one where you can magically uplift radically different biocultural groups by pouring money into them.
What you get from a book like Beyond the Melting Pot is a real Rorschach test of what you are already primed to find evidence for. If you already knew Americans voted in identitarian blocs, then you now know that it is nothing new. If you already knew some immigrants assimilate better than others into mainline American culture (or the regional culture of the area they move to), then you now know that it is nothing new. If youâve already read Culture of Critique and knew about the involvement of overseas Israelis in leftist agitation and the institutional long march, then you now know that it is nothing new (and moreover that when Jews write about it, it is considered non-controversial).
Ultimately, I would recommend Beyond the Melting Pot as a companion text. On its own, it is really just a general interest book with no application beyond 1960s New York City. In conjunction with other literature , it becomes much more illuminating. | 0 |
Hillary Clinton delivered a lacerating rebuke on Thursday of her likely Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, declaring that he was hopelessly unprepared and temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief. Electing him, she said, would be a “historic mistake. ” Speaking in a steady, modulated tone but lobbing some of the most fiery lines of her presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton painted Mr. Trump as a reckless, childish and uninformed amateur who was playing at the game of global statecraft. “This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes,” she said, “because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin. ” Mrs. Clinton, whose campaign had grappled for weeks over how to handle Mr. Trump, seemed to find her footing as she addressed an audience in San Diego that laughed and cheered as she deconstructed Mr. Trump’s foreign policy pronouncements. They were, she said, “not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies. ” The speech, which mixed biting sarcasm and somber assessments of the foreign crises of the Obama years, unfurled what is likely to be the core argument that Mrs. Clinton will carry into the general election. Her remarks were billed as a major foreign policy address, and she was flanked by a row of 19 American flags as majestic as those that often back Mr. Trump at his public events. Yet the speech was devoid of new policy prescriptions, and she skipped over difficult episodes during her tenure as secretary of state, including the NATO intervention in Libya and its bloody aftermath in Benghazi. Instead she borrowed a tactic from President Obama, reeling off zingers that are catnip to channels. It won her the kind of sustained live coverage that Mr. Trump has enjoyed routinely but Mrs. Clinton has not, though the announcement by Speaker Paul D. Ryan that he planned to vote for Mr. Trump stole her thunder in the opening moments of the address. She said she imagined Mr. Trump was “composing nasty tweets” about her even as she spoke. And indeed he was: “Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton!” Mr. Trump wrote. “Reading poorly from the teleprompter! She doesn’t even look presidential. ” But Mrs. Clinton sought to turn Mr. Trump’s prolific Twitter habit into an additional bullet point demonstrating that he was “unfit” for the presidency, as she put it. She twice referred to the scene in the White House Situation Room where as secretary of state, she advised Mr. Obama on the raid on a compound in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. “Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making decisions on behalf of the United States,” Mrs. Clinton said, eliciting cries of “No!” from her audience. “Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry, but America’s entire arsenal. ” In an interview with The New York Times during Mrs. Clinton’s speech, Mr. Trump said that Mrs. Clinton’s performance was “terrible” and “pathetic. ” He added: “I’m not at all. I’m the opposite of . ” For Mrs. Clinton, whose formal speeches tend to be earnest and laden with policy prescriptions, it was a striking departure — a rollicking political indictment that doubled as Mrs. Clinton’s first response to Mr. Trump’s drumbeat of criticism about her ethics and judgment during a in public life. The speech came after weeks of study by Clinton aides to determine which attacks by Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals had not worked. It was studded with punch lines: Mr. Trump “doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about,” Mrs. Clinton said at one point. “Donald doesn’t see the complexity,” she said at another. “This isn’t reality television,” she said of a Trump presidency. “This is actual reality. ” After her campaign had initially issued a tepid response to Mr. Trump’s proposal of defaulting on the national debt, calling the idea “risky,” Mrs. Clinton said Thursday that such action would lead to “an economic catastrophe. ” “He believes we can treat the U. S. economy like one of his casinos,” she said. The speech was roughly 10 days in the making and written by Mrs. Clinton’s speechwriters, Dan Schwerin and Megan Rooney, and top policy aide, Jake Sullivan, with outside advisers including Mr. Obama’s former chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, reviewing a late draft. Ms. Rooney, a former State Department speechwriter, was perched on the arm of Mrs. Clinton’s chair on a flight from Boston to San Diego on Wednesday night, making revisions on her laptop and making sure the lines echoed Mrs. Clinton’s sardonic humor. The address was a meaty rebuttal to Democrats who had expressed concern that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign lacked gumption in going after Mr. Trump, particularly because Mr. Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have relished opportunities to skewer him. By turns mocking and stern, Mrs. Clinton derided Mr. Trump for suggesting that Japan should acquire nuclear weapons to deter North Korea, that the United States should have walked away from the nuclear deal with Iran, and that “maybe Syria should be a free zone for ISIS. ” “He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And to top it off, he believes America is weak. An embarrassment. He called our military a disaster. He said we are, and I quote, a ‘ country. ’” In vivid strokes, Mrs. Clinton framed not just her case against Mr. Trump but the broader debate in the election: She cast herself as the defender of an world order against an insurgent who did not understand, let alone respect, the network of alliances the United States constructed after World War II to safeguard its interests. Mrs. Clinton presented herself as a commander in chief, a fervent believer in America as an exceptional country, tested by her time in the Situation Room. She highlighted her ability to go “toe to toe” with leaders in Beijing and Moscow, contrasting that with what she said was Mr. Trump’s “bizarre fascination with dictators and strongmen who have no love for America. ” “I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants,” she said. “I just wonder how anyone could be so wrong about who America’s real friends are. ” Even as she excoriated Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton kept a close eye on domestic politics. She noted, for example, that she understood the deep qualms that voters had with trade deals. Still, Mr. Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Chinese imports, Mrs. Clinton said, would set off a trade war of the kind that deepened the Great Depression in the 1930s. Mrs. Clinton recited a handful of highlights from her time at the State Department, including her role in brokering a between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in 2012 and rallying the world to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. But she failed to flesh out her proposals for dealing with the Islamic State or the civil war in Syria. To Mrs. Clinton, such policy details were not as important as the differences between her and Mr. Trump. “He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture and the murder of civilians who are related to suspected terrorists, even though those are war crimes,” Mrs. Clinton said. “He says he doesn’t have to listen to our generals or our admirals, our ambassadors and other high officials, because he has, quote, ‘a very good brain. ’” “He also said, ‘I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.’ You know what?” she continued. “I don’t believe him. ” Mrs. Clinton ended her remarks on a more solemn note, arguing that Mr. Trump’s proposals, like barring Muslims from entering the United States, “could fuel an ugly narrative about who we are. ” Mr. Trump, she said, would undo decades of statecraft by Republicans and Democrats. Striking a bipartisan note, Mrs. Clinton recalled an advertisement Mr. Trump took out in newspapers in 1987, during the Reagan administration, “saying that America lacked a backbone and that the world was, you guessed it, laughing at us. ” “You’ve got to wonder why somebody who fundamentally has so little confidence in America and has felt that way for at least 30 years wants to be our president,” she said. | 1 |
Financial Markets , Gold , Market Manipulation , Precious Metals , U.S. Economy Comex , LBMA , silver , silver eagles admin
The move by Modi to eliminate large-denomination cash bills from India has set off an unanticipated physical gold buying frenzy that has driven Indian ex-duty import premiums in the mid-$30’s. It’s the widest I’ve seen in them in the many years I’ve been tracking that data (via John Brimelow’s Gold Jottings report). “”I’m getting non-stop calls from unknown numbers from people asking for gold,” the jeweller told a Reuters reporter in an interview inside his shuttered showroom..”
Ditto for China. The SGE premium last night was $12.59 to spot gold. As Brimelow describes: “In this case the high premiums probably simply reflect capacity constraints among Chinese import dealers. Possibly there is a Trump/devaluation effect boosting local appetite, besides of course the price decline.”
My personal view is that, given the extreme amount of paper being launched at the LBMA and Comex right now, and given that the price of gold seems averse to going any lower (at least for now), the worst of the beat-down is over. Too many people are looking “down” right now…Eric Dubin has also called a “double bottom in gold.” He and Jason discussed the precious metals market, among many other topics in their lates Welcome to Dystopia episode, which you can access here: The Bottom Is In. | 0 |
In the effort to prove the credibility of the undercover donor featured in the videos and to keep the investigation going, Project Veritas Action made the decision to donate twenty thousand dollars to Robert Creamer’s effort.
Project Veritas Action had determined that the benefit of this investigation outweighed the cost. And it did.
In an unexpected twist, AUFC president Brad Woodhouse, the recipient of the $20,000, heard that Project Veritas Action was releasing undercover videos exposing AUFC’s activities.
He told a journalist that AUFC was going to return the twenty thousand dollars.
He said it was because they were concerned that it might have been an illegal foreign donation.
Project Veritas Action was pleased but wondered why that hadn’t been a problem for the month that they had the money.
| 0 |
Waking Times
As the U.S. government continues to fight its futile war on drugs , marijuana possession arrests have now become more common than all other crimes combined , according to a new report focused on showing the human toll of criminalizing drug use and published by Human Rights Watch ( HRW.org ).
The war on drugs in the U.S. is a palpable failure. Drug-possession arrests more than doubled between 1979 and 2016. The prison population now includes more than half a million Americans jailed for drug offenses , in comparison to only 41,000 in 1980. Over the last four decades, the war on drugs has restricted individual rights and created an environment of violence and inequality, but it has done almost nothing to solve the problems associated with drug abuse.
“Evaluations of specific tactics, such as raids on crack houses and crackdowns, suggest that their effects on drug availability are minimal, decay rapidly, and may displace drug activity to other areas and increase drug-related violence.” ~ 2016 study published in by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, entitled War on Drugs Policing and Police Brutality Shocking Rise in Cannabis Possession Arrests
Despite the ongoing war, cannabis usage is becoming more acceptable and even legal, proving that opinion and policy vary wildly. In fact, a study conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that the number of Americans who use marijuana has doubled from 2001-02 to 2012-13. The 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimates that over 22 million Americans use the plant either for medical purposes and/or recreationally.
Americans have become accepting of cannabis, even though it is still illegal under federal U.S. law. Over the last decade, immense amount of research has shown the medical benefits of the cannabis plant . Legalization of the plant in several U.S. states has demonstrated that it is not a threat to public safety. It seems that the most dangerous aspect of cannabis use is the possibility of police confrontation, arrest and incarceration.
Regardless of the trends showing an increase in cannabis popularity, the report by HRW.org found that policing of marijuana-possession laws continues to be quite aggressive when compared to the enforcement of other laws.
“Despite shifting public opinion, in 2015, nearly half of all drug possession arrests (over 574,000) were for marijuana possession. By comparison, there were 505,681 arrests for violent crimes (which the FBI defines as murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault). This means that police made more arrests for simple marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined.”
Through the evaluation of court data for the state of Texas, HRW discovered that many of those prosecuted “were prosecuted for small quantities of drugs—in some cases, fractions of a gram—that were clearly for personal use.” Other sources reveal that 8 in 10 drug arrests in 2013 were for drug possession rather than sale and manufacturing. Drug Crimes and Prisons
Every 25 seconds, someone in the U.S. is arrested for drug use or possession. More than one of nine arrests by state law enforcement are for drug possession, amounting to more than 1.25 million arrests per year.
As a result of this aggressive enforcement of drug laws, on any given day at least 137,000 people sit in local and state jails on drug possession charges awaiting their day in court. Drug possession offenders in general will soon make up 25% of the prison population. Because federal law mandates a sentence of life without parole for anyone whose third strike is a federal crime (such as drug possession and, in many states, marijuana possession), 10 times as many third-strikers are serving time for drug possession as a second-degree murder.
It’s clear that people from all demographics wish to have safe access to cannabis , both for recreational purposes as well as for a growing list of medical benefits. While access opens up in U.S. states where legalization continues to gain steam, safe access to cannabis is still an issue for many, which is why people are creating businesses like Buy Weed Online Canada , and until the government fully decriminalizes cannabis, our prison system, court system and police forces will continue to be bogged down with the persecution and prosecution of non-violent offenders. Read more articles by Vic Bishop . About the Author
Vic Bishop is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and OffgridOutpost.com Survival Tips blog. He is an observer of people, animals, nature, and he loves to ponder the connection and relationship between them all. A believer in always striving to becoming self-sufficient and free from the matrix, please track him down on Facebook . Like Waking Times on Facebook . Follow Waking Times on Twitter .
This article ( Arrests for Cannabis Possession Outnumber Arrests for All Violent Crimes Combined ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Vic Bishop and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. Please contact [email protected] for more info.
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ORLANDO, Fla. — The city announced Friday that the $7 million it collected after the nightclub shooting would be given directly to family members and survivors instead of being distributed through charities and nonprofit groups. The change was necessary, Mayor Buddy Dyer said, because survivors of the nightclub attack and relatives needed help immediately with expenses like rent and groceries. “We are working through exactly the way they are going to do that,” Mr. Dyer said. “The most important thing is to do it right, do it transparently and make sure our funders are comfortable with how we are doing this. ” A charitable and advocacy organization, the National Center for Victims of Crime, which is based in Washington, had criticized Orlando’s plan to distribute money via nonprofits, saying that too little money donated in that manner had made its way to victims and their families after similar tragedies. Of the $7 million collected for the OneOrlando fund, Mr. Dyer said, $6. 5 million came from corporations. With the move, Orlando is the latest to shift away from established charities and opt for direct donations, a move that has become increasingly common, in part because of questions about how some charities use donations. The shooting early Sunday at Pulse, a gay nightclub, left 49 people dead and more than 50 wounded. The gunman, Omar Mateen, 29, claimed allegiance to the Islamic State during a phone call to the authorities in the midst of the attack. Mr. Mateen was killed in a gunfight. Here in Orlando, the families of victims are already receiving help with funerals and airfare, Mr. Dyer said. In Puerto Rico, a representative of the governor’s office said each family was receiving $7, 500 to bury loved ones. Mr. Dyer made the announcement at the Camping World Stadium, once known as the Citrus Bowl, where 35 agencies have set up to offer services to the family members. Already 94 families and 256 people have received help, Mr. Dyer said. The city has also established a board led by Alex Martins, chief executive of the Orlando Magic basketball team, to develop a plan to distribute the money. The outpouring for Orlando has raised millions through traditional charities and online campaigns, including through crowdfunding websites. On one such site, GoFundMe, more than 300 campaigns have raised $6. 2 million, including $5. 2 million by Equality Florida, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, a GoFundMe spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, said. “There is a real power to being able to give to an individual story and being able to follow that story,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “It is the power of those individual stories. ” Charity officials said the individual campaigns were also a reflection of the public’s concern that their donations get to the people for which they were intended. After the terrorist attacks in September 2001, the American Red Cross came under intense criticism for collecting millions of dollars in the name of the victims and then making plans to use the money elsewhere. Eventually, the Red Cross agreed to use all of its $543 million Liberty Disaster Fund to assist those affected by the attacks. Specialists in charitable giving said Orlando’s decision could alter how local governments handle the sudden outpouring of money from the public after natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and mass shootings like the one in Newtown, Conn. “There have been so many scandals we’ve seen after these sorts of situations, so it is a big deal that they’ve bypassed nonprofits because it shows a distrust in how nonprofits are doing things,” said Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy. “This sends a big message, too, because other cities might decide to use this as a model in the future. ” Mai Fernandez, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, said Friday that the group, as well as some family members, had told city officials that they feared donations from OneOrlando would not get to victims if a traditional nonprofit was placed in charge. The organization founded a charity, the National Compassion Fund, in 2014, to ensure that donations made after tragedies go to victims. The group has raised about $5 million for Orlando’s victims, Ms. Fernandez said, and will start to distribute the money in the next several weeks. Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer who oversaw the federal government’s victim compensation fund and has become the administrator for a number of such accounts, said Friday that he had consulted with officials in Orlando but had not taken a formal role. Mr. Feinberg said he believed that people who donate money after tragedies intend it to go directly to victims. “There is the understanding that it is a special fund for a special tragedy requiring a special effort,” he said. | 1 |
Share on Facebook China remains the world's largest producer of rice. The Middle Kingdom harvests over 200 million tons per year and a large share of it gets exported all over the world. But cooks and diners alike should take care: not only are untold amounts of pesticides used in Chinese agriculture, but according to a report in The Korea Times rice is also now being manufactured artificially. Potato starch gets mixed with plastic (synthetic resin, for instance) and then formed into rice-shaped kernels. Finally the grains are steamed with a typical rice aroma. Doctors have emphatically warned against consuming the artificial product: three full portions apparently contain as much plastic as there is in a little plastic bag. That's alarming! With these simple tricks you can test whether your rice is wholesome and plastic-free: The Water Test Pour a tablespoon of uncooked rice into a glass with cold water. If the rice all sinks to the bottom of the glass, it's fine. If the grains float up to the surface, be careful! The Fire Test Try setting a little bit of your rice on fire with a match or lighter. If it starts burning right away and smells like burning plastic, then you know what to do! (Do not eat it!) The Mortar And Pestle Test When you crush a few grains of rice with a mortar and pestle they should be reduced to a fine, white, starchy powder. But with artificial rice, you will see a light yellow discoloration instead. The Mold Test If you want to know for sure whether your cooked rice is quite safe, put a small quantity of cooked rice into an airtight container and leave it in a warm place. Within a couple of days it will have gotten moldy. Only fake rice stays mold-free. This is how to be on the safe side. Show these tricks to your rice-eating friends and that way no one will have to eat plastic for dinner! Related: | 0 |
ORLANDO, Fla. — Delegates puffed on between chants of “freedom!” Educational booths proclaimed the virtues of hemp, “ economics” and the literature of Ayn Rand. A woman on stilts wearing purple angel wings greeted activists as they milled between seminars on drug war policies and on “how to abolish the government in three steps. ” In a year when the two major parties are consumed by tensions, defections and chaos, the Libertarian Party, which sees itself as their alternative, displayed some of the same traits as it wrestled with nominating two former Republican governors for its presidential ticket at its annual convention over the weekend. But there was also a palpable sense of excitement at the event, held at a hotel here less than 10 miles from Disney World. For an antiwar party that promotes legalizing marijuana and tearing up the tax code, 2016 has brought hope that acceptance in the political mainstream is imminent amid broad discontent with the probable nominees from the major parties. “We have been given the gift of Trump and Clinton,” said Larry Sharpe, a businessman and candidate for the Libertarian nomination. “Their ears are open, and I want them to hear who we are and vote for us for who we are. ” The Libertarian Party is the country’s third largest by voter registration, excluding people who consider themselves independent, but it is often overlooked as a political sideshow with a hodgepodge of positions that many consider to be either overly liberal on social issues or too conservative fiscally. With Donald J. Trump’s rise spawning a contingent of conservative Republicans who will not support him and backers of Senator Bernie Sanders feeling that the Democratic Party is favoring his opponent, Hillary Clinton, Libertarians think they are poised to peel away voters from both sides. The party aims to be on the general election ballot in all 50 states. “There are Republican voters who are going to feel cheated by the fact that their presidential nomination has been taken by a reality show star, and there are Democratic voters who are going to feel cheated when that corporate shill boxes out Senator Sanders at the convention in that rigged process,” Nicholas Sarwark, the Libertarian Party’s national chairman, said on Sunday. “When those people feel cheated, we present an option for them. ” Although only the most fanatical party loyalists feel confident about their chances of winning the presidency, many think that Libertarians are poised to win a record number of votes. Some believe they could steal a state, which no third party has done since George Wallace in 1968, or get enough votes to influence the election, as Ross Perot and Ralph Nader did. More than disrupting the election, though, they see it as a golden opportunity for true national exposure and expansion. The party received more than a million votes in 2012, its most ever, and recent polling suggests a growing appetite for candidates. An NBC Street Journal poll this month found that 47 percent of registered voters would consider a candidate if Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton were the major party nominees. Political analysts were taken by surprise this spring when two separate polls showed Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and the 2012 Libertarian Party nominee, pulling 10 percent and 11 percent of the national vote. The party chose Mr. Johnson again as its at its nominating convention on Sunday. If he can get to 15 percent in polls, he can stand on the debate stage as the first candidate to do so since Mr. Perot in 1992. The feat would provide a bounty of free news media attention for a party that does not have the money for expensive advertising or efforts. Mr. Johnson believes that with sufficient exposure and a positive message he can attract both the young, progressive voters who are backing Mr. Sanders and Republicans who want limited government but fear that Mr. Trump would ratchet up spending and start trade wars. “We should be portraying an optimistic message,” Mr. Johnson, dressed in a dark suit with no tie and wearing sneakers, said in an interview. “Life is good in America. ” Looking to add credibility to his campaign, Mr. Johnson is teaming up with William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, as his running mate. Mr. Weld, who has compared Mr. Trump’s immigration policies to those of Nazi Germany, said he was reaching out to Republican donors who have decided that they cannot support their party’s presumptive nominee. “I’m going to go knocking on every door I can to try to help us along,” Mr. Weld said. As with Republicans and Democrats, the Libertarians displayed their own intraparty divides on Sunday during a raucous round of voting. Many delegates expressed concern that the party was becoming a landing ground for failed former Republicans and sacrificing its purity to appear more palatable. Mr. Johnson secured the nomination on the second ballot of voting, and Mr. Weld was forced to publicly promise his allegiance to the party before he was voted onto the ticket, also on a second ballot. The possible effect of the Libertarians on the November election remains unclear, as most state polls have not included any of the candidates and the party is not yet on the ballot in every state. Kyle Kondik of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia said a ticket with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Weld could capture many votes in their home states of New Mexico and Massachusetts. Alaska, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada have also shown a propensity to find unconventional candidates appealing, he said, so the Libertarians could tilt close races there. “The Libertarian ticket is kind of a mix of left and right,” Mr. Kondik said. “There is potential appeal for it to be a soft landing spot for voters of all stripes. ” Still, the climb will be steep. There were just 411, 000 registered Libertarian voters as of February, and, Mr. Kondik noted, candidates tend to underperform their poll numbers. “Ultimately it would be a giant shock if they carried even one state,” Mr. Kondik said. “Perot never did, and he got 19 percent. ” Despite efforts to broaden their base and become an acceptable alternative to the American public, Libertarians battle perceptions that they are “Republican lite” or “old white guys. ” The convention’s atmosphere belied those caricatures: A clad in a leotard strode across the stage with an umbrella to introduce one candidate, and professional dancers basked in strobe lights at a party before the candidates debated on Saturday night. The debate itself offered a window into some of the challenges the Libertarians face as they try to package themselves for broader consumption while sticking to their principles. The conversation often drifted into strained arguments about how common sense would keep heroin out of the hands of children, how driver’s licenses are unnecessary — one suggestion was a pink flashing light for new drivers — and how public infrastructure could be built without taxes. “Who will build the roads?” Austin Petersen, a presidential candidate and founder of The Libertarian Republic, a magazine, said during the debate. “Where we’re going we don’t need roads. ” There were also presidential hopefuls such as Vermin Supreme, a performance artist who wandered the event with a rubber boot on his head, and Marc Allan Feldman, who began his speech with a Libertarian rap in which he proclaimed, “Republicans and Democrats are wack. ” And then there was John McAfee, the antivirus software pioneer who in 2012 was in hiding in Belize after the police there sought him for questioning in the death of his neighbor. Mr. McAfee, who presented a campaign video declaring, “Here’s to the crazy ones,” doused some of the enthusiasm when he said none of the candidates — himself included — had any chance of becoming president. Win or lose, most remained encouraged that this year will be important for the Libertarian Party and that even if they do not take the White House this time there are opportunities to win state and local races and to convert Republicans and Democrats. Scott Scrimshaw, a community chaplain from Oregon, switched from Republican to Libertarian six months ago after he surveyed the field of candidates and found himself disappointed. A longtime admirer of Ronald Reagan, he said that he could not trust Mr. Trump with his vote and that he did not want to choose between “the lesser of two evils. ” “I feel we are really on the edge of entering a new era of American politics,” Mr. Scrimshaw said. “The era of the third party. ” | 1 |
The world just can’t get enough of the royal family. Now that the family has two adorable babies, we just can’t keep the cameras from rolling. Take a look at some of the most adorable photos of the... | 0 |
Nov 4 Nov 4 Civil War In FBI As Patriot Agents Battle Corrupt Obama/Clinton Cabal Trying To Cover Up Regime Crimes, Obstruct Justice
The Guardian
Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.
Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.
This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.
The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
The agent called the bureau “Trumplandia”, with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party’s national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected.
At the same time, other sources dispute the depth of support for Trump within the bureau, though they uniformly stated that Clinton is viewed highly unfavorably.
“There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt. What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician,” said a former FBI official.
Sources who disputed the depth of Trump’s internal support agreed that the FBI is now in parlous political territory. Justice department officials – another current target of FBI dissatisfaction – have said the bureau disregarded longstanding rules against perceived or actual electoral interference when Comey wrote to Congress to say it was reviewing newly discovered emails relating to Clinton’s personal server. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday ordered Hillary Clinton to provide written testimony under oath about why she set up a private computer server to send and receive emails while secretary of state, ensuring that the issue will continue to dog her presidential campaign until the eve of the election. In a brief ruling issued on Friday afternoon, the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court in Washington, approved a motion by the conservative advocacy organization Judicial Watch to pursue its vigorous campaign to expose Mrs. Clinton’s use of the private server. In addition to requiring her testimony in writing, the judge allowed the group to depose a senior State Department aide who had warned two subordinates not to question her email practices. Only six weeks ago, the director of the F. B. I. James B. Comey Jr. declined to recommend prosecuting Mrs. Clinton, saying that while her actions had been careless, they did not amount to a crime. Yet the controversy refuses to dissipate. This week, the bureau turned over to Congress the documents it compiled in the case, including a hour interview with Mrs. Clinton, even as Republicans in Congress pressed their public case for her to be charged with perjury. Judge Sullivan’s ruling opened another front in a fight Mrs. Clinton’s campaign certainly hoped to put behind her. Although he declined to order her to answer questions in person, his ruling underscored the legal complications that Mrs. Clinton faces even as she enters the homestretch of her campaign. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, Brian Fallon, sharply criticized Judicial Watch’s legal campaign, saying it was “a organization that has been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s. ” “This is just another lawsuit intended to try to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” he said. Judge Sullivan gave Judicial Watch until Oct. 14 to submit questions to Mrs. Clinton — three and a half weeks before Election Day on Nov. 8. Significantly, perhaps, he ordered Mrs. Clinton to submit her answers within 30 days of that deadline, meaning she could delay her answers until after the election. The deposition of the senior aide, however, will take place by Oct. 31. The aide, John Bentel, a career foreign service officer who has since retired, was one of the officials in the State Department who seemed to be aware of Mrs. Clinton’s use of the server. At the time, he headed the part of her executive staff in charge of information management, including the preservation of emails and other records. According to the department’s inspector general, he rebuffed concerns raised in 2010 by two officials in the division about whether her emails were being preserved for the record, instructing them “never to speak of the secretary’s personal email system again. ” Mr. Bentel has declined several requests through his lawyer to comment, but he will now be compelled to testify in person and under oath. Judicial Watch, which dogged Bill Clinton during his presidency, has brought several lawsuits seeking records from the State Department under the Freedom of Information of Act about various aspects of Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, including the employment status of her close aide Huma Abedin. Judge Sullivan, who has at times appeared sympathetic to the group’s demands for information, has compelled testimony from a number of department officials, including Ms. Abedin and Mrs. Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl D. Mills. The group’s president, Tom Fitton, expressed pleasure at the latest successful challenge, although the order fell short of the personal interview he may have wanted. “The decision is a reminder that Hillary Clinton is not above the law,” he said in a statement. | 1 |
Horror author Stephen King took to his Twitter account Saturday to pen a story that mocked President Donald Trump’s claim that former President Obama wiretapped his office in Trump Tower before the 2016 presidential election. [“Not only did Obama tap Trump’s phones, he stole the strawberry ice cream out of the mess locker,” King wrote in the first of three Tweets Saturday. Not only did Obama tap Trump’s phones, he stole the strawberry ice cream out of the mess locker. — Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 4, 2017, Obama tapped Trump’s phones IN PERSON! Went in wearing a Con Ed coverall. Michelle stood guard while O spliced the lines. SAD! — Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 4, 2017, Trump should know OBAMA NEVER LEFT THE WHITE HOUSE! He’s in the closet! HE HAS SCISSORS! — Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 4, 2017, On Saturday, the president claimed that Obama had the phone in his office in Trump Tower before the election, comparing the alleged incident to Richard Nixon’s conduct during the Watergate scandal. Is it legal for a sitting President to be ”wire tapping” a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017, I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017, How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is . Bad (or sick) guy! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017, A representative for Obama has strongly denied the claim. The author — awarded the National Medal of Arts by Obama in 2015 — has been a frequent and outspoken critic of Trump since well before the election. In December, King tweeted that he would no longer tweet about Trump. “That anyone in America would even CONSIDER voting for this rabid coyote leaves me speechless,” he wrote then. In May, the Carrie author joined hundreds of other prominent authors in signing an open letter “unequivocally” condemning Trump’s candidacy. The following month, King told Rolling Stone that he was “disappointed in the country” after Trump claimed the Republican nomination. “I think that he’s sort of the last stand of a sort of American male who feels like women have gotten out of their place and they’re letting in all these people that have the wrong skin colors. He speaks to those people,” he told the magazine. “Trump is extremely popular because people would like to have a world where you just didn’t question that the white American was at the top of the pecking order,” he added. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
Videos Should Third Parties Support ‘Vote Pacts’ To Avoid ‘Spoiling’ Elections? Unlike other vote swapping schemes which pair a voter in a swing state with a voter in a ‘safe’ state, a vote pact pairs voters across party lines who each promise to cast their ballots for a third-party candidate instead. Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein, foreground, meets her supporters during a campaign stop at Humanist Hall in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016.
AUSTIN, Texas — Third-party candidates are often accused of acting as “spoilers” by siphoning votes from the two major parties’ nominees and potentially tipping the balance in an election.
Perhaps the most notable example of this is Ralph Nader. The former Green Party candidate is frequently accused of helping George W. Bush win the 2000 presidential election by diverting votes which otherwise would have gone to Democratic nominee Al Gore, although this theory has been disproven many times .
“A lot of people have basically grown to depend on the confines of the two-party system and have a hard time getting their brain around a constructive, strategic path out of it,” Sam Husseini, a political activist, told MintPress News.
Husseini proposed an alternative strategy in which voters form “voting pacts” across party lines. For example, a Democrat and a Republican might each agree to vote for a third-party candidate of their choice, rather than the two major parties’ candidates. The strategy reduces the potential for “spoiling” votes, as long as voting pacts don’t cross state lines, because each of the major candidates loses voters equally.
Husseini operates the website VotePact.org to encourage this method of vote sharing or vote pairing. Letter in Wash Post: “VotePact Offers Voters a Sensible Alternative” — how #NeverTrump & #NeverHillary can pair up: https://t.co/HB3CtnGGdi
— votepact (@votepact) August 30, 2016
“It has the potential for being a catalyst for genuine realignment and perhaps even for a victory for a so-called third party or independent candidate creative enough to use such a strategy,” Husseini said.
Third-party candidates frequently urge voters to follow their conscience rather opt for one of the “lesser of two evils” selected by the two-party system. As Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein frequently says , “We need to stand up and fight for the greater good like our lives depend on it.”
Husseini said he’d like to see third-party candidates embrace vote pacts instead of dismissing spoiler claims. He suggested they should also urge their supporters to form vote pacts as a way to safely support third-party movement building. Here’s how Husseini imagines the idea being pitched by a candidate: “There’s a way out of this. You feel like you gotta vote for Clinton because you hate Trump. I get that. Lots of people are like that and lots of people are on the other side. Well, they should pair up and both vote for me.”
He continued: “I’ve never seen any third-party candidate do that, which is why I think they’re going to remain in single digits” in the popular vote.
Other forms of “vote swapping” have been proposed during this and previous elections, usually seeking to pair a voter from a swing state with a voter from a state “red” or “blue” state. The voter in the so-called “safe state” agrees to vote for a third-party candidate in return for securing a vote for their preferred candidate in a state where the election is in play.
This “safe state” strategy was especially popular in 2000, when voters sought to trade Nader and Gore votes. That election prompted a court case in which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that that vote swapping is “clearly protected by the First Amendment.”
Last month, Husseini told Bustle’s Amée Latour that the “safe state” strategy just “kicks the can down the road.” Third parties often hope to secure 5 percent of the popular vote in presidential races, which would unlock millions in additional federal funding for future elections, but Husseini thinks by embracing vote pacts they could potentially win elections outright.
“The other so-called ‘strategies’ are basically a way of minimizing the so-called ‘damage’ of third-party runs,” he told MintPress.
While Husseini said he hopes alternative candidates will someday make vote pacts a key part of their campaign strategy, he also stressed that it isn’t too late for voters to embrace the idea in the 2016 election. Vote pacts require mutual trust between political opponents, so he recommends forming them with family members, close friends, and coworkers across party lines.
He also said voting pacts could spur political change by encouraging people to engage in challenging political conversations across party lines rather than simply shutting out opposing views.
“Instead unfriending that guy who said he might vote for Trump because he hates Clinton, reach out to them.” Be Sociable, Share! | 0 |
MAGOODHOO, Maldives — As long as anyone can remember, life on the island of Magoodhoo in the Maldives has revolved around fishing in the crystal clear waters that wash the coral reefs, and kicking back under palm trees on deck chairs made from coir rope. “This is a very fun, happy life,” said Islam Ahmed, 24, a tall, lean man chewing on areca nuts and betel leaves at one of two cafes on the less than island. It is one of nearly 1, 200 islands that make up the Republic of Maldives, a nation southwest of India in the Indian Ocean. But Mr. Ahmed and others here are bracing for a life change they fear could be catastrophic, after the Maldivian president’s announcement in January that leaders of Saudi Arabia were planning a $10 billion investment in the group of islands where Mr. Ahmed lives, known as Faafu Atoll. Most alarming to the residents were reports that the government was breaking with a longstanding policy of leasing the islands that are home to some of the world’s premier resorts and selling the atoll outright to the Saudis. The inhabitants fear they might be moved off the islands. “It is worrying that we may be taken from here and put in tiny apartment boxes,” said Sobira Aboobukaru, 58, near the farm where she grows chilies and cucumbers. “It would be hard beyond our imaginations. ” The Maldivian president, Abdulla Yameen, has denied that the atoll will be sold, and the Saudi embassy said it had no intention “of investing in a megaproject or buying an island or atoll in the Maldives. ” But the fact that Mr. Yameen pushed to change the Constitution in 2015 to allow the sale of property to foreign entities has continued to fuel rumors of a potential sale. All of this has left Mr. Ahmed and the approximately 4, 000 residents of the 19 coral islands in Faafu Atoll guessing about what the future holds. It has also underscored how new allies and investors have gained a foothold in this strategic archipelago. The country has pivoted from its traditional partners — India and the European Union — amid growing international pressure over accusations of human rights abuses by Mr. Yameen. Saudi Arabia has for decades spread its conservative strand of Islam in the Maldives by sending religious leaders, building mosques and giving scholarships to students to attend its universities. The Saudis are building a new airport terminal, and have pledged tens of millions of dollars in loans and grants for infrastructure and housing on an artificial island near the capital, Malé. Similarly, China, which sees the Maldives as a strategic outpost in its quest for regional dominance, has underwritten hundreds of millions of dollars in loans for a new airport runway and a bridge connecting the airport to the capital. The $10 billion Saudi investment seemed to be a crowning achievement for Mr. Yameen, but now the Saudis seem put off by the negative publicity, and the deal may be unraveling. King Salman of Saudi Arabia was expected to visit the Maldives last week, but canceled at the last minute, citing a flu epidemic on the islands. It was widely assumed here that he wanted to avoid inflaming the dispute or facing protests. The Saudi interest in Faafu Atoll began with a 2014 visit by King Salman, then the crown prince, and his son Mohammed bin Salman, now the deputy crown prince. A year later, Prince Mohammed returned to host a week of parties. He and his entourage took over two resorts, said a person familiar with the plans. That person said guests had flown in night after night on private jets to attend the parties, which featured famous entertainers including the rapper Pitbull and the South Korean singer Psy. Mohamed Maleeh Jamal, formerly a member of Mr. Yameen’s economic and youth council, said that he had attended the signing of a memorandum of understanding between representatives of the Saudi royal family and the Maldives two years ago. He said he had been told that it involved selling the atoll, although he was not privy to the details. The precise plans remain a secret, but Mr. Yameen has said the Saudis envision developments similar to the French Riviera. A million people would be drawn to the atoll, on which airports, resorts and housing would be built, he said. For centuries, life in Magoodhoo has revolved around fishing. The populated of the Maldives’ 20 administrative atolls, Faafu is steeped in history. The mosque on the Maldives, built more than 800 years ago, lies on island of Nilandhoo, which is the atoll capital. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl said in his 1986 book, “The Maldive Mystery,” that he had found ruins of ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples on the same island. About half of the men in Magoodhoo, including Mr. Ahmed, spend much of their lives at sea. Six yellowfin tuna fishing boats operate from here, each with a crew of at least 16 men. Their wives and children stay behind on the island, an oval nub of silver sand rising out of the ocean with a clump of coconut and breadfruit trees in the center. In small, concrete buildings in the center of town stand a school, a police station, a health center and an island council office. Residents live in small houses built with coral limestone along the several roads that crisscross the center of town. The streets are not paved but covered in sand and kept passable by women who sweep them several times a day. By the beachside, many women spend their days cutting palm leaves and weaving thatch, a valued commodity for resorts. With its tiny population spread over hundreds of such islands, the government has struggled to meet its people’s demands for fresh water, sanitation and education. It has a history of pushing people off the smaller islands onto the larger ones, where it can provide centralized services, further fueling the fears of the people of Magoodhoo. Not everyone dreads the potential Saudi embrace. Many are hopeful that Saudi investment will bring jobs and development, even as they worry they could be forced to move off the island. More than a third of the Maldives population of nearly 350, 000 is crowded onto the capital island, Malé, on just 2. 2 square miles of land that is a speedboat ride northeast of Faafu Atoll. Even Mr. Ahmed said he was willing to move off the island, under the right circumstances. “Anyone who has a bit of wealth is going to Malé to educate their kids,” he said. “If I get enough money, I, too, will go to give my kid an education. ” But with the prospective Saudi development, he worries that he and his family could be forced to move whether they want to or not. Many residents fear they may be moved to apartments the government is building on an artificial island near Malé, financed in part by an $80 million loan from the Saudi Fund for Development. When Mr. Yameen visited Magoodhoo island in late January, he tried to assuage such fears. The president came to announce that King Salman had donated a new mosque to the people of Magoodhoo. But much more Saudi development would be coming, Mr. Yameen promised. “They have planned a huge project for Faafu Atoll,” he said. “All the charts and drawings have been completed. ” | 1 |
President-elect Donald Trump has named Steve Bannon as his senior counselor and chief strategist. Reince Priebus will be the White House chief of staff.
The uproar came when the press release announced that the two would be equal partners in the White House, thus making Bannon one of the most powerful people in the Executive Mansion. It has been stated that the most effective way to influence the White House is to be named the president’s most important advisor.
Bannon’s place in the Trump administration is of significance in American politics. It is also one of controversy. The president-elect’s choice for his top aide was criticized by the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, and multiple Democratic leaders. Harry Reid stated, “President-elect Trump’s choice of Steve Bannon as his top aide signals that White Supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump’s White House.”
John Weaver, a Republican consultant to Governor John Kasich, sent a tweet stating “a racist, anti-Semite” was named an equal to Trump’s chief of staff and warned the nation to stay vigilant.
Bannon was a significant part of the creation and growth of the nationalist right, or alt-right movement, which welcomes those who are openly anti-Semites and racist. The Washington Post printed a similar comment when he became chairman of the Trump campaign, stating: “it was the latest sign for white nationalists, once dismissed as fringe, that their worldview was gaining popularity and that the old Republican Party was coming to an end.”
The Bannon Climb to the White House A former spokesman for Breitbart News, Kurt Bardella, told The New Yorker that Bannon attempts to ride the coattails of anyone who could grant him political power. He supported Sarah Palin, then the Tea Party, on to Ted Cruz, jumped to Ben Carson, and so on.
