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Jenice Armstrong, Philly, October 26, 2016
The Temple attacks were about troublemaking teens–not race.
The youngsters who jumped those college students as they walked to campus Friday night are delinquents who need to be put in check before it’s too late.
They were nothing but miscreants who took out their aggression and misdirected rage on random passersby. Why? Because they felt like wilding out that night. They were out to create chaos, so they did.
So, don’t talk to me about gentrification in North Philly.
Don’t talk to me about poverty.
Don’t talk to me about race relations.
Those are whole other conversations and not what these attacks were about.
No one was safe from these teens that night. Not the six Temple students who were injured. Not the Temple police officer knocked from her bicycle by a 15-year-old. Not even a police horse. Anyone could have gotten caught up in that madness.
According to news reports, a crowd of 150 youngsters started gathering after an Instagram advertised an 8 p.m. meet-up at the AMC North Broad Street 7 (formerly the Pearl Theater at Avenue North), on Broad Street near Oxford at the southern end of the campus.
{snip}
Most of the high schoolers who responded to the online posting were good kids looking to socialize. But then the delinquents did what they often do and ruined it for everybody.
According to police, a group of 20 to 30 boys and girls in their early to late teens randomly attacked Temple students as they returned from a football game at Lincoln Financial Field.
{snip}
People keep trying to make this a racial thing because at least two of the victims were white and all of the assailants were African American. They make that assumption even though we don’t know the race of the other injured students. (Lots of African Americans go to Temple.) Nor do we know the race of the injured officers.
Street violence is street violence. It knows no skin color. {snip}
{snip}
Another student, a junior environmental science major who didn’t give her name, told a website called theTab.com, “My boyfriend ran and got away but the second I tried to run, they grabbed me by my hair and started beating my head and back.
“I remember shoes coming for my face and after that I heard other kids from the group saying, ‘Yo chill, yo chill, it’s just a girl,’ and they pulled my attackers off me.”
{snip}
Temple has promised increased security, but when it comes to random street violence, anything can happen to anyone–black or white. | 0 |
George Mason Univ. Gets Their Fascism On – Who Knew It Was A Crime To Hang Anti-Terrorism Posters? George Mason Univ. Gets Their Fascism On – Who Knew It Was A Crime To Hang Anti-Terrorism Posters? November 17, 2016, 2:00 pm by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton Leave a Comment 0
NoisyRoom.net
My friend and compatriot Oleg Atbashian found that out the hard way. Imagine my surprise this morning to find out he had been roughed up and arrested in Fairfax, Virginia. His crime was hanging anti-terrorism posters on the university campus. Oh, and bonus… he wasn’t even read his rights. He is now out on $8,000 bail for putting up pro-Israel posters to combat a pro-Islamist conference at George Mason University. He faces the very real prospect of five years in prison for allegedly committing a “class 6 felony.”
Oleg is an artistic genius. His satirical site, The People’s Cube , is one of the very best out there. Oleg did the graphics for NoisyRoom and has done work for Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid as well. He is a member of a small circle of commie hunters out there. We all have very long memories and we take it very personally when one of our own is treated like this.
Oleg: “Back in my Soviet dissident days, when I was collecting signatures in defense of Andrei Sakharov, I was screamed at, threatened, and lectured by the KGB and Communist functionaries,” Oleg says. “What I never imagined was that in the United States, the land of the free, I would not only be subjected to similar treatment, but go to jail .”
Daniel Greenfield of FrontPage Mag and Sultan Knish fame had this to say regarding Oleg:
Oleg’s mixture of art and satire took off with Communists for Kerry. He’s the mastermind behind The People’s Cube and his tweaking of the radical left and its alliance with Islamic terrorists allowed him to continue the same fight he had pursued in the days of the Soviet Union. But as the US comes to resemble the USSR, political satire and activism carries a serious price.
This is what happened to Oleg when he put up some of his Freedom Center posters challenging the anti-Semitic environment created by the left’s alliance with Islamic terrorists on campus.
This was supposed to be a two-day poster campaign, to counteract the George Mason University hosting an official national conference for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is an anti-Semitic organization with well-documented ties to Hamas – a terrorist group whose stated goal is to exterminate the Jews. The GMU poster campaign was conceived by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In every communist regime or despotic hellhole throughout history, one of the first groups of people they go after are the artists. They are considered especially dangerous. That’s when they aren’t going after Jews of course. Oleg went to GMU to hang posters and stickers against Justice in Palestine. A group that has terrorist connections. Instead he was treated like a domestic terrorist himself.
The police knew which rental car he had and as they were putting up three posters with wheat paste, the police arrested them for destroying property… it’s totally water soluble and the posters would have washed off with the first rain. Instead of giving Oleg and his partner a citation or a warning, the campus police frisked them, cuffed them and took them in. They wanted to make an example of him.
Here is the first part of Oleg’s story about persecution for doing nothing more than hanging anti-terrorism posters in defense of Israel and Jews in Virginia:
My part in it was to create provocative artwork for the posters and to hang them around the GMU campus, as well as to distribute flyers in order to raise awareness among the students, faculty, and the administration about the true meaning of their support for the SJP conference.