From 2008 to 2016, he studied Sarah Palin and political figures that held a right-wing status. He even made documentaries about these people, creating a kind of epicenter for the nationalist right, or alt-right, movement.
After President Barack Obama was re-elected, Republican leaders, the GOP business wing, and consultants decided their focus needed to be on immigration. Priebus was the chairman of the Republican National Committee and submitted a report stating that passing legislation for immigration reform was a necessary means for the survival of the party. This situation became Bannon’s window of opportunity.
He was open about his disdain for Fox News and believed Rupert Murdoch was a globalist. He thought of Priebus, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders as enemies. Bannon made Breitbart a rebellious hub, resisting all efforts to immigration reform. He developed a friendship of support with Senator Jeff Sessions, leader of the Senate opposition.
This divide created an opening for an unnoticed group of conservatives, who had been marginalized. They shared an idea to “promote the restoration of white culture.” Bannon provided Breitbart as an outlet to further the alt-right movement and bring it into mainstream conversation.
Journalists were sent to the Mexican border to interview Americans who believed they were victims of immigration. The writers used anti-Semitic terms in their articles while criticizing globalists and international bankers. Weeks before Bannon became chairman of the Trump campaign, he told a reporter for Mother Jones, “We’re the platform for the alt-right,” referring to the Breitbart News site.
The nationalist-right website encouraged any outsider who was a threat to Republican leadership. Ted Cruz was a key element of the government shut-down, in 2013. The news site celebrated the accomplishment. It supported David Brad when he defeated Cantor, in a primary, by verbally assaulting his Wall Street connections. The site even assisted in instigating the uprising against Speaker of the House John Boehner.
During the 2015 Republican primaries, Breitbart shredded the reputations of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. By the fall, Breitbart was the “Trump propaganda machine or Trumpbart News,” as referred to by critics.
When Breitbart News reporter, Michelle Fields, was grabbed by Corey Lewandowski for approaching Trump, Bannon took the side of the presidential campaign. He did not protect his own reporter while the campaign denied the incident.
In August 2016, he found the Golden Ticket. Trump asked Bannon to chair his presidential campaign.
Under the Wing of Trump The presidential candidate had already received criticism for using the vocabulary of white nationalists and anti-Semitic radicals. This, combined with his approval from the Ku Klux Klan made Trump an even more favorable ally. Allegedly, Bannon inserted anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric in Trump’s written campaign speeches and television ads. When asked about these invocations, Bannon stated that he supported “nationalism, not white nationalism.” He believes the European movements focus on the identity of the people as a nation, not racial identity.
He stated the approval of white working-class Americans could win Trump electoral votes from Michigan and Wisconsin, in the presidential election. These states have voted Democrat since the ‘80s. He did not believe Hillary Clinton had the same Hispanic and African-American support Obama had garnered in 2012. This would cause her to lose the Florida electoral votes. Bannon was right.
The alt-right nationalist has nurtured his connections with like-minded people in France, the U.K., Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. The first foreign national the president-elect met with was Nigel Farage, a friend of Bannon.
He has stated multiple times that American capitalism was constructed on “Judeo-Christian values.” He believes that when capitalism was most beneficial, the strongest leaders were also faithful Judeo-Christians. They were either active in the Christian or Jewish faith and it was manifested in their accomplishments. Would the Founding Fathers considered white supremacists?
Senior Council The senior counselor position has been held by David Axelrod and Karl Rove, most recently. The role is a high-level function in the Oval Office that involves communication with national and foreign governments. It could involve writing speeches for the president on any occasion.
Appointing Bannon to this position tells the nation that the philosophy of the alt-right voters will integrate into American policy. Indeed, it is the plan, of the president-elect, to deport millions of immigrants after his Inauguration Ceremony. Could this begin a new Holocaust?
By Jeanette Smith
Sources:
The New Yorker: Steve Bannon Will Lead Trump’s White House
The Jerusalem Post: Stephen Bannon in 2014: Racism will get ‘washed out’ of nationalist right
Fortune: Trump Taps Reince Priebus for Chief of Staff, Stephen Bannon as Senior Counselor
Featured Image Courtesy of Joel Hageman’s Flickr Page
Top Image Courtesy of Travis Nep Smith’s Flickr Page Bannon , Trump , white house | 0 |
House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows ( ) says that if Congress fails to introduce a tax reform package by the end of July, leadership in the House and Senate should call off the August recess. [Chairman Meadows told attendees at a Heritage Foundation tax event, “We need to get tax reform done sooner (rather) than later and by that we should have a real proposal that we start debating before we leave at the end of July. ” Meadows said that we need to have an agreement on tax reform in the next 3 or 4 weeks and that negotiations will fare much better once Congress moves past the idea of a border adjustment tax. “There is no consensus for the border adjustment tax. The sooner we acknowledge that and get on with a plan that actually works and actually can build consensus, the better off we will be,” the North Carolina congressman added. Meadows negotiated with former Tuesday Tom MacArthur ( ) to craft the MacArthur amendment. The amendment galvanized enough support for the American Health Care Act (AHCA) to pass through the House. Now, Meadows wants to negotiate a tax reform deal, even if that means getting rid of Congress’s vacation in August. Rep. Jim Jordan ( ) the former Freedom Caucus chair, also dispelled the notion of a border adjustment tax. A border adjustment tax (BAT) would tax imports at 20 percent while exempting exports from the tax. Jordan said that lawmakers need to eliminate the idea of revenue neutrality for tax reform, which he argues does not amount to a real tax cut for Americans. “Letting families keep more of their money is not a cost to government — it’s called freedom,” Jordan said. The Ohio congressman chided the current talks of the House budget negotiations. Jordan said, “Right now a budget cannot pass in the House. ” Congressman Dave Brat ( ) explained that this is a “one in a century opportunity” to create economic growth through tax reform. Jack Spencer, the vice president for the Institute for Economic Freedom at Heritage, asked the Freedom Caucus panel how the Senate might jeopardize the reconciliation and budget process by retaining Obamacare’s taxes in the Senate health care bill. Jordan chided, “It certainly doesn’t help it. That’s the Senate’s job. ” Congressman Warren Davidson ( ) another Freedom Caucus member, reiterated Jordan’s emphasis on real tax cuts for American families. “We can’t tweak around the edges, we need to go big,” Davidson said. | 1 |
in: Government Corruption , US News It’s been almost a week since FBI director announced the reopening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of her state department emails and this story is only getting bigger with every passing day. Hillary’s fully controlled liberal left mainstream media and her attack dog politicians and authority figure minions are doing things that some may argue resemble a silent coup d’etat. Yes, I’m talking about an American coup d’etat. I believe in many ways we are witnessing a slow motion coup d’etat that if it succeeds it will mark the permanent end to the rule of law, any resemblance of justice and the end of America itself. Let’s begin by first looking at the definition of coup d’etat : a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force Recently reopened by the FBI, the investigation of Hillary’s criminality is very real and under any normal circumstances would or should guarantee not only her removal as presidential candidate regardless of how close we are to the elections, but also a warrant for her arrest. The Hillary crime team is not about to lay down for this incredible moment in US history however. Hillary has unleashed her attackers on the FBI and its director James Comey, who of course has been one of Hillary’s very controlled minions all along until now perhaps. To counter the application of the rule of law (remember, Hillary broke the law), to preserve her road to presidency and to block her road to jail Hillary’s attack dogs have been released on the justice system itself, something historically unusual and alone worthy of top news status. Attack dog number one, Senator Harry Reid recently threatened FBI director Comey stating the following in a letter to him: I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act… Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law. Historically and astonishingly Reid is attempting to put the elections before the rule of law itself. This is apparently a common theme and strategy in the Hillary criminal camp. So much so that they are attempting to make this about James Comey instead of the actual criminal who broke the law, Hillary Clinton. Attorney General Loretta Lynch also jumped in on this pro-Hillary, screw-the-rule-of-law narrative now being perpetuated by the pro-Hillary minions and attack dogs when it was reported that she “advised Comey not to send a letter to Congress informing them of the discovery of new emails”. The New Yorker put out anonymous quotes designed to attack Comey saying (anonymity emphasized in bold) “You don’t do this,” one former senior Justice Department official exclaimed . “It’s aberrational. It violates decades of practice.” The reason, according to the former official, who asked not to be identified because of ongoing cases involving the department, “is because it impugns the integrity and reputation of the candidate, even though there’s no finding by a court, or in this instance even an indictment.” In fact, according to the Washington Post James Comey’s critics are “ growing by the hour “. All of this is a continuation of what we’ve been seeing throughout this US presidential election campaign. Ignore the suspect on trial and attack the investigator instead. Ignore the details of the videos and emails being revealed and question the source or blame it on Russia. In the case of Hillary, this craziness is what we’ve been seeing for decades. Hillary (like Bill) is above the law and any attempt to bring her to justice will be fought and resisted by her army. They know that they are close to taking over the presidency (very likely via voting fraud ) that they don’t have to answer to the rule of law. The process of getting Hillary in, which we call election day, is therefore more important than the application of the law itself and justice. According to the pro-Hillary resistance (to the rule of law and justice), removing a potential criminal candidate who has repeatedly lied and murdered her enemies is apparently only of secondary importance to election day itself. The idea, the deep rooted delusional belief that Hillary really is actually above the law seems to be believed by her followers, supporters and attack dogs. Thus by perpetuating this belief they (the Hillary attack dogs) are trying to WILL their way into a Hillary presidential victory while completely ignoring the possibility and prospects that Hillary is in fact a criminal. It’s incredible how times have changed. It’s like we are watching the Watergate scandal in reverse. Imagine if AFTER the Watergate scandals of the 1970’s THEN Richard Nixon would have ran for president instead of the other way around. This, my friends, is what we are seeing with Hillary. The logic sequence goes like this: 1. Hillary criminality revealed and exposed to the world via leaks, witnesses, emails etc. 2. Hillary body count rises, many of her enemies coincidentally end up dead. The world watches this. 3. Hillary’s fully revealed criminality not allowed to be investigated because pursuing justice is seen as “interfering” with an election. 4. Known criminal Hillary Clinton becomes president and assumes power with the aid of George Soros and a mass criminal operation of voter fraud. 5. Hillary assumes power to go after all her enemies who tried to hold her to the law. Again, this is their (the pro-Hillary insiders) desired sequence and this is how they want to see things unfold. Adding to the recent attacks from the Clinton attack dogs Democratic Strategist James Carville recently stated: “This is in effect an attempt to hijack an election,” Carville claimed. “It’s unprecedented… the House Republicans and the KGB are trying to influence our democracy,” he said. Yes, the KGB apparently is behind the recent application of the rule of law as it pertains to Hillary’s lies and criminality now further revealed in her personal assistant’s ( Huma Abedin ) emails discovered by the FBI. The emails that offer further hard evidence to the Hillary criminal accusations. According to the NEW rule of law, especially the rule of law that Hillary will bring with her regime, none of this apparently matters any more. What most Americans don’t see is how closely all of this resembles a coup d’etat. Taking over the rule of law and declaring your own version of the law is a takeover any which way you cut it. The arrogance seen in Hillary Clinton in one hearing after another which she has sat for is mind boggling. At no point in any of these hearings (including the Benghazi hearings) has Hillary ever admitted doing anything wrong. She has just the right arrogance to take over the criminal Obama regime and push the West’s global order plans forward. She has just the right arrogance and criminal mindset to push the world into world war 3 and destroy whatever is left of America and individual freedom. Everything we are watching resembles an American coup d’etat from a legal point of view if you ask me. And the Hillary attack dogs at every level are riding out the final storm before (they hope) they insert their leader on election day. The criminals ignoring the rule of law surely have a stake in what they hope will be the next regime. Submit your review | 0 |
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Oh hey, I was the guy who started that plane tracking thread – https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/57×782/flightradar24com_offline_after_a_redditor_tracks/ . A week ago I put the final dot on the situation, since the Ecuadorian embassy seemingly validated that Assange is still at the embassy and doing well.
Now, 8 days later I come back to see what has changed, and to be honest, it looks like the situation hasn’t been crossed off as a “false alarm” yet. | 0 |
November 6, 2016 at 10:31 pm
humans are stupid, especially Amerikkkans. while the sheep continue to consume irrelevant trinkets in there capitalistic society like sheep grazin on grass in an enclosed field, Russia is preparin to crush Amerikkka with a iron gauntlet. China, N.Korea, and Iran will play there parts too. it wont be this year, it wont be next year, and likely not even 2018, but by 2019, somethin really bad is goin to happen. mark my words. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — When Speaker Paul D. Ryan arrived at the White House on Friday to inform President Trump that the health care bill he had made his first major legislative push could not pass, Mr. Trump had one reaction: He wanted revenge. Furious at rebellious Republicans who refused to back the measure, Mr. Trump demanded that defectors cast “no” votes for all to see — even if it meant the measure’s defeat, broadcast live on television. But over a lunch of chicken, brussels sprouts and potatoes in the Oval Office, Mr. Ryan pleaded with Mr. Trump to reconsider. A loss could do lasting political damage to Republicans who supported the contentious bill, Mr. Ryan argued, especially those in competitive districts who were vulnerable to primary challenges. It would do nothing to isolate or punish the Freedom Caucus, the conservative faction that had resisted the measure all along, he added. And it could alienate Republicans needed to push through other challenging initiatives in the weeks to come, including an increase in the debt ceiling, a sweeping tax cut and the president’s promised $1 trillion infrastructure package. Mr. Trump remained unconvinced, but by midafternoon, armed with vote counts showing that the measure lacked a majority to pass, the president called the speaker to agree: You should pull the bill. The collapse of the measure dealt Mr. Trump — a professed master dealmaker who campaigned as an agent of change — a remarkable setback in his young presidency, threatening to sap his influence and imperil his ambitious agenda. It also highlighted the importance of a pairing that will shape the Trump era: a president inexperienced in the complexities of politics and uninterested in the nuance of policy, paired with a vulnerable speaker struggling to corral competing coalitions within the Republican Party. With repeal and replace now a hollow vow, Mr. Trump’s anger at the defiant members of the Freedom Caucus was undiminished. But trying to put the best possible face on a major defeat late Friday afternoon, he confined his public criticism to Democrats. “When you get zero from the other side — they let us down because they’re hurting the people,” Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview shortly after he had agreed to pull the measure. Asked whether he was worried the loss would hurt Republicans, he said, “I’ll let you know in a year. ” The demise of the American Health Care Act played out in a tense 24 hours that White House and congressional officials said proved a political education for Mr. Trump and his top advisers on the promise and peril of governing, even with unified Republican control. This account is based on government officials who were present during the negotiations and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We all learned a lot,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday afternoon. “We learned a lot about loyalty, and we learned a lot about the process. ” “Certainly for me, it was a very interesting experience,” he added. Mr. Trump, who initially had little involvement in crafting the health care bill, became more deeply engaged in recent weeks, promoting it at rallies outside Washington and holding meetings in the West Wing with conservative and moderate coalitions whose support was crucial to its passage. But he made little secret of his ambivalence about addressing the issue — “I would have loved to have put it first, I’ll be honest,” Mr. Trump said of tax reform in Nashville last week — yet he told aides he believed the measure could not pass without a push from him. By Thursday afternoon, just hours before a scheduled vote, it had become clear that his efforts — along with those of Vice President Mike Pence and other senior White House officials — had fallen short. At a meeting in Mr. Ryan’s office in the Capitol with members of the recalcitrant Freedom Caucus, top White House officials laid out the changes they had made at the group’s behest, including stripping it of federal standards for benefits that must be provided in health insurance policies, including maternity and wellness care. Caucus members began outlining still more changes they needed to see before they could support the bill, angering Mr. Ryan and Mr. Trump’s aides. Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, told the group that the White House was finished negotiating and that the president wanted to know its position on the bill — yes or no. Called on in turn to state their positions, several members refused. As tensions rose, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina said that he spoke for the group and that they were not ready to commit. That meant the votes would not be there. Mr. Ryan postponed the vote and called an evening meeting of House Republicans in the basement of the Capitol. Lawmakers munched on takeout as Mr. Mulvaney delivered the president’s ultimatum on the health measure: Fall in line behind it or accept that former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act would be the law of the land. The speaker emerged and told reporters there would be a vote in the morning, rushing away from the news cameras as he was asked if Republicans had the votes. In a telephone call Thursday evening between Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan, the two commiserated over the demands of the caucus and strategized over the prospects for a vote on Friday. Even as the two spoke, some of Mr. Trump’s advisers were privately expressing frustration with Mr. Ryan, arguing that he had badly misjudged the situation and misled the president into tackling health care before a tax overhaul. The meeting with the Freedom Caucus had prompted a realization by Mr. Trump and his inner circle about how the group operated, and that offering it policy concessions would not win its support. By Friday, Mr. Trump was out for blood, eager to call the bluff of the Freedom Caucus and savage it if the health bill went down in defeat. Mr. Bannon and Marc Short, Mr. Trump’s legislative affairs director, both favored holding the vote. But Mr. Ryan, reluctant to suffer an embarrassing loss or to ask his fellow Republicans to take what could be a politically perilous vote on a measure that had little chance of passing, argued vigorously against it. White House officials still believed as much as half of the Freedom Caucus could be pressured into supporting the bill, and Mr. Bannon demanded to see a confidential list that demonstrated otherwise. The numbers were grim, and Mr. Trump called Mr. Ryan to acquiesce into calling off the vote. “I don’t blame him for a thing, I really don’t,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Ryan in the interview on Friday. “Look, he tried. He tried very hard. ” But one close adviser said that Mr. Trump, who hates looking weak or any form of embarrassment in public, was stewing. One ally of the president, however, said that he had learned from the process. Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and a longtime friend of Mr. Trump, said he thought it was a “blessing in disguise” that the bill had died. “This bill was a political bullet aimed at the president and congressional Republicans running for office next year,” he said. “On future legislation, he won’t make the same mistakes. ” As Mr. Trump reflected on the health care debacle, the president who had predicted during the campaign that he would win so often that people would become “sick of winning” insisted that he was at peace with the day’s results. “I’m not disappointed,” he said in the interview. “If I were, I wouldn’t be calling you. ” He said that he was moving on to overhauling the tax system and trade, describing the experience with the health bill as not that different from some of his negotiations as a developer. But he acknowledged that he was pleased to have it all behind him. “It’s enough already,” he said. | 1 |
LEWES, England — Though it is never flattering to be burned in effigy, Donald J. Trump was in good company on Saturday when his image went up in flames not far from those of the British prime minister, Theresa May, and of a pope. In the streets, firecrackers exploded, blazing crosses were carried and the air filled with smoke as the people of Lewes, in southeast England, paraded in a dazzling array of costumes on Nov. 5, the anniversary of a failed plot to blow up Parliament in London in 1605. More than four centuries later, many throughout Britain still commemorate the event — known as Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night (after one of the plotters) — though its distinctiveness is being usurped as it sometimes merges with Halloween, a relatively recent import here, or the Hindu festival of Diwali. But not in Lewes. “It is the only thing in the whole year which marks us out from everyone else,” said Graham Mayhew, the mayor and a historian. “People are very proud of it and determined to protect it,” he said, adding that residents “love the fact that nobody else does this. ” On a field on the outskirts of the town, giant bonfires burned and fireworks exploded from the head of one of at least two effigies of Mr. Trump — this one suspended below a model of a wall adorned with Mexican flags. The spectacles are organized by the town’s seven bonfire societies, some of them more than 160 years old. Mr. Mayhew, interviewed before the event, said the subjects should not take their immolation personally. “You are not to take it seriously. It’s a statement of people’s reaction to the news,” he said. “It is not meant as an incitement. It’s like a political cartoon — it is exposing certain things to ridicule. ” Lewes (pronounced ) has several claims to historical fame, being at one time the home of Thomas Paine, the radical American author of “Common Sense,” who is memorialized with a plaque on the town’s White Hart Hotel marking the place where he “expounded his revolutionary politics. ” But it is best known now as the unofficial center of Britain’s Bonfire Night tradition, commemorating a moment of deliverance for Protestant England: the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, a plan by Roman Catholics to blow up Westminster Palace and everyone in it, including King James I. Guido, or Guy, Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were captured and suffered gruesome executions. Four centuries later, Lewes celebrates the event in a night carnival with strange, sometimes sectarian, undertones. Through the streets pass those dressed as smugglers, Zulu warriors, Native Americans, Vikings and regimental English soldiers, carrying flags with symbols such as the skull and crossbones. Then there is the effigy of Pope Paul V (the pontiff in 1605) alongside banners reading “no popery” and flaming crosses. Lewes also commemorates the killing of 17 Protestant martyrs who met their horrific deaths in the town well before the Gunpowder Plot. They were victims of the Marian Persecutions of the 16th century, which took place when Queen Mary (or “Bloody Mary”) sought to stamp out Protestantism. There is also an act of remembrance for those who died in the major wars of the 20th century. Mr. Mayhew conceded that there was “a bit of a hangover from the strong religious feeling of the 19th century,” when was rife, though he added that “most people would be horrified by the idea that they would have religious prejudice. ” Local Roman Catholics “tolerate it,” he said. “Sometimes feathers get ruffled. Some of the local priests have taken it more to heart. But everybody recognizes it is part of tradition. ” “It’s not right wing. It’s not left wing. It is a great celebration of ” he added. The town has a long history of Nonconformism, a form of Protestantism that dissents from the established Church of England, but Lewes seems more attached to the trappings of sectarianism than its reality. In the book “Burn Holy Fire,” Jeremy Goring recounts an episode in 1981 when Ian Paisley, a Protestant lawmaker from Northern Ireland, came to Lewes on Bonfire Night “and tried to fan the flames of conflict by distributing leaflets. ” “His intervention backfired badly, for the following year he himself was burned in effigy,” Mr. Goring wrote. The giant crosses ignited to remember the Lewes martyrs appear to be a innovation. According to Jim Etherington, a local historian and the author of “Lewes Bonfire Night,” their prominence increased in recent decades mainly because the police objected on safety grounds to fireworks in the parade, but seemed more relaxed about fiery crosses. The first recorded reference to November celebrations in Lewes dates from 1697, and over the next century and a half the “Bonfire boys” became increasingly unruly. In 1806, 18 were arrested, and there was a Bonfire Night riot in 1829. By the there was pressure for more orderly celebrations, leading to the creation of the first bonfire societies, which developed in idiosyncratic ways. Members of the Commercial Square Bonfire Society, for example, adopted American Indian costumes because a handful had spent time in America building railroads in the West. “During their time there, they observed the dreadful treatment of the Native American population,” the Lewes Bonfire Council website says. Though not exactly secretive, the bonfire societies are not very communicative, either, and the choice of effigies is known only by a handful of people before the unveiling in November. Brian Pugh, another local author, ties the strength of the Bonfire Night tradition to an innate rebelliousness. It is captured by a local saying, “We don’t be druv,” which translates as “We won’t be pushed around and are a bit rebellious,” he said. Perhaps a bigger puzzle is the fact that the Gunpowder Plot — and the accompanying rhyme “Remember, remember the fifth of November” — is still commemorated in Britain more than four centuries after it failed. What is so strange about that, wrote James Shapiro in “1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear,” is that “the fifth of November recalls a collective experience, a day of communal deliverance on which nothing actually happened. ” He added: “Nobody has fully explained the deep hold that ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November’ continues to have on the British psyche (though its grip seems to be slackening and the image of Guy Fawkes may soon be associated more with the visages on the masks worn by Anonymous protesters). ” It will, however, be some time before Lewes forgets, even if a lot of people here may be hazy about some of the things they are remembering, and perhaps have simpler motives. “What other opportunities do you have,” asked Mr. Etherington, “to dress up in weird and wonderful costumes, when the town has been cleared of traffic?” | 1 |
Alynda Segarra knows what it’s like to live between cultures. As a lonely teenager in the Bronx, she would regularly escape downtown, soaking up Latin poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and hanging out with crusty punks in Tompkins Square Park. “I always remember punk kids saying to me, ‘You’re not Puerto Rican, you’re white,’” Ms. Segarra said. “And the Puerto Rican kids would say: ‘Who dresses like you? Who are you really? ’” The question stung because Ms. Segarra herself didn’t know the answer. “I hadn’t internalized my heritage,” she said. “I was still finding most of my heroes in white men, feeling like they’re the ones who make history. I believed what was shoved down my throat. ” The art she made reflected that view. Even deep into her 20s, as Ms. Segarra rose as a critically admired on three albums released under the band name Hurray for the Riff Raff, she kept her lineage at bay. Instead, her music explored the blues and folk roots of Americana. Only last year, as she approached her 30th birthday, did Ms. Segarra confront her internalized cultural exile with the intent to reconcile the disparate strands of her identity. The results can be heard on her ambitious new work with the band due on Friday, “The Navigator,” a concept album that traces the wanderings of a character named Navita Milagros Negrón. Ms. Segarra fashioned the story as an imaginary Off Broadway play “starring” the musicians, “directed by” its producer and featuring a faux Playbill to guide listeners through. The music uses her contradictions to her advantage, mixing rock guitars with bomba rhythms, while melding original lyrics with some verse from the Puerto Rican poet Pedro Pietri. The songs connect the dots in a long history of Latin influences in popular music, from the harmonies of to Brill Building hits like “Save the Last Dance for Me,” to the of Mink DeVille. On a recent winter afternoon, Ms. Segarra returned to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe to discuss her early alienation, framing it, in part, as a product of assimilation. When she was growing up, her mother, Ninfa Segarra, had a thriving career as an educator and a politician, rising to become the deputy mayor of New York under Rudolph W. Giuliani. Her father was a vice principal and a music teacher in the Bronx, where he taught the singer and actor Marc Anthony as a youth. The couple split when Ms. Segarra was a child, and she was reared mainly by her aunt and uncle in Marble Hill. Ms. Segarra’s father introduced her to the clave rhythms of music, yet she gravitated more toward the videos of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra beloved by her aunt and uncle. Puberty ignited in her a rebellious side, which found reflection in punk bands like the Dead Kennedys and Bikini Kill. “I started to feel very angry about my place in the world as a girl,” Ms. Segarra said. “I wanted to go wherever I wanted without fear of danger, to be treated the same as my brother. ” In high school, she formed an acoustic punk group with other young women, modeled on the music of the singer Kimya Dawson. She also began to spend more time in the East Village, identifying with women who shaved their heads but not their armpits. Failing in school and feeling like a drain on her family, Ms. Segarra ran away from home to squat on the Lower East Side. “I was really scared — and really hungry,” she said. “But I was determined to live the life of an artist that everyone said was impossible. ” Aching for experience and escape, Ms. Segarra took to the road, hopping trains until she finally ended up settling in New Orleans by her 18th birthday. There, she found street kids she connected with more deeply. Together, they began performing songs by Woody Guthrie, whose wanderings Ms. Segarra’s own had echoed. She lived by busking, getting good enough at her craft to make home recordings that earned some buzz, starting with “It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You” (2008). In 2014, Ms. Segarra was signed to ATO Records for “Small Town Heroes,” which proved a critical breakthrough. Yet she felt unsatisfied in her work. To focus, she moved to Nashville, where she didn’t know anyone. “I began to ask myself, ‘Who am I when everyone I know is gone? ’” she said. The answer manifested itself in “The Navigator. ” Ms. Segarra felt to simply mimic Latin rhythms for the album. “‘Ziggy Stardust’ was a eureka moment,” she said, referring to the intergalactic David Bowie album and alter ego. “I learned I could create a character, the Navigator, who would stand at the intersection of all these identities and weave in and out. And I related to being the alien. I began to take that as a badge of honor. ” For musical role models, Ms. Segarra looked to earlier Latin artists heavily influenced by rock, like the Ghetto Brothers, a politically active Puerto Rican street gang turned band that recorded one album in 1971. She also looked to Rodriguez, whom she discovered from the documentary “Searching for Sugarman. ” The album’s lyrics conform to rock rather than to theatrical music, favoring poetic abstractions over clear narrative. Themes of gentrification and cultural appropriation center the work, all boldly delivered by Ms. Segarra’s billowing vibrato. Along the way, she gives a nod to the Young Lords, the Puerto Rican activist group of the ’60s and ’70s. In turn, Ms. Segarra finally took full ownership of her heritage. “Before, when I heard Latin sounds in popular music, I thought: That music belongs to everyone. Now I think: Oh, that’s the sound of where I came from. Look what we brought to the culture. Listen to what we added. ” | 1 |
Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock.com
What could be better than waking up in time to witness the last few minutes of the historic race between the Champion of Deplorables and the Best Friend of Banksters, and to see Trump emerging victorious! Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to see these scenes at all and especially in sunny Jerusalem where I am now, and thank you, our American friends, for achieving this victory. You were not scared when they called you “racist rednecks”, you did not despair when the CNN said (yesterday) that Clinton had a 96% chance of winning. You did not sat down with a bottle of beer, you still went to the booths and voted, God bless you.
And thank you those who voted against Trump. Ex-Pres. Bush said he did not vote for Trump – why, this news made my day! I am so happy that we do not owe anything, not a single vote in the victory, to the warring Bushmen. It would be embarrassing to find oneself in the same camp as the Butcher of Iraq. John McCain tried to knife Trump, didn’t endorse him – this is also good news. The FBI boss submitted to pressure and supported Clinton instead of adhering to the law: good riddance!
God bless you, my colleagues and editors of the truly great independent American media, Ron Unz of Unz.com, Jeffrey St Clair of Counterpunch, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com! By attacking the corrupted mainstream media, you preserved the dignity and the meaning of our profession, you delivered analysis and opinions to the thinking working men of America.
God bless you, Julian Assange of Wikileaks, in the windowless room in the Ecuadorian embassy in London! You did so much by publishing the documents nobody dared to touch. Without you, the American people would not know of the evil stratagems in the DNC, of the Podesta plots. You unmasked their plans. These discoveries will provide much material to tomorrow’s media. Let President Donald Trump pardon Julian, for all he did, he did for us, in the great battle against the evil globalizers. And while he’s at it, let him pardon Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, let them go home in honour.
Today, mankind has avoided a great danger. We peered into the abyss of Armageddon and quickly moved away. Now the world can fix its many problems. The Middle East wars will soon be over. With defeat of the Daesh Queen Hillary, the fanatic rebels will leave Aleppo for their bases in the Arabian desert and allow Syrians to rebuild their beautiful land. Let Saudis feed and house the ISIS gangs, perhaps they will be useful camel riders. There is enough space in Saudi Arabia for all the jihadis, let them go there and stay there.
Friendship with Russia will disarm the other source of danger, Eastern Europe. The NATO warmongers will retire to cultivate cucumbers. Estonia will be safe, actually, safer without American tanks. The world does not need so many weapons of mass destruction; the funds can be spent on something better, like affordable medical care for the average Americans. Or indeed infrastructure, as Trump mentioned.
Minority politics did not work. The women, the white women of America gave their votes to Trump, despite being ordered to march with the sisterhood of Madeleine Albright. US citizens of Mexican origin knew they are being used by people who do not care for them: and they did not bother to go and vote for Clinton.
What about the Jews? I’ll surprise you: despite many dark hints to the contrary, Israelis were happy with Trump’s victory. The US citizens living in Israel voted for Trump. Religious Jews (in Israel and in the US) voted for Trump. There was a hysterical scream in the Jewish liberal camp, among the gay parade Jews, or among financial Jews, but this is a small though voluble part of Jewish population.
Indeed Hillary propaganda warriors claimed that all the Jews support Clinton and are afraid of Trump. But not every Jewish woman is called Janet Yellen; not every Jewish man is George Soros (who is very unpopular in Israel) or the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein. Conservative and observant Jews did not like the push against gender normalcy that seems to be the favorite topic for Clinton camp.
Trump’s idea of a border wall is already a success in Israel: such a wall has been built between Israel and Egypt’s Sinai. Before the wall was built, tens of thousands of African job-seekers flooded Israel; since the wall has been completed about one hundred plucky persons made it. The liberals in Israel demanded to provide full rights to the refugees from Eritrea and Sudan, who were housed in the poor Jewish neighborhoods. There was a lot of aggravation, and the wall solved it all.
In short, the claim for “all the Jews” has been as false as the claim for “all the women”. One can expect that the Jews will produce a new community leadership instead of the old one that had been tainted with hatred to working class whites and to the Christian church. It is possible: Jews are very flexible, and they usually know the difference between what they want and what they can get.
The Palestinians I meet these days in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah do not regret the Fall of the House of Clinton. They have gotten nothing from the Democratic Presidents. They were obedient to AIPAC and quick to veto every pro-Palestinian resolution. Is there a possible solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Yes, this is called One State Solution. Let Israel absorb all Palestinian territories and populations, give them equal rights, as the Americans did to their minorities. Provided the equal rights campaign in the US had been very popular with American Jews, surely they will love to repeat it in Israel, too. ORDER IT NOW
Palestinian Christians, a big native community, are especially happy with defeat of Clinton who was partial to radical Muslims of the Middle East. They hope the US and Russia will help to rebuild the community and will protect them from the extreme Zionists and Wahhabis’ rage.
The Russians are flabbergasted with Trump’s victory. Yes, many of them hoped and prayed for Trump, but practically all Russians I know of were damn sure that Clinton would win despite the popular vote. After being manipulated for years, the Russians had lost their belief in democratic process. They were certain that the banks, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court and the media will force Clinton’s election through. My friends in the Russian pro-Kremlin media did not believe that in the US, people’s will may prevail over the Masters of Discourse. Ye of small faith, I told them, everything can happen if we want it. Now they learned that not everything is “sxvacheno” (agreed and decided in advance).
Trump’s victory is the great triumph of democracy, the next after the Brexit. Twice within one year, the people of England and America proved they can achieve what they want, even if the globalizing elites of bankers and media will stand against them. We can hope that the elections in Europe will follow this new pattern of true democracy, instead of the fake one practiced recently. France may be first to get her Trump, Marine Le Pen.
If Clinton had won, there would be more transgender toilets, more immigrants and more wars. Not much fun. Now we are entering the whole new world of new ideas and deeds. There are hundreds of suggestions ripe to be implemented. Donald Trump can borrow a leaf from Kennedy’s book and immediately start a nation-wide discussion of what can be done. Trump can harness the energy of the masses like has not been done for a century. And yesterday’s betrayed Sandernistas can take a prominent place in this transformation.
The interesting – and dangerous – part begins right now, after the election. The New York Times has already proposed: “Trump can be a good president. He just needs to forget most of what he said on the campaign trail.” What is good for the New York Times is bad for Trump’s voters and supporters. We hope Trump will avoid the danger of being co-opted by the people who besmirched him yesterday. Let him implement his ideas. And let us help him to lead us into a better and newer world.
Israel Shamir can be reached at | 0 |
Miss Islandia abandona concurso internacional de belleza porque le pidieron comer menos (Fotos) Publicado: 26 oct 2016 23:23 GMT
"Miss Grand International no merece mi rostro, mi cuerpo, mi personalidad o mi corazón", condenó la joven después de recibir denigrantes 'consejos' de los organizadores del evento. Instagram @arnayr Síguenos en Facebook
La representante de Islandia ha decidido abandonar un prestigioso concurso internacional de belleza después de que sus organizadores le 'aconsejaran' comer menos porque tiene exceso de grasa en su cuerpo, informa ' The Washington Times '.
Según la información disponible, Nawat Itsaragrisil, presidente de Miss Grand Internacional 2016, certamen que se celebra en Las Vegas (Nevada, EE.UU.), dio a conocer a Arna Yr Jonsdottir que tenía "un poco de grasa" y le recomendó tratar de perder algo de peso para competir mejor en la etapa final del evento. Instagram @arnayr
Estos 'consejos' indignaron a Miss Islandia, quien decidió retirarse del concurso. "Soy una mujer fuerte, pero a veces esto no es suficiente. Su equipo me dijo que tenía que perder peso para la fase final porque tengo mucha grasa y mis hombros son muy grandes. Me dijeron que comiera menos para que le gustara más a usted", respondió la joven de 20 años en una carta divulgada a través de las redes sociales. Фото опубликовано Arna Ýr Jónsdóttir (@arnayr) Окт 14 2016 в 7:08 PDT
"Me dicen que soy muy gorda para usted (…) Miss Grand International no merece mi rostro, mi cuerpo, mi personalidad o mi corazón", agregó la modelo islandesa, aclarando que se siente orgullosa de su cuerpo y que ha sido gimnasta desde los 10 años. "Mis hombros son un poco más anchos que los de otras chicas porque fui miembro de la Selección Islandesa de atletismo y estoy orgullosa de ello", sentenció. Instagram @arnayr | 0 |
Search America's Trump supporters may be lured to Florida and walled in by US government to maintain peaceful transfer of power after election. Topics: Donald Trump , 2016 Presidential Election , presidential politics Wednesday, 26 October 2016
A leaked transcript of a White house meeting reveals plans to lure the country's Trump Voters to Florida on election day and wall them in to help ensure the peaceful transfer of power.
Voice #1: "The traditional peaceful transfer of power after a presidential election, fundamental to our democracy, is in jeopardy. What happens if Trump somehow wins? Will Barrack and Hilary say they were just kidding about him being a truly dangerous unfit con artist and no hard feelings about that 5 year long race baiting Birther movement as US military leaders walk over to Trump with the nuclear codes?"
Voice #2: "Trump will probably lose. Still, that doesn't guarantee a peaceful transition. Trump's already convinced a majority of his supporters the election is illegitimate if he loses. He's recruiting voting station vigilantes. Trump supporter sheriff David Clarke from Milwaukee said its time for 'pitch forks and torches. How many of Trump's gun loving hard core base might do something violent?"
Voice #1: "I'm just thinking out loud, but what if we announce that to offset the rigged election, Trump negotiated a deal in which anyone that casts a Trump vote in Florida will have it counted as two votes from their home state. Then, we announce the greatest Trump rally of all time on election day in Florida; the largest NASCAR event; the largest Harley Davidson motorcycle convention, free assault rifles handed out as they cross the border..."
Voice #2: "Where are you going with this?"
Voice #1: "We lure hard core Trump voters in to Florida; get them packed in there; and then quickly unfurl a razor wire fence along the state's north border stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. Then, we start construction of the real wall right next to it. That's a wall Mexico might be willing to pay for."
Voice #2: "What about the Hillary supporters in Florida?"
Voice #1: "We'd have to get them out somehow. Give them incentives to vote in South Carolina, or airlift them out of Florida after the election."
Voice #2: "If it worked, it would get crowded down there in Florida."
Voice # 1: "We could promise Trump supporters free housing."
Voice #4: "Yes. We can put them in tent cities modeled after Syrian refugee camps."
Voice #1: "I'm trying to be serious."
Voice #4: "The Red Cross might pay for that tent city; just tell them we're quarantining people to stop the spread of a resurgent xenophobe epidemic."
Voice #2: "What about after the election? It's not like we can just let them back in after the peaceful transfer of power. They're going to be upset for a while."
Voice #4: "We could let a few of them back in every year. They'd have to go through 'extreme vetting'. As immigrants re-entering the upper 49, we'd need assurances they'd developed American values like tolerance for different religions and ethnicities."
Voice #1: "We'll worry about what to do with them later. First we have to lure them down there."
Voice #4: "What about appealing to Trump voter anti-elitism? We could tell them Florida universities will be shut down and demolished."
Voice #1: "Not fair. A lot of Trump supporters want to send their kids to college."
Voice #4: "They can go to Trump University."
Voice #2: "Trump University doesn't have real academics."
Voice #4: "We'll create some. We'll appoint Trump surrogate Katrina Pierson as chair of the 'Revisionist History Department.' Scholarly emphasis will be on how Obama and then secretary of state Hilary got us in to Afghanistan and Iraq and founded ISIS. Scottie Nell Hughes will head up the 'Ethics in Media' department. Rudy Giuliani can head the 'Institute for study of Giuliani's heroic role after the 9/11 attacks."
Voice #1: "If you don't have anything practical to..."
Voice #4: "We could say Trump supporters wearing T-shirts saying "Hillary sucks, but not as good as Monica", or "Trump that Bitch," will get preferential seating at the rally. If they also claim to hate Muslim societies because of how awful they treat their women, they also get to meet Trump backstage."
Voice #2: "One thing. If we actually do this, Marco Rubio is not getting out of Florida. And he thought that his little cowardly Trump endorsement video at the GOP convention wasn't going to haunt him."