On the first day, my friend and I placed a few stickers on walls, poles, and signs around the GMU campus. We also placed paper flyers inside and outside the university buildings. We had decided to hang the larger posters on the following night, right before the start of the SJP conference.
Arriving at the campus in the evening, we noticed a large police presence everywhere, including the campus Starbucks. From what we overheard at the tables, the police were on the lookout for people posting “disturbing” flyers. At one point we considered canceling our mission due to this higher risk, but then decided to hang a few posters in new locations, in order to get the message out more effectively.
We only had time to hang three large posters when, at about 4am, our car was pulled over by a GMU PD cruiser with flashing lights. As we found out later, they already had a description of our rental KIA Optima. Officer M.J. Guston and his female partner, Officer Daniels, requested to see our drivers’ licenses, which they took away. Then they inquired if we had any weapons and proceeded with the visual search, noticing our bucket with mixed wheat paste and some rolled posters on the back seat, covered with towels.
The police officers took pictures of the contents of our car and retrieved some of the loose fliers from the floor as evidence. They claimed that since we were covering the posters and flyers with towels, we intended to conceal our wrongdoing. We explained that the towels were needed to wipe our hands, to prevent the bucket from spilling, and to stop the papers from rolling around the car, which was the honest truth.
The officers said we had been photographed while attaching the flyers, but never showed us the actual pictures. They ordered us to give them our car key and to step out of the car. Then we were told to put our hands behind our backs and to spread our legs. Officer Guston then held my thumbs behind my back with his left hand, while his right hand gave me a complete and very thorough pat-down and searched the content of my pockets. He repeated the same procedure with my friend, repeatedly asking us if we had any kind of weapons on us or in the car.
My friend and I tried to be as friendly and cooperative as the situation allowed, but that had no effect. We were ordered to sit on the curb, as Officer Daniels told us that the content of our posters was violent and disturbing to some students, especially the one with the Hamas terrorist standing in pools of blood over his dead victims. Such interpretation flipped our message on its head entirely, turning it from sympathy for the victims of violence into a threat of violence.
It dawned on me that the reason they kept searching us and asking about weapons was that they were convinced we were members of some violent militant group of “domestic terrorists” who meant to do harm to the students – a stereotype largely created by the “progressive” media and unscrupulous politicians. And now we, defenseless artists, armed with nothing but brushes and paper, became victims of this manipulative mythology, which caused the police to treat us with extreme prejudice. At the same time, the officers who handled us as if we were terrorists, seemed to be blissfully unaware of the true nature of the SJP they were defending, and their organization’s very real ties to a known terrorist organization with a record of mass murder, kidnappings, and targeting innocent civilians.
Since they couldn’t find any weapons and our message was protected by the First Amendment, the officers decided to charge us with “destruction of property worth of at least $2,500,” which was a “class 6 felony.” (Editor’s note: According to VA law, intentional destruction of property that is worth $1,000 or more is a class 6 felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a maximum of $2,500 in fines.) They claimed we had “super-glued” our fliers to school signs and it was impossible to peel them off.
It didn’t matter that we never used permanent glue, or that there could be other volunteers on campus who posted the stickers they could have downloaded online. Our wallpaper paste was made of wheat and water; we only used it on three large posters, which could be easily removed with water and would be washed off by the first rain. The rest were stickers, printed on regular self-adhesive paper found in any office store. They, too, could be easily removed with a tissue soaked in Goo Gone, a common household cleaner found in any dollar store. We even offered to remove any posters and stickers for them, then catch our flights in the morning and never bother them again. But the officers weren’t interested in that. They seemed to have a rather inflexible phantom image of us as dangerous felons and “right-wing extremists” who belonged in jail.
A phone call that Officer Guston made inside his cruiser seemed to reinforce their determination. Stepping out into the street, he ordered us to put our hands behind our backs and then handcuffed us so tightly that our bruises were painful to the touch even on the following day. Then he emptied our pockets, took away my hat, and placed everything in two plastic bags.
We were then taken to the back of his police car. Officer Guston never read us our rights ; he simply declared that we were under arrest for committing felony and were going to jail. The partitioned space in the back of his police cruiser was extremely narrow, which forced my friend and I to contort our bodies in order to avoid additional pain from leaning on our tightly handcuffed hands behind our backs.
The full account can be found at American Thinker… please go there and read it all . It was Oleg this time, but it could be any of us next.
The arresting officer told them they could never come to GMU again. What happened to free speech and your constitutional rights? These charges should not stick… they were not read their rights and therefore the charges should be dismissed. But with the Progressive courts and judges we have now, who knows what will happen.
Oleg quoted George Orwell: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” He adds: “that is what the future of America also will look like if progressivism and political correctness continue to expand their grip on every sphere of life.”
Oleg survived the Soviet Union and persecution there. He’ll survive this. But it is just disgraceful that in the Land of the Free that someone would be treated this way for exercising free speech. Just shameful and it figures it is in Terry McAuliffe’s state. There was no permanent damage done as claimed… but a man who is an acclaimed Soviet dissident was treated like a domestic terrorist, while the real terrorists were giving lectures on campus. Or is it a crime now to stand up to Islamic extremists and speak out in defense of Israel?