Voice #1: "What about Healthcare in post-election day Florida? People with MD degrees are mostly Hilary supporters. There won't be many doctors down there."
Voice #2: "They'll have Ben Carson."
Voice #4: "We could also send in Harold Bornstein, that doctor who wrote the fake Trump medical statement in 5 minutes. Bornstein can claim that everyone's health in Florida is astonishingly excellent; the best he's ever seen'. That way, nobody has to get any treatments."
Voice #1: "Seriously, what about emergencies like gunshot wounds, heart attacks..."
Voice #4: "Dr. Oz could hang out in emergency rooms and sell DVDs of his show."
Voice #2: "How would post-election Florida be governed?"
Voice #4: "Offer Vladimir Putin a governorship. Tell him he can put a few short range nuclear missals in Cuba; like ones that could only reach Tallahassee; as long as Governor Putin agrees to act with stronger leadership than the weak soft president Obama.
And since Trump thinks the American media is so awful, Putin could help him reform Florida laws on journalists and free speech."
Voice #2: "Would Florida get any federal money?"
Voice #4: "Definitely would need some kind of Florida 'Trump tax'. This extra money would be used to offset the lack of taxes paid by Trump himself. The rest of the money would go to Trump's charity to fund any Trump purchases of autographed football helmets of evangelical athletes, or portraits of himself."
Voice #2: "We could lure Trump voters to Florida with promises of VA reforms."
Voice #4: "Yes. Then when they're walled in, we announce that POW military pensions will be cut in half because they let the country down by getting caught. We'll name it the 'Pathetic John McCain Endorsement of Trump VA Penalty."
Voice #2: "Stop. What kind of real changes would draw Trump voters to Florida?"
Voice #1: "We could tell them Florida will have the strictest bathroom laws; that correct gender will be checked by DNA analysis before anyone's allowed in a public bathroom."
Voice #4: "Then, once their walled in, we'll project holograms of naked transsexuals standing next to every urinal and toilet."
Voice #1: "We could lure them by saying how great the Florida beaches are."
Voice #4: "Yes. Then, when in there we mandate a statewide program; a photo of every woman who puts on a bathing suit will be posted online with a video of Trump critiquing her body."
Voice #1: "How do we get evangelical Trump supporters down there?"
Voice #4: "We could say we're converting all Florida planned parenthood operations in to 'defense of marriage clinics' where homosexuals can be sent for conversion therapy. Anyone caught performing or having an abortion would be subject to the death penalty. Then, on Sundays as families enter churches, we'll play a looped audio tape of Trump bragging he can grab any woman's pussy he wants.
Weigh stations will be set up at random pedestrian intersections. All females will be weighed. A database tracking weight gain will be publicly available. Biggest weekly gainers will be forced to exercise at a televised press conference as Trump mocks them while eating a McDonald's hamburger.
Any Trump tweets between the hours of 3 and 5 AM will set off warning alarms in every Florida cell phone. The tweet will then be read by the phones voice robot until the user takes the battery out.
On a 24 video channel, every Trump female voter in Florida cheated on by a male partner must explain why she enabled his infidelity. Then she must apologize to the women her partner cheated with, in case they were made to feel insulted or uncomfortable.
I don't think it would hurt to build some David Duke statues in Florida. 1. They might increase Trump white supremacist voter presence. 2. They might remind Trump who David Duke is; in case somebody on TV asks him if he would denounce David Duke or the KKK. Ben Carson and Pastor Mark Burns can unveil the David Duke statues.
On every female Florida drivers license, there will be a section filled in by Trump marked either 'yes' or 'no' indicating whether Trump thinks the woman is attractive enough to be groped sexually without consent.
A memorial will be built at the site of the Orlando nightclub massacre. We'll erect a large lit up plastic trump face smiling next to a sign that reads 'Thanks for all your congratulations on me predicting this mass shooting by Obama backed Islamic radicals..."
Voice #1: "I'm not sure if your kidding or not." Make Keith Vosseller's | 0 |
JERUSALEM — Speaking at a joint press conference today with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, U. S. President Donald Trump condemned the “evil losers” who carried out last night’s bombing of a pop concert in Manchester in which at least 22 people were murdered. [“I extend my deepest condolences to those terribly injured in this terrorist attack, and to the many killed, and the families, so many families, of the victims,” Trump said. “We stand in absolute solidarity with the people in the United Kingdom. So many young innocent people living and enjoying their lives, murdered by evil losers in life. ” “I won’t call them monsters, because they would like that term,” he continued. “They would think that’s a great name. I will call them from now on losers, because that’s what they are, they’re losers. and we’ll have more of them, but they’re losers. Just remember that. ” “This is what I’ve spent these last few days talking about during my trip overseas,” Trump said, referring to combatting terrorism. “Our society can have no tolerance for this continuation of bloodshed. We cannot stand a moment longer for the slaughter of innocent people. ” “The terrorists and extremists and those who give them aid and comfort must be driven out from our society forever,” Trump added. “This wicked ideology must be obliterated, and I mean completely obliterated, and innocent life must be protected. All civilized nations must join together to protect human life and the sacred right of our citizens to live in safety and in peace. ” | 1 |
Caged mongoose that he is, Anthony Weiner is not easily contained. Neither was my interview with the former congressman, mayoral candidate and apparent sexting recidivist, which appears in this weekend’s Talk feature of the magazine. I spoke to Weiner for about 90 minutes on the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month. Because of the early deadlines and long lead times of our print edition, almost three weeks elapsed between our discussion and publication — during which The New York Post reported (last weekend) that Weiner seemed to be engaging in more of the kinds of online dalliances that ended his career in Congress in 2011 and blew up his campaign to become mayor of New York in 2013. This time, according to The Post, Weiner was apparently flirting with a college student posing as a female named “Nikki. ” (Weiner reportedly boasted to Nikki that he was “deceptively strong . . . like a mongoose. ”) When I asked Weiner in Philadelphia whether he was still engaging in the activities that got him in trouble, he waved me off. “I’m not going to go down the path of talking about any of that,” he said. (He demurred again when I contacted him this week following the Post report.) O. K. fine. But Weiner was eager to engage on all manner of other matters. What follows is a bonus rendering of our encounter. We convened in the lobby bar of the Logan Hotel a few hours before Hillary Clinton would be giving her acceptance speech to the convention that night. Weiner had recently been in a heavy exposure phase, in a more traditional sense. He had appeared that week as a guest on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “Real Time With Bill Maher. ’’ He was also engaging in spirited political arguments across many platforms. “I get pleasure — I don’t think it’s perverse pleasure, but good, honest, wholesome pleasure — by infuriating these Trump trolls,” Weiner told me. “That’s a hornet’s nest I don’t mind kicking at all. ” Weiner was in the news a day earlier: Donald Trump had called Clinton a security risk, citing among other things her close relationship with Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, a top adviser. Abedin, Trump said, is “married to Anthony Weiner, who’s a sleazeball and pervert. . . . I don’t like Huma going home at night and telling Anthony Weiner all of these secrets. ” I asked Weiner what it has been like to have Huma dragged into these . “” he told me. “I’ve never seen a staffer targeted like that. I don’t engage on that at all. ” After about 20 minutes in the hotel bar, Weiner was summoned by an aide, and we boarded a van that would shuttle us to the Wells Fargo Arena. We pulled out of the hotel driveway and promptly plowed into a parked limousine — with a loud crunching sound. No one was injured, though Weiner’s volunteer driver for the D. N. C. a local college student named Tim, was clearly shaken and upset. Weiner, who had been talking to his son, Jordan, over a speakerphone, jumped out of the van to direct traffic around the mishap. He evinced the demeanor of a man who was accustomed to handling things, someone very much in his element amid chaos. Weiner comforted both drivers and oversaw the exchange of insurance information. At one point, he instructed Tim to back up the van, which nearly resulted in a second collision, this time with a police car. “Now, Tim, if you would have gone into reverse, and hit that guy, which you almost did, that would be a legitimate lifelong story,” Weiner told Tim as the nervous volunteer maneuvered the van toward the arena. One subject I was interested in discussing with Weiner was “Weiner,” the critically lauded documentary about his disastrous mayoral campaign. Weiner’s campaign melted down following reports of countless instances of the candidate’s tweeting dirty pictures of himself — the fallout from which was captured by the filmmakers in excruciating detail. Weiner said neither he nor his wife had seen the film and had no plans to. When he agreed to participate, he obviously envisioned a movie that would have a much happier ending, ideally starring Mayor Weiner and First Lady Huma. And his comeback triumph would be immortalized on screens much bigger than the ones that brought him down. For what it’s worth, Weiner’s made for a much better movie, at least for viewers. But I was still curious: Why, after the scandal broke, given the personal and embarrassing nature of it, didn’t Weiner just stop allowing access to the “Weiner” cameras? Weiner mentioned that one of the filmmakers, Josh Kriegman, was a friend and former aide, and he felt a degree of loyalty to him. “I generally wasn’t going to pull the plug,” he said. I asked Weiner whether his wife got a vote on this. “Um, so here’s the thing,” Weiner said. “I haven’t told — I haven’t gone here yet with anybody. So, they violated the agreement not to use her. ” The filmmakers had told Weiner that they would not include Abedin in the film without her permission, he said. “They didn’t have a release,” he told me. “She had to grant permission, which she didn’t. ” Kriegman is traveling on vacation and could not be reached. Lisa Califf, spokeswoman and counsel for the film, disputed that any agreement had been breached. “As is clear in the film, the filmmakers had consent from everyone who appears in the film, including Anthony and Huma,” said Califf via email. Weiner said Kriegman had assured him verbally and in emails that he would not use Abedin in the film without her consent. Both Weiner and Abedin were infuriated when they learned the film would go forward, and prominently feature footage of Abedin. (In a phone conversation, Califf said she could not discuss details relating to any discussions that took place between Kriegman and Weiner.) I asked Weiner if he had any plans to sue the filmmakers. “I mean, who knows what happens in the future,” he said. Is Kriegman still his friend? “Look, I like him,” Weiner said. “I just think this was a venal thing by someone who’s not venal. I mean, maybe I’ll get over it, maybe I won’t. ” Weiner said he and Abedin are rarely in the same place these days. She is off traveling with Clinton much of the time, and he is spending the bulk of his in New York, often taking care of Jordan. He said he had been back to Washington only twice since leaving Congress five years ago. He does not miss it, but allowed that there’s a good chance his wife could wind up back in D. C. if Clinton wins. “We haven’t figured that out yet,” Weiner said of his plans for after the election. “I mean, talking to Huma about it is like talking to a pitcher in the sixth inning while he’s pitching a . You don’t want to jinx anything. ” As Weiner’s dented van wound through traffic and security checkpoints, we pulled up to a side entrance of the Wells Fargo arena as scores of dignitaries were arriving. Representative Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic whip, emerged from the S. U. V. in front of ours. Weiner approached his former colleague to say hello. “Hi, I’m Anthony Weiner,” he said, extending his hand. “I used to be somebody. ” | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Hillary Clinton’s diagnosis of pneumonia has grounded her for a few days and shifted the focus of the presidential race to the candidates’ health. Mrs. Clinton, 68, and Donald Trump, 70, have promised to release more detailed information from their doctors. The issue isn’t just their state of vigor but whether they operate with more insularity than transparency. Mr. Trump also demanded that Mrs. Clinton apologize for calling some of his supporters “deplorables” and released an ad showcasing the remarks on national cable and in four battleground states. _____ 2. President Obama will veto a bill that would allow the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot, the White House said. Since both the House and Senate passed the legislation with majorities, the president could face the first veto override of his presidency. He also met with congressional leaders, above, to discuss measures needed to finance the government after the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, since lawmakers have not agreed on a budget. _____ 3. The U. N. secretary general, Ban is racing to get the Paris climate agreement into effect — possibly even before the U. S. election. The pact goes into force when 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions formally sign on, conditions that are more than halfway met. The world’s three largest emitters — the U. S. China, above and Brazil — are on board. This year is shaping up to be the third consecutive hottest on record, and some scientists warn that the oceans’ ability to absorb excess heat has masked the scale of the problem. These graphics lay out the issues. _____ 4. The N. C. A. A. made a surprise announcement: All its championships are being moved from North Carolina for this academic year because the state passed laws the group said violated the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The N. B. A. already moved next February’s Game from Charlotte, and stars like Bruce Springsteen and Itzhak Perlman have canceled concerts in the state. _____ 5. Florida’s offer of free Zika testing for pregnant women has increased rather than decreased their anxieties. That’s because so many responded that state labs are overwhelmed, and the wait for results can stretch to six weeks, complicating already difficult decisions about possibly terminating pregnancies. Above, workers went door to door to take blood samples. _____ 6. Colin Kaepernick, above right, and his teammate Eric Reid knelt during the national anthem before the San Francisco 49ers played their first game of the season against the Los Angeles Rams (10:20 p. m. Eastern, ESPN). Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the anthem to protest racial injustice has emboldened players on other teams — and in other sports — to make their own symbolic gestures of dissent. Such moves have been rare, in part because athletes are often preoccupied with team morale and financial and branding issues. _____ 7. If you’re forever playing our television experts can speed you along. Their list of the best shows that emerged over the summer includes some of contenders for Emmys on Sunday, including the documentary series “O. J.: Made in America” (ESPN). There’s also “Stranger Things,” above, an oddly straightforward horror story set in 1983. Our experts also suggest a few newbies, like Amazon’s promising pilots “I Love Dick” and the reboot of “The Tick. ” _____ 8. Feel whipsawed by the shift in the last few years from demonizing fat for health problems to blaming sugar? Historical documents discovered by a researcher show that the sugar industry paid several Harvard scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead. “They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” said a medical professor who helped bring the case to light. _____ 9. The Syrian called for in an agreement by the U. S. and Russia had an uneven start. Violations were reported in the north and south of the country shortly after it went into effect. The timing coincided with Eid the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, which commemorates a story central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s behest. One Syrian activist, pessimistic that the would make any difference in the conflict, posted on Facebook: “and they gathered like sheep in front of the guillotine. ” _____ 10. Millions of people are flowing over paths in Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj. One of them is our Mideast reporter Diaa Hadid, and she’s sending dispatches, videos and photos to help demystify the pilgrimage for . There are little prayer counters, like spiritual Fitbits shopping sprees ritual haircuts and moments of great kindness, like being sprayed under a sweltering sun with the last ounces of water from strangers’ bottles. _____ 11. Finally, this may hearten many Medicare beneficiaries: Claims for skilled nursing, home health care or outpatient therapy are not supposed to be rejected just because a patient has ceased to improve. In fact, a federal judge has ordered supervisors to do a better job of making that clear to health care providers and claims adjudicators. The actual rule is that Medicare must approve such services when they are “necessary to maintain the patient’s current condition or prevent or slow further deterioration. ” _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s the Weekend Briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
I'd love to see Clinton spend all her money and lose....penniless. | 0 |
During the tough financial times of 2011, Marcy Willis, a single mother who raised five children in Atlanta, used her credit card to rent a car for an acquaintance in exchange for cash. But the man — and the car — disappeared, she said. Four months later, when Ms. Willis finally recovered the car and returned it, she was charged with felony theft. As a offender, Ms. Willis, 52, qualified for a big break: a program called pretrial intervention, also known as diversion. If she took 12 weeks of classes, performed 24 hours of community service and stayed out of trouble, her case would be dismissed and her arrest could be expunged, leaving her record clean. Diversion is not uncommon. Last year, Rebecca Horting, a nurse in Topeka, Kan. was offered a similar deal for an offense that caused far greater harm. She was charged with reckless battery and texting while driving after she hit a girl on a bicycle, causing brain damage and the loss of a leg. Both women did what was required of them, yet their cases took different paths. The reason: money. Ms. Horting was able to pay $1, 138 in fees and is on track to have her case dismissed. Ms. Willis, who owed $690, had a harder time. When she paid all but $240, her case was sent back to court for prosecution. By that time, the arrest had already led to her losing her job, and then her apartment. At a homeless shelter, she was robbed. Accustomed to earning a living, she began to despair. “I felt like I was in a grave or a hole and instead of digging the dirt out, it was piling up,” Ms. Willis said. “I lost the respect of my kids, my family, and I was too embarrassed to reach out to friends — so what do you do?” Though few people have heard of diversion, the practice is increasingly being embraced as a way for the criminal justice system to save people from itself. Diversion is intended to relieve overburdened courts and crowded jails, and to spare offenders from the devastating consequences of a criminal record. It mostly applies to nonviolent cases that make up the vast majority of crimes — offenses like shoplifting, drug possession and theft. There are now diversion programs in almost every state. But an examination by The New York Times found that in many places, only people with money could afford a second chance. Though diversion was introduced as a reform, some jurisdictions quickly turned it into a source of revenue. Prosecutors exert almost total control over diversion, deciding who deserves mercy and at what price, The Times found. The prosecutors who grant diversion often benefit directly from the fees, which vary widely from town to town and can reach $5, 000 for a single offense. In a country where 27 million households make less than $25, 000 a year, even $500 can be prohibitive. Diversion, interviews and case records show, can be revoked for failure to pay, or never even offered to defendants deemed too poor to afford it. A prosecutor in Ohio said he rejected applicants if he thought they wouldn’t be able to pay restitution within a time limit — one that he imposed. “To tell somebody that if you can pay for this, you can get your charges dismissed, but if you are poor you are going to go through the system? That’s completely unfair,” said Mark Kammerer, who runs diversion programs for the Cook County state’s attorney in Chicago, where defendants are not charged a fee. The Times examination focused on adult diversion programs run by prosecutors, as opposed to drug courts or mental health courts where a judge is in charge. The Times gathered information, statutes and fee schedules on 225 diversion programs in 37 states and interviewed more than 150 prosecutors, defense lawyers, defendants and experts. Because prosecutors have wide latitude to design the programs, different jurisdictions have different rules, resulting in substantial inequities for defendants, records and interviews show. Tennesseans cannot get diversion for drunken driving, but in Oregon it is common. In Saline County, Kan. diversion is not offered for drug offenses three counties south, it is. In Toms River, N. J. a school district official accused of a $141 fraud was rejected by the prosecutor, who argued that she had violated the public trust. But near N. C. a prosecutor accused of offering $20, 000 to fix an election was allowed to enter pretrial diversion. Because diversion is considered a privilege, not a right, the district attorney’s decision is almost always final and those who are rejected have no way to appeal. Yet even defendants who are granted diversion can discover that the central promise of the program — avoiding prosecution and a criminal record — can be an empty one. Dismissed cases can still show up as a black mark in a background check. And many district attorneys impose rules that undermine the benefits of diversion, such as requiring defendants to enter a guilty plea that can later be used against them. Some defendants find themselves saddled with strict requirements, like hundreds of hours of community service, five years of probation or even a month in jail, that are indistinguishable from punishment. Because prosecutors are usually not required to report on their programs and many diversion agreements are not filed in court, there is little quantifiable data on fees, success rates, recidivism or even who is rejected. A few studies, including a recent Department of Justice examination of the Memphis juvenile court system, suggest that whites are far more likely to get diversion than blacks. Almost 200 defense lawyers across the country answered a Times questionnaire about diversion. of them said fees were a barrier for their clients. In Atlanta, Ms. Willis’s diversion was overseen by a private company that said about one in four of its cases was returned to court, often for failure to pay. Because of a court backlog, Ms. Willis’s case remained pending, and on her record, for more than four years. Finally, in January, she scraped together the remaining $240 and, with the help of the Georgia Justice Project, got the case dismissed. Now, her record has been approved for expungement — as soon as she can pay the $25 fee. In the aging rust belt towns of Lorain County, Ohio, diversion operates under the sole authority of Dennis Will, the prosecuting attorney. Mr. Will allows arresting officers and victims to block diversion. Defendants who enter the program pay only a modest fee but must plead guilty and pay off all restitution within a year. Though state law allows diversion for violent offenders in certain circumstances, Mr. Will does not. Lawyers there said diversion applicants had been denied because of unrelated prior offenses like driving with a suspended license or drunken driving. “It was very difficult to get anybody in diversion,” said one local lawyer, Kenneth Ortner. “It was a joke among defense attorneys. ” A national panel had something else in mind when it drew up standards in 2008 for pretrial diversion. The programs had been around for decades, but fell out of favor during the war on drugs. With the tide turning against incarceration, the idea was to reintroduce diversion as an alternative, said Spurgeon Kennedy, the vice president of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies, which drafted the standards. Diversion is intended to address the root causes of crime by connecting defendants to counseling, job training and, in the case of a Philadelphia man caught with painkillers, medical benefits to cover a root canal. It also gives prosecutors a way to avoid absurd outcomes. A Georgia college student who hacked into the online calendar of the school’s football rival and left a prank message faced up to 15 years in prison. He got diversion instead. Brendan Kelly, a prosecutor in Illinois, started offering diversion four years ago after seeing marijuana arrests having “tremendous impact” on the future of young men. “You’re branding them with a scarlet F” for felon, Mr. Kelly said. “You’re making them a permanent problem for law enforcement. ” But diversion is not without political risk, and it requires officials to balance questions of culpability, justice and mercy. In Chattanooga, Tenn. there was a public outcry when a speeding teenager was given diversion after a fatal crash. In San Antonio, on the other hand, a district attorney reluctant to use diversion was unseated. In Lorain County, Mr. Will said, voters have the ultimate say. “If people don’t like the decisions I make, then they have a way to deal with that. ” Frustrated by Mr. Will’s rules, county judges decided to take the matter into their own hands. In 2010, they started a competing program. James Burge, a judge at the time, said the legislature had intended for many more defendants to get diversion. “You find a credit card on the ground and you use it. That’s an automatic felony. You come in to Judge Burge and you plead guilty. You’re going to be on probation for at least 18 months and you’re going to have a felony conviction,” Mr. Burge said. “You have to wait another three years to get that record sealed. That’s four to five years as a young adult with a felony record. Try to buy a car, get a job, get a loan — it’s not happening. ” The judges’ diversion program gave a second chance to some defendants who had been rejected by Mr. Will. Among them was Wayne Dopart, who had been indicted on theft and Medicaid fraud charges. Mr. Will did not believe that Mr. Dopart could pay the thousands of dollars he owed in the case within a year, his lawyer recalled. But when Mr. Dopart was admitted to the judges’ program, he paid on time. Brenda who was charged with theft, was denied diversion because her arresting officer objected, according to court records. Corey Earl, a former police officer accused of cashing a $400 stolen check shortly after retiring from the force, was also deemed ineligible. Both Ms. and Mr. Earl successfully completed the judges’ diversion program. Of the 21 defendants listed in one court filing who had been granted diversion by the judges, only two had subsequent charges in Lorain County. But defendants like Ms. and Mr. Earl were not in the clear. Instead, they found themselves ensnared in a legal battle between the judges and the prosecutor. Mr. Will argued repeatedly to the appeals court that only prosecutors had the power to grant diversion. Several of the judges’ completed diversion cases were overturned and the defendants were forced to return to court. Ms. pleaded guilty and now has a felony record. Mr. Earl’s diversion was upheld, but he has been unable to get the case expunged from his record so he can find work. Mr. Will argued that because Mr. Earl was a police officer, “it is important for the public to maintain a public record of when this public figure admitted to violating that trust. ” Early last year, Caleb Moore was arrested in Troy, Ala. on charges of possessing Xanax and marijuana. Mr. Moore is the son of Roy Moore, at the time the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Despite having three prior arrests, Caleb Moore was granted pretrial diversion, paying $900. After he promised to enter drug rehab, his case was dismissed. But not every defendant is the son of a prominent jurist. The vast majority are poor people for whom $900 is well out of reach. Yet in many jurisdictions, they are required to pay the same fees as defendants. Diversion programs have complex fee structures, and it is impossible to come up with an average cost. To begin with, some defendants must pay just to find out whether they are eligible The Times found nonrefundable application fees as high as $250. If accepted, defendants almost always pay a program fee, typically a few hundred dollars but in some places far higher. Drunken driving diversion is often the most expensive in the city of Dothan, Ala. it costs up to $5, 000. The list of additional charges can be long: counseling, classes, drug tests, monthly supervision, charitable contributions, court costs, prosecution costs and compensation for the arresting agency. The Times found cases where defendants who were not being prosecuted paid a $400 drug lab fee, a $50 Crime Stoppers fee or $2, 000 for the services of an indigent defense lawyer. District attorneys are sometimes willing to adjust their diversion policies for the right price. In Shawnee County, Kan. defendants who might not normally be considered eligible can get diversion if they agree to pay more than the usual fee — sometimes thousands of dollars more — said Matt Patterson, the district attorney’s chief of staff. Asked if the fees are ever waived for the poor, Mr. Patterson gave a long sigh. “Not really, to be honest with you,” he said. The same is true in many places. “Pretrial diversion is a voluntary program,” reads the prosecutor’s website in Florida’s 18th judicial circuit, in all capital letters. “Fees are not eligible for reduction or waiver. ” While some jurisdictions do make allowances for the poor, The Times found sliding scales that exist largely in theory. In South Carolina, state lawmakers capped the diversion fee at $350 and said it might be waived for indigent defendants. But waivers remain an afterthought at best. In a review of diversion guidelines issued by 13 of the state’s 16 prosecutors, only two mentioned the possibility of a waiver. In interviews, several prosecutors seemed to have given little consideration to whether the costs exclude defendants. “I guess you’re right,” said Ron Dixon, a longtime prosecutor in Fulton County, Ga. when asked if fees kept people out of the program. Scott Colom, who last year was elected district attorney in eastern Mississippi with help from the liberal billionaire George Soros, said he ran on a platform of expanding diversion but kept the fee the same as his predecessor, assuming it was cheap compared with other places. It is $1, 320. That fee does cover services that cost extra in other jurisdictions, like drug testing and counseling. It can also be paid over time, which makes diversion more accessible. It is impossible to determine how many defendants are barred from diversion for lack of money, but one jurisdiction offers a hint. The diversion program in New Orleans once cost as much as $1, 200 and had about 300 participants. In 2009, when a new district attorney lowered the cost to $200, participation more than tripled. But some jurisdictions have come to rely on diversion revenue. In 2015, Wichita, Kan. brought in almost $1. 2 million, an increase of 49 percent over 2010. Diversion fees have received little scrutiny: They are rarely challenged in court, and district attorneys are seldom required to give a detailed account of how they spend the money. With so few checks and balances, the money can easily become a source of temptation. In 2013, a Nebraska prosecutor pleaded guilty to donating diversion money to a trapshooting team. In 2009, the district attorney in Shawnee County was found to have paid himself more than $300, 000 from the pretrial diversion and forfeiture funds. The county attorney in Brown County, Tex. is under investigation for accepting what he called donations of as much as $2, 500 — the state maximum diversion fee is $500 — in exchange for diversion. Some critics say diversion fees do not pass the smell test no matter how the money is used. “It’s almost like you’re paying for a dismissal,” said Lynn Pride Richardson, the chief public defender in Dallas. “And that is illegal. ” Some prosecutors said fees were necessary to cover programs’ costs. In other cases, defendants were used as piggy banks. Scott Anderson, who worked in the Topeka city prosecutor’s office, said the city’s fee structure had pure revenue “built in,” even though the program saved the city money. “The way we explained it to defendants — this is going to sound terrible — it was the benefit of the bargain for us: what the city was getting for not prosecuting you,” said Mr. Anderson, who has since become a public defender in Wichita. “When I was a prosecutor, it didn’t present a problem to me. But I’ve been a defense attorney now for 11 months, and it’s been an ” Mr. Anderson said. “I didn’t realize how many people we were actually disenfranchising from participating. ” By title, Amrith Aakre is an assistant prosecutor in Cook County, which encompasses Chicago. But what she really does is save people from prosecution. One morning in June, she sorted paperwork from the previous night’s arrests into two stacks: eligible for diversion, or probably not. A sheaf of paperwork from a huge drug bust went into the “no” pile. But on other cases, Ms. Aakre paused to take a closer look. She picked up one case, a car . “You see damage like shattering windows, a violent component,” she said. “We’re looking at the public safety risk. This happened across the street from a school at 12 o’clock, when all the kids were outside at recess. ” Next, she checked the defendant’s history. “We’re looking for a pattern — is this a thing or is there a long pattern of violence? If it’s a thing, this may be the gateway. There is a saying, ‘The more you do it, the more you do it.’ And this is our opportunity to catch them at an early stage and give them the services to cope with whatever they’re dealing with. ” Cook County’s diversion programs, recognized as a national model, handle about 5, 000 defendants a year. The emphasis is on inclusion: A team of prosecutors like Ms. Aakre is dedicated to scouting potential cases, and eligibility has steadily expanded. Defendants do not have to plead guilty if they fail, they are either returned for traditional prosecution with no penalty or moved to a more intensive program. Diversion can be completed quickly, in as little as three months for the most minor offenses. Victims must give consent, but they rarely refuse, prosecutors said. Defendants pay no fee — in fact, the notion strikes prosecutors as absurd. “That would be a complete failure here in Cook County,” said Robert Groebner Jr. a felony prosecutor. “These defendants, they don’t have $50 in their pocket. ” The wide range of diversion programs is based on a medical model: Use the least invasive treatment that has a chance of success. Misdemeanor defendants may be required to do nothing more than attend two counseling sessions, while those charged with felonies can be sent to Branch 9, a yearlong program overseen by a singing, judge. Community service is assigned only if the defendant cannot find a job. In part because relapse is often part of recovery from addiction, the programs are forgiving: Defendants can repeat drug school, a defensive class for drug offenders, if they have been for three years, and can undergo a more intensive drug diversion program up to three times. Participants may be asked to get a substance abuse evaluation, but treatment is not mandatory. “These are not people who are acutely symptomatic,” said Mark Kammerer, who runs the programs. “These are people who we want to think about whether there’s something deeper going on with them. ” More complex cases are referred to drug court or mental health court, where defendants can be required to get treatment. By Mr. Kammerer’s measure, the programs are highly successful. A year after finishing felony diversion, 97 percent of graduates have no new felony arrests, and 86 percent have no new arrests of any kind. Drug school alone saves the county an estimated $1. 5 million a year. One afternoon in felony court, Debra Kreatsoulas anxiously awaited the appearance of her husband, Carlos Ramirez. Mr. Ramirez had gone to work drunk, Ms. Kreatsoulas said, and had gotten into an argument with a fellow school custodian. Mr. Ramirez left, saying he was going to get a gun and shoot the other man, according to the police report. It was the day after a mass shooting at an Orlando, Fla. nightclub that killed 49 people. The school was placed on lockdown the story made the evening news. Mr. Ramirez might have faced up to three years in prison. But when prosecutors reviewed the facts — he had no criminal record and no gun was found — they decided that diversion was more appropriate. The victim at first refused to allow diversion, saying that Mr. Ramirez had used a racial slur. But he relented when he learned that Mr. Ramirez had already spent more than two weeks in jail. Ms. Kreatsoulas, a teacher’s aide who could not afford to bail her husband out, was optimistic. She said his drinking had become worse since he lost a job a year before. “This might force him to get the help that he needs,” she said. “He has a family that he needs to stand up and start supporting. ” Mr. Ramirez accepted Branch 9 diversion and, hours later, was released from jail, which he described as a dangerous place where inmates fought over bread and soap. “I’m not coming back here to the jungle,” he said. Branch 9 connects defendants to services like classes for a high school equivalency diploma, substance abuse evaluations and health insurance. Spurgeon Kennedy, the diversion expert, said recent research contradicted the assumption that punitive rules and negative consequences, rather than immediate benefits, keep defendants in line. “Defendants don’t think that way,” he said. “Most people are participating because they see a value. ” So far, Mr. Kammerer said, Mr. Ramirez has met all of his diversion requirements and is once again working full time. Ten years ago, Issa Kona tried to steal an $80 battery charger from a Home Depot in Cleveland. The prosecutor’s office charged him with robbery, as opposed to shoplifting, because store employees said that when they asked for the merchandise, Mr. Kona resisted and had to be handcuffed. Still, it was his first arrest. Mr. Kona’s case was dismissed after he agreed to plead guilty and enter pretrial diversion. He came to regret it. Mr. Kona, a Palestinian stonecutter, has been in the United States legally since 2002. His three daughters are in college. He had applied to become a United States citizen. But when immigration lawyers discovered his robbery case, they warned him that the fact that he had pleaded guilty meant he could be deported. “We don’t want to go back,” Mr. Kona said. “We don’t know a thing back there. ” Diversion’s big promise is to spare defendants a criminal record. But that central goal is being undermined by prosecutors across the country who, for the sake of expediency, are requiring defendants like Mr. Kona to plead guilty. If a defendant fails to complete diversion and is sent back to court, prosecutors must mount a case from scratch, locating evidence and witnesses months or years after the fact. “You didn’t just go to a sentencing hearing, you went to square zero,” said Joshua Marquis, an Oregon district attorney who serves on the board of the National District Attorneys Association. “So many D. A. s were like, ‘Why are we doing this? ’” Guilty pleas solve the problem, ensuring conviction without the effort of a trial. But for defendants, the pleas make things more difficult, coming back to haunt them years after completing diversion. Pleas have been used as evidence to deny professional licenses, citizenship and employment. The 2008 diversion guidelines issued by the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies said that defendants should not be required to plead guilty. Other common practices make it harder for defendants to succeed. Though prosecutors can dismiss a case when diversion starts, clearing it from the docket with the option of reopening it later, many prefer to leave the case open. A pending charge, though, can stymie defendants’ efforts to find work and housing, or even win custody of their children. The guidelines also stressed that dismissal is not enough — after diversion, cases should be sealed or expunged from the public record. But expungement is rarely automatic, and many defendants do not realize that it requires filing paperwork and paying an additional fee. In El Paso, the district attorney bans expungement altogether. In interviews, several defendants said they had trouble landing a job because their case appeared in background checks. Employers, they said, did not differentiate between a dismissal and a conviction. In some cases, even expungement may not be enough. Though state laws usually specify that sealed records do not have to be disclosed on applications, The Times found job, college and housing forms that ask applicants whether they have ever had a case diverted. The application for St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio requires people to disclose any criminal case, “even if you were granted any type of pretrial diversion. ” It adds, “Disclosure is required even if you have been told by any source that you do not have to disclose any such instance. ” Stephen M. Sheppard, dean of the law school, said diversion would not disqualify an applicant. The point, he said, was evoking candor and making sure that students did not have unacknowledged problems like substance abuse that would hinder them from representing future clients. In Cleveland, Mr. Kona tried to undo his diversion and guilty plea to clear his path to citizenship. Had the case gone to trial, Mr. Kona’s lawyer said, it would most likely have been downgraded to the less serious charge of shoplifting, which would not set off deportation. So Mr. Kona took the unusual step of asking the state Supreme Court to allow him to be prosecuted. During oral arguments 18 months ago, Justice William O’Neill did not bother to suppress his incredulity. “In order to get into that diversion program, you must admit to committing a crime?” he asked. “What happened to the Fifth Amendment?” Last month, the court finally ruled, in Mr. Kona’s favor. The local prosecutor announced that he would not retry the case. | 1 |
Getty - Justin Sullivan
The artificial intelligence system that has accurately predicted the outcomes of every U.S. presidential election since it was created in 2004 is forecasting a Donald Trump victory.
Using various data, including engagement on Facebook and Twitter, the AI system found that Trump is outpacing Barack Obama’s peak engagement numbers during his historic 2008 campaign by 25 percent.
CNBC has more details :
MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, the founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions.
The AI system was created in 2004, so it has been getting smarter all the time. It had already correctly predicted the results of the Democrat and Republican Primaries. Image Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
“If Trump loses, it will defy the data trend for the first time in the last 12 years since Internet engagement began in full earnest,” Rai wrote in a report, according to CNBC .
However, before Trump supporters get too excited about the AI prediction, even Rai admits the social media-focused data model isn’t perfect. Even if Trump is getting more social engagement than Obama in 2008, that certainly doesn’t mean all those social media users will be voting for him. He explained it to CNBC like this:
Rai said that his system would be improved by more granular data. He said that If Google was to give him access to the unique internet addresses assigned to each digital device, then he could collect data on exactly what people were thinking. For example, Rai said if someone was searching for a YouTube video on how to vote, then looked for a video on how to vote for Trump, this could give the AI a good idea of the voter's intention. He added that there would be no privacy concerns as these internet addresses would be anonymized.
That being said, Rai advised the Clinton campaign not to get complacent in light of the AI's prediction. | 0 |
You have a work bunker? What is it exactly that you do? Man if the world went to crap, the last thing i would be concerned about is ensuring my employer keeps the loot rolling in lol. In fact if that does go down, im jumping in my truck with a motivational "item" and coming to work to stock up. The mine site has enough food for 500 people a for 2 weeks at a time. I live out in the country. Im On well water, 1000 liter propane tank for heat and out door boiler. The genny is hooked up to a 400 liter gas storage container. My house that im building up the road from my current house already has the solar panels hooked up on a 24 volt system. Everyday, theres a buck or a couple does in the yard. Lots of partridge and bears around if things get rough. Only thing we would be lacking is fresh vegetables over the winter...which could be problematic. | 0 |
Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions stated Tuesday he will recuse himself from investigations concerning failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton if confirmed as Attorney General. [Asked by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley how he planned to address concerns about his possible handling of an investigation involving Clinton, Sessions said: “Mr. Chairman, it was a highly contentious campaign. I, like a lot of people, made comments about the issues in that campaign with regard to Secretary Clinton. And some of the comments I made, I do believe that could place my objectivity in question. ” “I’ve given that thought. I believe the proper thing to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involved Secretary Clinton and that were raised during the campaign, or could be otherwise connected to it,” he said. “To be very clear, you intend to recuse yourself from both the Clinton email investigation and any matters involving the Clinton Foundation if there are any?” Grassley asked. “Yes,” Sessions said firmly. “Let me follow up again, because it’s important. When you say you’ll recuse, you mean you’ll actually recuse, and the decision will therefore fall to I assume a deputy attorney general?” Grassley asked. “I ask because after Attorney General Lynch met with President Clinton in Phoenix, she said she would ‘defer’ to the FBI, but she never officially recused. ” “No, she did not officially recuse and there’s a procedure for that I would follow. And I believe that would be the best approach for the country, because we can never have a political dispute turn into a criminal dispute, in any way that would suggest anything other than absolute objectivity,” Sessions said. “This country does not punish its political enemies, but this country ensures no one is above the law. ” | 1 |
November 1, 2016 -
By Tom Winter exclusively for Fort Russ -
Screen capture from In the Now video A TALE OF TWO CITIES “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” The best of times — that’s Mosul. The liberation of the city from ISIS is going apace, with the US Air Force assisting Iraq. Yes, the resistance is fierce, and there will be door-to-door fighting, but the day of deliverance is coming -- a summary of NPR this morning.
No war crimes, not even any mention of civilian casualties under the euphemism of “collateral damage." And Mosul is never called "a city under siege"!
The worst of times — that’s Aleppo, "a city under siege." This is where Dictator Assad and the Russians are deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure under the condemnation of the western world for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Thus speak the parrots, with one voice, following Mark C. Toner's press briefings. And NPR is there to remind us that Kerry wants Russian war crimes investigated [' Russia's bombing of civilians in Syria "beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes."'] and to remind us that Russia is bombing hospitals .
Never a mention of the besieged being ISIS!
Listening to CNN and NPR (National PR), no one would ever guess that it’s the same struggle in each city, a struggle to liberate innocent civilians from the headchoppers of ISIS. But in Mosul, NPR acknowledges that the innocent civilians are forced to stay and serve as human shields for ISIS.
Your retired Latin prof translator/commentator keeps up with the help of Facebook friends in 35 countries. Comparing the international posts and comments with the American ones points out the irony. One of them, in Romania, has been advised to “Stop watching RT and other Russian-biased sources.”
But in Romania, there is no access to Fox, CNN, or even to NPR. So what is the poor Rumanian to do? And in another bingo for Godwin’s law, the one advising against trusting RT calls Trump “another Hitler.”
In the following response to a report of 300 civilians killed in a US airstrike,
there is a mix of the rational, yet it is still written through the lens of CNN and the rest of western MSM: “I am a little defensive that some of these stories have come from RT (not this one) when Russia is deliberately targeting civilians and basically you could argue we need to try harder to avoid them. It is an area with a high damned if you do (potentially causing collateral deaths) and damned if you don't (thus allowing ISIS to spread and kill civilians directly) quotient.” To which the only possible reply:
look at what you wrote! OUR airstrikes cause "collateral damage;" Russian airstrikes "deliberately target civilians." The collusion of the western press with the Washington Blob took a month or two to take hold: There was a time, early in 2014, when talking heads were saying stuff like “Ukraine should just make the best deal they can with Russia.” One retired French politician noted there is no sense getting involved in matters of what used to be internal boundaries of the Soviet Union. CNN as late as September of 2014 once acknowledged that the Kiev government was bombing civilians .
But not any more! All the non-Russia-biased media have long since gotten the memo.
And to avoid intellectual discomfort from exposure to views and news that do not jibe with the US State Department and CNN, don't watch RT or any Russia-biased sources!
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WASHINGTON — Three agents knocked on the door of a modest duplex in a Wisconsin town just after dawn. The Mexican immigrant living on the ground floor stuck his head out They asked his name and he gave it. Within minutes José Cervantes Amaral was in handcuffs as his wife, also from Mexico, silently watched. After 18 years working and living quietly in the United States, Mr. Cervantes, who did not have legal papers, rode away in the back seat, heading for deportation. It is a routine that continues daily. The Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ended initiatives by President Obama that would have given protection from deportation to more than four million immigrants in the country illegally, most of them parents of American citizens. Mr. Obama showed his frustration with the decision, saying his goal was to help immigrants who had raised families here and helped the country with their work. The president said immigrants who might have qualified for the programs would still be safe from deportation. Still, deportations continue, thousands every week. In November 2014 when Mr. Obama first announced the protection programs, he also set new priorities for enforcement. Since then, immigration authorities say, their focus is on removing convicted criminals and foreigners who pose national security threats. But the administration’s priorities also include deporting migrants from Central America, including children, who came in an influx since 2014. And immigrants who committed minor offenses — or none at all — are often swept up in the operations. After Thursday’s Supreme Court decision, the president’s protections are gone, but the enforcement plan remains in effect. It is part of a particularly edgy moment for immigrants and their supporters framed by the Supreme Court ruling, Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign and Britain’s surprise vote, influenced in part by sentiments, to leave the European Union. Last year, immigration authorities deported 235, 413 people, according to official figures. Of those, 59 percent were convicted criminals, and 98 percent fit within the administration’s priorities, Department of Homeland Security officials said. The top priority includes foreigners who pose a threat to national or border security or to public safety. Other priorities are for people with serious criminal records, but they also include any migrant caught entering the country illegally after Jan. 1, 2014. Homeland Security officials said Friday that the Supreme Court decision would have no effect on the pace or strategy of enforcement. “Our limited enforcement resources will not be focused on the removal of those who have committed no serious crimes, have been in this country for years and have families here,” said Marsha Catron, a spokeswoman for the department. “Under this policy, these people are not priorities for removal, nor should they be. ” Mr. Obama has carried out many more deportations than previous presidents, setting a record of more than 2. 4 million formal removals. But Republican lawmakers point to a sharp decrease in deportations — down 43 percent in 2015 from 409, 849 in 2012 — to say that Mr. Obama has all but stopped enforcing immigration law. “When will the Obama administration end its reckless policies that wreak havoc on our communities?” asked Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. But what is not enough enforcement for some is too much for others. This week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is known as ICE, said it had arrested 331 immigrants in May and June in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Kansas and Missouri. The operations were its “latest effort to arrest and remove convicted criminal aliens,” said Ricardo Wong, the director of the agency’s office in Chicago. “By focusing our resources on the most egregious offenders,” Mr. Wong said, “we ensure the very best use of our resources while immediately improving public safety. ” One of those arrested was Mr. Cervantes. In 2006, Mr. Cervantes said in an interview by telephone on Friday, he was caught up in an immigration raid at a factory near his workplace. Local police who assisted in the raid arrested him, finding — mistakenly, he says — that he was working with documents under a false name. Mr. Cervantes, a construction worker, pleaded guilty to an identity theft offense, a felony. A decade later, after he and his wife raised two daughters in Genoa City, Wis. immigration agents came to his door to deport him. “The shock for my wife was very strong,” Mr. Cervantes said. She has been in treatment at local hospitals for kidney cancer, he said. “If we have to go back to Mexico, I won’t have her for long. ” He has been released while he fights his immigration case. “The administration is continuing to deport people who should not be a priority,” said Christine executive director of Voces de la Frontera, an organization that assisted Mr. Cervantes. Mr. Obama, she said, “can do much more to prevent the unnecessary breakup of families. ” Some clearly are in the priority group. On Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had arrested 45 foreigners who had been listed by Interpol as wanted for serious crimes, including three men from El Salvador sought in connection with gang killings. Immigration agents have conducted many roundups of drug traffickers and human smugglers. At the same time, a migrant from Honduras, Wildin Acosta, was still being held in an immigration detention center in Lumpkin, Ga. five months after he was arrested when he was heading to high school in Durham, N. C. In 2014, Mr. Acosta crossed the border illegally and turned himself in to border agents, asking for asylum. Since he was 17 at the time and traveling without his parents, he was held under special protections for unaccompanied minors. He was sent to live with his parents, who had settled years before in Durham. He started going to high school, made friends who helped him learn English and joined a local soccer league. He presented a formal request for asylum in the United States, saying in legal papers that he fled Honduras after two close relatives were murdered. But he missed a date in immigration court and a judge ordered him deported. Mr. Acosta also turned 19, making him too old, immigration officials said, to be given deference as a minor. Mr. Acosta was among dozens of teenagers as well as mothers and smaller children from Central America who were arrested in an operation by immigration agents over one weekend in late January. Homeland Security Department officials said that because of his recent border crossing, Mr. Acosta was among the highest priorities for deportation. The arrests caused panic in immigrant communities in Durham. Teachers, lawmakers and community leaders mobilized to protest. Mr. Acosta’s lawyer, Evelyn Smallwood, has forestalled his deportation but has not secured his release. “He is a good kid, and he is doing everything he can to keep his sanity,” she said. “The administration has said it is as important to remove Wildin as it is to remove a drug trafficker or a terrorist. ” | 1 |
I didn't know which one to do first or rather if I would but I did and not in chronological order either. Hello, My colleagues call me Captain Jack. My name is Jack Fearow and no not Captain Jack Spearow or was that Jack Sparrow? Anyways I'm new here but I'm no newb so don't expect me to believe a weather balloon is a Chinese lantern you know what I mean. Hopefully I reach out and touch a soul or 2 but if not I know I gave it me best. And that's the best I can do till we meet have a helluva bloody day! | 0 |
I dont know guys , i must say that attack looks mighty fake , i didnt see anyone firing back , it looked very staged . I think the idea of fake terror is to give reason for the Gov around the world to have an exuse to change laws and terrorise the polulation so they need"" the armies to protect them . They mentioned that in the white paper of a world without war , because without armies the people might overthrow the crooks in power . No one appeared to be really stressed in that video . Lets face it not one country has ever exposed all the false flags of other nations . Rothschild has a central bank in everycountry except 2 or three =he controls all of them . They do all war game together and have immunity for all their spooks which only leaves the public as an enemy . There are no good guys in the elites and if you think they would let anyonecontrol them in any way your dreaming . You wont see them on the front line they are far too busy counting the profits and partying on . The human rights clatter is only directed against the west , so are the chemtrails , and green c02 fraud , its not hard to work out . And only the west has made it law to force the deadly vaccines on people . | 0 |
Last summer, the Justice Department decided to start winding down its use of private prisons. Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates noted in a memo that while private prisons were useful when public prisons were overflowing, they made little sense now that the prison population was falling. They didn’t save much on costs. Nor did they provide the kind of rehabilitation programs proved to reduce recidivism. And they are particularly dangerous. A recent report by the department’s inspector general found that prisoners in private facilities, which house some 12 percent of federal inmates, were much more likely to have weapons. Private prisons had many more assaults on inmates and prison workers than those run by the Bureau of Prisons. And they went into lockdown to respond to disturbances 10 times as often. But on Nov. 9, the day after Donald J. Trump was elected president, the stocks of correctional conglomerates were among the best performing on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares in Corrections Corporation of America, now CoreCivic, gained an astonishing 43 percent on the day. The reason? Privatization is back at the top of the government’s agenda. While this is being applauded in executive suites across corporate America, the cost for the rest of society is likely to be high. “With prisons I do think we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons,” Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail last year. “It seems to work a lot better. ” Mr. Trump’s pick for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, is a staunch supporter of the approach, having invited private prisons into his state as its attorney general more than 20 years ago. But privatization is likely to sweep through not only prisons. The wants to privatize health services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. He wants to privatize public infrastructure — drawing private sector companies to fix, build and manage bridges and roads, water supplies and airports. He is selling privatization as a surefire winner that will deliver better services for less public money. “There’s a magical thinking among business executives that something about the profit motive makes everything run better,” noted Raymond Fisman, a professor of economics at Boston University. “What is government going to be like when it is run by billionaire C. E. O.s that see the private sector as a solution to all the world’s problems?” A serious body of economics, not to mention reams of evidence from decades of privatizations around the world, suggests this belief is false. Consider, for instance, what the profit motive has done for higher education. colleges absorb a full quarter of federal aid for higher education. Not all are fraudulent diploma mills set up to milk federal aid dollars from students. Still, on average they are much more expensive than public institutions, while their degrees are much less valuable. There are abundant similar examples in the health care industry. Hospices run for profit are less likely to admit patients with shorter, expected lengths of stay. hospitals have been found to fib more to Medicare than nonprofits do — tweaking their diagnoses to get higher reimbursements. And they have been found to bolster profits at the expense of patient safety. A study at the RAND Corporation found that hospitals that switched from nonprofit to operation saw a sharp rise in profits but also a jump in mortality rates one to two years after their conversion. Then there is a study by Bonnie Svarstad and Chester Bond of the School of Pharmacy at the University of more than three decades ago: They found that patients in nursing homes got heavier doses of sedatives than those in nonprofits got. Explaining the pattern, the economist Burton Weisbrod wrote that sedatives were “less expensive than, say, giving special attention to more active patients who need to be kept busy. ” Of course, the government can also do a horrible job of running things. And private corporations do many things well. They tend to be much faster to innovate. In competitive markets, the profit motive makes for a powerful incentive to deliver all kinds of goods and services, from widgets to telephone calls, efficiently and effectively. A study found that opening nursing homes in Sweden to private providers actually improved patients’ mortality rates. But it is critical to understand how profit seeking can go awry, giving companies a motivation to skimp on quality to bolster margins. When a private provider faces little or no competition, or when quality of service is difficult to track properly — think of the of patients in a nursing home, or the health of prison inmates — there will be nothing to stop it from pursuing higher profits at society’s expense. “The private sector is good at cutting costs and finding ways to save money,” Oliver Hart, a professor of economics at Harvard, told me. “Some are socially desirable some are not. ” The critical issue is whether a contract can be written that reduces the space for socially undesirable tactics to a minimum. Negotiating the is not always obvious. For instance, the privatization of the water supply of Buenos Aires led to a reduction in infant deaths from infectious and parasitic disease. But it also increased water bills, so the unpopular concession to a private company was ultimately canceled. Professor Hart, as it happens, won the Nobel in economic sciences last year for his work in studying precisely these sorts of contracts: When are they more likely to work? How should they be structured? Crucial tasks with many dimensions — waging war, policing the streets of a city — are often best left to the public sector, he points out. By contrast, a private provider could do a better job when the desired output is more straightforward and can be measured properly, like collecting trash. He is not at all opposed to privatization. Indeed, he argues that determining whether a service should be privately or publicly provided should not be an ideological issue. The decision should be based on “what mode of organization achieves the social goal in the best way. ” Unfortunately, he noted, it seems unlikely Mr. Trump’s team will take the thoughtful path. Indeed, one of Professor Hart’s seminal papers, produced together with Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny nearly 20 years ago, suggested that while things like garbage collection or weapons production were quite suitable for private provision, the government would probably do a better job tackling tasks like foreign policy, the police and … prisons. | 1 |
With private cybersecurity firms linking North Korea to recent computer attacks that absconded with at least $81 million, the Treasury Department moved on Wednesday to choke off Pyongyang’s remaining access to the global financial system, designating the country a “primary” money launderer. The Treasury, employing sanctions techniques that helped pressure Iran to give up much of its nuclear program, said it would seek to impose what are known as secondary sanctions against the reclusive communist country. That means that it could cut off from the American financial system any bank or company that conducts banking transactions with Pyongyang. As a practical matter, that would largely affect Chinese banks, which facilitate North Korea’s financial transactions with Beijing, its largest trading partner. It could also affect some institutions in the nominally autonomous Chinese regions of Macau and Hong Kong, as well as in Singapore, where Pyongyang has often gone to hide the true nature of its banking activities, and to pay for missiles, nuclear fuel and the huge infrastructure it has built around those programs. The designation, officials said, was in the works long before evidence emerged linking the country’s aggressive hackers to the bank thefts, which involved stealing the credentials that banks use to access the Swift system, a global network that thousands of financial firms use to authorize payments from one account to another. In interviews, administration officials said they were still sorting through the evidence that North Korea was involved, and left open the possibility that the thieves deliberately left evidence implicating the country to throw investigators off their trail. It could be months, the officials said, before they reach any conclusions, and in the end the perpetrators of the attack may not be definitively known. Only once — in the case of North Korea’s attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, which was promoting a movie depicting the assassination of Kim the country’s unpredictable young leader — has President Obama publicly accused another country of using computer code to wreak havoc in the United States. In this case, the sanctions were proposed most immediately because of a Treasury investigation that concluded North Korea uses hard currency to finance its nuclear and missile programs. The department invoked a section of the Patriot Act to ban banks from processing any banking transaction that runs through North Korea. It is hard to assess how much the action will hurt North Korea. Such sanctions against financial institutions doing business with Iran proved effective because Tehran had billions of dollars in monthly oil and other energy exports that could be choked off North Korea has none. Oftentimes Pyongyang deals in cash. Until a few years ago it was one of the largest counterfeiters of $100 bills. But that fraud was largely cut off by the redesign of the $100 bill. The key test will be the reaction of the Chinese. American officials will have a chance to find out next week: Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew are traveling to Beijing for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, where the isolation of North Korea will be a major subject of discussion. China voted for the latest United Nations sanctions, but Beijing’s fears of provoking a collapse of North Korea’s government still outweigh its desire to rein in Mr. Kim’s government. Underlying the financial action was the United States’ desire to respond to North Korea’s third nuclear weapons test, conducted in January, which the country said was its first test of a hydrogen bomb. (There is no evidence that it was, in fact, a hydrogen weapon, which increases the magnitude of the blast.) More recently Pyongyang has attempted, and failed, to launch a Musudan missile. It is based on an early Soviet model, which was launched from a submarine, but the repeated failures have embarrassed Mr. Kim and undermined his effort to convince the world that his nuclear missile program is steaming ahead quickly. The bigger mystery is whether Mr. Kim is also trying to show that he can undermine the global financial system, his best way of getting back at the West and his Asian neighbors for their support of sanctions. Two cybersecurity firms identified Pyongyang as the culprit behind a series of cyberattacks against Asian banks, including the theft that spirited $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Private security researchers analyzing those thefts say that unique digital fingerprints in the attackers’ code match those of the code used in cyberattacks against Sony in 2014 and South Korean banks and broadcasting companies in 2013. The Sony hack destroyed 70 percent of the firm’s computers. South Korea has blamed North Korea for the attacks on its firms. Elements of the code in those attacks closely track some of the code found in the more recent bank thefts. Banks in the United States are already prohibited from doing business with financial institutions in North Korea. But the recommended rules would require them to perform additional due diligence to ensure they are not inadvertently transacting with North Korean financial institutions or the Pyongyang government through shell companies or other fictitious entities. The rules are the result of a monthslong effort by the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to determine whether North Korea is a haven for money laundering. With that designation established, the Treasury secretary is able to take aggressive measures to cut off the country’s access to the United States financial system. Other countries have also been stepping up efforts to isolate North Korea. In March, the United Nations Security Council said its members had 90 days to sever banking relationships with North Korean financial institutions. The recent attacks on Asian banks exposed new vulnerabilities in the way banks move money around the world. North Korea’s possible involvement in those cyberattacks has raised alarms about Pyongyang’s ability to exploit Swift, the global bank messaging network. But the attack did not go to the core of the Swift system instead, it was analogous to stealing a credit card number to post a phony transaction in the Visa or MasterCard system. | 1 |
This year is off to a start for global temperatures. It has been the hottest year to date, with January, February and March each passing marks set in 2015, according to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. March was also the 11th consecutive month to set a record high for temperatures, which agencies started tracking in the 1800s. With the release on Tuesday of its global climate report, NOAA is the third independent agency — along with NASA and the Japan Meteorological Association — to reach similar findings, each using slightly different methods. The reports add a sense of urgency at the United Nations, where world diplomats are gathered this week to sign the climate accord reached late last year in Paris, when 195 nations committed to lower greenhouse gas emissions and to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Since the initial agreement was reached, other global anomalies have been reported that punctuate the threat of climate change, including troubling trends on Arctic sea ice, floods, drought and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Some of these — warm temperatures and heavy rains in particular — can be explained in part by this year’s El Niño phenomenon, which scientists predicted would release large amounts of heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere, causing irregular weather patterns across the globe. But the effects of the current El Niño have been exacerbated by global warming, a result of emissions of greenhouse gases by humans, said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist with NOAA and lead author of the report. El Niño is on its way out, and ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific peaked in November, said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. But the heat the ocean had stored had to go somewhere: “It’s come out and been distributed around the world,” which helps explain record warm temperatures and wildfires in the Southern Hemisphere, Mr. Trenberth said. To get an idea of how much of the record heat is caused by El Niño and how much by global warming, Dr. Blunden said that scientists at NOAA compared this El Niño to the last strong one, in which was also for its warmth. This one has pushed past those records by raising global temperatures an additional 0. 8 degree or so, Dr. Blunden said. The high temperatures in March probably signaled the last gasp of El Niño, and surface temperatures across the globe are likely to begin to fall this year. Often, El Niños are followed by La Niña storm systems, which can usher in cooler periods, Dr. Blunden said. But after more than two hot years — 2014 and 2015 and an extremely warm few months in 2016 — many of the devastating effects of the punch of global warming and El Niño may be inescapable, setting the world on a course for an extended period of rapid global warming, after a period of relatively slow warming that began in 1998 and lasted for about a decade. Dr. Blunden said that the Arctic was seeing some of the most abnormal weather on earth, with temperatures about 6 degrees warmer than the average over all. These highs could lead to record melting of Arctic sea ice this summer the ice cover is at its lowest since measurements began to be taken in the late 1970s. Dr. Trenberth said that these conditions did not represent “a new normal” and that it was difficult to determine the consequences of this El Niño on both global temperatures and Arctic sea ice cover. He is not sure if 2016 will prove to be as warm as 2015 — “I’m betting it’s a tossup,” he said — but added that it’s not the record heat that comes as a shock. The magnitude of the jump “is indeed surprising,” Dr. Trenberth said. A central feature of the Paris climate agreement was to hold the increase in the global average temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3. 6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial levels, and to try to limit the increase to about 1. 5 degrees Celsius. As global temperatures are already nearing the 1. threshold, and some months have been about 1 degree or more above average, this goal might be difficult to achieve, Dr. Trenberth said. “I don’t see at all how we’re going to not go through the 1. 5 in the next decade or so,” Dr. Trenberth added. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump do not agree on much, but Saudi Arabia may be an exception. She has deplored Saudi Arabia’s support for “radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism. ” He has called the Saudis “the world’s biggest funders of terrorism. ” The first American diplomat to serve as envoy to Muslim communities around the world visited 80 countries and concluded that the Saudi influence was destroying tolerant Islamic traditions. “If the Saudis do not cease what they are doing,” the official, Farah Pandith, wrote last year, “there must be diplomatic, cultural and economic consequences. ” And hardly a week passes without a television pundit or a newspaper columnist blaming Saudi Arabia for jihadist violence. On HBO, Bill Maher calls Saudi teachings “medieval,” adding an epithet. In The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria writes that the Saudis have “created a monster in the world of Islam. ” The idea has become a commonplace: that Saudi Arabia’s export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal, fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fueled global extremism and contributed to terrorism. As the Islamic State projects its menacing calls for violence into the West, directing or inspiring terrorist attacks in country after country, an old debate over Saudi influence on Islam has taken on new relevance. Those questions are deeply contentious, partly because of the contradictory impulses of the Saudi state. In the realm of extremist Islam, the Saudis are “both the arsonists and the firefighters,” said William McCants, a Brookings Institution scholar. “They promote a very toxic form of Islam that draws sharp lines between a small number of true believers and everyone else, Muslim and ” he said, providing ideological fodder for violent jihadists. Yet at the same time, “they’re our partners in counterterrorism,” said Mr. McCants, one of three dozen academics, government officials and experts on Islam from multiple countries interviewed for this article. Saudi leaders seek good relations with the West and see jihadist violence as a menace that could endanger their rule, especially now that the Islamic State is staging attacks in the kingdom — 25 in the last eight months, by the government’s count. But they are also driven by their rivalry with Iran, and they depend for legitimacy on a clerical establishment dedicated to a reactionary set of beliefs. Those conflicting goals can play out in a bafflingly inconsistent manner. Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian terrorism expert who has advised the United States government, said the most important effect of Saudi proselytizing might have been to slow the evolution of Islam, blocking its natural accommodation to a diverse and globalized world. “If there was going to be an Islamic reformation in the 20th century, the Saudis probably prevented it by pumping out literalism,” he said. The reach of the Saudis has been stunning, touching nearly every country with a Muslim population, from the Gothenburg Mosque in Sweden to the King Faisal Mosque in Chad, from the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles to the Seoul Central Mosque in South Korea. Support has come from the Saudi government the royal family Saudi charities and organizations including the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Relief Organization, providing the hardware of impressive edifices and the software of preaching and teaching. There is a broad consensus that the Saudi ideological juggernaut has disrupted local Islamic traditions in dozens of countries — the result of lavish spending on religious outreach for half a century, estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. The result has been amplified by guest workers, many from South Asia, who spend years in Saudi Arabia and bring Saudi ways home with them. In many countries, Wahhabist preaching has encouraged a harshly judgmental religion, contributing to majority support in some polls in Egypt, Pakistan and other countries for stoning for adultery and execution for anyone trying to leave Islam. But exactly how Saudi influence plays out seems to depend greatly on local conditions. In parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, for instance, Saudi teachings have shifted the religious culture in a markedly conservative direction, most visibly in the decision of more women to cover their hair or of men to grow beards. Among Muslim immigrant communities in Europe, the Saudi influence seems to be just one factor driving radicalization, and not the most significant. In divided countries like Pakistan and Nigeria, the flood of Saudi money, and the ideology it promotes, have exacerbated divisions over religion that regularly prove lethal. And for a small minority in many countries, the exclusionary Saudi version of Sunni Islam, with its denigration of Jews and Christians, as well as of Muslims of Shiite, Sufi and other traditions, may have made some people vulnerable to the lure of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups. “There’s only so much dehumanizing of the other that you can be exposed to — and exposed to as the word of God — without becoming susceptible to recruitment,” said David Andrew Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington who tracks Saudi influence. Exhibit A may be Saudi Arabia itself, which produced not only Osama bin Laden, but also 15 of the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001 sent more suicide bombers than any other country to Iraq after the 2003 invasion and has supplied more foreign fighters to the Islamic State, 2, 500, than any country other than Tunisia. Mehmet Gormez, the senior Islamic cleric in Turkey, said that while he was meeting with Saudi clerics in Riyadh in January, the Saudi authorities had executed 47 people in a single day on terrorism charges, 45 of them Saudi citizens. “I said: ‘These people studied Islam for 10 or 15 years in your country. Is there a problem with the educational system?’ ” Mr. Gormez said in an interview. He argued that Wahhabi teaching was undermining the pluralism, tolerance and openness to science and learning that had long characterized Islam. “Sadly,” he said, the changes have taken place “in almost all of the Islamic world. ” In a huge embarrassment to the Saudi authorities, the Islamic State adopted official Saudi textbooks for its schools until the extremist group could publish its own books in 2015. Out of 12 works by Muslim scholars republished by the Islamic State, seven are by Muhammad ibn Abd the founder of the Saudi school of Islam, said Jacob Olidort, a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Adil declared with regret in a television interview in January that the Islamic State leaders “draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, our own principles. ” Small details of Saudi practice can cause outsize trouble. For at least two decades, the kingdom has distributed an English translation of the Quran that in the first surah, or chapter, adds parenthetical references to Jews and Christians in addressing Allah: “those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews) nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians). ” Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University and the editor in chief of the new Study Quran, an annotated English version, said the additions were “a complete heresy, with no basis in Islamic tradition. ” Accordingly, many American officials who have worked to counter extremism and terrorism have formed a dark view of the Saudi effect — even if, given the sensitivity of the relationship, they are often loath to discuss it publicly. The United States’ reliance on Saudi counterterrorism cooperation in recent years — for instance, the Saudi tip that foiled a 2010 Qaeda plot to blow up two American cargo planes — has often taken precedence over concerns about radical influence. And generous Saudi funding for professorships and research centers at American universities, including the most elite institutions, has deterred criticism and discouraged research on the effects of Wahhabi proselytizing, according to Mr. McCants — who is working on a book about the Saudi impact on global Islam — and other scholars. One American former official who has begun to speak out is Ms. Pandith, the State Department’s first special representative to Muslim communities worldwide. From 2009 to 2014, she visited Muslims in 80 countries and concluded that Saudi influence was pernicious and universal. “In each place I visited, the Wahhabi influence was an insidious presence,” she wrote in The New York Times last year. She said the United States should “disrupt the training of extremist imams,” “reject free Saudi textbooks and translations that are filled with hate,” and “prevent the Saudis from demolishing local Muslim religious and cultural sites that are evidence of the diversity of Islam. ” Yet some scholars on Islam and extremism, including experts on radicalization in many countries, push back against the notion that Saudi Arabia bears predominant responsibility for the current wave of extremism and jihadist violence. They point to multiple sources for the rise and spread of Islamist terrorism, including repressive secular governments in the Middle East, local injustices and divisions, the hijacking of the internet for terrorist propaganda, and American interventions in the Muslim world from the war in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq. The ideologues most influential with modern jihadists, like Sayyid Qutb of Egypt and Abul Ala Maududi of Pakistan, reached their extreme, views without much Saudi input. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State despise Saudi rulers, whom they consider the worst of hypocrites. “Americans like to have someone to blame — a person, a political party or country,” said Robert S. Ford, a former United States ambassador to Syria and Algeria. “But it’s a lot more complicated than that. I’d be careful about blaming the Saudis. ” While Saudi religious influence may be disruptive, he and others say, its effect is not monolithic. A major tenet of official Saudi Islamic teaching is obedience to rulers — hardly a precept that encourages terrorism intended to break nations. Many Saudi and clerics are quietist, characterized by a devotion to scripture and prayer and a shunning of politics, let alone political violence. And especially since 2003, when Qaeda attacks in the kingdom awoke the monarchy to the danger it faced from militancy, Saudi Arabia has acted more aggressively to curtail preachers who call for violence, cut off terrorist financing and cooperate with Western intelligence to foil terrorist plots. From 2004 to 2012, 3, 500 imams were fired for refusing to renounce extremist views, and another 20, 000 went through retraining, according to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs — though the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed skepticism that the training was really “instilling tolerance. ” An American scholar with long experience in Saudi Arabia — who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve his ability to travel to the kingdom for research — said he believed that Saudi influence had often been exaggerated in American political discourse. But he compared it to climate change. Just as a increase in temperature can ultimately result in drastic effects around the globe, with glaciers melting and species dying off, so Saudi teaching is playing out in many countries in ways that are hard to predict and difficult to trace but often profound, the scholar said. Saudi proselytizing can result in a “recalibrating of the religious center of gravity” for young people, the scholar said, which makes it “easier for them to swallow or make sense of the ISIS religious narrative when it does arrive. It doesn’t seem quite as foreign as it might have, had that Saudi religious influence not been there. ” Why does Saudi Arabia find it so difficult to let go of an ideology that much of the world finds repugnant? The key to the Saudi dilemma dates back nearly three centuries to the origin of the alliance that still undergirds the Saudi state. In 1744, Muhammad ibn Abd a reformist cleric, sought the protection of Muhammad bin Saud, a powerful tribal leader in the harsh desert of the Arabian Peninsula. The alliance was mutually beneficial: Wahhab received military protection for his movement, which sought to return Muslims to what he believed were the values of the early years of Islam in the seventh century, when the Prophet Muhammad was alive. (His beliefs were a variant of Salafism, the conservative school of Islam that teaches that the salaf, or pious ancestors, had the correct ways and beliefs and should be emulated.) In return, the Saud family earned the endorsement of an Islamic cleric — a puritanical enforcer known for insisting on the death by stoning of a woman for adultery. Wahhab’s particular version of Islam was the first of two historical accidents that would define Saudi religious influence centuries later. What came to be known as Wahhabism was “a tribal, desert Islam,” said Akbar Ahmed, the chairman of Islamic studies at American University in Washington. It was shaped by the austere environment — xenophobic, fiercely opposed to shrines and tombs, disapproving of art and music, and hugely different from the cosmopolitan Islam of diverse trading cities like Baghdad and Cairo. The second historical accident came in 1938, when American prospectors discovered the largest oil reserves on earth in Saudi Arabia. Oil revenue generated by the Oil Company, or Aramco, created fabulous wealth. But it also froze in place a rigid social and economic system and gave the conservative religious establishment an extravagant budget for the export of its severe strain of Islam. “One day you find oil, and the world is coming to you,” Professor Ahmed said. “God has given you the ability to take your version of Islam to the world. ” In 1964, when King Faisal ascended the throne, he embraced the obligation of spreading Islam. A modernizer in many respects, with close ties to the West, he nonetheless could not overhaul the Wahhabi doctrine that became the face of Saudi generosity in many countries. Over the next four decades, in countries alone, Saudi Arabia would build 1, 359 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, 202 colleges and 2, 000 schools. Saudi money helped finance 16 American mosques four in Canada and others in London, Madrid, Brussels and Geneva, according to a report in an official Saudi weekly, Ain . The total spending, including supplying or training imams and teachers, was “many billions” of Saudi riyals (at a rate of about four to a dollar) the report said. Saudi religious teaching had particular force because it came from the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, the land of Islam’s two holiest places, Mecca and Medina. When Saudi imams arrived in Muslim countries in Asia or Africa, or in Muslim communities in Europe or the Americas, wearing traditional Arabian robes, speaking the language of the Quran — and carrying a generous checkbook — they had automatic credibility. As the 20th century progressed and people of different nationalities and faiths mixed routinely, the puritanical, exclusionary nature of Wahhab’s teachings would become more and more dysfunctional. But the Saudi government would find it extraordinarily difficult to shed or soften its ideology, especially after the landmark year of 1979. In Tehran that year, the Iranian revolution brought to power a radical Shiite government, symbolically challenging Saudi Arabia, the leader of Sunnism, for leadership of global Islam. The declaration of an Islamic Republic escalated the competition between the two major branches of Islam, spurring the Saudis to redouble their efforts to counter Iran and spread Wahhabism around the world. Then, in a stunning strike, a band of 500 Saudi extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca for two weeks, publicly calling Saudi rulers puppets of the West and traitors to true Islam. The rebels were defeated, but leading clerics agreed to back the government only after assurances of support for a crackdown on immodest ways in the kingdom and a more aggressive export of Wahhabism abroad. Finally, at year’s end, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and seized power to prop up a Communist government. It soon faced an insurgent movement of mujahedeen, or holy warriors battling for Islam, which drew fighters from around the world for a battle to expel the occupiers. Throughout the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and the United States worked together to finance the mujahedeen in this great Afghan war, which would revive the notion of noble armed jihad for Muslims worldwide. President Ronald Reagan famously welcomed to the Oval Office a delegation of bearded “Afghan freedom fighters” whose social and theological views were hardly distinguishable from those later embraced by the Taliban. In fact, the United States spent $50 million from 1986 to 1992 on what was called a “jihad literacy” project — printing books for Afghan children and adults to encourage violence against “infidels” like Soviet troops. A language textbook for Pashto speakers, for example, according to a study by Dana Burde, an associate professor at New York University, used “Mujahid,” or fighter of jihad, as the illustration: “My brother is a Mujahid. Afghan Muslims are Mujahedeen. I do jihad together with them. Doing jihad against infidels is our duty. ” One day in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Robert W. Jordan, the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was driving in the kingdom with the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan. The prince pointed to a mosque and said, “I just fired the imam there. ” The man’s preaching had been too militant, he said. Mr. Jordan, a Texas lawyer, said that after the Qaeda attacks, he had stepped up pressure on the Saudi government over its spread of extremism. “I told them: ‘What you teach in your schools and preach in your mosques now is not an internal matter. It affects our national security,’” he said. After years of encouraging and financing a harsh Islam in support of the jihad, the United States had reversed course — gradually during the 1990s and then dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks. But in pressuring Saudi Arabia, American officials would tread lightly, acutely aware of American dependence on Saudi oil and intelligence cooperation. Saudi reform would move at an excruciatingly slow pace. Twelve years after Sept. 11, after years of quiet American complaints about Saudi teachings, a State Department contractor, the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, completed a study of official Saudi textbooks. It reported some progress in cutting back on bigoted and violent content but found that plenty of objectionable material remained. Officials never released the 2013 study, for fear of angering the Saudis. The New York Times obtained it under the Freedom of Information Act. Seventh graders were being taught that “fighting the infidels to elevate the words of Allah” was among the deeds Allah loved the most, the report found, among dozens of passages it found troubling. Tenth graders learned that Muslims who abandoned Islam should be jailed for three days and, if they did not change their minds, “killed for walking away from their true religion. ” Fourth graders read that had been “shown the truth but abandoned it, like the Jews,” or had replaced truth with “ignorance and delusion, like the Christians. ” Some of the books, prepared and distributed by the government, propagated views that were hostile to science, modernity and women’s rights, not to say downright quirky — advocating, for instance, execution for sorcerers and warning against the dangers of the Rotary Club and the Lions Club. (The groups’ intent, said a textbook, “is to achieve the goals of the Zionist movement. ”) The textbooks, or other Saudi teaching materials with similar content, had been distributed in scores of countries, the study found. Textbook reform has continued since the 2013 study, and Saudi officials say they are trying to replace older books distributed overseas. But as the study noted, the schoolbooks were only a modest part of the Saudis’ lavishly funded global export of Wahhabism. In many places, the study said, the largess includes “a school with a Wahhabist faculty (educated in a Wahhabist University) attached to a mosque with a Wahhabist imam, and ultimately controlled by an international Wahhabist educational body. ” This ideological steamroller has landed in diverse places where Muslims of different sects had spent centuries learning to accommodate one another. Sayyed Shah, a Pakistani journalist working on a doctorate in the United States, described the devastating effect on his town, not far from the Afghan border, of the arrival some years ago of a young Pakistani preacher trained in a seminary. Village residents had long held a mélange of Muslim beliefs, he said. “We were Sunni, but our culture, our traditions were a mixture of Shia and Barelvi and Deobandi,” Mr. Shah said, referring to Muslim sects. His family would visit the large Barelvi shrine, and watch their Shiite neighbors as they lashed themselves in a public religious ritual. “We wouldn’t do that ourselves, but we’d hand out sweets and water,” he said. The new preacher, he said, denounced the Barelvi and Shiite beliefs as false and heretical, dividing the community and setting off years of bitter argument. By 2010, Mr. Shah said, “everything had changed. ” Women who had used shawls to cover their hair and face began wearing full burqas. Militants began attacking kiosks where merchants sold secular music CDs. Twice, terrorists used explosives to try to destroy the village’s locally famous shrine. Now, Mr. Shah said, families are divided his cousin, he said, “just wants Saudi religion. ” He said an entire generation had been “indoctrinated” with a rigid, unforgiving creed. “It’s so difficult these days,” he said. “Initially we were on a single path. We just had economic problems, but we were culturally sound. ” He added, “But now it’s very difficult, because some people want Saudi culture to be our culture, and others are opposing that. ” C. Christine Fair, a specialist on Pakistan at Georgetown University, said Mr. Shah’s account was credible. But like many scholars describing the Saudi impact on religion, she said that militancy in Pakistan also had local causes. While Saudi money and teaching have unquestionably been “accelerants,” Pakistan’s sectarian troubles and jihadist violence have deep roots dating to the country’s origins in the partition of India in 1947. “The idea that without the Saudis Pakistan would be Switzerland is ridiculous,” she said. That is the disputed question, of course: how the world would be different without decades of shaping of Islam. Though there is a widespread belief that Saudi influence has contributed to the growth of terrorism, it is rare to find a direct case of cause and effect. For example, in Brussels, the Grand Mosque was built with Saudi money and staffed with Saudi imams. In 2012, according to Saudi diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, one Saudi preacher was removed after Belgian complaints that he was a “true Salafi” who did not accept other schools of Islam. And Brussels’ immigrant neighborhoods, notably Molenbeek, have long been the home of storefront mosques teaching Salafi views. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in November and in Brussels in March were tied to an Islamic State cell in Belgium, the Saudi history was the subject of several news media reports. Yet it was difficult to find any direct link between the bombers and the Saudi legacy in the Belgian capital. Several suspects had petty criminal backgrounds their knowledge of Islam was described by friends as superficial they did not appear to be regulars at any mosque. Though the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blasts, resentment of the treatment of North African immigrant families in Belgium and exposure to Islamic State propaganda, in person or via the internet and social media, appeared to be the major factors motivating the attacks. If there was a Saudi connection, it was highly indirect, perhaps playing out over a generation or longer. Hind Fraihi, a journalist who went underground in the Brussels immigrant neighborhood of Molenbeek in 2005 and wrote a book about it, met imams and found lots of extremist literature written in Saudi Arabia that encouraged “polarization, the sentiment of us against them, the glorification of jihad. ” The recent attackers, Ms. Fraihi said, were motivated by “lots of factors — economic frustration, racism, a generation that feels it has no future. ” But Saudi teaching, she said, “is part of the cocktail. ” Without the Saudi presence over the decades, might a more progressive and accommodating Islam, reflecting immigrants’ Moroccan roots, have taken hold in Brussels? Would young Muslims raised in Belgium have been less susceptible to the stark, violent call of the Islamic State? Conceivably, but the case is impossible to prove. Or consider an utterly different cultural milieu — the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia. The Saudis have sent money for books and teachers for decades, said Sidney Jones, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta. “Over time,” said Ms. Jones, who has visited or lived in Indonesia since the 1970s, the Saudi influence “has contributed to a more conservative, more intolerant atmosphere. ” (President Obama, who lived in Indonesia as a boy, has remarked on the same phenomenon.) She said she believed money from private Saudi donors and foundations was behind campaigns in Indonesia against Shiite and Ahmadi Islam, considered heretical by Wahhabi teaching. Some Indonesian religious vigilantes are she said. But when Ms. Jones studied the approximately 1, 000 people arrested in Indonesia on terrorism charges since 2002, she found only a few — “literally four or five” — with ties to Wahhabi or Salafi institutions. When it comes to violence, she concluded, the Saudi connection is “mostly a red herring. ” In fact, she said, there is a gulf between Indonesian jihadists and Indonesian Salafis who look to Saudi or Yemeni scholars for guidance. The jihadists accuse the Salafis of failing to act on their convictions the Salafis scorn the jihadists as extremists. Whatever the global effects of decades of Saudi proselytizing, it is under greater scrutiny than ever, from outside and inside the kingdom. Saudi leaders’ ideological reform efforts, encompassing textbooks and preaching, amount to a tacit recognition that its religious exports have sometimes backfired. And the kingdom has stepped up an aggressive public relations campaign in the West, hiring American publicists to counter critical news media reports and fashion a reformist image for Saudi leaders. But neither the publicists nor their clients can renounce the strain of Islam on which the Saudi state was built, and old habits sometimes prove difficult to suppress. A prominent cleric, Saad bin Nasser had been stripped of a leadership position by the previous king, Abdullah, for condemning coeducation. King Salman restored Mr. Shethri to the job last year, not long after the cleric had joined the chorus of official voices criticizing the Islamic State. But Mr. Shethri’s reasoning for denouncing the Islamic State suggested the difficulty of change. The group was, he said, “more infidel than Jews and Christians. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — So much for President Obama’s fatherly advice on college. Malia Obama, his older daughter and perhaps the nation’s most scrutinized and college applicant, has opted to attend Harvard University beginning in the fall of 2017, apparently disregarding her parents’ counsel that she need not choose a school with a big name and reputation. The White House announced Malia’s choice, and her decision to take a gap year, on Sunday in a short statement from the first lady’s office, ending a season of speculation and surveillance on her college search process. She will become the latest in a long line of presidential children to attend the highly ranked Ivy League university. The president suggested that, with his own daughter, he had weighed into the national angst over the increasing difficulty of getting into prestigious colleges, and said that he had made it clear there were other options for Malia, whom he has described as a capable, conscientious student who is ready to make her way independently in the world. Last fall, the president said he had told his daughter “not to stress too much” about being accepted to a particular school, adding, “Just because it’s not some famous, fancy school doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get a great education there. ” But in the end, Malia, 17, a daughter of two academic overachievers who both attended law school at Harvard, gravitated to an institution with not only a name, but also plenty of experience hosting — and, to some degree, protecting — the children of some of the world’s most powerful people. “The challenge of being a first child is to be normal within the context of all the scrutiny, and the challenge of everybody around them is to pretend like they’re normal and nothing’s out of the ordinary, which puts an enormous amount of stress on both the kid and the school,” said Gil Troy, a presidential historian at McGill University and the author of “The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s. ” “The larger the institutional ego of the place, the more comfortable you can feel about the ability to cope with that and still have as close to a normal experience as possible. ” Harvard has long been a destination for the children of American and foreign leaders as well as those of celebrities and the ultrawealthy its police force even has a dignitary protection unit. By deferring her start date until 2017, Malia may be maximizing her chances of having an ordinary freshman year, removed from the kind of news media attention and social media chatter her parents have worked to fend off for their daughters throughout Mr. Obama’s time in office. Malia had a taste of what life outside the White House might be like during a college tour last fall, when students posted photographs of her at a Brown University party. “The degree to which every presidential child is half a millisecond away or a snapshot away or an Instagram away from scandal — it’s really kind of unfair,” Mr. Troy said. Once the parent has left office, he added, “the kids can get to at least some level of irrelevance that they absolutely cannot get when they’re still in the White House. ” The gap year will also allow the Obamas to avoid the type of spectacle that heralded the arrival of Chelsea Clinton for her freshman year at Stanford University in 1997. Bill and Hillary Clinton arrived on campus to drop her off with more than 200 reporters in tow. Dozens of Secret Service agents swarmed the scene, investigating parked vehicles and trying unsuccessfully to blend in. When it came time for President George W. Bush’s twin daughters to attend college — Barbara at Yale University and Jenna at the University of Texas at Austin — things were much more recalled Anita McBride, a former chief of staff to Laura Bush. “It was a different time, and there was not this constant focus on where these girls were and what they were doing,” Ms. McBride said. With Malia, she added, “We’ve watched her grow up to a certain degree in the public eye, and people feel it’s their business to know. ” Both the White House and the colleges said to be Malia’s favorites had been barraged with questions in recent days about where she would choose to go. When she accompanied her father on a trip to California last month, speculation raged about whether Malia had tagged along to give Stanford University a final look before committing to go there. Conjecture only grew after a photograph surfaced late Saturday night of Malia wearing a crimson Harvard 2020 . Harvard said little on Sunday beyond confirming that Malia had accepted an offer of admission and had deferred enrollment for a year. But on campus, where students were studying Sunday for final exams, the news was greeted by many with rivalrous pride. Harvard accepted just 5. 2 percent of applicants this year, making it the selective college in the country after Stanford. It is also one of the most expensive, costing more than $60, 000 a year for tuition, room, board and other fees. Sidwell Friends School, the elite Washington prep school where Malia is a senior, typically sends a handful of students to Harvard each year. The list of presidential children who have attended Harvard includes John Quincy Adams and his son, John Adams II Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert the sons of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush, who went to business school there. Malia will quickly be put in touch with that history when she arrives on campus. Freshmen typically live in Harvard Yard, the university’s historic center, and take their meals in Annenberg Hall, a grand Victorian cafeteria lined with portraits and busts of early American leaders. White House officials would not comment on Sunday on how Malia would spend the year until she enrolls. She has spent parts of the past two summers working on television sets in New York and Los Angeles, a path she could continue. First, though, is graduation, which Sidwell holds in early June. Mr. Obama has made it very clear that the speaker at the ceremony will not be him. “Malia is more than ready to leave, but I’m not ready for her to leave,” he said on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” in February. “And I was asked if I would speak at her graduation, and I said, ‘Absolutely not,’ because I’m going to be sitting there with dark glasses, sobbing. ” | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Hillary Clinton criticized Donald Trump for his derogatory comments on women and minorities in her first major speech as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The venue, a Planned Parenthood event, underscored her current focus on rallying the Democratic base rather than appealing to the center. She followed up on two big endorsements, meeting with Senator Elizabeth Warren and having aides begin setting up President Obama’s campaign appearances. _____ 2. Mr. Trump lashed back at Mrs. Clinton and sought to rally evangelical Christians, speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference. Protesters disrupted the proceedings. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, offered an unexpectedly blunt view of Mr. Trump’s failings and left open the possibility of rescinding his endorsement. _____ 3. Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and put itself up for sale. The company faces a $140 million legal judgment from an lawsuit brought by the former wrestler Hulk Hogan, with the financial backing of the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Gawker still plans to appeal. Above, its founder, Nick Denton, after the initial verdict. _____ 4. Thousands of people turned out in Louisville, Ky. for a joyous celebration of the life of Muhammad Ali, the boxing legend and civil rights icon honored around the world. Bill Clinton, Billy Crystal, Bryant Gumbel and Ali’s wife, Lonnie, eulogized him. People in the street chanted “Ali” and threw flowers at his funeral cortege, slapping hands with members of the Ali family and the actor Will Smith. “He dared to love black people at a time when black people had a problem loving themselves,” a minister said. _____ 5. Hockey fans also lost an icon. Gordie Howe, the Detroit Red Wings player who loved the sport so much that he was a grandfather by the time he retired, died Friday at the age of 88. The consummate tough guy, he was beloved in Detroit, where he spent most of his 32 professional seasons. Scotty Bowman, one of hockey’s most successful coaches, once said, “In my estimation, he was the best ever. ” _____ 6. Three officers who served in New York City’s Correction Department were the latest to be convicted in the brutal beating of an inmate, a case that brought to light the pervasive culture of violence on Rikers Island. The district attorney said the convictions “send a clear message that a uniform and a badge do not absolve anyone from committing a crime, and that even an inmate deserves to be treated like a human being. ” _____ 7. Malia Obama graduated from the prestigious Sidwell Friends high school in Washington. But social media appeared to pay more attention to two graduates in Texas, one of them above. The young women were met with support and outrage for declaring themselves to be undocumented immigrants as they left their Texas high schools. One is going to Yale, the other the University of Texas at Austin. _____ 8. The N. B. A. ushered in a hectic sports weekend, with the Golden State Warriors beating the Cleveland Cavaliers, to take a lead in the finals. The L. P. G. A. championship continues in Washington State, where Brooke Henderson held the lead after the first round (NBC and the Golf Channel, check listings for times). And Exaggerator, the Preakness winner, is the early favorite in the Belmont Stakes (post time 6:32 p. m. Eastern, . com). _____ 9. Finally, Noah’s ark suffered a modern calamity. This replica, built by a Dutch carpenter using the biblical description as a blueprint, crashed into a Norwegian Coast Guard patrol in Oslo when the crew towing the wooden vessel lost control. “It is unclear what happened to the 8. 7 million x 2 animals on board,” a city resident tweeted. Have a great weekend. _____ Jonah Bromwich contributed reporting. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
— Ted Carroll (@mediainvestors) October 25, 2016
These numbers must have Democrat rival Hillary Clinton worried sicker than she already is. Advertisement - story continues below
The mainstream media would love to have everyone believing that all black Americans hate Trump, but that’s just not true .