#StopCampusSupport4Terrorism | 0 |
Posted 10/31/2016 1:28 pm by PatriotRising with 0 comments
According to a report in the New Yorker, James Comey, Big Kahuna of the FBI, went full-on cowboy in releasing details of the new Clinton email inquiry. Apparently, the Department of Justice advised him not to release the information just days before the presidential election.
Gosh. I wonder if the same advice would have been given if it was Donald Trump who was being investigated by the FBI.
Comey explained his decision in a letter to FBI employees :
“We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
The DoJ – and by DoJ I mean Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who famously had a secret meeting on an airport tarmac with Bill Clinton to talk about her non-existent grandchildren – is implying that Comey is not playing fair and that the move is inconsistent with the rules which have been designed to make it seem like they are not interfering in an election.
Here’s Comey’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Really?
The DoJ thinks that the public shouldn’t know that the person they may be voting for is being investigated by the FBI?
That’s the most absurd thing I have heard for quite some time, and considering this election, that’s really saying something.
This is from the New Yorker report, emphasis mine.
On Friday, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, acting independently of Attorney General Loretta Lynch , sent a letter to Congress saying that the F.B.I. had discovered e-mails that were potentially relevant to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server. Coming less than two weeks before the Presidential election, Comey’s decision to make public new evidence that may raise additional legal questions about Clinton was contrary to the views of the Attorney General, according to a well-informed Administration official. Lynch expressed her preference that Comey follow the department’s longstanding practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations, and not taking any action that could influence the outcome of an election, but he said that he felt compelled to do otherwise .
Comey’s decision is a striking break with the policies of the Department of Justice, according to current and former federal legal officials. Comey, who is a Republican appointee of President Obama, has a reputation for integrity and independence, but his latest action is stirring an extraordinary level of concern among legal authorities, who see it as potentially affecting the outcome of the Presidential and congressional elections. ( source )
Is this investigation the iceberg to HRC’s Titanic campaign?
Hillary Clinton has said she finds the development “unprecedented and deeply troubling.” (source )
Oh, I’ll bet she does.
I’ll bet if Trump had been the target of the investigation she would have been up on the stage, gripping the podium to stay upright, saying how wonderful it was that Comey decided to break the news so that voters could be aware that they might be voting for someone who was suspected of having broken federal laws. I’ll bet she’d be saying that the public has a right to know if a candidate was under investigation. I’ll bet she’d take the high road and say that those elected to the office of President of the United States have to be above and beyond reproach.
Of course, when it’s her, things are a little different, aren’t they?
We do have a right to know. We absolutely have a right to know that a person who could be elected to know all of the secrets was careless when she only knew some of the secrets. It seems like a no-brainer that the public should know that a candidate is being investigated for a second time for being criminally negligent with information entrusted to her.
And the fact that we know has severely damaged Clinton’s campaign. Although previous polls were incredibly skewed to the point of being outright fake , it looks like the mainstream is now trying to save face with a new batch of polls. A poll from ABC news and the Washington Post , both hotbeds of liberal voters, has shown that her lead has dropped to within a single point over Donald Trump due to the Clinton email scandal.
“About a third of likely voters say they’re less likely to support Clinton given FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure Friday that the bureau is investigating more emails related to its probe of Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state. “
Finally, some people are actually paying attention to the character of Hillary Clinton.
But it may not be enough. There was one finding that was astonishing to me, even though it probably shouldn’t be:
“Given other considerations, 63 percent say it makes no difference.”
Those are the very people that warning labels were created to protect .
Meanwhile, on social media, the FBI emails are somehow not a trending topic. It certainly appears that Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Buzzfeed are blacking out the topic.
My biggest question is this: Why now?
Why did James Comey, who has probably committed career suicide, along with a potential actual “suicide” via a shot to the back of his own head like others who have run afoul of the Clintons, feel the need to break the news, particularly after giving her a pass during the last investigation?
Opponents will jump on the fact that he’s a Republican and will say that he did it for political reasons.
They won’t admit that perhaps he felt guilty for being complicit in letting her off the hook in the first investigation into the Clinton email negligence.
They will never, ever admit that maybe his integrity and belief in the office he holds made it impossible for him to keep quiet until after the election and that, perhaps, when he was given a chance to right a previous wrong, he took it.
Clinton isn’t taking it gracefully.
Clinton’s complaints, which have appeared in the press around the world, make her look even worse than she did before.
This is from The Telegraph , a UK publication:
Hillary Clinton was furiously fighting to keep her Presidential bid on track on Saturday night as her lead in the polls narrowed, after the FBI’s bombshell announcement that it had reopened its investigation into her emails.
James Comey announced on Friday afternoon that fresh evidence had emerged for his investigation into whether Mrs Clinton was criminally negligent in her handling of classified material.
On Saturday, the latest poll of polls by tracker site RealClearPolitics put Clinton 3.9 percentage points ahead of the Republican nationwide, down from 7.1 points just 10 days previously.
But wait – it gets better:
The Clinton campaign has responded with what amounts to a declaration of open warfare against Mr Comey, alleging that his actions are backed by a political motive. And Mrs Clinton herself called the decision “unprecedented” and “deeply troubling”.
“It’s pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election,” she complained, addressing cheering supporters at a rally in the must-win state of Florida.
Democrats questioned the timing of the agency’s decision, which comes as polls showed Mrs Clinton’s lead falling just 10 days before the presidential election.
“This is like an 18-wheeler smacking into us, and it just becomes a huge distraction at the worst possible time,” said Donna Brazile, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
“The campaign is trying to cut through the noise as best it can.
“We don’t want it to knock us off our game. But on the second-to-last weekend of the race, we find ourselves having to tell voters, ‘Keep your focus, keep your eyes on the prize.’”
Hillary’s campaign manager sounds pretty desperate to me. As for the complaints from HRC, they just make her sound like the out-of-touch, money-grabbing, power-hungry, deceitful | 0 |
Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the .) More than 1, 300 lives are cut short each year in the Los Angeles area because of air pollution, scientists say. Now, after years of work, regulators are getting ready to adopt their most substantial plan in more than a decade to do something about it. The proposal is outlined in pages from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, whose jurisdiction extends across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Not surprisingly, it has set off debate, as critics have called the plan too lenient on industry. “California has made clear that it intends to be a leader on environmental issues,” said Angela Johnson Meszaros, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental law group. “And here we’ve got the Los Angeles air agency not doing all that it can. ” All sides recognize that industries under the agency’s regulatory power — including refineries, ports and warehouses — must adopt cleaner technologies. The agreement breaks down over how to get there. The draft blueprint would adopt some tougher emissions rules. But it also calls for a carrot approach: roughly $15 billion in handouts over the next 15 years to encourage polluters to clean up. Some community leaders have portrayed the incentives — which would surely involve tax increases — as a form of corporate welfare at the expense of families. But supporters of the plan have argued that they are needed to avoid stifling business. Smaller operators, for example, may not be able to afford a new, cleaner truck. “Obviously you can’t make everybody happy,” said Philip M. Fine, deputy executive officer for the air district. “But we think we’ve developed a sensible, comprehensive and regulatory approach. ” At a public meeting last Friday, the air agency’s board was supposed to vote on a final version of the plan. Hundreds of people showed up, filling overflow rooms. Testimony included stories of the personal toll that asthma is taking on young Californians. Business leaders warned of job losses if the plan were amended to add new rules. In the end, the board postponed the vote, citing the unexpected absence of a member. They’ll try again next month. (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • “California in many ways is out of control,” President Trump said in an interview with Bill O’Reilly. [Sacramento Bee] • Mr. Trump’s refugee actions have reverberated in San Diego, a longtime hub for the nation’s new arrivals. [San Diego ] • In a dorm at University of California, Merced, undocumented students bond over their hopes and fears. [The New York Times] • Milo Yiannopoulos, whose speech at U. C. Berkeley was canceled after protests, said he planned to try again. [Daily Californian] • Californians are using less electricity. Some power plants have even shut down. So why do state officials keep approving new ones? [Los Angeles Times] • The Anaheim White House restaurant is known for helping needy children. Now, after it was damaged by fire, donations are pouring in. [Orange County Register] • Marta Becket died at 92. A New York ballerina and Broadway dancer, she created a cultural institution in the Mojave Desert. [The New York Times] • Airbnb, one of the most aggressive corporate critics of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy, took its opposition to the Super Bowl. [The New York Times] • Tech companies say the program is needed to find highly skilled employees. But it has also been used to cut jobs. [The New York Times] • Mavericks, a top surfing event, was canceled after organizers filed for bankruptcy. [The New York Times] • In Bel Air, the most expensive house in the nation is on the market for $250 million, but one is rising nearby that may cost half a billion. [The New York Times] • “Building the Wall,” a response to the Trump era, took just a week to write. A Los Angeles theater will mount the play next month. [The New York Times] • “This Is Us” is the biggest hit for the broadcast networks since “Empire. ” [The New York Times] • Photos: Tom Brady during his days as a high school quarterback in San Mateo. [NBC Bay Area] • The ATT Pebble Beach kicks off Thursday. Among the pros: Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson and the No. Jason Day. Bill Murray will join the celebrity field. • The Imperial Valley town of Holtville, the carrot capital of the world, holds its 70th annual Carrot Festival all week. The theme: “We dig carrots. ” • On Saturday, San Francisco hosts its annual Chinese New Year parade. The nighttime celebration will usher in the Year of the Rooster with floats and firecrackers. • The Grammy Awards are Sunday. An musical tribute to Prince is expected to be among the memorable moments. McWay Falls is among the most photographed of Big Sur’s vistas. For obvious reason — the falls tumble 80 feet off a granite cliff into an almost impossibly beautiful cove. Hajer Dlame, 26, a reader from the Bay Area, shared a photo she snapped at sunset while visiting with her mother last month. Alas, the beach itself, part of a state park, is strictly off limits. Visitors are confined to a nearby trail. The upside is McWay Cove has remained an unspoiled slice of the California coast. Want to submit a photo for possible publication? You can do it here. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
During his speech at CPAC on Friday, President Trump stated of his election victory, “they all underestimated the power of the people, you, and the people proved them totally wrong. Never — and this is so true, and this is what’s been happening, never underestimate the people, never. ” Trump said, “The media didn’t think we would win. … The pundits didn’t think we’d win. The consultants that suck up all that money, oh, they suck it up, they’re so good. They’re not good at politics, but they’re really good at sucking up people’s money, especially my opponents, because I kept them down to a minimum, but the consultants didn’t think we would win. But they all underestimated the power of the people, you, and the people proved them totally wrong. Never — and this is so true, and this is what’s been happening, never underestimate the people, never. I don’t think it’ll ever happen again. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
Sniveling Cowards and NeverTrumpers Mitt Romney and John Kasich Reach out to Trump Sniveling Cowards and NeverTrumpers Mitt Romney and John Kasich Reach out to Trump Politics By Amy Moreno November 9, 2016
Donald Trump won the 2016 election in an epic and historic victory.