Trump has gained the support of many who understand that Democrats have never actually followed through on their promises. They have little to show for supporting liberals but more strife and tension from a black president who promised hope and change.
Moreover, President Barack Obama has done more to increase racial tension in this country than anyone could have guessed. Many black voters understand that, and they do not see Clinton as someone they can trust to change it.
Trump has suggested that Democrats have done nothing to help black communities and has pointed out that they often suffer the most from a breakdown of law and order. He has challenged all Americans to think outside the box and vote for someone different — someone who might actually bring positive changes, such as jobs , to their neighborhoods. Advertisement - story continues below | 0 |
US Intelligence Sees Attacks Likely Ahead of Tuesday Vote by Jason Ditz, November 04, 2016 Share This
US intelligence officials have reportedly warned law enforcement around the country of the potential for multiple al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on Monday, aimed to coincide with the day before the US election. The reports were described as “ possibly legitimate and concerning. ”
Details are still scant, but the intelligence has singled out New York, Virginia, and Texas as the mostly likely targets. Even then, they offered no details on potential locations, saying al-Qaeda and its affiliates are eager to regain their relevance.
A NYPD spokesman briefed on the matter said that the threats “ lack specificity ,” however local police around the country were said to have been warned that polling places are considered “attractive targets” for both organized and homegrown terror attacks.
Of course, saying that any upcoming event is a potential “attractive target” is not unusual these days, and hardly a significant holiday goes by in the US where warnings and briefings about potential attacks are not heavily publicized.
The Monday warning offers some unusual details, however, as generally one would think the day of the election itself would be the target, when more people are queuing up for the vote. An attack the day before the election would, however, cast a rather dramatic pall over the entire matter. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
Wedding season is here, and many brides and grooms will find themselves in the best shape of their lives. Through a combination of adrenaline, dieting and exercise, they will walk the aisle as slim and buff as they will most likely ever be. That is, some say, unless they get divorced. For a lot of people, the divorce process seems to kick up stress hormones and motivations quite similar to those swirling around the body and psyche when a marriage ceremony draws near. “It goes to your guts, literally,” said Julie Worden, a yoga teacher in Brooklyn who divorced in 2015. “It’s almost the same feeling as falling in love. It’s the butterflies. ” Ms. Worden, 43, a former dancer, lost 15 pounds during her divorce. “The body goes through this emotional stress, higher levels of cortisol,” she said. “There were times I couldn’t eat because I couldn’t break food down. ” Something similar happened to Astrid Swan, 34, a fitness expert in Los Angeles. “One day I put on a pair of jeggings and they were baggy,” she said. At first she was thrilled, she recalled, because as a former model who was always being told to lose weight, she could “now walk the runways in Milan. ” But as a trainer, she knew that her low weight, and the pain involved with how she achieved it, was unsustainable. “I took some time to celebrate, and then the next month I was like, ‘O. K. this is a problem. ’” Alison Rona, 53, an interior designer and architectural consultant who lives in Brooklyn, also felt conflicted about her new figure. It pleased her, as a sort of “bonus,” she recalled, and yet she felt uninspired to do anything about it, like buy new clothes or date. “It felt a little false, that inside I was still hurting so much. Physically I had a body to show off but I didn’t have the confidence, because I was still so distraught by what had happened. ” Often called “the divorce diet,” which most recently got a celebrity by the country singer Blake Shelton, who slimmed down after he split from the singer Miranda Lambert, the regimen is really nothing more than stress, rage, sadness, and (for some) a need to control any part of their lives — through diet, exercise, or both — that hasn’t fallen into complete chaos. Rachel Sussman, a relationship expert and author of “The Breakup Bible,” said she sees upward of 70 percent of people going through divorce or breakups growing extremely thin. “Then when they start feeling better, at least 50 percent of those people want to keep that weight off,” she said. James J. Sexton, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan and Rockland County, N. Y. estimated that about 80 percent of his clients have lost weight, of them through exercise, and the others because they weren’t eating or were depressed. When Mr. Sexton went through his own divorce at age 36, he turned to intense exercise, practicing Bikram yoga six days a week. “It became something that stabilized me,” he said. “When the ground has fallen out from beneath you, where you sleep, your children are gone, where you live, exercise is a form of religion, there’s a routine and predictability to it,” he said. “In a scary world and in a scary time of your life, it’s wonderful to have it. ” “You can drink and you can take Xanax or you can join SoulCycle,” he said. Those with compromised metabolisms or who eat their feelings may not have much sympathy for skinnier people under divorce duress, but losing one’s appetite can turn into something serious. Ms. Sussman warns of the divorce diet becoming a gateway to eating disorders, and that those going through divorce need calories and protein to keep their cognitive abilities functioning when they are negotiating important legal issues. Ms. Swan, the fitness expert, said she was so disoriented by her divorce that she had to force herself to eat. “I had to remind myself, ‘You’re going to go and you’re going to get that sandwich,’” she said. But she also believes that exercise, even for those who are underweight or who have lost their appetites, is the best cure. “After a workout, you are craving a replenishment, your muscles know you need it,” she said, “not to mention endorphins, your time, your focus. ” Ms. Worden, the dancer, got certified in Kundalini yoga to get her strength back and to improve her she said. She now teachers a class specifically for divorced women called Sustaining the Groove to “clear out the nervous system of the yucks,” she said. Already thin, Ms. Worden gained back the 15 pounds she had lost within a year. But she said that many of her students had lost weight in her class and were happy to keep it off. “You’re so concerned with clearing out the rage that it happens without you even knowing it,” she said. Mark Fisher, who owns a gym in midtown Manhattan, agrees that exercise is crucial during “this time of disruption,” but warns against exercising too hard, which can compound the stress even further. “Most people would benefit from having movement that the body doesn’t perceive as a wartime scenario,” like yoga, he said. “We tend to like these workouts that take us to the limit, but these other softer workouts calm the body, the nervous system. ” Going through a divorce, like getting married, is often about entering a new life phase. And many women, said Cynthia Sass, a nutritionist and author in Manhattan, take that idea and run with it. “In many marriages, spouses become each other’s partners in crime by eating unhealthily together, including patterns like splitting pizzas, sharing pints of ice cream, snacking while watching TV,” she said. Ms. Sass said that many of her clients have told her that they have no desire to return to their old, unhealthy ways once they are single again. “Divorce can be a real opportunity for positive, healthy transformation,” she said. Jessica Rojas, a buyer for Estée Lauder, certainly sees it that way. After a rocky divorce in 2013 (“I would rather lose a limb than go through that again”) Ms. Rojas started Snatched in Six Weeks, an exercise and nutrition program at Mr. Fisher’s gym. “I could barely do a on my knees,” she said about her state. Mr. Fisher’s community of “misfits, nerds, outcasts, and Broadway geeks” cheered her on, she said, and after Snatched ended, she continued to work out there, enjoying the positive energy at the gym. Within a few months, she said, she went from a “flabby size 8 with a corporate commuter look” to a size 2. “That was the one thing I could have control over at that moment,” Ms. Rojas said. “I was in a fight for my life. ” “I’m going to get hot, I’m going to get the guy I want, I’m going to get the things I want out of life,” she recalled herself thinking. It worked. Last fall she locked eyes with Tim Kosakowski, 40, an old friend who works in wildlife management, at their 20th high school reunion in Easton, Pa. She fell for him immediately. On June 25, Ms. Rojas’s 40th birthday, she and Mr. Kosakowski were married under a gazebo at his home, which they now share, in Washington Township, N. J. | 1 |
.@SenateMajLdr on Gorsuch’s concerns over Trump’s attacks on the judiciary: I happen to agree with what Gorsuch said https: . During an interview aired on Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Senate Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell ( ) said that whether or not he needs to use the nuclear option to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court “will depend on the Democrats. ” When asked if he would have to use the nuclear option to get Gorsuch confirmed, McConnell answered, “That will depend on the Democrats. ” He’ll be confirmed. the issue for your audience, the issue you’re raising is, will we have to get cloture, in other words, 60 votes to advance the nomination? Senator [Jeff] Merkley ( ) announced we were going have to do that before he even knew who the nominee was. So, my assumption is, we’ll have to get 60 votes. ” McConnell further vowed that Gorsuch will get 60 votes, and that “In any event, Gorsuch is going to be confirmed. ” McConnell also praised Gorsuch, and stated that he agrees with Gorsuch’s concerns over President Trump’s “ judge” denunciation of a ruling against his immigration executive order. Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
He said it best, of course: He was “the astronaut of boxing” who “handcuffed lightning,” threw “thunder in jail” the dazzling warrior “with iron fists and a beautiful tan” “the greatest fighter that ever will be” who could “run through a hurricane” and not get wet. But Muhammad Ali shook the world with more than his electrifying speed and power in the ring. He also shook the world with the power of his convictions: his determination to stand up to the rules of the Jim Crow South, and to assert his freedom to invent himself — “I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want. ” “I am America,” he proudly declared, decades before the Black Lives Matter movement. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky my name, not yours my religion, not yours my goals, my own get used to me. ” He stood with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for freedom and social justice. And he stood up against the Vietnam War, refusing to be drafted in 1967 on religious grounds as a conscientious objector — a decision that would cost him his boxing title, years of his career at the peak of his powers, tens of millions of dollars in prize money and endorsements, and for many years, his popularity. These acts of conscience are part of the reason that older fans, including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who eulogized Ali, were so deeply affected by his death. As his wife, Lonnie, noted, he also died at a moment when “we face uncertainty in a world and divisions at home as to who we are as a people. ” It’s a moment when racism has infected the presidential race, when many politicians lack the courage to stand up for their own convictions, when radical jihadists have been trying to subvert the peaceful vision of Islam embraced by Ali. Ali’s willingness to speak truth to power outside the ring and his embodiment of many of the political and cultural changes that rocked America in the 1960s are also reasons so many fans spent the weeks after his death watching old videos and reading books about him, of which there are a multiplying number. Ali was a novelistic figure: not only an incandescent athlete dancing under the lights but also a showman, poet, philosopher, performance artist, statesman and pioneer, a man compared to Whitman, Robeson, Malcolm X, Ellington and Chaplin. Writers were magnetized by his contradictions: the G. O. A. T. (Greatest of All Time) who vanquished some of the baddest men on the planet but became one of the world’s most revered humanitarians a deeply religious man who loved practical jokes and practically invented trash talk “a radical even in a radical’s time,” as President Obama put it, who became so beloved by Americans across the political spectrum that he was featured in a DC Comics book in which he teamed up with Superman to save the world. He is best remembered today for his boastful doggerel (“Ali’s got a left, Ali’s got a if he hits you once, you’re asleep for the night”) but he also wrote more serious verse: a poem about the Attica prison riots read, “Better far from all I To die fighting to be What more fitting end could be?” Over the years, Ali has also inspired an uncommon amount of stellar writing, from Norman Mailer’s classic account of the boxer’s stunning victory over George Foreman in Zaire in 1974 to David Remnick’s “King of the World,” a powerful account of Ali’s emergence as a transformative figure in American politics and culture. There are also a plethora of essays about Ali by such gifted writers as Joyce Carol Oates, George Plimpton, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Roger Kahn, many of which can be found in a terrific anthology, “The Muhammad Ali Reader” (1998). The newest Ali books, recently rushed into print, hardly rise to the top of the stack. “Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest” is a hodgepodge of Thomas Hauser’s many essays — lackluster in comparison with the author’s valuable 1991 oral history, “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. ” Tim Shanahan’s “Running With the Champ,” an old friend’s reminiscences, has its share of touching moments, but proves less revealing than the 2004 book (“The Soul of a Butterfly”) written by Ali with his daughter Hana Yasmeen Ali — an elliptical, collagelike memoir that offered a philosophical look back at his life. Both these books give glimpses of Ali’s dignified, struggle with Parkinson’s, the disease that cruelly robbed him of the dazzling physical and verbal agility of his youth — a struggle that could not help but remind older readers of the passage of time and their own mortality, and boxing’s existential proximity to death (or what Ali once called “the near room” after his war of attrition with Joe Frazier in Manila in 1975). As for Sports Illustrated’s “Muhammad Ali, ” it’s a pretty souvenir of Ali’s life in the ring, with excerpts from that magazine’s voluminous archives and some of the most dramatic sports photos ever taken. They are photos that capture the boxer popping and smoking and throwing lightning bolts in the ring — testaments to what the fighter José Torres called “his prodigious magic. ” The archetypal photo of a victorious Ali, standing over the fallen body of Sonny Liston. A violent action shot of him catching George Foreman with a hard right in the Rumble in the Jungle. And one of him locked in a grim with an exhausted Frazier in the “Thrilla in Manila. ” There are also images of a skinny, Cassius Clay learning to box, and a solemn Ali, surrounded by reporters, explaining his opposition to the Vietnam War. These new books will help younger readers understand just what a long strange trip Ali’s life has been, and how much social and cultural landscape he traversed. “Muhammad Ali was America — he will always be America,” Mr. Obama wrote. “He was our most basic freedoms — religion, speech, spirit. He embodied our ability to invent ourselves. His life spoke to our original sin of slavery and discrimination, and the journey he traveled helped shock our conscience and lead us on a roundabout path toward salvation. ” These books also prompt us to remember that perseverance was one of the consistent melodies in Ali’s life: coming back after his exile to reclaim the world championship in 1974 by toughing it out against Foreman in Zaire coming back to beat Frazier twice, after losing their first arduous matchup and coming back against Leon Spinks in 1978 to win the world heavyweight championship for a third time. As Ali once observed: “Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them — a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill. ” When Cassius Clay was growing up in Louisville, Ky. the town was segregated, and even when he returned home from the 1960 Olympics with a gold medal around his neck, he was turned away from a luncheonette when he walked in and ordered a glass of juice. He would return to the Olympics decades later in Atlanta in 1996 as its final torchbearer. By then, he’d become one of the most revered men in the world — “a universal soldier for our common humanity,” in the words of Bill Clinton, who like many in the audience that day, wept watching Ali light the caldron, his hand trembling violently from Parkinson’s disease. This month, Louisville — where a young Cassius Clay heard calls of “nigger go home” if he ventured beyond his neighborhood — turned out to pay tribute to Ali, as his funeral motorcade made its way through the city. Mourners showered his car with flowers and rose petals and all along the route, The Louisville reported, lawns had been mowed and driveways freshly swept — out of respect for the Greatest on his final journey. | 1 |
on November 6, 2016 8:03 am ·
Saturday Night Live has helped bring quite a bit of levity to this otherwise horrific election year but in the final episode before the election, before we as a nation go to the polls and decide if we want to be extraordinary or “deplorable,” the cast of Saturday Night Live could not help but drop the act and get real with America.
It began as it normally does, with Alec Baldwin’s masterful Donald Trump character and Kate McKinnon’s excellent portrayal of Hillary Clinton (if she spent all day every day mainlining a dangerous mixture of sugar and caffeine).
“I never use emails,” Trump says in the cold opener. “I use a very private, very secure site where one can write whatever they want to and no one can read it It’s called Twitter.”
After he is informed that everyone can see his tweets, “Trump” replies:
“Really? And I’m still in this thing? America you must really hate this lady.”
After a scathing rebuke of the media’s decision to ignore Trump’s cozy relationship with Putin, the KKK, and the FBI and instead focus on something as meaningless as Hillary Clinton’s emails, something magical happened: McKinnon and Baldwin dropped the facade and got serious.
“I’m sorry, Kate. I just hate yelling all this stuff at you like this,” Baldwin says. “I just feel gross all the time about this. Don’t you all feel gross?” he added, addressing the audience.
McKinnon agrees and the two embark on a “friendship montage” through the city before returning to the stage. Then they dropped perhaps the most important message you will hear this election year. “None of this would have mattered if you don’t vote,” Baldwin says.
“We can’t tell you who to vote for, but on Tuesday we all get a chance to choose what kind of country we want to live in,” McKinnon finishes.
They’re right. | 0 |
GREENVILLE, S. C. — Seton Hall guard Khadeen Carrington hit his first when he was 11. It was in a gym on Paerdegat Avenue in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. It was a midrange jump shot. His team was down by 1 and won by 1 and, he said, it turned basketball into his duty, not just a game. “It set me up,” he said. “It puts some fuel in it for you where I took basketball more serious, and that’s what I want to do, play basketball. I remember that day going to the park and working on my game, and I kept working and working. ” How long did that feeling from his first last? “I still have it,” Carrington said. The is the heart of the N. C. A. A. tournament. It’s a hallmark play, and everyone has a favorite. Lorenzo Charles. Tate George. Tyus Edney. Christian Laettner. If the shot takes down a favorite (Bryce Drew of Valparaiso, 1998) or delivers a championship (Kris Jenkins of Villanova last year) the celebration is a little louder, the memory a little more enduring. For players, though, draining a is a benchmark, no matter how young they are. And the setting does not have to be the grand stage of the N. C. A. A. tournament. Arkansas guard Daryl Macon was 14, a freshman at Parkview High School in Little Rock, when he hit a to send a game into triple overtime. He was not a starter, and he did not even play in that third overtime. But he said he leaned on that moment throughout his high school career. “I was just as a freshman,” Macon said. “I had my doubts whether I was going to be a player or not. I made that shot and I remember thinking: Maybe I have something. Maybe I have what it takes. “That shot kept me going. Anytime I felt like giving up in high school because I wasn’t getting recruited, I remembered that . ” Macon went to Holmes Community College and grew into a standout guard, then joined the Razorbacks’ program this season. On Jan. 24, he had his own moment when he made three free throws with 1. 6 seconds left to deliver a win at Vanderbilt. “The floor was shaking under my feet because we were on the road,” Macon said. “I said: ‘Look at the goal, look at the goal. Find tunnel vision. ’” Not all are the same, of course. Players interviewed here all insisted that the spontaneous dribble and shoot was easier than play stopping and emotions getting a chance to build ahead of free throws. “It gives you too much time to think,” Carrington said. But the dogma of the is pretty simple: Do not think, because that is when pressure replaces instinct. Seton Hall junior Desi Rodriguez had his moment at age 12, while he was in middle school in the Bronx. He made a layup to give his team a victory. “I started taking basketball more serious from there,” Rodriguez said. “I felt I was good at it. I felt I was getting better. A moment like that wakes you up a little. That was my only one. ” But what of the player who misses the ? Princeton’s Devin Cannady had an open that would have lifted the Tigers over Notre Dame in the first round on Thursday. The shot was similar to one he had once made to win a high school game. But this one clanged off the rim and the Irish won, . “I didn’t think about a March Madness moment,” Cannady told reporters. “It was a good look. It’s a shot I’ve taken before. But the ball didn’t fall like I wanted it to. ” Duke’s Jayson Tatum also remembers a that didn’t fall, during a playoff game when he was a high school sophomore. His team’s season ended with the miss. “That was a tough one to miss because you have to wait until the next year,” Tatum said. “But it’s just one game. It doesn’t define your career. You keep shooting. I was just 15. I have a lot of basketball to go. ” Sometimes the vanquished have to live with a for a lot longer than that. It is well known that North Carolina guard Nate Britt lives in the same house in Upper Marlboro, Md. with Villanova’s Jenkins. Britt’s parents are Jenkins’s legal guardians. And it was Jenkins who took down Britt and North Carolina at the buzzer in last year’s national championship game in Houston. When he came home from school last summer, Britt found that his parents had commemorated the moment by putting up pictures of the winning shot near where the family eat their meals. “There is a picture on the wall of the shot,” Britt said. “I don’t eat at my table anymore, partially because of that. ” | 1 |
Actor Woody Harrelson is almost as famous for his outspoken advocacy of marijuana as he is for his movie roles, but now, after 30 years of advocacy, Harrelson is swearing off pot. [In a new interview, the Hunger Games star revealed that his pot smoking days are over. Harrelson, 55, told Vulture that he stopped smoking pot a year ago. “I am a party animal,” the Oscar nominee said. “But on the other hand, I haven’t … I’m now extremely moderate, and … I actually stopped smoking pot almost a year ago. ” The interviewer noted that he, too, had “a problem” with pot saying that it “messed with his head” and made him “less productive. ” Harrelson agreed to a degree with that characterization, saying, “Yeah, that was a little bit of my issue. Just 30 solid years of just partying too f***ing hard. ” This might shock some of the actor’s fans. After all, Harrelson has been a longtime fan of pot. So much so that he has publicly supported the marijuana organization NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) has served on the organization’s board, and even once applied to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Hawaii. Perhaps realizing he was bucking years of advocacy, Harrelson was quick to add that he is still a supporter of pot. “I don’t have a problem at all with smoking. I think it’s great. I think it’s a great drug, in terms of … Even cops say that the side effect is euphoria. Or the … what do you call it? … The effect of it is euphoria,” he said. “But when you’re doing it all the time, it just becomes … Well, you know. I feel like it was keeping me from being emotionally available. I really don’t want this interview to turn into a whole thing about that. ” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
A dollar to be made and all I got was a quarter. Sad. | 0 |
Poverty Rose in 96% of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency & U.S. Near Bottom in Public ‘Confidence in Elections’ Only Mexico Scores Lower Among OECD Countries Poverty Rose in 96% of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency O n November 3rd, Morning Consult’s Jon Reid bannered, “Poverty on the Rise in Nearly All House Districts” and he reported that, “A Brookings Institution study , released less than a week before the election, shows that the number of people living in poverty has increased in 96 percent of congressional districts between 2000 and 2010-2014.”
COVER IMAGE: The Great American Dream. A Vision common in the 1950s propaganda. That finding fits along with others, such as that the economic ‘recovery’ after Barack Obama came into the White House in 2009, went virtually entirely to the very rich. .. According to the top experts on wealth-inequality in the United States, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, American wealth-inequality soared faster during 2003-2013 than ever since the period 1923-1928, right before the Great Crash of 1929. Their study “Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913” , published in the May 2016 Quarterly Journal of Economics , reported that ever since the remilitarization of the U.S. from the 2003 invasion of Iraq onward (and continuing under Obama, with boosts to NATO, and invasions such as of Libya in 2011), the percentage of total wealth owned by the richest .1% of American families (those families whose net worth was $111 million or higher) rose from 15% of the total in 2003, to 22% of the total in 2013, and this means that the percentage going to the lower 99.9% declined from 85% down to 78% during that time. .. America’s soaring inequality during the George W. Bush Presidency continued unaffected by the 2009 change of Presidential Administrations.
.. The dream is now a cruel joke for most Americans, all due to their political ignorance, a treacherous media, and the runaway criminality they have allowed in their political and corporate classes. In fact: whereas Bush’s stock-market plunge in 2006-2008 hit the richest the hardest, Obama’s coming into office restored their lost wealth rapidly, while the wealth of the bottom 90% of the U.S. population flatlined throughout his Presidency. The Obama economic recovery was no recovery at all for the bottom 90% of Americans. Not just wealth but personal income also soared for the super-rich under Obama. The “Share of income earned by top 0.1% wealth holders” soared throughout Obama’s Presidency, at least up through 2012, which is the latest figure shown there for that. So: at least the bottom 90% of U.S. families have experienced none of the Obama economic recovery; what ‘recovery’ from the ‘recession’ there is, went only to the very rich. .. Findings such as those are consistent with, and might help to explain, the finding in the new Brookings study, that 96% of House districts have experienced increased poverty under Obama. The nation’s poor have gotten political rhetoric, but not much else, and the middle class also have received no net benefit, under Obama. U.S. Near Bottom in Public ‘Confidence in Elections’ Only Mexico Scores Lower Among OECD Countries Here are the figures, as emailed by Gallup on November 2nd, and soon to be published as part of the “Gallup World Poll 2016”: Confidence in Elections Among OECD Countries Finland 89% | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia used his executive power on Friday to restore voting rights to more than 200, 000 convicted felons, circumventing the legislature. The action effectively overturns a Civil provision in the state’s Constitution aimed, he said, at disenfranchising . The sweeping order, in a swing state that could play a role in deciding the November presidential election, will enable all felons who have served their prison time and finished parole or probation to register to vote. Nearly half are a core constituency of Democrats, Mr. McAuliffe’s political party. Amid intensifying national attention over harsh sentencing policies that have disproportionately affected governors and legislatures around the nation have been debating — and often fighting over — moves to restore voting rights for convicted felons. Virginia imposes especially harsh restrictions, barring felons from voting for life. In Kentucky, Gov. Matt Bevin, a newly elected Republican, recently overturned an order enacted by his Democratic predecessor that was similar to the one Mr. McAuliffe signed Friday. In Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, vetoed a measure to restore voting rights to convicted felons, but Democrats in the state legislature overrode him in February and an estimated 44, 000 former prisoners who are on probation can now register to vote. “There’s no question that we’ve had a horrible history in voting rights as relates to — we should remedy it,” Mr. McAuliffe said in an interview Thursday, previewing the announcement he made on the steps of Virginia’s Capitol, just yards from where President Abraham Lincoln once addressed freed slaves. “We should do it as soon as we possibly can. ” Republicans in the Virginia Legislature have resisted measures to expand voting rights for convicted felons, and Mr. McAuliffe’s action, which he said was justified under an expansive legal interpretation of his executive clemency authority, provoked an immediate backlash. Virginia Republicans issued a statement Friday accusing the governor of “political opportunism” and “a transparent effort to win votes. ” “Those who have paid their debts to society should be allowed full participation in society,” said the statement from the party chairman, John Whitbeck. “But there are limits. ” He said Mr. McAuliffe was wrong to issue a blanket restoration of rights, even to those who “committed heinous acts of violence. ” The order includes those convicted of violent crimes, including murder and rape. There is no way to know how many of the newly eligible voters in Virginia will register. “My message is going to be that I have now done my part,” Mr. McAuliffe said. Nationally, an estimated 5. 85 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of felony convictions, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington research organizations, which says one in five in Virginia cannot vote. Only two states, Maine and Vermont, have no voting restrictions on felons Virginia is among four — the others are Kentucky, Florida and Iowa — that have the harshest restrictions. Friday’s shift in Virginia is part of a national trend toward restoring voter rights to felons, based in part on the hope that it will aid former prisoners’ into society. Over the last two decades about 20 states have acted to ease their restrictions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. In Kentucky, Mr. Bevin, who took office in November, promptly overturned an executive order issued by his predecessor, Steven L. Beshear, just before he left office. Then, last week, Mr. Bevin signed into law a less expansive measure, allowing felons to petition judges to vacate their convictions, which would enable them to vote. Previous governors in Florida and Iowa took executive action to ease their lifetime bans, but in each case, a subsequent governor restored the tough rules. Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, said Mr. McAuliffe’s decision would have lasting consequences because it will remain in effect at least until January 2018, when the governor leaves office. “This will be the single most significant action on disenfranchisement that we’ve ever seen from a governor,” Mr. Mauer said, “and it’s noteworthy that it’s coming in the middle of this term, not the day before he leaves office. So there may be some political heat but clearly he’s willing to take that on, which is quite admirable. ” Myrna Pérez, director of a voting rights project at the Brennan Center, said Mr. McAuliffe’s move was particularly important because Virginia has had such restrictive laws on voting by felons. Still, she said,“Compared to the rest of the country, this is a very middle of the road policy. ’’ Ms. Pérez said a number of states already had less restrictive policies than the one announced by Mr. McAuliffe. Fourteen states allow felons to vote after their prison terms are completed even while they remain on parole or probation. Advocates who have been working with the Virginia governor say they are planning to fan out into Richmond communities Friday to start registering people. Experts say with the stroke of his pen, Mr. McAuliffe has allowed convicted felons to begin registering to vote, and that their voting rights cannot be revoked — even if a new governor rescinds the order for future released prisoners. But the move led to accusations that the governor was playing politics he is a longtime friend of — and for — Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee for president, and former President Bill Clinton. In the interview, Mr. McAuliffe said that he was not acting for political reasons, and that few people outside his immediate staff knew of his plan. He said he did not consult with Mrs. Clinton or her campaign before making the decision. The executive order builds on steps the governor had already taken to restore voting rights to 18, 000 Virginians since the beginning of his term, and he said he believed his authority to issue the decision was “ironclad. ” Prof. A. E. Dick Howard of the University of Virginia School of Law, the principal draftsman of a revised Constitution adopted by Virginia in 1971, agreed, and said the governor had “ample authority. ” But Professor Howard, who advised Mr. McAuliffe on the issue, said the move might well be challenged in court. The most likely argument, he said, is that the governor cannot restore voting rights to an entire class of people all at once. Virginia’s Constitution has prohibited felons from voting since the Civil War the restrictions were expanded in 1902, as part of a package that included poll taxes and literacy tests. In researching the provisions, advisers to the governor turned up a 1906 report that quoted Carter Glass, a Virginia state senator, as saying they would “eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than five years, so that in no single county of the Commonwealth will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government. ” Mr. McAuliffe, who took office in 2014 and campaigned to restore voting rights to felons, said that he viewed disenfranchisement as “a remnant of the poll tax” and that he had been “trying to figure out what more I can possibly do. ” The governor’s action Friday will not apply to felons released in the future his aides say Mr. McAuliffe intends to issue similar orders on a monthly basis to cover people as they are released. “People have served their time and done their probation,” Mr. McAuliffe said. “I want you back in society. I want you feeling good about yourself. I want you voting, getting a job, paying taxes. ’’ | 1 |
If you are reading this hunched over your desk or smartphone, take this moment to loosen up your neck. Move it up and down. Now side to side. Roll it around clockwise and counterclockwise. Now retract it into your shell. Oh wait, you can’t do that — you are not a turtle. But have you ever wondered how these reptiles evolved to have such an interesting trick? Scientists have, and now after studying the cervical bones of a turtle fossil, a team of researchers thinks that most turtles developed the ability first as a way to spring their head forward quickly to snatch prey, rather than as a means of protection, as was previously thought. The ability further evolved in some turtles to become a crucial part of their defenses. The researchers published their study Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. The earliest known turtle ancestors were unable to retract their necks, but today’s modern species can. To understand turtle necks, however, you must first understand the two main types of turtles: cryptodires and pleurodires. Both turtle groups can retract their necks, but they do it differently. Cryptodires include tortoises as well as most turtles: box turtles, sea turtles and alligator snapping turtles. They retract their necks straight back into their shells by folding the muscles vertically. Pleurodires include species that are mostly found in South America, Australia and Africa, like the matamata and turtles. They bend their muscles horizontally to pull their necks back to the side and tuck it next to their shoulder. Jérémy Anquetin, a paleontologist from the Jurassica Museum in Switzerland and the lead author, and his colleagues studied a turtle fossil that had some strange characteristics. The turtle, known as Platychelys oberndorferi, was from the Late Jurassic period and lived in what is today Germany and Switzerland. From its shell and skeleton the team could clearly tell that it belonged to the pleurodira group. But the shape of its two cervical bones suggested that it pulled its neck back vertically as cryptodires do, not horizontally. The neck also appeared to be unable to fully fold into the shell. “Why did it have this neck retraction mechanism? This turtle is very peculiar,” Dr. Anquetin said. “Our fossil cannot retract it completely. It brings no value for protection, so we had to find an explanation for that. ” The team homed in on the creature’s other features for clues. Its appearance was similar to modern turtles, suggesting that it was an ambush predator like the matamata turtle or the common snapping turtle. The two modern species are distantly related, but they hunt using similar tactics. They both lurk among the plants that shroud the floors of ponds, swamps and shallow lakes. Once an unsuspecting fish gets close enough, they strike. “We can expect that our turtle was behaving the same way,” Dr. Anquetin said. He and his team report that the neck mechanisms seen in their extinct turtle and in cryptodires is an example of convergent evolution, meaning that both P. oberndorferi and cryptodires evolved the ability independently of each other because of the evolutionary advantages that it offered them in their environments. The method of retracting their necks straight back allowed them to rapidly shoot out their heads and catch darting prey more easily. The researchers acknowledge that their hypothesis needs further testing and that it does not offer an explanation for why pleurodira turtles evolved to pull their necks in sideways. James Parham, an assistant professor of geological sciences at California State University, Fullerton, who has done research on turtles and lizards but was not involved in the study, said in an email the paper showed that the evolution of neck retraction in early turtles was more complex than the binary of folding the neck to the side versus bending it in vertically that we have ascribed to the reptiles today. He added that the team did a good job showing the similarities between the fossil turtle and ambush turtles, but he agreed that the authors’ hypothesis needed further study. “They set the stage for some interesting new studies and force us to look at the evolution of these fossils in an entirely new light,” he said. | 1 |
Black Mirror prepara un capítulo sobre el día en que tu madre se instaló WhatsApp EL PROTAGONISTA RECIBE EL MENSAJE "OLA CARIÑO TEGNO WASAP" Y SE DESATA LA TRAGEDIA Whatsapp
El director de la serie “Black Mirror”, Charlie Brooker, está preparando un capítulo sobre un futuro distópico en el que tu madre se abre una cuenta en WhatsApp. Una vez más, Brooker vuelve a enfrentar al espectador a un escenario posible que se convierte en escalofriante por la cercanía con nuestra realidad.