He cleaned Hillary’s clock.
This is what Trump’s electoral map looks like.
This looks like a country UNITED.
Trump’s victory was a thrashing of the political and media elite – the American people rallied against global stooges like Mitt Romney and John Kasich, two morons who unsuccessfully attempted to STOP Trump every step of the way.
Kasich did not vote for Trump, opting instead to help Hillary by writing-in John McCain’s name.
Now, however, these twp clowns have changed their tune and tweeted out war congratulations to Donald Trump.
Screw them. Best wishes for our duly elected president: May his victory speech be his guide and preserving the Republic his aim.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) November 9, 2016 The American people have spoken and it’s time to come together. Congratulations President-elect @realDonaldTrump .
— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) November 9, 2016 Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. Turning Point: An executive at Ikea declared that the West has reached “peak stuff,” with people owning too many things. The Japanese word “tokimeku” means “to spark joy. ” Someone who is adopting my method of tidying must take a possession of hers and ask: “Does this spark joy for me?” This question is the sole basis for choosing what things to keep in one’s home and what to discard. But can we apply this notion of sparking joy on a larger scale? We live in a disorganized and chaotic world, much of it outside our control. I read recently that more than 80 billion articles of clothing are produced each year, but only a negligible few are recycled. As people’s buying habits shift and technology moves most everything to the cloud, people have been valuing experiences over material things. Some have even pointed out that we may have reached a critical point in terms of mass consumption — we’ve reached peak stuff. Though it sometimes may seem like our things are threatening to take over our world, we can focus our energy and determination on choosing what makes us happy, and ultimately change our lives. Asking ourselves whether something sparks joy seems like such a simple process — so simple that many people wonder whether it can really be effective. The strength of the “spark joy” standard, however, lies in its ambiguity. Let’s consider, for argument’s sake, more precise standards for what to keep or discard, even for something as basic as clothing. Should the number of jackets you own be fewer than 10? Should you discard clothes that you haven’t worn in more than three years? Rules that adopt concise numerical values may appear to be more practical, which is why society often imposes specific standards on us, such as the amount of money we should earn, the ideal body weight we should maintain or the recommended quantity of food we should consume each day. But what makes one person happy, comfortable and healthy varies for the next, so your individual gold standard can be determined only through your own perspective. This is where the magic question — Does it spark joy? — comes into play. Continually assessing whether the belongings in your life spark joy allows you to hone your judgment. Over time, your ability to identify what is worth keeping will extend from your home to your career to your relationships. You will be able to discern what makes you happiest and most contented in other aspects of your life. I don’t mean to suggest that tidy homes full of satisfied people who act in accordance with what sparks joy will cure all of our planet’s ills. Yet I believe that people who are pleased with the course and direction of their lives and who have seen what their own determination can achieve can help create a kinder, better world. I’d like to share some ideas on how you can use the concept of tokimeku in your own life. Before you start deciding what sparks joy in your life, you must first get a true sense of the problems you face. For example, when organizing clothes, I ask that you take out all the clothes you own and gather them in one spot, so that you can visually comprehend how much you have. What we don’t often realize is that the furniture and closets in which we store our clothing have a remarkable way of concealing truths we would rather not see (a pilled sweater, for instance, that does not bring any joy). It’s perfectly fine to take advantage of this masking effect on a small scale, but when the amount of things that you don’t need continuously increases — along with the time and space that you devote to accumulating those things — you will find that it becomes harder to lie to yourself. We also work in much the same way. We often hide our problems inside the closet of our hearts as if they never existed. Whenever my mind clouds over and I feel overwhelmed, I immediately take out a sketchbook. I write down all the emotions that I feel and the possible reasons behind them across a blank white page. Once you’ve pinpointed your problems, identify specific solutions. For each problem, assign a concrete task such as “contact and consult a professional” or “reply immediately with an email. ” These actions should be as clear and specific as possible. Indeed, the ultimate goal of organizing is to remedy the state of untidiness and prevent its recurrence. When choosing these actions, you must never forget to ask yourself whether each action sparks joy and makes sense for you. Once you’ve compiled a list, all you have to do is serenely execute these tasks. I also keep a list in my sketchbook. Each time I complete a task, I put a checkmark next to it. As I complete the tasks one by one, I get a joyful feeling of lightness, as though I have completely finished tidying up my home. It sounds simple, but this is exactly the moment that sparks joy for me. The “spark joy” standard for tidiness depends on the individual. You cannot force people to tidy, nor should you try. But there can be communal applications for this idea. More and more, I feel that the question of whether something sparks joy becomes all the more effective when people can exchange views and share a common vision for the future. Understanding and appreciating the concept of tokimeku in the midst of a confusing and disorderly world will allow us to clarify our ideals, and help us gain confidence in our ability to lead productive lives and develop a sense of responsibility to those around us. From there, we can act with focus and certainty while improving our lives and our beautiful — if still very messy — world. | 1 |
For Many Americans, A Day to Forget November 12, 2016
For many Americans, Nov. 9 was a time of shock at the surprise election of Donald Trump, but the distress was perhaps strongest in New York City which knows Trump best, writes Michael Winship.