¿Qué pasaría si un día recibes un WhatsApp que dice “ola cariño tegno wasap”? Este es el punto de partida de “No me he sentado en todo el día”, el capítulo que relata un drama cada vez más común: las madres y las nuevas tecnologías como nexo de unión.
A partir de aquí, llega un incesante goteo de mensajes, a cual más terrorífico. “Oye que no contetas o que? Esto no funcion ”. “Haber si vienes a verme que parece que no tengas madr ”. Y, finalmente, el texto que desencadena la histeria en el protagonista, es decir, tú: “Van a cerrar WhatsApp. Reenvía este mensaje a todos tus contactos para que tu cuenta no sea desactivada. Va en serio, lo han dicho en El País”.
“El reto es construir un universo agobiante y del que es imposible escapar. La madre mandando memes absurdos que ya habías visto hace dos meses, vídeos de bebés de familiares cuyo nombre has olvidado y que agotan tu tarifa de datos, fotos de comida…”, explica Brooker.
Por si esto fuera poco, la serie se ambientará en Navidad y la trama principal girará alrededor del grupo familiar “Cena de Nochebuena”. | 0 |
The sole Navy SEAL veteran congressman told Breitbart News the special warfare community prefers not to discuss operations — such as the raid in which Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens was killed — but President Donald Trump’s salute to his widow Carryn Owens was an important event for the community and the nation. [“It was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen,” said Rep. Scott Taylor (R. .) who, with the of former congressman Ryan Zinke as the Interior Secretary, becomes the only Navy SEAL veteran serving in Congress. “I was just blown away,” he said. “She was obviously very strong, and obviously, my community is very proud of her. ” In his first address to a joint session of Congress, Trump singled out Owens as she sat next to the president’s older daughter Ivanka Trump. “Ryan died as he lived,” the president said as the standing ovation from the House floor and the packed galleries crescendoed for two minutes and the widow dressed in black alternated between looking to the president and the crowd and then up to Heaven. “Ryan’s legacy is etched into eternity. ” Taylor said what Americans witnessed in the House of Representatives Tuesday evening was just a sample of the cost paid by less than one percent of the population. “That’s a family that was committed, and they believed in what they were doing,” he said. “It’s a horrible thing, but it is also good for the nation to see that, because most of the nation has not joined into the sacrifice,” he said. The congressman said he was with the president at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, for the Feb. 1 ceremonial receiving of the remains of the fallen SEAL. “Everybody was quiet,” he said. “The president was right behind me, and I heard him say to himself: ‘Man, this is really tough.’ That’s so important. Not just that he was there, but that he understands the costs as well, because of his decisions to send people into harm’s way. ” Political opponents of the president have called the Yemen raid a “botched raid” and used it as an example of Trump’s failure as the . “Our community would prefer for it not to be a political football,” Taylor said. “I think it’s a shame — honestly — that some folks are trying to use it politically,” he said. “It is bad for the legacy of Ryan and his family. ” Taylor said he traveled in and out of Yemen after his Navy career ended, and it is a troubled and complicated part of the world. Because of the terrorists, such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as criminal elements in Yemen, it is worthy of select missions, but he would oppose a invasion. The congressman said he has no issues with negative statements made in the press by the fallen SEAL’s father, Bill Owens. Gold Star parents and Gold Star family members have the right to say whatever they want to say, given the price they paid, he said. Taylor spoke to Breitbart News moments after the president finished. It was the best speech he has heard the president give, he said. “He discussed unity, not only within the nation but within the parties,” he added. It was excellent the way Trump called people to come together to do big things, he said. “That is why I am here, and that’s what my Democratic peers in my freshman class want to do, too. I just hope the Democratic leadership wants the same thing. ” | 1 |
At 10:45 p. m. on Monday night, in a office above the Ed Sullivan Theater, Stephen Colbert was talking so rapidly that he might as well have been speaking in tongues. Gazing at a monitor, this host of “The Late Show” on CBS was rapidly reading through dozens of jokes that his writers had been composing throughout the first presidential debate between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton. The goal: to trim minutes from a monologue Mr. Colbert would be performing live in less than an hour. In phrases that may have sounded like requests but were really demands, Mr. Colbert called out to his team of producers: Could he get a video package of all the times Mr. Trump said “wrong”? Could they cut the word “terror” from the phrase “panic and terror”? Could they shelve a joke about “Interrupting Donald Trump” for another night? There was no time to Mr. Colbert. “Unless there’s a clean hit they think is undeniable, the playground is closed,” he announced to the room at 10:48 p. m. Mr. Colbert and his colleagues were hoping to capitalize on the debate’s colossal viewership and help reverse the fortunes of “The Late Show,” which after a year on the air still trails Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” on NBC and has sometimes finished third behind ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The “Late Show” team was also trying to sustain the momentum from its live episodes during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in July. In those two weeks, Mr. Colbert and his program showed a nimbleness and bite that he often exhibited on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” — an improvement on his lumbering, uncertain first months on “The Late Show. ” Among other course corrections, Mr. Colbert has brought in a dedicated showrunner and he has addressed a longstanding identity crisis by reconciling with his conservative character from “The Colbert Report,” a version of whom he has dusted off and resumed playing. Now he has to imbue “The Late Show,” on any other night of the week when the future of the Republic is not hanging in the balance, with the same sense of immediacy that has propelled him in his live broadcasts. And he must still find the harmony between his trademark brand of pointed political commentary and the broader demands of a mainstream talk show. When he started at CBS, Mr. Colbert said in an interview last week: “People were watching me learn to play a new instrument in public. Now I really don’t care and it’s so much more fun. “If I do things that are like the old show,” he continued, “it was a good show. ” Yet the host is capable of doing something his famously arrogant alter ego never would: admit mistakes. He believes he has identified what he did wrong: cutting himself off from the persona, tone and formats that he established on Comedy Central, for fear that they would overshadow the authentic self that he wanted his CBS viewers to see. As Mr. Colbert said, riffing on a favorite Elvis Costello lyric, “I tried so hard to be myself that I kept on fading away. ” His realization is that he can embrace elements of “The Colbert Report” and still be himself. “It is all me,” he said. “Of course it’s me. I thought of the character. It’s my humor. ” He remains a highly host, to judge from a Monday evening rehearsal at the Ed Sullivan Theater. As he ran through monologue jokes while bobbing back and forth on a scooter, Mr. Colbert asked for changes to graphics of Gennifer Flowers and the debate stage, and called out his bandleader, Jon Batiste, for munching on veggie chips at his piano. (“Is there a glacier toppling into the Arctic Ocean?” Mr. Colbert asked.) Any time Mr. Colbert hit a line he wasn’t fond of, he would call out to the writers and producers in the theater, “Let’s beat that. ” If, a year ago, the assumption was that Mr. Colbert would simply glide into the time slot and theater last occupied by David Letterman and dominate the landscape, that did not happen. For months, his “Late Show” never shook off its jitters, nor established a breakout recurring comedy bit. Though his ratings saw a small spike, to about 2. 5 million viewers a night during the live convention episodes, they generally lag well below “The Tonight Show,” the category leader, which averages more than 3. 6 million. (According to preliminary ratings information on Tuesday, the “Late Show” was Mr. Colbert’s strongest performance with viewers since and tied “The Tonight Show” in overnight metered markets.) Mr. Colbert acknowledged in the interview that he had taken on too much. Was it — “Hubris?” Mr. Colbert said before the question was finished. “Yeah. A little bit. You think you know what you’re doing, until you do something different. ” In April, “The Late Show” brought in Chris Licht, an executive producer of “CBS This Morning,” as a showrunner, a role that did not exist at that program. As Mr. Licht explained in an interview, his principal task is to “systematically remove things from Stephen’s plate. ” “Anything that doesn’t involve him thinking creatively and enjoying his performance — anything that gets in the way of that, I take,” he added. Mr. Licht has a vision, too, for “The Late Show” to stand out in a crowded field — “It’s us versus the Jimmys,” he said — and to make topical humor one of its defining features. “The Late Show” will do two more live episodes on Oct. 4 and Oct. 19, following the and third presidential debates. That path became a little clearer over the summer, when Mr. Colbert’s postconvention episodes were lifted by comedy segments that went viral, like a sketch starring Laura Benanti as a pouting, plagiarizing Melania Trump and a blistering monologue from Jon Stewart, Mr. Colbert’s former boss at “The Daily Show,” criticizing the Fox News host Sean Hannity. (Mr. Stewart is also an executive producer of “The Late Show. ”) Mr. Colbert revived his old “Stephen Colbert” character, in a way (he says the original character is dead, and he is now playing that man’s identical twin cousin) and added a recurring segment called “Werd,” which is awfully similar to “The Word,” a segment on his previous show. (When asked what Comedy Central thought about him using material originally created for that network, Mr. Colbert said, “I have been advised not to answer your question. ” He smiled and added, “It’s funny ’cause it’s true. ” Comedy Central declined to comment.) There is no certain formula for sustaining this adrenaline from night to night, but Mr. Colbert said the solution rested on his being his self, by “being gobsmacked by the news and walking out and going, ‘Can you” — here he restrained himself from saying a naughty word — “believe what this person just said? ’” At a time when Mr. Fallon has been widely criticized for his chummy treatment of Mr. Trump, Mr. Colbert’s unvarnished political perspective could prove crucial in distinguishing himself from his network competitors. Without commenting directly on Mr. Fallon’s program, Mr. Colbert said, “I’ve surrendered to my natural instincts, and to how I actually feel on a daily basis. ” Besides, Mr. Colbert felt sufficiently regretful about his own interview with Mr. Trump, at the start of his tenure on “The Late Show” in September 2015. “I tried being gracious and pointed at the same time, and got almost nothing out of him,” Mr. Colbert said. “It was actually boring, because he wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Being nice to a guy who isn’t nice to other people, it doesn’t serve you that much. ” Mr. Licht said that topical comedy should be the “bread and butter” of “The Late Show. ” But growing its audience means the show must reach beyond the crowd that already tunes in for Mr. Colbert’s political satire, and that remains a work in progress. “You have to be as funny, as relevant and as entertaining on a night when there’s no news, as when you’re in the middle of the biggest story of the day,” Mr. Licht said. “That’s what we’re striving for. ” What Mr. Colbert said he had learned from his live shows is not to be precious about his material, and to favor timely responses instead of stale, overthought takes. “Leave nothing on the table,” he said. “Talk about it immediately. If it happens at 5 o’clock and the show tapes at 5:30, we will have it on the show. ” Mr. Colbert’s opening monologue on Monday was mostly cleansed of the jokes in the rehearsal, replaced with bits about Mr. Trump’s persistent sniffles and his frequent invocations of “law and order” and Mrs. Clinton’s state of readiness. (“My new nickname for her is Preparation H,” Mr. Colbert said. “It’s a compliment. ”) There was only one other topical comedy segment, a prepared sketch in which Mr. Colbert interviewed Rob Lowe, who played the character of an undecided voter. Still, Mr. Colbert indicated that he had learned some lessons about being open to future possibilities. As he said, only about his approach to this broadcast, “I will do anything as long as I have enough time to read it through once. ” | 1 |
TEHRAN — The hunger strike, a pressure tactic of used by political protesters around the world, is forcing Iran’s powerful judiciary to reconsider the conditions of at least one of its inmates after several started fasts that are leading to widespread support on social media. The exact number of hunger strikers in Iranian prisons is unclear, but according to human rights organizations and reports in local media outlets, seven inmates, sentenced for crimes against the state, have refused to eat for intervals ranging from several weeks to more than two months. Their backgrounds vary, but they include an antigovernment protester, a children’s rights activist, an ayatollah, a spiritual leader and a Lebanese computer technology specialist convicted of espionage. It is not possible to verify their conditions because of restrictions preventing foreign reporters from visiting Iranian prisons without permission. While some members of Iran’s Parliament have said on their social media accounts that they are investigating the reports, other officials have dismissed the hunger strikes as plots organized by foreign opposition groups. Conservative critics further argue that the extensive support for the hunger strikers seen on social media networks is an exaggeration created by automated messages. One of the inmates, Arash Sadeghi, stopped his strike last Tuesday, after the judiciary met his demand to temporarily release his imprisoned wife. She was transferred back to prison on Saturday, said the couple’s lawyer, Amir Raeesian. Refusing to eat to protest conditions in prison is illegal in Iran, but is not uncommon. However, the number of inmates now simultaneously fasting, in combination with a large social media campaign, is unusual in the country. It also providing a publicity platform for those in prison, Iranian analysts say. “The success is clearly motivating others to join,” said Nader Karimi Joni, a journalist close to the reformist factions in Iran. Two of the hunger strikers, Mr. Sadeghi and Ali Shariati, have been convicted of crimes against the state — charges that by Western standards would make them political prisoners. They went for nearly 70 days without food, advocates say, surviving on water and salts. Mr. Sadeghi received a sentence last year for offenses like “provoking protest gatherings,” “conniving with counterrevolutionaries against the system,” “making propaganda against the system,” “insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei” and “insulting the sharia,” his lawyer, Mr. Raeesian, said. The “system” is an Iranian ideological term for the country’s political establishment: a coterie of clerics, commanders and revolutionary comrades. Mr. Sadeghi’s sentence is lengthy even by Iranian standards, and reflects what rights activists regard as a new trend in which relatively unknown offenders receive long sentences, often as a warning to others. He began his fast on Oct. 24 after his wife, Golrokh started serving a prison term for an unpublished story found on her private computer about a woman watching a film about a stoning and burning a Quran in anger afterward. She was convicted on blasphemy charges. Mr. Shariati, 30, is serving a sentence for his involvement in a 2014 protest supporting the female victims of acid attacks. He is demanding to be released. Their ordeals have galvanized supporters to highlight the hunger strikes on messaging platforms, using hashtags like #savearash and #sosali. Both became worldwide trending topics on Twitter. The use of the hunger strike in Iran has in some ways put the government in an embarrassing position, as it exalted the Northern Ireland hunger strikers who once vexed the British. The embassy of Britain in Tehran is on Bobby Sands Street, renamed for the Provisional I. R. A. member who was imprisoned in Northern Ireland and died in 1981 after refusing to eat for 66 days. An Iranian journalist, Reza Dehaki, a supporter of his country’s hunger strikes, noted that incongruity. “In the regulations for Iranian prisons, hunger strike is against the law, but we have a street named after #Bobby_Sands the most renowned person who went on hunger strike! #contradiction #savearash,” Mr. Dehaki wrote on his Twitter account. Last Monday, a group of around 50 activists, ignoring the dangers that come with organizing unauthorized protests in Iran, gathered in front of Tehran’s Evin prison, where Mr. Sadeghi and Mrs. are being held, and called for their release. A day later, Iran’s judiciary capitulated to a crucial demand of Mr. Sadeghi. Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, Tehran’s prosecutor, announced that Mrs. would be given a leave from prison. Mr. Sadeghi ended his fast, after 72 days. “He was brought to a hospital Saturday, after four days,” said his lawyer, Mr. Raeesian. The judiciary, dominated by Iran’s is engaged in a barely veiled battle with the government of President Hassan Rouhani, which is seeking to limit its powers. Some say the hunger strikes have been organized with Mr. Rouhani’s tacit support to embarrass the judiciary. Last month Mr. Rouhani released what he called a citizenship rights charter that outlined the personal freedoms of Iranians. “The government, by giving out such charters, is adding fuel to the fire of the hunger strikes,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, a political analyst. “These are all opportunities for outsiders to apply new pressure on Iran. ” The other hunger strikers are in prisons scattered across the country. Information on their conditions is leaking out through human rights organizations and local opposition websites. One of the inmates, Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Nekounam, was reported to have been hospitalized on Saturday after 15 days of fasting, according to his website. He is accused of having relations with “spirits,” but supporters say he has been critical of the religious establishment. A children’s rights activist, Saeed Shirzad, 27, has vowed not to eat for at least a month and supporters say he had his lips sewn closed. An open letter with his name on it, published on a Kurdish website, said he was protesting the lack of basic rights for prisoners. Mehdi Kukhian and Karim Chaichian, imprisoned for “spreading propaganda” over the internet, have been on hunger strike for the last three weeks, according to Oyan News, a website promoting the Azari language that the Iranian authorities have sought to block. Another hunger striker, a spiritual healer named Mohammad Ali Taheri, is accused of leading a cult, his supporters say. The Lebanese man sentenced to 10 years for spying, Nizar Zakka, started a hunger strike on Dec. 8, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a group based in New York. For inmates, refusing to eat is sometimes the only way to be heard, one prominent Iranian human rights lawyer said. “To do a hunger strike is a last resort for inmates and political prisoners, who are arrested at midnight, interrogated in unknown jails, under horrible pressures, while their families witnessing the ordeals from afar, what can they do but go on hunger strike?” said the lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was imprisoned herself for several years. “It is incredibly hard, but in some cases it leads to success. ” In 2012, while serving a sentence, Mrs. Sotoudeh went on a hunger strike for 49 days after authorities refused to allow her daughter to leave the country. She fell into fragile health, drinking only water mixed with salts and sugar. Her weight dropped to 95 pounds. It was the second time that Ms. Sotoudeh had stopped eating. She declared her first hunger strike in 2010, after her family was forbidden to visit or make phone calls. In that showdown, the authorities capitulated after four weeks, allowing her husband and two children to visit weekly. Mrs. Sotoudeh, who was given the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament in 2012, said she was haunted by the deprivations of those protests, even though she prevailed. “I am over 50 years old and I have sustained several diseases, suffered pains for different reasons physically,” she said. “But I should say the hunger strike was the most painful experience which I have suffered in my life and I will never forget it. ” | 1 |
President Donald Trump welcomed a group of American manufacturing companies to the White House on Friday, announcing the results a new survey from the National Association of Manufacturers. [The survey showed that 93 percent of manufacturers had a positive outlook of the future of their industry up from 56 percent in the previous year. The survey includes 13, 000 manufacturing members of the association, The news marked a record high for the survey, prompting Trump to claim a “new surge of optimism” for more jobs in the United States, thanks to many of his policies. Jay Timmons, of the National Association of Manufacturers, said that the optimism centered on Trump’s focus on lowering taxes, cutting regulations, and investing in infrastructure. The survey also showed a jump from 26 percent of members saying that the country was on the right track before the inauguration to over 60 percent in the new survey. “We appreciate your committment to investment and job creation in manufacturing and we’re going to deliver,” Timmons said. Several leaders of American manufacturers joined Trump for the event, highlighting the jobs they had created in the United States. “We’re removing regulations and lifting the burdens on American industry, like I would say have never been lifted before,” Trump said. He noted that a lot of manufacturing jobs had been moved to places like Mexico and China. Trump previewed his upcoming meeting with the President of China at his estate in . “It’s going to be something, I think, very important, very special, I look very much forward to meeting him and the delegation and we’ll see what happens,” he said. | 1 |
A leading US senator: US Supporting War in Syria
A leading US senator said the war in Syria would have been over by now if the US had put an end to its intervention when Russia entered the war-ravaged country.
“If the United States had just stayed out of it at that point, the war would be over by now; people would be rebuilding, refugees would be returning back to Syria, but the United States rushed anti-Tank missiles, and we used these so-called moderate rebels as a conduit to supply al-Nusra Front (also known as Fatah al-Sham Front), which is al-Qaeda in Syria,” republican member of the Virginia State in US Senate, Richard Hayden Black said in an exclusive interview with Press TV.
“If we were not supporting the war in Syria, I believe that the Syrians, combined with their allied forces from Iran, Lebanon and Russia… would move very steadily and restore the borders of Syria.”
The senate member, who visited Syria in April, refused to distinguish between militants and terrorists fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying, the two are “thoroughly integrated.”
“They really are one and the same, they’re part of the same army,” he said, citing a US defense intelligence agency’s investigation in 2013, which showed Washington’s ties with the terror group.
The outspoken state senator referred to plans by the CIA to transfer arms from Libya to Turkey and from there to Syria to supply the militants, noting that the move “evolved into an indiscriminate program of supplying all militant groups, including specifically ISIL and al-Qaeda.”
“We do it indirectly because it’s unlawful to do it directly,” he said, adding that the US keeps “extremely violent organizations… off the terrorist watch list because these are the agents that take our weapons and then distribute them to ISIL and al-Qaeda.”
In response to a question on why Iran and Russia are portrayed as the “bad guys,” while they are the ones really fighting terrorism there, as put recently by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Black said the Republican candidate has a “clear understanding of what’s happening over there.”
“Sometimes, his rhetoric has to match the political mood of the moment… but I know a number of his advisers and they believe that our determination to topple the government in Syria is suicidal, that it threatens not only the entire Middle East but literally the entire world.”
He further warned that the US itself could be “threatened,” arguing that, “if Syria falls, it will be dominated by some al-Qaeda-related organization; Lebanon will fall; Jordan will fall and the entire area will be destabilized.”
The Vietnam war veteran also elaborated on his personal definition of the Middle East “axis of evil,” naming Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and “particularly” Turkey over their support for terrorism.
“Probably, three quarters of the rebels are not Syrian at all, they are mercenaries recruited by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” he asserted, describing the three countries as “the primary force behind the terrorist movement.”
“Turkey has invaded Iraq and Syria with heavy military forces. Turkey has really become a rogue nation,” he added, referring to a 1923 treaty that set the border between Turkey and Greece, saying that was even being questioned by President Rececp Tayyip Erdogan.
“And now you see this emerging threat against Western Europe by Turkey,” he noted, further adding that Erdogan “has made it clear that he looks to resurrection of the Ottoman Empire.”
“He has become more and more aggressive; he’s crushed the military, the free press; every powerful institution of the Turkish government has come under his iron fist and he’s now a total dictator. He’s a man who has said that he wants the constitution amended so that he will have power similar to those of Adolf Hilter… This is our great ally; we’re allied with a man who would be Hitler.”
He also blasted Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, “where women are not allowed to walk out in the front yard to pick up the newspaper without a man’s permission; they can’t drive a car!”
“Somehow, this is part of the liberalization that we seek to impose on the Middle East,” he said ironically, calling it “bizarre.”
He also praised the resistance against the Saudi aggression by the people of Yemen, saying, “God bless them! The Yemenis are giving the Saudis a bloody nose,” despite being a “tiny little, poor nation.”
“I think the world recognizes that Saudi Arabia has just embarked in massive war crimes in Yemen,” he said, voicing regret over the US support for the monarchy.
“We don’t pay too much attention to them while engaged in war crimes because they’re our good allies,” he said, concluding that Washington is on a “suicidal course of action.”
“Saudi money pays the very top politicians in many Western nations. And they really have co-opted the American military into acting as mercenaries for Wahhabism.”Black referred to the Western media’s portrayal of Iran as a supporter of terrorism, saying, “The fact of the matter is that if you really look at global terrorism, it all emanates from Saudi Arabia.”
He exemplified various terrorists attack, including the 9/11, the Boston bombing, and the Brussels attacks, noting that they are all a “reflection of the Wahhabi philosophy.” | 0 |
Trump Supporters Get Last Laugh After Hillary Disrespects Them On Radio Show Posted on October 27, 2016 by Rebecca Diserio in Politics Share This
Hillary Clinton is once again pandering to the black community as she’s often done, changing who she is depending on who she is talking to. However, just yesterday, she made a wrong move, hitting Donald Trump’s supporters as she told a hip-hop radio show that Trump and his supporters need to do one thing. Unfortunately for her, she quickly learned that she can’t talk trash and get away with it anymore.
Hillary showed up on some hip-hop radio station in New York yesterday, and the interview was pure propaganda as she tried to pander to the black community. Hillary even agreed that she gets her fashion look from Death Row Records’ Suge Knight and Snoop Dogg.
Wherever she gets it, that look is hideous and horrible. Not to mention, Death Row Records was made famous by a song titled “F*ck The Police.” That seems rather fitting since Hillary doesn’t care about cops. She just needs black voters to show up on election day. Hillary agreed with a black radio host that she gets her look from Death Row records, a known cop-hating label that produced the song “F*ck The Police.”
After talking about her failed fashion sense, she had to get her jab in on Donald Trump, but she took it further than she should have. The Breakfast Club radio host told Hillary that the whole country is divided and that she has to bring it back together. This sparked Hillary to launch her attack, saying:
“ What Trump has done is to make it possible for people who have racist and sexist and all kinds of prejudices and bigotry to put them right out there ,” Hillary said. “But what he’s done really [is] unleashed a lot of darkness and divisiveness.”
We all know the only game Hillary’s got going is this thinly veiled narrative that Trump supporters are racist, sexist, and violent. We are “deplorables,” a remark she purposefully made to describe Trump supporters because it is her campaign plan.
Unfortunately for her, Trump supporters aren’t stupid, and those who are very active on social media fought back at her false rhetoric. For hours after her comments on that radio show, the hashtag # HillarysBullies was trending worldwide.
Trump supporters made a mockery out of Hillary , sending a truth bomb straight at her. It’s Hillary who is purposely dividing the country with her rhetoric. It’s Hillary who hired paid thugs to beat up Trump supporters. Even Mike Pence got into the act, and below is his tweet to Hillary: "I'm Hillary Clinton & I approve this message." #HillarysBullies were bought & paid for. pic.twitter.com/onahYVpGlw
— Deplorable VP (@MikePenceVP) October 27, 2016
Hillary is losing this election. Every indication outside the mainstream press shows that there’s little to no enthusiasm for her campaign. Record-breaking numbers of Trump supporters have been seen across the country where early voting is allowed, and even today, Hillary needed Michelle Obama to beg North Carolinians to bring out people to vote.
With only days left, Trump supporters slapped Hillary hard on social media, and all she’s got is a weak campaign slogan and the lie that Trump’s a racist and so are his deplorable supporters. From her small rally sizes, it’s clear, Americans smell her bullcrap and no one really wants to hear that screeching voice or see her win. | 0 |
Email
Hillary Clinton personally ordered a consultant to use a nonprofit group to troll the Trump campaign with a ‘Donald Duck’ mascot, according to the Democratic operatives who say they arranged it with a nonprofit organization.
When Breitbart News’ Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, confronted Mook about Creamer and his firm in the spin room after the third presidential debate, Mook claimed: “They’ve never worked for our campaign.” When asked if Clinton had ever discussed the controversial political operations with Creamer directly, Mook replied: “I don’t think so.”
Now, however, O’Keefe and Project Veritas have released video of Creamer claiming that Clinton directly approved one of his more bizarre plans — an effort to attract media attention and incite violence by dressing an activist in a Donald Duck costume and sending that activist into Trump events, emphasizing the argument that Trump was “ducking” releasing his tax returns.
The action, if true, would be a black-letter violation of federal election law, which prohibits presidential campaigns from coordinating activities with outside groups that can collect unlimited ‘dark money’ from contributors – and don’t pay taxes on what they collect.
Project Veritas Action video footage shows Robert Creamer, a convicted felon who was forced out of his executive role at the liberal consultancy Democracy Partners, saying Clinton chose the duck stunt.
‘In the end, it was the candidate, Hillary Clinton, the future president of the United States, who wanted ducks on the ground. So by God we would get ducks on the ground,’ Creamer says in the video. | 0 |
Two prominent north Texas Democrats are sounding the alarm on the threat of a concern: voter fraud. [Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings (D) and State Representative Eric Johnson ( 100) submitted a letter Thursday to Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni after public concerns continued to mount about scores of reports involving a potential absentee voter fraud scheme. “According to reports, dozens of voters received ballots they never requested,” the letter states, which “suggests the possibility of a coordinated effort to benefit a candidate or candidates in the upcoming Dallas City Council elections. ” As Breitbart Texas previously reported, the episode began when West pastor James Armstrong alerted local media and officials alike that some of his congregants came forward with evidence that absentee ballots were arriving at their respective homes without first asking for them, as Texas law requires. “It’s just a travesty that we are dealing with this,” Armstrong told NBC DFW at the time. “Seniors who have lived in this neighborhood all of their life and are now being taken advantage of. ” Another community resident, Alice Washington, 81, lodged similar complaints with the County via her niece, Barbara Roberson. “I said, ‘Would you please send me a copy of that application because I’d like to see her signature’,” Roberson told WFAA at the time. “Someone forged her signature,” said Roberson after review of the paperwork. In the week following, dozens of similar complaints have been made, according to Mayor Rawlings’ joint letter. The duo also notes a possible pattern in recent elections: What’s more startling is that this is the second time in less than a year that we have heard reports of irregularities in West Dallas. In November, media reports indicated someone fraudulently mailed ballots for dozens of elderly or dead voters. Previous Breitbart Texas coverage noted where election integrity experts explained root causes for the latest episode and steps Texas can take to fix the matter going forward: Election integrity advocates have argued that absentee ballot problems can sometimes be rooted in poor maintenance of the underlying voter records. The Public Interest Legal Foundation noted in response to the Dallas episode that Texas should consider tightening procedures for requesting absentee ballots. “As long as you have a name and address of another voter, you’re good to go … You don’t even need to give a birth date,” a group spokesperson told Lifezette. Analysts say that requiring absentee ballot applications to include driver’s license or other identification numbers could cut down impersonation attempts like claimed by the Washington family. Recent fraud conspiracies prosecuted in southern Texas point to a possible example for how elderly voters are preyed upon through the mail voting system. After an unsolicited ballot arrives, an illicit political operative would visit the recipient’s home, offering “assistance” with completing and returning the form with candidates in mind. One recent Texas case involved a U. S. Postal Service delivery man taking bribes in trade for allowing “politiqueras” to follow his truck, indicating which homes received ballots. The mailman also allegedly took part in campaigning for local Democrat candidates while in uniform as well. Short of legislative reforms, Mayor Rawlings and Rep. Johnson were left to implore to “devote additional resources to verify the integrity of each ballot in Dallas. ” Rawlings Johnson Re Mail Ballots by BreitbartTexas on Scribd, Logan Churchwell is a founding editor of the Breitbart Texas team. You can follow him on Twitter @LCChurchwell. He also serves as the communications director for the Public Interest Legal Foundation. | 1 |
Home / Badge Abuse / Leaked Soros Memo Reveals Potential Plan to Use Black Lives Matter to Federalize US Police Leaked Soros Memo Reveals Potential Plan to Use Black Lives Matter to Federalize US Police Matt Agorist August 31, 2016 97 Comments
Memos and documents published by DCLeaks continue shedding light on billionaire globalist George Soros and his progressive organization, Open Society Foundations (OSF). Due to their poor digital curation, however, the leaks are hard to comb through which is leading to the information slowly trickling out. The latest of the documents reveals the billionaire’s attempt to organize a “national movement” to create a federalized police force.
The document shows that OSF saw the killings of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and Freddie Gray as an opportunity to implement this mission of federal police guidelines. OSF, according to the documents, then held a meeting titled, “Police Reform: How to Take Advantage of the Crisis of the Moment and Drive Long-Term Institutional Change in Police-Community Practice.”
The memo further documents that Soros-financed groups and personalities influenced a Task Force on 21st Century Policing, created by President Obama. Last may, the task force released a final report consisting of 60 recommendations recommending protocol to local departments on how to modify policing practices.
The information is from a 61-page report of an Open Society U.S. Programs Board Meeting that took place in New York City in May of last year.
States the board meeting document:
The federal government is seeking philanthropic support for a number of its initiatives. In addition to seeking support to advance the implementation of the recommendations of the Presidential Taskforce, the White House recently launched the Policing Data Initiative to explore how best to use data and technology to build trust, voice, and solutions to improve community policing. The Department of Justice recently selected the first six cities to host pilot sites for the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, which was launched last fall to help repair and strengthen the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve by exploring strategies intended to enhance procedural justice, reduce implicit bias, and support racial reconciliation.
We are gaining a better understanding of these efforts in order to determine how best USP can use this moment to create a national movement. We have already had a set of preliminary conversations with about a dozen key stakeholders and will undertake a field scan to map the areas of work currently underway to advance police reform, including an assessment of the redundancies and gaps in work, and opportunities for collaboration. As we proceed, we will engage the funder network we helped to establish, the Executive Alliance on Men and Boys of Color, which now includes forty foundations.
U.S. Programs (USP) is a part of OSF with the stated mission of working to further a vibrant democratic society in which all people can meaningfully participate in its civic, economic, and political life.
According to the above excerpt, USP was thinking of ways to capitalize on police killings to ‘create a national movement’ to implement their agenda.
The think tank also raises the question of how to properly steer the ostensible ‘grassroots’ organizations, such as Black Lives Matter, to achieve USP goals.
The events of the past several months have understandably led to a wide range of activities, including a variety of advocacy efforts, to respond to the significant challenges in policing that have been exposed and the opportunity to promote meaningful and lasting change. For example, organized under the banner of the Civil Rights Coalition on Police Reform, organizations like the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, LCCHR, and LDF are advocating for federal reform efforts with a particular emphasis on data collection and transparency and, as noted above, 35 effecting federal funding streams. A variety of other national advocacy organizations, including grantees Advancement Project, PolicyLink, the Center for Popular Democracy and the ACLU are working to provide advocates with toolkits and resources to help their organizing efforts. Locally based groups such as the Ohio Student Association, the Organization for Black Struggle, the Asian Law Caucus, and the ACLU of New Jersey, to name a few, are advocating for specific reforms at the city and state levels. Another layer of grassroots and youth-oriented groups like Freedom Side, Ferguson Action, Black Lives Matter and Million Hoodies Movement for Justice are also advocating for specific reforms. The range of efforts underway raises a number of questions and concerns about capacity, the need for coordination and the appropriate prioritization of policy objectives, among others, which we will discuss in the policing portion of the meeting.
While the intentions of reforming police in America seem noble, the very idea of a Soros-led initiative is chilling.
Another memo, leaked earlier this month, showed the billionaire was potentially funding the Black Lives Matter movement , to the tune of $650,000. Now, as today’s memo shows, we know why.
As the Free Thought Project has pointed out many times before, Soros has been exposed literally manipulating the world.
Earlier this month, in an email found within the WikiLeaks’ Hillary Clinton archive, with the subject ‘Unrest in Albania,’ Soros makes clear to Clinton that “two things need to be done urgently.” He then directs the Secretary of State to “bring the full weight of the international community to bear on Prime Minister Berisha” and “appoint a senior European official as mediator.” Revealing the influence he wields within the corridors of power, Soros then provides Secretary of State Clinton with three names from which to choose. Unsurprisingly, Clinton acquiesced and chose one of the officials recommended by Soros — Miroslav Lajcak.
This is standard operating procedure for Soros. Anyone familiar with the history of the Soros Open Society Foundations in Eastern Europe and around the world since the late 1980s, will know that his supposedly philanthropic “democracy-building” projects in Poland, Russia, or Ukraine in the 1990s allowed Soros the businessman to literally plunder the former communist countries wealth, according to the New Eastern Outlook .
Soros-affiliated organizations are deeply connected to numerous color revolutions, such as the Arab Spring, and a number of other uprisings across the world. They have been intimately involved in the coup that took place in Ukraine, and subsequent ratcheting up of Cold War tensions with Russia.
As these leaked memos and emails prove, the United States is nothing more than one of Soros’ pawns.
While Americans remain oblivious and argue over straw men fed to them by the mainstream media, the police state is growing — both here and abroad. As the citizens are promised ‘reform’ the only thing that actually changes are the puppets in marble buildings. Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. <a class=”twitter-follow-button” href=”https://twitter.com/MattAgorist” data-show-count=”false” data-size=”large”>Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter</a> and now on <a href=”https://steemit.com/ Share Google + Real Truth stings
I think its time to end local policing for profit. The police force should exist to protect and serve, not to fill the county coffers. We need direct oversight of the police, the end of the power of their union to protect bad cops and the end of corrupt local government. The downside is the federal government is so big and spread out that they can barely keep track of our military assets. We can count on them to institute a public facing, qualifications search for candidates. Randy Pitts
Do you really not understand that what you just said is exactly what this article is exposing?!?!?!