By Michael Winship
I would just as soon forget the morning after my father was nearly killed in a car accident and I heard my sister in her bedroom cry out as our mother told her. I would just as soon forget the morning after my father’s store burned to the ground, set ablaze after someone living next door to it fell asleep smoking. Or the morning the pay phone on my college dormitory floor rang and it was my mother telling me my father had died.
I would just as soon forget the morning after Election Day, 1972. I was on the campaign staff of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. I had spent the last couple of weeks in Connecticut. They told us we would lose the state by around 100,000 votes, but we put our shoulders to the wheel and managed to lose it by more than a quarter of a million. Richard Nixon beat us everywhere but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. People knew about Watergate by then but didn’t yet care very much. It was a cold, rainy drive back to Washington.
While I’m at it, I’d like to forget the morning after John Lennon was murdered in December 1980. Another cold, rainy day. All of Manhattan was in shock. I took the subway up to 72nd Street and walked to the Dakota, the apartment building where Lennon lived and died. Fans stood on the sidewalks, soaked, holding radios and tape players, blasting his music, leaving sodden flowers and guttering candles on the doorsteps and windowsills.
And, of course, the morning of 9/11 and the morning after and the morning after that. I live a mile and a half from Ground Zero and saw the towers burn. The day after, we were sealed off from the rest of the city, streets closed to everything but emergency traffic. The smells of burning, of melted metal and other horrors intermittently filled the air, as they would for weeks to come.
Finally, I would just as soon forget Wednesday morning of this very week, Nov. 9. Donald Trump made his victory speech around 3 a.m. A few hours later, as daylight broke, the sky was overcast with a bit of rain and much of New York had fallen into the pained silence of a deep funk. Some compared it to the city’s mood after 9/11 but no, in 2001 there were almost immediate feelings of defiance and resolve mixed with the loss and sadness. Now there was just bewildered numbness, a physical ache.
Rejection in the Big Apple
But a couple of things buoyed me. For one, Donald Trump lost New York City (except for Staten Island) and New York State big time. Here in Manhattan, he received only 10 percent of the vote. Sure, active Democrats outnumber Republicans in the borough by more than 7 to 1 , but from where I sit, 10 percent’s a number for losers. Donald Trump speaking with supporters in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
I know, feeling good about that statistic is a bit of a stretch given the grand scheme of things, but that piddling 10 percent is a reminder that people who live in Manhattan know Donald Trump better than the general population of anywhere else in the country. And we voted no. Loudly.
Maybe we should have been more vocal about this during the election, sent platoons of Manhattanites out into the rest of the country, telling people just what it’s been like to live with this guy for the past four-plus decades: The bragging and lies, the crass excesses and raging misogyny, the bankruptcies, the high-rise real estate developments that have contributed to both our gross income inequality and the staggering property costs that increasingly force everyone but the very wealthiest out of their homes and small businesses.
We could have told them about 1989 and how Trump went after five teenagers of color falsely accused of raping a woman jogger in the city’s Central Park, how he took out full-page newspaper ads calling for a return to the death penalty as punishment, how even after the five were exonerated on the basis of solid DNA evidence and another man’s confession, he refused to apologize and continued to insist on their guilt.
And we could have told them what it’s really like to live on this island of diverse nationalities and ethnicities, of many religions and gender orientations, and the resulting, incredible variety of food, fashion, music and art; how once you’re unavoidably and insistently immersed in our differences, more often than not they’re a cause for celebration and not fear and hate. A lesson yet to be learned by our resident President-elect, who lives in a tower high above such things, but we can hope.
I feel good, too, that by the end of the day on Wednesday, demonstrators had gathered at the Trump International Hotel on Columbus Circle a couple of blocks from our offices, that thousands more gathered in Union Square downtown, and that all of them marched toward Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, carrying placards and shouting in protest. Similar actions took place in cities across the nation and continue as I write.
Condemning those marches and sounding more like the sheriff of Nottingham than his real job, sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, right-wing Trump surrogate David A. Clarke tweeted , “These temper tantrums from these radical anarchists must be quelled. There is no legitimate reason to protest the will of the people.” Sorry, sheriff — dissent is alive and well. Get used to it these next four years.
In my lifetime, we’ve managed to survive Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and two Bushes in the White House. Trump has an excellent chance at being worse than all of them combined. We’ll see. It’s going to be challenging and often frightening.
I fear there will be plenty more terrible mornings ahead. But as Joe Hill said, “Don’t mourn, organize.” And so we shall.
Michael Winship is the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, and a former senior writing fellow at the policy and advocacy group Demos. Follow him on Twitter at @MichaelWinship . [This article originally appeared at http://billmoyers.com/story/adds-november-9th-mornings-id-rather-forget/ ] | 0 |
President Trump is lashing out against “fake news” in what is quite possibly the greatest course ever publicly taught in America. [Also, there is Mr. Trump’s relentless interaction with the press. And I don’t just mean the big guys. I mean the little local guys from Poughkeepsie, piped into the White House briefing room for awkward questions asked by disemboweled local anchors. At the end of the day, Mr. Trump is still not done. So he turns to Twitter to unleash yet more unfiltered news awesomeness onto the American media landscape. Welcome to the Age of Raw Journalism. Truly, a new dawn in American media. Drink fully from it, for the flowing bounty has never been like this ever before, and who knows if and when it will ever end. It is the confluence of instant information, manic technologies and a political figure who has the strength, fearlessness and stamina to keep it going around the clock. So let’s check in with the professionals, the folks who stand to benefit the most from this most generous newsmaker. “This is how the muzzling starts,” New York Times media drip Jim Rutenberg warned ominously, “not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself. ” Not sure exactly what that means, but I checked twice to make sure I copied it correctly. “Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism ‘fake.’ “Maybe it’s the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail). ” All of that is from an actual report by Mr. Rutenberg in the newspaper that is now, according to the president, “failing. ” Everywhere you turn today, reporters are gasping that the First Amendment is somehow under assault by Mr. Trump. White House reporters say they are under siege during daily briefings with Sean Spicer insulting them, rudely answering questions and assaulting them with the actual White House podium. OK, that last one I made up, but it was from the first funny skit “Saturday Night Live” has come up with in decades. But let’s seriously consider how Mr. Trump is handling the press. He gave a press briefing in the White House last Thursday. He walked in and began by “mentioning” the name of his new nominee for labor secretary. And then he turned the whole thing over to reporters. All modern presidents have opened such briefings with a list of handpicked reporters they would call on to ensure they only got the type of questions they wanted. Nobody in the doormat press corps ever complains about that. Donald Trump threw the gates wide open. If he walked in with a list, he tossed it aside by the time he got going. He was up there pointing to random reporters and pitting them against one another, at times barking like a tobacco auctioneer. He took any and all questions. He was tough, he was funny, he was belligerent. But he was always engaging. Mr. Trump’s immediate predecessor was famous for taking eight questions and bloviating at length and droning on long enough on each question that he would stretch it out to 50 minutes. He never wavered, of course, from his list of approved questioners. In Mr. Trump’s freewheeling press conference, he answered questions from two dozen reporters, more than 40 questions total if you include . And the entire thing was riveting and revealing and supremely watchable. How is this an affront to the First Amendment? Katy Tur, another journalistic lion over on the MSNBC television channel, was recently interviewing a Republican in Congress. “As we know, there’s since 2000 been a couple dozen suspicious deaths of journalists in Russia who came out against the government there,” Ms. Tur said. “Donald Trump has made no secret about going after journalists and his distaste for any news that doesn’t agree with him here. Do you find that this is a dangerous path he is heading down?” So Donald Trump likes to mix it up with reporters and challenge them? So next step is he’s going to start killing them? OK, I am not in the least bit concerned about the First Amendment in America with Mr. Trump in the White House. But we are seriously on the precipice of doom if fragile dopes like Katy Tur are our last line of defense. • Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes. com follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt. | 1 |
A top politician who at one time served as the Secretary of Finance for the Mexican State of Tabasco is now wanted in the U. S. on money laundering charges. While the man remains in Mexico, federal agents arrested his wife this week in Houston. [A criminal indictment that was unsealed this week names former Tabasco Secretary of Finance Jose Manuel Saiz Pineda, his wife Silvia Beatriz Perez Ceballo, and their associate Martin Alberto Medina Sonda. The three are charged with money laundering conspiracy and bank fraud conspiracy. Saiz Pineda and Medina Sonda are in a Mexican prison in Tabasco in connection with a public corruption case there. Saiz Pineda served as the secretary of finance for Tabasco from 2007 to 2012 under then Governor Andres Granier Melo from Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Granier Melo was arrested in 2013 in Mexico on embezzlement and public corruption charges. Despite the politician’s claims otherwise, courts in Mexico have sided against him. As Breitbart Texas reported, Mexico’s PRI has a long history of corruption and ties to drug cartels including two former governors who are wanted by U. S. authorities on money laundering charges and several other cases that remain under seal. While the indictment does not mention Mexican drug cartels or bribes, the case was investigated by the U. S. Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force a special investigation unit that includes the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the U. S. Marshal’s Service, Harris County, and Fort Bend County Sheriffs. According to court documents obtained by Breitbart Texas, federal prosecutors are looking to seize bank accounts, condominiums and other property in New York, Florida, California, and Texas the properties are valued at more than $50 million. Authorities are also trying to seize another bank account in Bermuda all tied to the Saiz Pineda and his associates. The case against the Mexican politician is based on a criminal indictment that was handed down by a federal grand jury in Corpus Christi on April 26, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the U. S. Attorney’s Office revealed. The case was sealed by the court until this week when federal agents arrested Perez Ceballos at her home in Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston. The woman went before a U. S. magistrate judge who ordered that she be held in custody until a detention hearing next week. Ildefonso Ortiz is an journalist with Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. | 1 |