Soros has indoctrinated you fools into favoring a federal police!!! Real Truth stings
do you have a better idea? we have localized corruption in every state. if you have another way to achieve this, feel free to discuss it. billdeserthills
Right, mostly because obama has been doing everything he can to crap on the police. By your thinking the TSA is doing a fantastic job, huh? Real Truth stings
you aren’t looking at the upsides that are possible. billdeserthills
Because there are no ‘upsides’ except for upside yo head, when those even stupider federalized cops hit you pto
Replace local corruption with centralized corruption… At least now some places aren’t corrupt. billdeserthills
Citizen Oversight cole
Soris is not favoring a national police, he wabts rules and restrictions put on the police before we devolve into a police state, and we already half way there, he is funding BLM because they are at the forefront of bringing police misconduct to lightt, how do you people not see this. Razedbywolvs
I don’t like police misconduct. But i don’t burn down the city yelling kill the Jews to accomplish it. Tracy Lund
What a stupid thing to say. Razedbywolvs
Does that make you pro burring down the city to stop the 1% who all happen to be Ashkenazi Jews? AZ Patriot
What are you talking about ? What do Jews have to do with this ? You and some other people are on this are now blaming the Jews for the mess we are in. How stupid Razedbywolvs
Well that kind of happens when you use a lobby’s to buy off every politician in a foreign country, and are a big contributing factor to what appears to be a 3000 year old blood feud in the ME. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KMVhb57RqI AZ Patriot
Typical Jew hater there really is no hope for you or your soul . Why not worry about the people who are willing to blow you up ? Razedbywolvs
Would being opposed to a special interest group of Saudi buying off American politicians make me a Arab hater? Thats stupid. I don’t hate Jews but i really wounder how you all got brainwashed as bad as North Koreans. I really don’t think Israel has a problem blowing us up. They sure as hell don’t care about us enough to give a heads up when they know in advance that 2000 Americans are going to die. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/23bbf79b4dfbe4c1798c7f00e5225d1d41c1c799c58f13bea0dab4bae52b80fb.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/da89e01c99866c5f96482293178464b32f339551dc8aec652bbd2d11c75d9b5b.png s AZ Patriot
So you are one of those 9/11 crazies who believe the Jews knew about this and that the Bushes did this to get oil. I think you and that other loon Rosie O’Donnell make a one team of nuts Razedbywolvs
Are you one of those crazies that doesn’t believe official FBI documents? I figured you would of been trigged by the brainwashing comment. but you skipped right over it and pointed at one the few non Jews in Hollywood as the problem. You have to have a short list for that? especially since Rosie O’Donnell hasn’t been relevant for 15 years if ever. My tin foil hat is itching. The Immigrant Absorption Ministry.. I think your I.D.F. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OyUoGUV7b8 AZ Patriot
This tape means nothing and you havent shown any shred of FBI evidence. You are a crazy 9/11 loon Razedbywolvs
I guess the difference between loon’s and sane people is we read the dam reports. You should try it. AZ Patriot
You read into things that arent there. Go away loser Razedbywolvs
Go away from were. Do you think im inside your computer or something? billdeserthills
Sure cause soros is such an honorable guy, huh?? Why I bet you think he does this for the good of humanity, just so he can get that real special place in heaven that he so richly deserves, don’t You?? Prince
Local police should not exist…period! steve yates
Who will protect us from the criminals? Prince
The 2nd. Amendment. Jo
Prince- the second amendment doesn’t matter if there is no government and police to ENFORCE it. DUH….. Prince
Duh Jo, We The People enforce it with guns! Doodlee Pigvirus
check out 6 ideas for a cop-free world. Carolyn
I think you can make a list of crimes in one night that Chicago will commit just for a starter. Carolyn
Mr Prince. When he gets robbed, assaulted in anyway, he wants to call Razedbywolvs to help him because no one else will. Get real. The constitution states that the States should govern themselves not let the government do it. Nishi
I have never been so naive as to think that smart and engaged people refrained from brainstorming solutions together according to their shared beliefs. Nor have I ever thought that would be a good idea. cole
Tell this so called journalist that he can’t complain about Soros trying to change the direction of our police force before it turns into a police state, then at the end of the article try himself to tell us we need to be on the watchout for a police state shusei
right? there is no evil plan in these memos.. I don’t know much about Soros if he is evil guy or good guy, but, least I can say is this article is BS, and many people in here have no ability to read, understand and think… Prince
Somebody really needs to put a bullet in Soros’ head! Despicable REM1875 ✓certified
Don’t leave out his son. Greg Geitner
Now it’s easy to see why soros was paying them to act out Ricialove
As a black woman, here’s what I want to know…with all that money that BLM receives….what the heck do they do?!?! anna miller
George Soros is a criminal subversive who has created havoc on a global level and for a long time. His crimes are well-documented. He is the billonaire who “broke the British pound” in 1992. He is responsible for funding numerous revolutions including the coup in Ukraine, toppling a democratically elected president and moving NATO closer to Russian borders. And funding NGO’s who were not really charities, but subversive infiltrators. He is an evil man. Have you noticed how many billonaire Jews are involved in all kinds of evil financial schemes, and or hold such high positions in both neoliberal as well as neocon (both sides of the fence)government positions although they only make up 2% of the populace? Why hasn’t this criminal been arrested? His aim is to deliberately stir up a race war. The police are attacking people of all colors and ages. Yet BLM seems to defend black men who were in truth, guilty. At least they could pick a black man or woman who was actually innocent. Why doesn”t Black Lives Matter defend blacks who have been murdered by other blacks, which is usually the case. Or don’t those black lives matter? And how about the 72% of black children born to single mothers, with NO father in the home? Often to siblings from multiple fathers. These children often grow up to be street thugs. The facts bear this out. Blacks do commit most of the crime in the U.S, and commit more crimes against whites as well. The issue should be on the increasing police brutality on ALL citizens, not only focused on black lives. The police target them more because blacks commit most of the crime. Does the truth enter this equation? BLM detracts from the entire populace of all races focusing together, on increased police brutality against the public at large. For Soros, and those who want to increase anti-white sentiment and race tensions, BLM is: mission accomplished. The bastard Soros should have been arrested a long time ago, and imprisoned, and not in one of those cushy hotel prisons either. And one can only wonder who is really running this nation, when Soros remains unfettered. Dan
maybe, just maybe Hitler saw something that the rest of the world still can not see…. (or simply refuses to see) AZ Patriot
What are you saying, all Jews should have been sent to the gas chamber so that Soros wouldnt be around ? Dan
oh right, your one of “those” kinds of people huh.. next you are going to tell me that they really did make lampshades and soap out of jews huh? AZ Patriot
If I were you, I wouldnt continue to show your ignorance, insensitivity and anti Jew sentiment. Go away Dan
im ignorant? bwahahah. heres an easy one for ya, whats 6 minus 3 ? Carolyn
Idiot must run in your family Carolyn
Dan, you are an atheist who wants the world to believe that Hitler did not slaughter millions of Jews. Go to the Holocaust museums filled with the pictures and tools the Nazi’s used to experiment on the children pictures taken by the American soldiers when they entered into the prisons. So go into a Hellnory site and w her with your crap. Dan
so, explain to me how they had to change the plaque at auschwitz in the 90’s from claiming 4 million died there to only just over 1 million? and its now believed that its not even 1 million that died there?
and you dare to call me the idiot? keep googling, im sure you can find it… Carolyn
I did not call you an idiot but I should have. Auschwitz was only one of many concentration and death camps. You check it out. Dan
wow, you have shown your level of stupid on 2 levels in the one post, good work.. but i digress, ad hominems like yours only exist to show your own lack of a reasonable argument…
auschwitz was well known to have been by far the largest concentration camp during ww2 with the greatest population compared to all other camps, it even boasted a swimming pool inside the camp for its population. how do they just “lose” 3 million deaths from that camp? if auschwitz could not accomodate 4 million deaths but only closer to 1 million how did the other much smaller camps process more deaths than alschwitz?
now, here is hte real kicker, from back in 1901 jews were already claiming the 6 million 4 decades into the future… its in the damn newspapers and you can freely search and find them for yourself…
care to explain how that happened? jew magic i guess? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef1a9d677260b8a4a2ae4d4d3fe66946ef9deedfffe439b92a51c9f1774787bf.jpg Carolyn
Dan did you read any of the small incomplete articles? Evidently not. 6M was quoted to show that Russia and other countries had that many Jews. Nothing about death. These prior years to 1938 were expressing the plight of how the Jewish people were being treated. Now Auschwitz was not the only camp that slaughtered Jews. Now does that sign specifically say that Auschwitz deaths were just Auschwitz murders? Your ‘damn newspapers’ need to be read by you before you put that smudge attitude in writing. Dan
wow, your brain really is broken huh? you cant see the connection between claiming the magical 6 million prophecy (which is actually about claiming the heartland) in 1900 and using that same exact figure in the lies about ww2? the same lies that the nazis also made lampshades and soap out of jews?
auschwitz plaque was obviously blatantly lying (just like the lampshades and soap myths), once the soviets were forced to give up the ledgers iirc in the 80’s it was obvious that they could no longer sustain the lie that 4 million were killed there and were forced to bring that number down to “about” 1.5 million. are you really that stupid that you can not see the pattern here?
there is a hell of a lot more but i get the feeling that im talking to someone to stupid to even grasp the basics.
fun fact: anne frank never wrote anne franks diary, otto bought the story from another novelist and changed it to reflect his daughter. there was even a recent copyright case where they are now claiming that he was the author. fun times. Carolyn
Oh I see your pattern. Believe that crap instead of what the pictures, written accounts by the liberation armies, and you did not answer my question on the articles you want to point to that does not say 6M Jews died. Did you pull all of the articles and read the whole story? I would bet you did not. You are a typical atheist, Marxist, Democrat. You can pound your chest again when you check history and find out that the Democraps started the KKK group and were the biggest slave owners. You people amaze me how you put crap out there that you can not back up. Kind of like your loving candidate Hellnory. Dan
show me a single picture of gassed jews? or even of the gas chambers themselves? or even the several thousand dead jews they would have to have piled up waiting for their several hours in the crematorium it actually took back then to cremate even a single body? or you mean i am meant to take the word of the proven lying jews who to this day, like in the video i linked above, have clung to their fantasies even after they have been busted lying?
as for the liberating armies, you do recall that all the “gas chambers” were in ruins when they came through? and there was zero evidence, besides the lamp shades and soap, of any jew holocaust? that account you mean?
and of course it dosnt say that 6 million died yet, only that they were in peril etc but you dont find it a mighty large coincidence? you also obviously have no idea how they came up with the 6 million at the end of ww2 do you? go find out where that number came from.. the person who made it up even claimed it was completely symbolic and not to be taken literally.
“You are a typical atheist, Marxist, Democrat.” and in the face of clear defeat, out with the mindless ad hominem once again. a clear indicator that you are way outside of your depth… you are incorrect on all 3 counts, once again. do you ever get anything right?
“were the biggest slave owners.” guess who the biggest slave owners were? fucking jews!!! hahaha. they owned all the slave ships and were behind every facet of the trade.
“Kind of like your loving candidate Hellnory.” and thats the funniest, go find my twitter feed, its full of anti hillary sentiment, in fact its the only reason i really began using twitter was during this election cycle to keep track of whats going on because i refuse to engage in the corrupt leftist media (once again, mostly jew owned) for fear of turning into a brainless zombie like yourself…
ill give you this tho, you certainly are persistent in your stupidity. its no wonder you cant see anything thats going on around you in this world. Dan
here is a great classic you really should watch about his explaining away his lies as not really lies… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j30sWIOMIak Carolyn
You really have a real talent referencing things. Dan
yea, this is how you learn things. you take a fairytale, lets use santa as an example, and you work out (when your like 6 years old)… how can there be 12 santas in the same place? why are my presents always in the bottom of my parents wardrobe a week before “santa” apparently brings them to you a week later? and slowly you deduce that there is no santa clause and its just a lie that you have been fed while your brain is all still mushy.
or you know, you can just blindly have “faith” that there is still a santa, you know, like you do… even in the face of such a mountain of evidence… Carolyn
You need to stop your atheistic info because you do not know what you are talking about. 1.1M Jews killed in all of the Auschwitz camps. Did you know that there were 3 large camps with 4 large crematoriums? No you did not. That is just a drop in the bucket places that murdered, experimented on, starved, gased, and shooting of Jews. 426K Hungary, 300K Poland, 69K France, 60K Netherlands, 55K Greece, 46K Boheman & Moravia, 27K Slovakia, 25K Belgium, 10K Yugoslavia, 8K Itally, 690 Norway, and 34K from other countries. 960K Jews, 74K Poles, 21K Gypsies, 15K Soviet prisoners, 15K Czecks, Yugoslavs, French, Germans. Did you know that Hitler had built 40,000 camps. Death camps, concentration camps, holding camps, gas camp vans, labor camps and detention camps. Many Jews died in ghettos, on trains, during the death march to evade the oncoming of the Russian Army and US forces. These camps were set up in France, Russia, Germany, Poland, and Austria. One of the camps, Berkenau, killed 6 thousand Jews per day. In total 2.7M Jews killed in killing centers and 3.3 Jews shot, gased, experimented on. Now how do you explain your decision to not believe these totals? Dan
of course i knew, i obviously know more about the subject than you do. like you i came from a place of believing the lies until i started questioning some of the “facts” i was taught and the advent of the internet and “survivors” videos where they constantly get busted telling lies made me reconsider the “truth” about ww2
actually current scholars beleive its somewhere between 300k and i think its 700k (it might be 800k) died in all of auschwitz. while i do not doubt that there was some experimenting (america was doing the same thing but on its own people at the time) the great majority were simply natural attrition in a time of war considering the “allies” were bombing supply lines constantly (yet never the camps themselves because they also knew they were not “death camps”) in fact lets invoke the story of the holocaust poster child again anne frank, if they were really gassing people in some huge manner why would they even keep around a weak sickly girl long enough for her to die from typhus?
and yes of course many PEOPLE died, many of them jews. thats what happens when you have wars. none of this supports gassing or mass extermination of jews, stupid.
but my final question is, how do you blindly believe the word of people who have been shown on many occasions to be liars? specially in the face of so much verifiable evidence to the contrary (IE the lampshades, soap, diesel gassing vans, eye witness stories that completely contradict everything etc) specially knowing the fact that many jews chose to escape with their german captors rather than await the soviet armys “rescue”? Carolyn
Of course you did not know any of the information I wrote. If you profess that you know how many died, then go on the Holocaust Site and you will see that after they checked the records that the Germans kept, you do know they tattooed the Jews, to make sure what numbers were dead or alive. How would I know why they kept Anne Franks till she died of typhus. They very cruel people. The Jews were at war with the Nazi Germans. What the hell are you talking about. If you go on the Site you will see pictures of the gas chambers and crematories. What the hell else do you want. Why don’t you go to Auschwitz and see for yourself? You are so bigoted and I believe you are a lousy Democrap. Despicable REM1875 ✓certified
Hitler has the rothschild and other bank roll him while killing off the poor and middle class Jews who hardly dominate their own street block let alone the world. As a true socialist he had the pragmatic double standards so many on the left have today. AZ Patriot
You are painting all Jews with a very broad brush. No all Jews, not all billionaire Jews are involved in evil schemes. Stop it. Despicable REM1875 ✓certified
soros is to Jew as kerry, kaine, biden, pilosi or kennedy is to Roman Catholic. soros is to Jew like ryan or beck are to conservative Or and a better example soros is to Jew like oblamer is to Christian. anna miller
Yes, all these people have one thing in common, they claim connection to the evil Hebrew Yahweh , the tyrannical Iron Age war- volcano god. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. Just another evil scripture found in your not so “holy” book. Psalm 137:9 Stop making excuses for evil! Despicable REM1875 ✓certified
Howdy Anna I an sorry I didn’t make myself clear – I was stating none of those people are believing Jews or Christians . They believe they are God. anna miller
They have no humility nor conscience. Tatiana Covington | 0 |
BOOM! Kellyanne Conway Shuts Down CNN’s Cuomo Barracuda Brigade 2016-11-23 THIS IS WHY WE LOVE THIS WOMAN! Kellyanne Conway is one smart cookie and is so quick with comebacks. Watch her shut down Chris Cuomo on his faux concern about “my president” tweeting: Kellyanne Conway defends Trump’s ‘Hamilton’ twitter scrap: ‘Why do you care’ https://t.co/11UIp8cKFi https://t.co/vnk4rOhY4m | 0 |
PARIS — Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the only direct participant in November’s Paris attacks to have survived, was handed over to France by Belgium on Wednesday, prosecutors in both countries said. He was later charged in a French court with murder connected to terrorism, participation in a terrorist conspiracy and possession of weapons and explosives, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced. Mr. Abdeslam, who is also believed to be connected to the attacks in Brussels last month, was the subject of a European arrest warrant, which simplified the extradition between the two European Union countries. “Within the framework of the Paris attacks of the 13th of November 2015, Salah Abdeslam has been surrendered to the French authorities this morning,” the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The Paris prosecutor’s office said Mr. Abdeslam arrived in French territory at 9:05 a. m. Frank Berton, Mr. Abdeslam’s French lawyer, said he had been brought to France under heavy escort by a helicopter from the prison where he was being detained, in Beveren, Belgium. The French justice minister, Urvoas, said after a cabinet meeting that Mr. Abdeslam would be held in isolation in a prison in the Paris region. Mr. Abdeslam, 26, is believed to have been part of a team of 10 Islamic State operatives who carried out a series of shootings and suicide bombings in Paris, and in the northern suburb of St. on the evening of Nov. 13, killing 130 people and wounding more than 400. A French citizen of Moroccan ancestry who lived in Belgium, Mr. Abdeslam fled Paris for Brussels in the early hours of Nov. 14. He was the target of a international manhunt before he was arrested on March 18 in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, his hometown. Mr. Abdeslam ran a bar there with his brother Ibrahim, who detonated a suicide vest in the Comptoir Voltaire cafe in central Paris on Nov. 13. French and Belgian investigators have found evidence suggesting that Mr. Abdeslam was heavily involved in preparations for the Paris attacks. He rented cars and at least one safe house, bought material used in explosives and drove across Europe to pick up other suspects. But Mr. Abdeslam’s exact role on the night of the attacks is still unclear. Experts have questioned how valuable he will be to investigators in France, though the French authorities and families of the victims have expressed relief that a surviving participant in the attacks will stand trial. He is suspected of driving three suicide bombers to the Stade de France soccer stadium in St. and investigators are still trying to establish whether he had intended to carry out another attack. Shortly after his arrest, Mr. Abdeslam told investigators that he had “backed out” of carrying out a suicide bombing against the Stade de France. Mr. Berton said Tuesday said that Mr. Abdeslam had to be judged “for what he has done and not for what he represents, because he is the last survivor and some would blame him for deeds and actions that are not his. ” In an interview with the French newspaper Libération, Sven Mary, Mr. Abdeslam’s lawyer in Belgium, was more disparaging, characterizing his client as a “little jerk from Molenbeek” and as a petty criminal. | 1 |
Top Hillary Clinton adviser Karen Finney said on CNN Sunday that Clinton’s campaign faced “a perfect storm” of problems that cost her the election, the Daily Mail reported. [“Look, there are any number of things that you could point to to say that it was a mistake that we made that probably has some merit to it, because it was such a perfect storm of a lot of different things,” Finney told Jake Tapper, sitting on a panel of Democrats on CNN’s State of the Union. Finney said there was no “magic bullet” that could have changed the direction of the doomed campaign. Even though she said the campaign was doomed, she also said that it was a close race. “Particularly when you look at the fact that in those Rust Belt states … that gap is about 70, 000 votes that we’re talking about,” she continued. “A majority of those people agreed with [Clinton] on the economy, thought she’d be better on the economy,’ Finney said. ‘And she’s won 2. 8 million more in the popular vote. ” Finney suggested to Tapper that outreach could be better, like former DNC chairman Howard Dean’s “ strategy” that helped Obama get elected. “I think we need to learn some of the lessons coming out of this election, no question, in terms of how we talk to working families, whether they are black, white, brown and where those families are located, how we talk to them about the issues they care about,” Finney said. “But I don’t think that this is an example of, you know, there are one or two things that was just flip a switch and everything will be perfect,” she said. In November, Finney blamed the election loss on everything but Clinton, saying she lost because of sexism, James Comey, and the media, among other reasons, the Washington Free Beacon reported. | 1 |
The leader of the migration Sweden Democrats (SD) party Jimmie Åkesson has written an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal strongly criticising those who dismissed out of hand President Trump’s remarks on the dire security and migration situation. [Lamenting the rise in violence and that has accompanied the migrant wave that saw Sweden take more migrants per captia than any other European nation, Mr Åkesson remarked that sex crimes in the country had doubled in a year. Reeling off a list of damages done to Sweden by mass migration in the opinion piece with fellow SD politician Mattias Karlsson, Mr Åkesson urged America to take heed and not repeat the same mistakes of immigration and cultural capitulation made in Europe. Mr Åkesson wrote: When President Trump last week raised Sweden’s problematic experience with immigration, skeptics were quick to dismiss his claims. Two days later an immigrant suburb of Stockholm was racked by another riot. No one was seriously injured, though the crowd burned cars and hurled stones at police officers. Mr. Trump did not exaggerate Sweden’s current problems. If anything, he understated them. Sweden took in about 275, 000 from — more per capita than any other European country. Eighty percent of those who came in 2015 lacked passports and identification, but a majority come from Muslim nations. Islam has become Sweden’s religion. In Malmö, our city, Mohamed is the most common name for baby boys. The effects are palpable, starting with national security. An estimated 300 Swedish citizens with immigrant backgrounds have traveled to the Middle East to fight for Islamic State. Many are now returning to Sweden and are being welcomed back with open arms by our socialist government. In December 2010 we had our first suicide attack on Swedish soil, when an Islamic terrorist tried to blow up hundreds of civilians in central Stockholm while they were shopping for Christmas presents. Thankfully the bomber killed only himself. Read more at the Wall Street Journal. Mr Åkesson’s Sweden Democrats are presently riding high in the polls, with the next general election expected in September 2018. While the governing Social Democrat party has held the lead position in polls for much of the past year, the Sweden Democrats, buoyed by their unique position as opponents of the mass migration that has so rapidly transformed Swedish society have often enjoyed a close second place. The position could be crucial after the 2018 election if the SD are able to enter into coalition with other parties and freeze the left out of power, even if Prime Minister Löfven’s Social Democrats are able to command fractionally more support. | 1 |
After my first Airbnb guests checked out of our garage apartment last February, I eagerly called up their online review. I had no reason to suspect anything but flattering comments from the two young women from Oregon, one of whom had originally planned on coming with her husband to celebrate their fourth anniversary until he had to drop out at the last minute. She brought a friend instead, but disappointment, I discovered, came along in her suitcase. When they arrived for the stay in my home southwest of Austin, I met them cheerily with a basket of muffins and walked them through the apartment, which my husband and I used to rent out until we decided to jump on the Airbnb gravy train. If all went well, we figured we could make the $650 we used to get per month in six nights. As a travel writer, I’ve reviewed scores of hotels and was quite sure I knew what I was doing. We bought a sumptuous pillowtop mattress, luscious sheets and towels and an array of pillow styles. I left coffee, tea and real (no powdered creamer for my guests!) as well as bubble bath for the tub. As I arranged the vintage patio furniture on the balcony and looked out over our 15 acres of rolling Texas Hill Country terrain, I thought, Who wouldn’t love this? Well, as they say, pride goes before a fall. “Very little supplies in the kitchen,” was just one of the gripes the Oregon women left in their review. They gave me three out of five stars — a rating handed out in fewer than six percent of stays, according to a subsequent note from Airbnb. Thanks to my faceplant out of the gate, I was told my search placement would be impacted. For months to come, my cumulative star rating remained less than nearby hosts. I was devastated, especially since I had sung the guests’ praises in my review of them (reviews are published simultaneously so I didn’t see theirs in advance). I felt the same pangs of rejection and inadequacy that go with unrequited high school friendships. And so I discovered how little I knew about hospitality in the brave new sharing economy. Airbnb offers pages of advice on how to meet its hosting standards in areas such as communication (“respond to reservation requests within 24 hours,” for instance) and pricing (“a very high price may lead travelers to assume your listing is extra luxurious — they shouldn’t be expecting a castle when they arrive at a cottage”). The site also lets you know what will happen if you consistently fail to measure up. “Travelers … tell us that getting rejected can be discouraging, so if you decline an excess number of reservation requests, your listing may be temporarily deactivated. ” (The company, which says it has removed hosts for apparent discrimination, is attempting to get even more stringent with this type of penalty in order to address recent reports of some hosts not accepting requests from minorities.) But in all those pages of practical information, here’s what Airbnb doesn’t tell you. Honest reviews of both hosts and guests are what keep the whole Airbnb system in check. Without them, people could go on benders with no consequences. Or hosts could get away with horrors like leaving hair doilies in the shower drain. But even if you’re used to people throwing darts at you in your professional life, it’s something else to have strangers judging your home and your way of living. And doing it publicly. I’d told the Oregon women they were my first guests and to let me know how I could improve, but they never mentioned any problems and seemed happy enough. Being called out online is like asking someone if you have food in your teeth and having that person proceed to announce that yes, in fact you do, over a loud speaker. That first review started well enough — beautiful setting and décor kind, gracious host. Then came “although” and the first salvo: “There was no drinking water,” as if I was a stingy guarding my oasis spring, when I regularly had our well water tested and it was just fine. (The true outrage, I wanted to tell them, is when $ hotels charge $10 for a bottle of water.) The women also complained that the jets didn’t work on my whirlpool tub, even though I had told them that’s why I hadn’t advertised the feature on my listing. The personal sting of such is compounded by the potential financial one, since negative comments affect future bookings. I had been told by experienced Airbnb hosts to price my property low initially to get reservations, which would lead to reviews that would attract other guests. Then I could raise my rates. But they didn’t say what would happen if you got a big raspberry. Luckily, I already had more bookings lined up. Even the things you can’t control. My worst sin in that first review turned out to be location, location, location. They claimed I was at least an hour from downtown (not 30 minutes as I said truthfully in my listing). Their low rating on my accuracy was, in the Airbnb webosphere, the equivalent of yelling, “Liar, liar. ” My listing included a map that showed exactly where I was in relation to Austin. When they arrived, the Oregon women told me their GPS took them the wrong way, and they did make the trip during rush hour hence the drive time. No matter. Their travel issues became my issue. I wanted to respond to their review with an apology for not clearing the highways out of Austin for them, but I had the sense to know snark would not win me future bookings. Instead I immediately put a disclaimer on my listing that “your driving time may vary because of traffic. ” “Duh” implied. Once you’ve gotten a review, you start looking at every possible defect as a potential online skewer. One day, when the wind blew one of the sheets off the clothesline and onto the ground (I had some romantic notion that people would appreciate the smell of bedding) I imagined the review I’d get if our next guests suffered a spider bite in bed. Another time I noticed the bathroom sink was leaking in my head I saw, “Could not sleep because of the drip, drip, drip. ” The emergency plumber bill was about half as much as my imminently arriving guests were paying for the whole stay. At that moment, the $650 a month from tenants seemed like a bargain. When I bemoaned my bad review to a friend, she mentioned that she always gives wine to her guests. Aha, I thought. That’s what I was missing. So in addition to a basket of muffins, I began leaving a nice bottle of sauvignon blanc. “How much are you spending on each guest?” my husband asked when he saw me carting the swag to the apartment. To be honest, I didn’t really care. My pride was at stake and anyway, it seems to have worked. All my reviews were glowing after the addition of alcohol. You may start your Airbnb career imagining you’ll be a magnanimous, kind of host. But at some point you’ll have guests who’ll make you want to hide under your bed until they’ve gone out for the day. We had a perfectly nice couple who could not master the thermostat and would call or text every time the temperature was not to their liking. They’d also frequently update us on their struggles with the icemaker, the washer’s spin cycle, the ceiling fan switch. On one occasion, when I ran into the couple in the driveway, they informed me that they’d found an insect they suspected was a “kissing bug” (which they claimed was poisonous though I’d never heard of it in my 20 years in the Texas Hill Country). They were thinking of sending it off for testing, and oh, by the way, the wife had some weird bite on her arm. I think my eyes spontaneously crossed. Later, after they’d checked out and given me five stars (wine for me after that one) I got a text from them saying that the agricultural extension agency confirmed the insect was indeed a kissing bug. It was with great joy that I deleted it and thanked the patron saint of innkeepers, St. Martin of Tours — who according to some sources also serves that role for alcoholics, appropriately enough — that they hadn’t included that little tidbit in their review. Even at a Motel 6. I’m no longer hosting for Airbnb — not because I got my Egyptian cotton sheets in a wad, but because we sold our house five months into my gig. We made a bit of money from our stint as guesthouse hosts — maybe not as much as my husband hoped with the wine and all. Plus, because of that first blot on my record, I never felt I could raise my rates. However, I gained something else in the process: a new empathy for those I’ve scrutinized in my other life as a hotel reviewer. Cleaning toilets in between guests will do that for you. These days I avoid using a hotel towel to wipe off my eye makeup because I know firsthand that mascara is nearly impossible to get out. I lose the tone when I call the front desk over a temperamental connection. I was just a hobbyist, but I’ll think twice about with Airbnb in our new home though we have the space. The hospitality business is one long, grinning, tap dance, more easily disparaged than done. | 1 |
‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. Veterans may face higher risk of suicide during first year home By Arnaldo Rodgers on October 29, 2016 Veterans
By www.foxnews.com
Veterans may be more likely to commit suicide during the first year after they leave the military than after more time passes, a U.S. study suggests.
Compared with people still on active duty in the military, veterans out of the service for up to three months were 2.5 times more likely to commit suicide, the study found. Veterans who had left the service from three to 12 months earlier had almost triple the suicide odds of current members of the military.
“Family members and community can be proactive to reach out to veterans if they recently experienced stressful events – not just limited to the stressful events we can capture in the data such as divorce or separation from the military,” said lead study author Yu-Chu Shen, a researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Read the Full Article at www.foxnews.com >>>> Related Posts: The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VNN, VNN authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. Notices Posted by Arnaldo Rodgers on October 29, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Veterans . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can leave a response or trackback to this entry FaceBook Comments
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While Donald Trump talks of repealing and replacing Obamacare and Hillary Clinton talks of reopening the conversation about the public option , the state of Vermont has begun dealing its own personal health care crisis by invoking something called the “all-payer model.”
The Green Mountain Care Board on Wednesday voted to approve this methodology for paying for health care, but understanding what that means requires reading the fine print of the agreement.
By approving the all-payer model agreement, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin seeks to align incentives across Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance so health care providers are paid for keeping patients healthy, not for providing individual services and procedures.
The board’s approval makes Vermont the first state to pursue an all-payer model statewide.
In a statement sent from the governor’s office, Shumlin thanked President Barack Obama and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell for negotiating the agreement with the state, and he said the model would control health care costs and reward doctors for a more preventive approach to care.
“Vermont will now become the first state in America to ensure that your doctor can focus on keeping you healthy, rather than running tests or procedures,” Shumlin said, adding:
By shifting the focus away from the current fee-for-service system to one that rewards primary care and prevention, we will help Vermonters lead healthier lives and more effectively manage chronic diseases, allow doctors to better treat their patients and identify health issues before they become severe, and reduce costs in a health care system that, if left unchecked, will bankrupt our state and Vermont families.
Green Mountain Care Board Chair Al Gobeille called the event “an important next step in provider-led health care reform,” adding that the program will save Vermont $10 billion over the next decade.
However, the board’s action did little to address concerns raised by the Joint Fiscal Office. In a report released Friday , the JFO weighed the supposed benefits of the new system against a list of critiques and uncertainties. Among the uncertainties are the administrative costs of the program, as well as where funding will come from.
The JFO report also notes that the next governor could refuse to go forward with the program. Republican gubernatorial candidate Phil Scott has said he does not support the program.
In a statement sent to local media, State House Minority Leader Rep. Don Turner, criticized the plan.
“The proposal raises many important, but unanswered, questions regarding the ability to cap healthcare cost growth, the use of the ACO model … and the competency of the Shumlin Administration to successfully run another complex regulatory system given its dismal record with Vermont Health Connect,” he said.
Darcie Johnston, director of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, said she was shocked at the speed with which the board approved the draft. “Our legislators made a huge mistake in giving the GMCB so much power — the power to enter into contracts to further destroy our health care system.”
Amy Cooper, executive director of HealthFirst, an independent practice association representing over 250 medical professionals, told Vermont Watchdog she believes “the concept could be a good one” but nevertheless is “nervous about the State’s ability to implement it, especially with such a short timeline of reviewing the details that were only released a month ago.”
Shumlin will sign the revised draft document at 2 p.m. Thursday in his ceremonial office in Montpelier.
Over the past month, health care officials held public forums to explain Vermont’s 44-page draft agreement with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Still, many doctors and patients feel unsure of what the “all-payer model” will mean for them, in part because of the program’s many complexities.
For starters, despite the administration’s talk of an “all-payer waiver,” the draft document contains a waiver only for Medicare, not Medicaid or commercial insurance — the other two “payers” in Vermont’s health care system. Instead, the document gives state health care officials permission to operate accountable care organizations, or ACOs, under a restructured payment system.
For health care providers, the new payment system will start to replace current fee-for-service payments with a state-run global budget, the goal of which is to reward positive outcomes and overall population health.
Once the agreement is finalized, Vermont will start using its state-approved ACO, called the Vermont Care Organization. That network of health care providers is comprised of representatives from existing ACOs, including OneCare, HealthFirst and Community Health Accountable Care.
The smaller ACOs have not yet committed to being managed by the Vermont Care Organization. They have until 2018 to decide whether to remain as fee-for-service operators or transition to global budgeting within the Vermont Care Organization, as overseen by the Green Mountain Care Board.
Dr. Paul Reiss, chief medical officer at HealthFirst, told Watchdog his ACO is not recommending that physicians sign on with the Vermont Care Organization until details of the offer are known.
“There’s no proposal to change the way physicians are paid under Medicare in 2017,” Reiss said. “We’ll recommend signing on when there are actually offers on the table.”
At recent public forums, both Gov. Peter Shumlin and Al Gobeille, chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, said the Vermont Care Organization would be “risk bearing.” That means the umbrella ACO network, not individual providers, will absorb losses if providers exceed their budget for the year.
While the risk-bearing stipulation may allay providers’ worries about going over budget, page 8 of the agreement states that the ACO is responsible for “at minimum 30 percent” of shared losses. Put another way, providers in some cases will be responsible for paying up to 70 percent of the cost of exceeding the state-determined budget.
Delivering care under a global budget worries some doctors, who may not be able to survive under a budget cap and offer effective care at the same time.
When an audience member at the Norwich public forum asked what impact failing practices might have on the system, Shumlin replied, “You cannot be refused care. … It’s the ACO’s problem to deal with the bankruptcy. … It would not affect care in any way. It might not be the same provider, because they would be out of business theoretically, but someone would have an interest in caring for you.”
Gobeille agreed that private practices might face bankruptcy “because they couldn’t make it work in the independent practice world.” He added that such practices could be absorbed into the hospital system.
Since the draft agreement was announced , some physicians have criticized the plan on the grounds that hospitals may continue getting reimbursed for services at a higher rate, because of their bargaining advantage with insurance companies and the Green Mountain Care Board.
While it’s generally expected that the all-payer model will fix the payment reimbursement differential between Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurers, Reiss said he’s skeptical.
“There are no [plans] currently diagrammed on any drawing board to make that happen,” Reiss told Watchdog.
In fact, the draft agreement doesn’t fix the reimbursement differential. Instead, it says by 2020 the state must deliver “a report on options to narrow the Payer Differential between payers.”
The long delay could disappoint independent physicians, who have been told they don’t have to join the state-run ACO if they don’t want. That freedom of choice may be illusory at best, since financial pressure cited in the agreement could coerce doctors to join the network or face financial consequences.
Specifically, the draft agreement says the state will “encourage” providers and beneficiaries to participate. One “encouragement” includes a potential Medicare payment reduction for practices that remain outside of the ACO.
However, in an Oct.19 email exchange obtained by Vermont Watchdog, state Sen. Tim Ashe, told Burlington psychiatrist Robert Emmons that he contacted Ena Backus, health policy chief at the Green Mountain Care Board, and the financial penalty is now removed from the updated agreement.
Funding to help Vermont abandon a fee-for-service model includes a one-time payment of $9.5 million dollars from Medicare. The state also has a verbal agreement with Medicaid for $200 million — likely $110 million in federal money and $90 million in state funds.
It’s unclear where this money, and the administrative expense of Vermont Care Organization, will come from.
On Tuesday, Johnston unsuccessfully called for the board to delay its vote until outstanding questions are answered.
“We believe that doctors and patients have significant concerns, and that the delivery of health care to Vermonters could be significantly impacted. We are concerned about the rationing of care,” the Vermonters for Healthcare Freedom director said in a statement. “…There are too many questions that deserve answers before the Green Mountain Care Board should agree to support such a risky venture.”
Other concerns of Johnston’s include a lack of transparency and the model’s impact on Vermont’s doctor shortage.
A timeline of key events reveals the long road ahead for the all-payer health care model. | 0 |
On Sept. 29, 1973, Peter Schjeldahl and Brooke Alderson, who had met the previous spring at an opening at the Whitney Museum, moved into an apartment on the top floor of a at 53 St. Marks Place. It was the day W. H. Auden died, a fact that seemed to portend the lush bohemian life that followed. Mr. Schjeldahl, a poet and art critic, would go on to write for The Village Voice and for The New Yorker, where he has remained for two decades Ms. Alderson was an actress and comic. They had a daughter, Ada Calhoun, who grew up to be a writer herself. She dedicated her recent book, “St. Marks Is Dead,” a history of the street where she grew up, to them: “To my parents, who looked at the apocalyptic 1970s East Village and thought, What a great place to raise a kid. ” That chaos found counterbalance in a rural idyll. In the 1980s, Mr. Schjeldahl and his wife purchased many acres of mountainous land in the town of Bovina, a little more than three hours north of Midtown Manhattan. For more than a the property served as the site of a Fourth of July celebration that has maintained a singular place in New York’s social history, drawing friends, and friends of friends, from the city — artists, writers, musicians, academics, gallery owners, movie stars — and a considerable segment of the surrounding population of Delaware County. At its most constrained, the event attracted as many as 300 people, who gathered not only for the kind of ecumenical fellowship rarely found in the modern world outside an A. A. meeting, but, above all, to experience Mr. Schjeldahl’s mythic, untamed fireworks. “We were strictly illegal, until the end,” Mr. Schjeldahl told me recently. “The cops and firemen brought their families. This is libertarian country. ” Last year, the pyrotechnics hewed more closely to legitimacy — a technical supervisor was even on the premises — but that party turned out to be the last, after approximately 2, 000 people showed up, word of it having reached a vast universe of Brooklyn millennials via social media, a means of communication Mr. Schjeldahl and his wife have never employed. “It was 300 hipsters from Bushwick coming down the driveway, and I nearly died,” Ms. Alderson said. Last year, guests, most of them not known to their hosts, could be overheard arguing about whether the property was a state park or a municipal park. One generation’s utopia had encroached upon another’s. Ominous signs began to present themselves a few years ago. Ms. Calhoun recalls entering a bedroom at the Bovina house to find a young woman she had never seen before changing into a bathing suit. On another occasion, her husband and young son were at a florist in Williamsburg where they learned that the young saleswoman behind the counter had become a regular at the party, even though she had no idea who actually held it. Even back in its more tightly circumscribed days, the party was so enormous that its hosts were hardly able to speak to everyone. One year, Mr. Schjeldahl received a warm note of thanks from Louis Menand, the literary critic and Harvard professor, who described the party as a spectacular aesthetic experience. The men had never met, not at The New Yorker, where they are colleagues, nor at the Fourth of July event. Over the years, the artists Brice and Helen Marden came, as did Steve Martin, the poet Susan Wheeler and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys, who eventually brought Ben Stiller. The year Mr. Stiller came, he was assigned to the “front line,” an assemblage of guests tasked with lighting fireworks by hand. Carmine Covelli, the drummer for a band called the Julie Ruin, was dispatched to watch over him. Mr. Stiller looked terrified, Mr. Covelli said he noted that the actor never returned. Mesmerized by Mr. Schjeldahl’s obsession — one year, he said, he strapped explosives to trees because he’d seen fireworks shot horizontally from the Eiffel Tower, and grew jealous of French ingenuity — Mr. Covelli and Mr. Horovitz began filming a documentary about the annual event. The food was the other hallmark of the party. Everyone brought something. There were maybe a hundred pies once a hunter brought bear meat. Another distinctive element was an exercise in making uptight urban parents nervous. During the day, a huge basket of bottle rockets was made available to the children who were old enough to shoot away. “I know what I want when I grow up,” one little boy announced to his parents as they were leaving the party, Mr. Schjeldahl recounted. “A lighter. ” With the money they saved by calling off the party this year, Mr. Schjeldahl and Ms. Alderson went to Rome in the spring. They had a good time. This weekend, they will have two people posted on their front porch telling anyone who might not have heard that the era has ended. When Ms. Alderson realized she would need something to fill the time that months of party planning had consumed, she decided to build a miniature golf course with a Rip Van Winkle theme, a work still in progress. This weekend the couple will eat out, and they will mourn what was lost — a sense of inclusion and ultimately a tent that just got too big. | 1 |
Social media news outlets are buzzing today after reporting that a man allegedly threw his 3 year-old son off of the Golden Gate Bridge after he “broke his father’s Apple Watch during its WatchOS 3 update.” The article claims the man, Richard Thomas, was driving across the bridge when his 3 year-old grabbed the watch during its OS 3 update and threw it out the window. The father reportedly slammed on his brakes, retrieved the Apple Watch, only to find it was broken.
As Thomas’s car began to back up traffic, he pulled his three-year-old son out of the car and threw him into the water. The news headline has been circulating around the Internet all day.
TMZ Breaking SOURCE | 0 |
PENNSYLVANIA GUN STORE tells customers “Muslims and Hillary supporters are not welcome” An advertisement for ALTRA FIREARMS warns potential customers that Muslims and supporters of Hillary Clinton, who are “terrorists” in the store’s parlance, are not welcome. âPlease NO Muslims or Hillary Supporters â We do not feel safe selling to terrorists!â Altra Firearms in Jackson Center, Pennsylvania advertised in local papers this week. TalkingPointsMemo  The âPolitically Incorrect Firearmsâ store also invited readers to âVisit our underground bunker and speak with our unique and deplorable sales associates.â Altra Firearms’ owner Paul Chandler, 54, told TPM Friday that heâs had a sign in front of his store advertising that supporters of President Obama arenât welcome to come inside, either. âWe did have, in three-foot letters, âNo radical Muslims,â but I changed that to âNo Muslims,â period,â Chandler said in a phone interview, noting rhetoric from Iranian television motivated the change. âTheyâre saying that America is the great Satan and itâs got to be destroyed. Theyâre basically teaching that if itâs an infidel, either they convert or kill them. And thatâs what theyâre doing in our country now,â he said, comparing the actions of modern Islamic nations to the expansion of Muslim influence into Europe before the Crusades. âIf the gun store in Florida wouldnât have sold to that man, thereâs be 40 or 50 more people alive,â he continued, referring to Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in Orlando when he opened fire in an LGBT nightclub. PA gun store ad: "please no Muslims or Hillary supporters. We do not feel safe selling to terrorists" pic.twitter.com/yPqAsd5MsO
— Dorey Scheimer (@DoreyScheimer) October 27, 2016 Chandler told TPM he’s never actually denied service to any Muslims or Clinton supporters, although he said he’d told one woman with an Obama bumper sticker on her car that the store was closed. He also said he’d denied service to one man who told him âI hate niggers, I want a gun.â Chandler said he didnât extend the same blanket ban to potential Christian customers after a series of abortion clinic bombings years ago because âhundreds of Christian preachers got up and said âthat is wrong.â” âDo you hear any Muslim clerics condemning what is going on today?â he asked. âI havenât heard one.â In 2015, designated terrorist group CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) sued a different store in Florida ( FLORIDA GUN SUPPLY ) which declared itself a ‘Muslim Free Zone’ but the case was dismissed. | 0 |
+++ Muhten ihm einiges zu: Bauer soll Streit unter Kühen schlichten +++ +++ Mönchenskinder!: Abt erzürnt über Verstoß gegen das Zölibat +++ +++ Im falschen Körper gefangen: Erdmännchenweibchen +++ +++ Tretrad, Roller, Rad: Kasperl für großen Fuhrpark kritisiert +++ +++ Will sich mal schlau machen: Blondine informiert sich über Färbemöglichkeiten +++ +++ Beinhaar: Oberschenkel nahezu komplett rasiert +++ +++ "Wolp!" - Erdinger weg: Fabelwesen leert Weißbier in einem einzigen Schluck und verschwindet +++ adl, tom, oga, sod, sta, kol, kly Jetzt bestellen! Der Postillon-Newsticker-Kalender 2017 (nur 9,99€): Der Postillon: +++ Newsticker +++ Artikel teilen: | 0 |
As Black History Month commemorations start to wind down, one festival is just gearing up. Afropunk the Takeover — Harlem, running from Tuesday through Feb. 25, will celebrate black culture with music, art, film screenings, discussions and comedy. by Harlem Stage and the Apollo Theater, this series is the latest offering from Afropunk, which hosts a music festival in Brooklyn. While music is an integral part of this Harlem festival, a couple of its more events focus on activism — from art in response to current events to the expression of black joy — which is especially resonant in this moment of racial division and continued protests against the Trump administration. “Bearing Witness as Protest,” at the Studio Museum in Harlem on Thursday, will examine political dissent in art. The evening begins with a guided tour of two exhibitions: “The Window and the Breaking of the Window,” with art from the Black Lives Matter era, and “Circa 1970,” whose focus is on the sociopolitical and cultural issues of the ’70s. The shows further affirm that, in the age of the news cycle and endless social media feeds, there’s no escape from news of horrific acts of hate, social injustices and inequalities. Works by Rudy Shepherd depict the nine parishioners killed in a Charleston, S. C. church in 2015, and others evoke the “hands up, don’t shoot” rallying cry for protesters in the aftermath of a fatal police shooting in Ferguson, Mo. “It’s a difficult show, and I think some people might be moved by some of the images,” Amanda Hunt, associate curator at the museum, said last week. “They might be saddened and I wanted to give space for all of that. ” Deborah Grant’s “56 Blows,” from her “Blackboard” series, initially looks simplistic — the outline of a camcorder drawn in white chalk on a black background underneath is the title rendered in block letters. The title is a haunting nod to the 56 blows inflicted on Rodney King by the Los Angeles police in 1991 the camcorder a reminder of the documentation of the violence. In “A Beautiful Ghetto,” Devin Allen’s photographs chronicle the response of black residents in Baltimore to such violence — like Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Tying it all together are Kerry James Marshall’s prints echoing slogans that blacks have used to organize, resist and uplift (“by any means necessary,” “black is beautiful”) — reminders that the black experience is as much about having pride as exposing social inequities. The tour, starting at 6 p. m. will be followed by a discussion focusing on what it means to bear witness — to share traumatic experiences — and how the act itself might be a form of protest. The artist Oasa DuVerney and Jess Krug of Harlem CopWatch, a coalition documenting the police’s interactions with the public, will participate. While the Studio Museum will tackle activism through a creative lens, a discussion on Tuesday at the National Black Theater will ask panelists to look inward to ponder the emotional expressions of resistance. The aim of “Black Joy as an Expression of Resistance and Liberation” is to shine a light on the importance of cultivating and seeking out diverse narratives of black lives and opposing stereotypical depictions that pop up across the media. The panelists — including the actress Zoë Kravitz, Larry of ARTNOIR and the Afropunk founder, Matthew Morgan — will also discuss the importance of caring for oneself as well as those in your circle of friends and family. “Black joy is really that pursuit of healing all of those wounds,” Sade Lythcott, chief executive of the National Black Theater and a panelist, said in a telephone interview. “When the pendulum swings so far to one side where there is this epidemic of trauma being displayed as entertainment,” she said of videos depicting interactions between the police and black people, “artists are always going to rise up” as a means of both documentation and catharsis. André D. Singleton, a of the Very Black Project, which celebrates black culture through apparel among other things, and moderator of the “Black Joy” event, said in a phone interview that delving into “the places we don’t want to go, the stewing, actually allowing ourselves to feel,” is imperative to moving forward. “I grew up in the church, and I was taught that happiness is fleeting and joy is something the world can’t take away,” he said, reflecting on the Maze and Frankie Beverly song “Joy and Pain,” which perhaps describes the balance between the two. Here are a few events to check out: FEB. 24 AT 6:30 P. M. A screening of “The Talk — Race in America” at the Cinema at the Maysles Documentary Center. FEB. 24 AT 7:30 P. M. “The Hair Tales,” a discussion about black hair culture, at Harlem Stage. FEB. 25 AT 7:30 P. M. Afropunk: “Unapologetically Black,” a homage to black protest music featuring Robert Glasper and others, at the Apollo Theater. | 1 |
The CIA has considered developing technology to hack the driving systems of road vehicles including cars and trucks, according to a WikiLeaks dump of agency documents released earlier today. [From WikiLeaks’ press release: As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations. CIA meeting notes from 2014 show that the agency’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB) was looking at “vehicle systems (e. g VSEP)” as a “potential mission area. ” This appears to have been part of a wider effort on the part of the CIA to take control of the “internet things” — a term used in the technology community to refer to the growing connectivity of physical devices through the internet. The meeting notes specifically notes “the internet of things” as another potential EDB mission area. The CIA has also successfully breached Samsung’s Smart TVs, and now has the ability to covertly switch on the Smart TVs’ microphones to monitor nearby audio, even when the devices are switched off. That Samsung smart TV? The CIA can turn the mic on and listen to everything you say #vault7 #1984rebooted pic. twitter. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017, Much of this vast hacking power is now in the hands of third parties as well as the CIA. According to the WikiLeaks, dump, the CIA has lost control of much of its hacking arsenal to unknown parties, after the were “circulated among former U. S government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner. ” You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitter and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to abokhari@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Long after government regulators had confirmed the lethal consequences of cigarette smoking, Mike Pence mocked their warnings as “hysteria” in 1998. “Time for a quick reality check,” he wrote. “Smoking doesn’t kill. ” Long after most members of Congress had abandoned the quaint practice of delivering morning speeches, Mr. Pence eagerly held court in an empty chamber, musing about sports and Scripture. And long after Republicans’ war on big government was fading, Mr. Pence defiantly opposed his own party over the creation of signature programs like No Child Left Behind and a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Throughout his career as a congressman, radio host and governor, Gov. Michael Richard Pence of Indiana, Donald J. Trump’s running mate, has been deeply and proudly out of sync with his times. With his formal bearing, shiny helmet of white hair and carefully chosen, slowly delivered words, he is a throwback in his demeanor. With his deep social conservatism, public religiosity and aversion to negative campaigning, he is a throwback in his political style. He is so abstemious that he once declared that to avoid temptation, he would never appear anywhere alcohol was served unless his wife was with him. This has earned Mr. Pence, 57, both the admiration of Republican voters who identify with his homespun manner and the frustration of outsiders who see him as a dangerous anachronism. Leslie Lenkowsky, a former professor at Indiana University who has known Mr. Pence for 20 years, said that in an age of governors who deliberately avoid touchy social issues, “Mike sees himself as a champion of a very culturally conservative set of values that represent Middle America. ” “He sees his role,” Mr. Lenkowsky said, “as protecting them. ” In interviews, Mr. Pence describes himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order. ” Those animating forces were at the center of the most consequential — and controversial — decision Mr. Pence made as governor: signing a 2015 law that could have made it easier for religious conservatives to refuse service to gay couples just as marriage was spreading across the country. The national firestorm generated by the law was so fierce that sports leagues, trade groups and technology companies threatened to boycott Mr. Pence’s state, forcing him to revise the law in a compromise that infuriated both sides of the debate. For many Americans, it was a searing introduction to Mr. Pence. But for those who have closely tracked his career, it fit a longstanding pattern: the winds of change might blow, but Mr. Pence is slow to bend. By the time he was elected to Congress in 2000, after two failed tries, Mr. Pence had missed the Republican revolution led by Newt Gingrich and his scrappy, fiscally conservative acolytes who stormed Washington in 1994. Nobody, it seemed, had told Mr. Pence that the rebellion was over. He arrived in the House determined to slash federal spending and shrink the role of government. It was not to be: House Republicans, led by President George W. Bush, created giant new programs like Medicare Part D and spent trillions bailing out Wall Street after the financial crisis. “I was like the frozen man,” Mr. Pence said of his poor timing in a 2004 speech. “Frozen before the revolution thawed after it was over. A minuteman who showed up 10 years too late. ” He left little mark on the institution: During his congressional career, he introduced 90 bills and resolutions. None became law. Showing up late, by many accounts, was his fate as governor, too. By the time he was elected, his popular predecessor, Gov. Mitch Daniels, along with a Republican legislature, had checked off almost every box on the conservative wish list: shrunken budgets, privately managed health care for state workers, and a voucher program that allowed public students to attend private schools. “Mitch Daniels dominated Indiana politics for the better part of 10 years,” said Michael D. McDaniel, who was the Indiana Republican chairman from 1995 until 2002. “Mike Pence would be the first person to tell you that he knew that was going to be a tough act to follow. ” So far, he has struggled to carve out a national reputation beyond his polarizing pursuit of socially conservative causes. In an echo of his actions on gay rights, he signed a strict new law in March that bans abortions based solely on the fetus having a disability such as Down syndrome. The measure inflamed many women and activists across the country and now faces a court challenge. “A society,” Mr. Pence said at the time, “can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable — the aged, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn. ” His conservatism, friends said, is firmly rooted in his Indiana childhood, a postcard from a tranquil Midwest of the 1960s. The son of a gas station manager, he was a quiet altar boy whose favorite childhood memory was playing in a neighborhood creek. In college, he gravitated from his family’s Catholicism to evangelical Christianity after a fraternity brother at Hanover College “challenged me to take seriously the claims of Christ,” Mr. Pence later recalled on the House floor. His personality was the centerpiece of his early campaigns. In 1988, during his first run for Congress, he rode a bicycle across 261 miles of his district to meet voters. He lost. But his feel for the local mood and mores allowed him to master a form of communication that proved pivotal to his political rise: talk radio. After he lost the 1988 campaign, and another in 1990, “The Mike Pence Show” became his tether to voters across Indiana and a springboard into the world of national conservatives. The show’s origins reveal much about its host. The head of a local station had sold Mr. Pence (and his mother, who attended the meeting) on the idea by reminding him that radio was Ronald Reagan’s ticket to stardom in the 1930s. “Our idea was just to keep his name out there,” said Sharon Disinger, who is a of the station with her husband. The broadcast, an amiable discussion of politics, weather and local life that ran from 1993 to 1999, was a hit. It eventually aired on 18 local stations. “It was pleasant radio, like a fireside type chat,” Ms. Disinger said. Mr. Pence described it this way: “Rush Limbaugh on decaf. ” And it paved the way for his eventual victory in a 2000 race for Congress. By then, Mr. Pence had made a declaration that could complicate his new political partnership with Mr. Trump, whose style leaves no rival unscathed. He swore off personal attacks on campaign opponents, saying he regretted his tactics against his Democratic rival, Representative Phil Sharp. In one 1990 campaign commercial, Mr. Pence hired an actor to play an Arab, dressed in stereotypical garb, who theatrically thanked Mr. Sharp for American dependency on foreign oil. “Negative campaigning, I now know, is wrong,” Mr. Pence wrote in a contrite essay after he lost to Mr. Sharp. In it, he quoted from the Bible about Jesus and sin. “A campaign,” Mr. Pence posited, “ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate. ” Mr. Sharp, in an interview, seemed unmoved. “To me, neither he nor Trump are of presidential timber,” Mr. Sharp said. But friends said it was a sincere conversion. Curt Smith, the president of the Indiana Family Institute, a conservative group, said Mr. Pence still talked about his regret over that poisonous campaign years later. “Mike talks about his mistakes,” Mr. Smith said. “He is coming from a place of conviction. ” Admission of error did not come as easily in the case of the religious exceptions law that Mr. Pence signed in 2015. After offending gays across the country, enduring a backlash from the state’s business community and undergoing a painfully awkward nationally televised interview in which he struggled to explain the law’s impact, Mr. Pence acknowledged only that he could have better handled the TV encounter. Soon after, he accepted a revision to the law that he said would prevent businesses from denying services to gay couples, or anyone else. “It was badly mishandled,” said Mr. Lenkowsky, the former Indiana University professor. On that, even Mr. Pence’s conservative allies agree. The compromise Mr. Pence struck, said Mr. Smith, “turned out to be a dramatic unraveling, and I was very disappointed. ” Mr. Pence, however, seems unperturbed by the politically costly decision and the resulting cultural clash that has come to define his time in office. “I don’t think it’s something he regrets,” said Mr. Lenkowsky. “If that’s his identity, that’s his identity. He can live with it. ” | 1 |
LAKE GEORGE, N. Y. — It was the height of summer, the end of one of those spectacular July days in the Adirondacks when the blistering afternoons give way to cooler evenings and waters, luring boaters out for a twilight cruise. On July 25, the Enchanted Evening, a antique wooden boat, was making its way along the shoreline of Lake George, headed for Cramer Point on the west side of the lake. On board, Charlotte McCue, 8, was with her mother in the middle of the boat as her grandfather piloted the vessel when, out of nowhere, a fiberglass power boat slammed into its side. The smaller craft, according to court documents and witnesses, was going so fast that it became airborne, lifting out of the water and sailing over the middle of the wooden boat. As it soared through the air, the boat hit Charlotte and her mother, Courtney McCue. Witnesses at a nearby campground heard screams and profanities and a man yelling, “Oh, dear God, no!” In a scene of unimaginable horror, the boat’s propeller mangled the girl, killing her instantly. The smaller boat stalled, then started again and drove off. The next day, Alexander M. West, 24, the driver of the smaller boat, turned himself in at the Warren County sheriff’s office. He was initially charged with leaving the scene of an accident. After an investigation, a grand jury on Monday indicted him on 12 new charges, including manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, leaving the scene of an accident without reporting, boating while impaired by alcohol and drugs and criminal possession of a controlled substance, specifically cocaine. Mr. West could face up to 22 years in prison. At his arraignment here on Wednesday in a packed courtroom that included members of the girl’s family, Mr. West pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. Afterward, Cheryl Coleman, Mr. West’s defense lawyer, told reporters she was eager to take the case to trial. But she added she might seek a change of venue because statements by the prosecutor and the sheriff, Ms. Coleman said, had poisoned the potential jury pool. She cited a news conference during which Bud York, the sheriff, had discussed results of her client’s toxicology report. Ms. Coleman also emphasized that so far, only part of the story had emerged. In her 30 years of legal experience, she said, “I’ve never seen a case that is more different when you get on the inside than it looks on the outside. ” For now, the way it looks on the outside is extremely damaging to her client. In court documents, witnesses, all of whose names were redacted, have said that on the day of the crash, Mr. West and his four passengers had been drinking at Log Bay Day, an annual celebration on the lake. It began decades ago as a way for Lake George’s youthful summer work force to let off steam, but over the years it has evolved into an bacchanal. After they left the festivities, Mr. West and his friends stopped for dinner on the lake and headed home. Then, one of the passengers, Matthew J. Marry, told the police, “We hit something. ” “When I looked back, I realized it was a boat we hit,” Mr. Marry, 28, of Kingsbury, N. Y. told the police. “We waved to the boat and asked if they were O. K. They just looked at us and kept driving. ” A member of the McCue family who was aboard the wooden boat told the police what happened from the family’s perspective. “All of a sudden, there was a bow of another boat charging up the right side of our boat near Courtney and Charlotte,” he said. “The boat cleared ours and Courtney screamed, ‘We’re hurt. ’” Charlotte was “mangled badly,” her head and body cut. “I just screamed, ‘No, no, no,’” the family member said. “I knew she was hurt bad, she wasn’t saying anything, her eyes were a different color — to me they looked dead. ” He added: “I just tried to hold her to keep her together. She was cut so bad. ” Not wanting anyone else to see Charlotte this way, he covered her with a blanket. At 9:24 that night, witnesses at a nearby campground heard the collision and the screams. “I then heard a boat speeding off toward the south,” a witness at the campground said, adding that a man in the boat that was speeding away was uttering profanities. The authorities have said a nearby homeowner provided them with video of the crash from his home security system. Shortly after the crash, an police officer saw a boat pull into a nearby dock with its lights off, according to court papers. The officer said he heard one of the female passengers tell the others “not to talk about this or text about this, not to discuss it with anybody. ” None of the occupants of the boat reported the collision. The officer reported what he had seen and heard, which led the police to Mr. West’s parents. At an arraignment in July on the earlier charge against Mr. West, prosecutors said a text from Mr. West’s mother, Cassandra West, indicated she may have been helping her son and his friends evade the police. A few weeks ago, she was involved in a serious motorcycle accident, and so far Ms. West has not been charged in this case. The four passengers on the power boat were charged with misdemeanors. Blood samples taken when Mr. West turned himself in, more than 12 hours after the crash, showed no alcohol in his system, but toxicology reports showed he had ingested at least two illegal drugs. An investigator said in court papers that Mr. West was arrested because he had “cause to know that personal injury had been caused to another person by virtue of the force with which his boat hit the other boat, the screaming of the persons on board the boat he hit and the damage his boat sustained. ” The community here has been deeply shaken by the death and particularly the accusation that Mr. West left the scene. Several officials have called for ending the Log Bay Day celebration as well as for tighter boating regulations and increased lake patrols. Lake George has fewer boating restrictions than many other Adirondack lakes, and its waters and the scenic backdrop of its mountains have long attracted tourists and recreationists. Although the lake is 32 miles long, sections of it are often crowded with boat traffic. At the arraignment in Warren County Court on Wednesday, Kate Hogan, the district attorney, asked Judge John S. Hall Jr. to increase Mr. West’s bail, saying he was a flight risk, but she did not specify an amount. Although he lives here with his family, he has a Colorado driver’s license, she said, and travels west in winter to ski. Ms. Hogan said the defendant had reason to flee because the evidence against him was so compelling. And, she added, the charges against him include leaving the scene of an accident. “The very nature of this charge is him not stopping and doing what he should have done under the law,” Ms. Hogan said. Judge Hall increased bail for Mr. West to $100, 000 in cash or a $300, 000 bail bond, up from $50, 000 in cash or a $100, 000 bail bond. Mr. West was led away in handcuffs. His lawyer said she expected to raise the necessary money to have him released from jail. The judge ordered the defense to file its next motions by Dec. 9. If the case goes to a trial, it could be held as soon as late April. | 1 |
Share on Facebook Upon learning this, you will think that happened long ago, but no. There is still a place to live, and not say for its scenery, but for their ideals as a society who do not follow the standards to which we are accustomed. In this town there is no money, no religion, no politics. This is truly a paradise to live. Think only in a place where there are none of these factors, where you can finally live in peace. This place exists and is called “Auroville”! It was founded in 1968 and was hailed as an international city by UNESCO, as its inhabitants are over 50 nationalities and different cultures. They coexist without any problem, since they have a political system, have no religion, and on top, do not use money and getting all living through the system of exchanges. Auroville is located in South India, 150 kilometers from Chennai in Madras. In this epic city, the buildings are made based on an experimental architecture, as they are constantly changing. This is because these structures seek to optimize the use of renewable energies and their main objective: reuse and recycling. The person who designed and managed to found this wonderful city was: Mirra Alfassa, better known as “Mother”. "There should be a place on Earth that no nation could claim as their own; where all human beings of good will who have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme truth. A place of peace, concord and harmony where all the fighting instinct in man were used exclusively to overcome the cause of their sufferings and miseries, to overcome their weaknesses and ignorance, and to triumph over their limitations and disabilities. A place where the needs of the spirit and interest of progress precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions or the pursuit of pleasure and material enjoyment," was the idea of Alfassa. From this hypothesis, we now have this amazing international city. This city is positioning itself as a model of sustainable eco-city. It is a method developed by the multi-cropping, combining fruit trees, cornfields and orchards, organized into 15 farms, reaching an area of 160 hectares. In this way, they ensure much food, so supply the population. In these farms work 50 villagers and 300 neighbors, producing 2% of rice and cereals consumed and 50% of vegetables. Also, the village is also self-sufficient in milk and dairy products, and fruits in season. Despite not being the only city that takes this model itself is special for receiving protection by UNESCO, and is a clear example of how it will be our way of life in a few more years, when Earth begins to manifest the consequences our mistreatment of her. Definitely this city is an example, where one of its principles is healthy, both mentally and physical life. We have nothing more to congratulate and wish all follow that model of life. Would you be in agreement with this new style of society? Related: | 0 |
The Times of Israel reports: A member of Hamas’s naval commando unit defected from the terror organization nearly a year ago to join the Sinai Province — the Islamic State group’s branch in the Sinai Peninsula, Palestinian sources told The Times of Israel. [Abed Abu Aadara, 20, from the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, was arrested approximately two months ago by Hamas while visiting Gaza due to his affiliation with IS. He has since been freed. Although Abu Aadara is not the first Hamas operative to defect to IS, he is the first known member of the group’s naval commando unit to join its ranks. Read more here. | 1 |
College admissions experts breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday when the Supreme Court upheld a University of Texas admissions plan that allows race and ethnicity to be considered as one of many factors in admission. “I think there are going to be some parties tonight in high school counseling offices and in college admissions offices,” said Phil Trout, the president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and a college counselor at Minnetonka High School outside Minneapolis. “‘Sigh of relief’ is not strong enough. ” In its ruling, the Supreme Court noted that the Texas plan — which automatically grants admission to roughly the top 10 percent of students across the state, then uses race as one of many factors in considering the rest — was unique and very much a product of Texas politics, law and demographics. But what was encouraging about the court decision, experts said, was that in affirming the value of diversity, including race and ethnicity, in higher education, the court recognized that there was not one, immutable way of defining and achieving it. “It’s a terrific outcome,” said Peter McDonough, the vice president and general counsel at the American Council on Education. “I think today’s decision is about deference. It’s not about dictating. I think it’s about the continuing recognition that our country’s campuses are laboratories for experimentation, and that the formula for diversity does remain elusive. It changes over time, and it is impacted by context. ” Mr. McDonough echoed a critical part of the Supreme Court opinion that described public universities as “laboratories for experimentation” and called on the University of Texas at Austin “to scrutinize the fairness of its admissions program to assess whether changing demographics have undermined the need for a policy and to identify the effects, both positive and negative, of the measures it deems necessary. ” The decision was made on fairly narrow legal grounds and does not establish any bold new policy, said David Hawkins, the executive director for education content and policy of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “I don’t expect to see a resounding clarion call for further investment in the use of race and ethnicity as an admissions tool,” he said. Mr. Hawkins said he expected colleges to react by heeding the court’s call to be introspective — to “engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection” — about how they achieved diversity. Several states — including Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington — have banned affirmative action, and some education analysts wondered whether the court’s decision would lead to more such backlash. “Public opinion polling suggests that most Americans don’t like the idea of counting race in deciding who gets into universities,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, who has argued for using poverty rather than race to achieve diversity and said he saw the decision as a setback for that cause. “Republicans have resisted pushing this issue because they fear that it will generate turnout among ” he said. “But all bets are off with Donald Trump. It will be interesting to see what he does. ” Affirmative action bans have led public universities like the University of Michigan to look for other ways to achieve diversity, like reaching out to minority students after they have been offered admission to persuade them to accept. Experts also said other affirmative action plans could still face challenges in state legislatures and in cases before lower courts challenging admissions policies at Harvard and at the University of North Carolina. The lawsuits argue that diversity can be achieved through alternatives. The Harvard complaint also argues that affirmative action policies have the effect of discriminating against applicants. “The lower courts will obviously have the Fisher precedent to apply while looking at those schools’ programs,” said Rachel Kleinman, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, referring to the name of the case, Fisher v. University of Texas, No. . “I think that could be very helpful. ” Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, noted that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in his dissent, said the Texas plan discriminated against . “The points made in Justice Alito’s dissent about his view and the view of dissenters that this discriminates against I think, is one of the themes that the opponents of affirmative action are pursuing,” Mr. Bollinger said. “I do not expect Fisher to be the end. ” On the campus of the University of Texas, Sergio Cavazos, 20, president of the Senate of College Councils, said he thought students overwhelmingly supported the admissions policy. Mr. Cavazos, a senior government major, is from Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas on the border with Mexico. One of four children from a Hispanic family, he graduated from high school in 2013 ranked 10th in his class of 350 and entered the university under its policy of admitting the top 10 percent of graduating high school seniors. He has a full academic scholarship. “We value diversity on this campus,” he said. “One of the key concerns for me — myself being a Hispanic student from Brownsville — was ensuring this campus remain diverse and representative of the population of this state. ” The court seemed skeptical of using poverty as a proxy for achieving racial diversity, as some have called for. The decision said that Texas had “tried, and failed, to increase diversity through enhanced consideration of socioeconomic and other factors. ” Some have argued that making large allowances for race could lead to admitting students who would flounder because they were “mismatched” to academic standards, a theory that Justice Antonin Scalia seemed to be thinking of during oral arguments in the case. The court said Thursday that “the Equal Protection Clause does not force universities to choose between a diverse student body and a reputation for academic excellence. ” Justice Scalia died in February before he could participate in the Fisher decision. | 1 |
The voters of the world have had quite a year: They rejected Colombia’s peace deal split Britain from the European Union endorsed a Thai Constitution that curtails democracy and, in Hungary, backed the government’s plan to restrict refugees, but without the necessary turnout for a valid result. Each of these moves was determined by a national referendum. Though voters upended their governments’ plans, eroded their own rights and ignited political crises, they all accomplished one thing: They demonstrated why many political scientists consider referendums messy and dangerous. When asked whether referendums were a good idea, Michael Marsh, a political scientist at Trinity College Dublin, said, “The simple answer is almost never. ” “I’ve watched many of these in Ireland, and they really range from the pointless to the dangerous,” he added. Though such votes are portrayed as popular governance in its purest form, studies have found that they often subvert democracy rather than serve it. They tend to be volatile, turning not just on the merits of the decision but also on unrelated political swings or even, as may have happened in Colombia, on the weather. Voters must make their decisions with relatively little information, forcing them to rely on political messaging — which puts power in the hands of political elites rather than those of voters. “This is a tool that’s risky, but politicians keep using it because they think that they’ll win,” said Alexandra Cirone, a fellow at the London School of Economics. But often they do not win, and instead of resolving political problems, the referendums create new ones. Looking over the research on these votes, it becomes clear why many experts are skeptical. Voters face a problem in any referendum: They need to distill difficult policy choices down to a simple yes or no, and predict the outcome of decisions so complex that even experts might spend years struggling to understand them. Voters typically solve this problem by finding what the political scientists Arthur Lupia and Mathew D. McCubbins have termed “short cuts. ” The voters follow the guidance of trusted authority figures or fit the choice within a familiar narrative. When a referendum is put forward by the government, people often vote in support if they like the leadership and vote in opposition if they dislike it, according to research by Lawrence LeDuc, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. “A vote that is supposed to be about an important public issue ends up instead being about the popularity or unpopularity of a particular party or leader, the record of the government, or some set of issues or events that are not related to the subject of the referendum,” Professor LeDuc wrote in a 2015 paper. In Colombia, for example, most regions that voted for President Juan Manuel Santos in 2014 also voted for the peace deal, and vice versa. Voters may also cope with complex issues by shoehorning them into existing ideological beliefs. This dynamic plays out in virtually every referendum — especially those with higher stakes. Politicians or other powerful actors will often reframe the referendum into simplistic, straightforward narratives. The result is that votes become less about the actual policy question than about contests between abstract values, or between which narrative voters find more appealing. In Britain’s debate over whether to leave the European Union, or “Brexit,” neither side emphasized the specifics of membership in the bloc, instead framing the vote as a choice about which values to emphasize. The “Remain” campaign presented membership as a matter of economic stability. The “Leave” campaign emphasized immigration. It worked. People who voted to remain expressed great concern about the economy, but not much about immigrants. People who voted to leave said they were very concerned about immigration, and less so about the economy. In Colombia, Mr. Santos presented the referendum as a vote on peace, but the opposition presented it as a decision on whether the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, was entitled to leniency. Neither narrative fully portrayed the question of whether the peace deal would be worthwhile. Colombia, Ms. Cirone said, also highlighted that “in contexts where the referendum addresses a historical political issue, it may be hard for voters to separate past experiences with what is best for the country in the future. ” In Thailand, the government held a referendum in August to approve a new Constitution that would entrench its power and curtail elements of democracy. But the military also promised elections only after the Constitution passed, in effect selling an document as the choice. The measure passed. Though presented as putting power in the hands of the people, referendums are often intended to put a stamp of popular legitimacy on something leaders have already decided to do. “It doesn’t have a lot to do with whether this should be decided by the people,” Ms. Cirone said. “It has to do with whether a politician can gain an advantage from putting a question to the people. ” For example, David Cameron, until July the British prime minister, held the vote on whether to depart the European Union expecting that it would bolster his decision to stay in the bloc and would thus silence British politicians who wanted to leave. The Thai military restricted news coverage of the draft Constitution, ensuring that there was no counternarrative that might portray it as a threat to democracy. By giving the appearance of popular input, the military in fact dampened it. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary most likely devised his country’s referendum — on whether to reject European Union requirements for accepting refugees — to inevitable objections in the bloc to his policies and to bolster his political standing at home. In both cases, it was about using the vote as an instrument to strengthen himself. This stamp of popular legitimacy, though, can sometimes be a good thing, settling contentious national disputes that might otherwise lead to political turmoil or even to armed conflict. But it is precisely because the stakes are so high that the risks are, as well. Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace deal in 1998 was followed by two referendums, one in Northern Ireland and one in the Republic of Ireland. That gave communities a sense of having been included, and marginalized anyone who wanted to keep fighting, making a relapse into conflict less likely. This shows an important way referendums are different from regular elections: They succeed only when the nation perceives the vote as reflecting popular will. That works best if turnout is high and one side wins in a landslide, as happened in Northern Ireland’s 1998 vote. But in Colombia, turnout was just 38 percent, and the vote was split almost perfectly down the middle, meaning a few thousand people swung the outcome. Even if the referendum had passed, it would have failed to give the peace deal popular legitimacy. That problem can be solved by requiring high turnout and a landslide victory for a referendum to be binding, Ms. Cirone said. But in a puzzling decision, neither Colombia nor Britain required more than 50 percent of the vote for either side to win. A close result like Colombia’s can risk deepening political disputes rather than bridging them. Leaders have to choose whether to accept a result that does not demonstrably reflect popular will, or reject the result and risk a political backlash or a constitutional crisis. National referendums can also be extremely volatile, driven by factors unrelated to the issue’s merits and outside anyone’s control. Opinion polls are often misleading because people do not form their opinions until immediately before the vote. Tellingly, they often abandon those views just as quickly. Professor Marsh of Trinity College Dublin said he had found, in some cases, that “most people can’t remember any arguments for — this is about a week later — they can’t remember any arguments against, and they’re not really quite sure why they voted yes or no. ” He added, “That doesn’t inspire me, really, with referendums. ” The ambient noise of politics can also distort popular will: Whether one party is up or down in the polls, whether intraparty infighting over the vote spills into public, and how the news media portrays related issues all play a role. Votes are also subject to random factors, including the weather. In Colombia, turnout for the referendum may have been depressed by a hurricane that hit the day before, forcing evacuations in some areas. “The idea that somehow any decision reached anytime by majority rule is necessarily ‘democratic’ is a perversion of the term,” Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard, wrote after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. “This isn’t democracy it is Russian roulette for republics,” he added. | 1 |
DALLAS — On Thursday night, around the time the gunfire started, Kristy Villasenor, the wife of a Dallas police officer, posted a picture of herself and her toddler daughter on Facebook from a Texas Rangers baseball game at Globe Life Park in Arlington. Soon after, one of her friends commented anxiously on the photo: “Glad Pat is there and not in Dallas right now. ” Ms. Villasenor replied: “He’s not here. ” Pat — her husband, Officer Patrick Zamarripa — was in Dallas during the game, caught in the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle that would eventually claim his life and those of four other officers. The news of the killings emerged almost in real time online. At 10:53 p. m. the Dallas Police Department posted a Twitter message announcing that 10 officers had been shot during a protest rally, three of them fatally. Twenty minutes later, a second message said that a fourth officer had been killed. Then, after midnight, there was a third: “It has been a devastating night. We are sad to report a fifth officer has died. ” By Friday afternoon, the full scope of the city’s losses was clear: At least two of the slain officers had served overseas in the military, only to die back home in Texas. A third had made his way to Dallas after working at a jail outside Detroit. A fourth was a large man — about — who had the semblance of a grizzly bear, according to a friend. The fifth was a standout on Dallas’s large, modern force: The local police association had named him the “Cops’ Cop” for February 2009. As condolences for the men poured in all day on Friday — from the governor to the secretary general of the United Nations — details of the officers’ lives started to emerge. “We’re hurting, our profession is hurting,” said David O. Brown, the Dallas police chief. The first officer to be identified was Brent Thompson, 43, who worked for the police force of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, which operates trains and buses in the region. Mr. Thompson, the first DART officer to die in the line of duty, joined the transit force in 2009 and patrolled the northwestern section of the transit system, according to his LinkedIn page. Before Dallas, he worked for DynCorp International as a police liaison officer and helped train fellow officers in Afghanistan and Iraq. He had also been a police academy instructor in Corsicana, Tex. southeast of Dallas, where he attended high school. He started in law enforcement in the Navarro County sheriff’s office, where he was assigned to the county jail, said Leslie A. Cotten Sr. the former sheriff. But like most young officers, Mr. Cotten said, “he wanted to get out on patrol and ride around in a patrol car and do a different job. ” Family members, writing on Facebook, were the first to publicly identify Mr. Zamarripa, a veteran of the Dallas force who had spent time in the Navy and served tours in Iraq as a military policeman. His Navy records released on Friday showed that he enlisted in 2001 and had also been posted in Florida, Illinois, Texas, Virginia and Bahrain. When he finished his military service, Mr. Zamarripa, a fan of the Rangers and the Dallas Cowboys, returned to the Dallas area and joined the Police Department, said his uncle, Hector Zamarripa. He lived in the Fort Worth area with Ms. Villasenor and their daughter, Lyncoln. He also had a stepson, his uncle said. On Friday afternoon, the National Latino Law Enforcement Organization — Mr. Zamarripa was a member — held a somber lunch for grieving supporters. “A good kid, man, a good young kid,” said Sgt. George Aranda, who runs the organization. “He loved his job. I talked to his mom last night, and even his mom said this was Patrick’s dream. This is what he wanted to be, a police officer. ” The third slain officer was Michael Krol, 40. Before moving to Dallas, Mr. Krol had served in the Wayne County, Mich. jail system from 2003 to 2007, said the county sheriff, Benny N. Napoleon. Two of Mr. Krol’s relatives declined to be interviewed on Friday. A fourth officer, Lorne Ahrens, was married to a Dallas police detective and regarded as a lawman devoted to the profession that he pursued in Dallas for more than a dozen years. “There are very few officers I’ve met who are more passionate about doing the job right than that man,” said Timothy S. Rodgers, a former prosecutor in Dallas County. “He was always calling me. He always had questions like, ‘What can I do better in this situation?’ ” Mr. Ahrens had worked in patrol and on property crimes. Mr. Rodgers recalled with a chuckle that his friend had a knack for finding criminals who would challenge him, despite his hefty size. The fifth slain officer was Michael J. Smith, who joined the Police Department in September 1989 after growing up in the southeastern corner of the state. In a publication acknowledging his Cops’ Cop award, the Police Association said that Mr. Smith held an array of posts: in personnel, on patrol and at the airport. The publication also said he had been injured on duty years ago when a gang member “lunged at his partner with an unknown object in his hand. ” At a news conference on Friday morning, Mayor Mike Rawlings stood beside Chief Brown and said: “To say that our police officers put their lives on the line every day is no hyperbole, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a reality. ” A few hours earlier, the department had posted yet another Twitter message: “Thank you to the members of our community for your show of support during this difficult time. ” | 1 |
By wmw_admin on October 29, 2016 US Preparing For War With Russia? Cristina Silva — IBT Oct 25, 2016 This 1997 aerial photograph shows the entrance to a cave facility the U.S. military uses in the Trondheim region of central Norway. Heavy armour, tanks, artillery and Armoured Personnel Carriers are pre-positioned in the cave complex ready for use by thousands of NATO troops who could be flown into Norway should conflict erupt with Russia. (Defense Department photo courtesy of the National Archives). Click to enlarge
More than 300 Marines will be deployed to Norway along the Russian border as tensions between Moscow and Washington over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria have provoked new threats of sanctions and military upgrades. The deployment marks the first time a foreign military will be on the ground in Norway since World War II, according to Reuters.
The Marines will take part in training and manoeuvres in near Arctic conditions. They will be stationed at the Vaernes military base in central Norway about 600 miles from Russia and will “increase NATO’s ability to rapidly aggregate and employ forces in northern Europe,” Major General Niel Nelson, commander of U.S. Marines in Europe, said Monday.
Norway typically maintains good relations with the Kremlin and the two nations share a 122-mile border in the Arctic. But the Russian military has raised concerns in recent months after ordering its troops to train along Norwegian airspace and expand remote border roads. Moscow’s recent military exercises near Sweden, Denmark and Finland, as well as the former Soviet Union states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have also stroked fears of a miltary build-up.
“This U.S. initiative is welcome and also fits well within ongoing processes in NATO to increase exercises, training and interoperability within the Alliance,” Norwegian Defence Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said in the statement. “The defence of Norway is dependent on allied reinforcements, and it is crucial for Norwegian security that our allies come here to gain knowledge of how to operate in Norway and with Norwegian forces.”
NATO previously deployed four multinational battalions to Poland and the Baltic States to temper Russian agression, and U.S. tanks have been stationed in Europe. Norway has been a NATO member since 1949, but under a deal with Russia it had prevously said it would not allow foreign troops on its land. But Russia’s ongoing military conflicts in Ukraine and Syria have drawn rebuke from Europe and the United States, including threats of further sanctions. Meanwhile, Moscow continues to spend big on defense .
Former senior Norwegian army officer Jacob Borresen told broadcaster NRK the latest deployment “sends negative signals eastwards” that could incite a Cold War-style “confrontation zone.”
Russia has already denounced the move . “Taking into account multiple statements made by Norwegian officials about the absence of threat from Russia to Norway, we would like to understand why Norway is so much willing to increase its military potential, in particular through the stationing of American forces in Vaernes, “embassy spokesman Maxime Gourov said in an email to Agence France-Presse. | 0 |
But God’s law ?
Um…no thank you.
Law apart from God is beautiful to most Americans. Law defined by God is abhorrent to most of the same people.
Think about that and you’ll quickly get clarity as to why we are where we are in America.
Just swap “law” for “God’s law” and the otherwise adored and championed concept as embraced and proclaimed throughout the land by gajillions of supposedly God-loving American people suddenly becomes something to fear, avoid, run away from, deny, ignore, work around and/or generally malign.
Replace “law” with “God’s law” and you will find most “conservative Christian” types in America flipping like a switch in conversations about how government and law ought to be approached here in *ahem* God’s creation.
Much like the concepts freedom, liberty, prosperity, success, and peace, the concept of law has been thoroughly separated from God in the minds of most politically active conservatives claiming the name of Christ in America.
In short, it is self-described conservative Christians in America who have long modeled the open contempt for God’s Law that has led us to where we are now.
Talk about the importance of generic law in America, and these people will cheer and champion your cause.
Talk about the importance of God’s Law in America, and they’ll more often than not rail against the notion and turn on your personally for even bringing the idea into focus.
“We the People” are God in practice , after all.
“We the People” are free to define our own approach to reality based on our (ever-shifting) standards as we see fit, at least as far as most politically active professing Christian conservatives in the land are concerned.
Don’t believe me?
Just ask ’em what they think about “law.”
Let them go on as long as they like in response. Ask obvious follow-up questions honestly and encourage them to give detailed answers.
Then, after they’ve made their view of law and its role in America plain, ask ’em the same question about God’s Law and its binding authority over America and every other part of God’s creation.
Article reposted with permission from Fire Breathing Christian Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . | 0 |
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