Perhaps you didn’t gather enough information in the first year and a half of the campaign. Perhaps you thought you had made up your mind and cast your ballot early, only to have a change of heart. It happens. We’re sorry to say it’s probably too late to do anything about it. With the exceptions of absentee voters in three states — New York, Pennsylvania and Mississippi — people who have already voted cannot still change their minds. Based on recent Google searches, it seems some Americans are having buyer’s remorse. Searches for “change early voting” and “change my vote” peaked on Nov. 2 and have continued through Election Day. In Wisconsin, absentee voters could change their minds up to three times, but the deadline to do so passed last week, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Unlike in Pennsylvania, voters cannot void their previous ballots in person at their polling places. Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said 3, 027 voters had voided their ballots as of Friday afternoon. The state is expecting 3. 1 million votes. Those people are not necessarily changing their votes. Several people have said they don’t trust that their absentee ballots will be accurately counted and have decided to vote in person, he said. Still, there is a small window for a few voters to change their minds. Pennsylvania does not allow early voting, but those who voted by an absentee ballot could cast a different vote if they were able to show up in person at their polling place, according to PennLive. In that case, the absentee ballot — presumably cast because the person would be unable to vote in person — would be voided. Absentee voters in Mississippi can also void an absentee ballot by voting in person, according to Leah Rupp Smith, a Department of State spokeswoman. Absentee voters in New York have the same option, according to John Conklin, a spokesman for the state’s board of elections. Connecticut voters can void an absentee ballot until 10 a. m. on Election Day by making a request at the municipal clerk’s office. In other states, early voters could have pulled a switcheroo a little earlier, but at this point their civic duty has been recorded, no . Minnesotans who voted early could have asked to cancel their ballot, but the deadline was a week ago. Absentee voters in Michigan saw their deadline pass on Monday, according to WZZM, a local TV station. | 1 |
WATCH: ‘Damn!’ Liberal Hosts Flustered Over NEW Proof Clintons Are Dirty Shae Weatherall in Politics Share This
On Thursday, the panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” reacted to recently leaked documents, proving the Clintons’ involvement in dirty financial dealings while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. They were so flustered by the damning evidence, one of the liberal hosts even used the words “Damn” and “Yuck” while describing the information as another said this could be the big story that ends it for Hillary.
Fox News reports that among the new WikiLeaks release of John Podesta’s emails was one containing an attachment to a twelve-page memo written in 2011 by Doug Band, a long-time aide to former President Bill Clinton. Within the text, Band talks about the “circle of enrichment” which financially benefits the Clinton Foundation as well as the Clintons personally. Band used the contacts of his company, Teneo, to solicit donations to the Foundation from major corporations and to set up “for profit” engagements for Bill Clinton. Band referred to the paid appearances as “Bill Clinton Inc.”
Within the memo, Doug Band described his role in helping to make the Clintons rich by leveraging their political influences. “ This memorandum strives to set forth how I have endeavored to support the Clinton Foundation and President Clinton personally ,” Band wrote.
Under a section titled “For-Profit Activity of President Clinton (i.e., Bill Clinton, Inc. ),” Band wrote that he and Clinton aide Justin Cooper “found, developed and brought” to Clinton all four of his advisory arrangements at the time – arrangements that “ yielded more than $30 million for him personally, with $66 million to be paid out over the next nine years should he choose to continue with the current engagements .” The memo also included a footnote explaining how Clinton’s speaking agent estimated that during a 10-year period, “ $20 million in speeches for the President have derived … from Justin and my efforts.” [via FOX News ]
This leaked memo consumed a large portion of Thursday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC , however, it’s clear in the first two minutes of the five-minute clip below that the show’s panel is shocked and flustered over the Clintons’ dirty financial dealings that have been exposed. Mika Brzezinski even suggested that the only word that can be added to the discussion of the new scandal is “ Damn! ”
Joe Scarborough commented with some derision about how he views the Clintons’ use of their political leverage and their “charitable” Foundation as bait to fatten their own personal bank accounts. “ Maybe they’re using the State Department, but using relief work in Haiti? ‘Hey can you help those suffering in Haiti? It’s really important. Thanks, listen, could you also give Bill Clinton $500,000 to give a speech? In your corporate luxury box?’ ” At the end of Joe’s impression of the unethical dealings, Mika added a disgusted, “ Yuck .”
Yuck, indeed. Also during the panel discussion, it was asked what the perception would be if a Bush had been engaged in this type of scandal. Incredibly, several of the participants, including Joe, admitted that the Bush family “would never do this.”
Finally, the magnitude of the collective proof of the Clintons’ unethical and illegal activities appear to have put seeds of doubt in the minds of some of their loyalists, but is it enough? Is it too late? Even though a few of the liberal news outlets have chosen to do the right thing, for once, in reporting on this “Bill Clinton Inc.” scandal, it’s unlikely it will last long in the spotlight of the national media.
It’s up to us, We the People , to make sure this kind of information reaches every corner of social media in the hopes that it will help to influence those voters who are still undecided. We only have ten days left to share the truth and make sure Hillary Clinton stays far away from our White House. | 0 |
INDIANAPOLIS — For about a year, the guys at the gym just called him Joe. He lifted weights in the early mornings wearing a . He worked out on the elliptical, wiping it down when he was done. Then one day Shaun Yeary, a salesman at a landscape supply company, asked him in the locker room what he did for a living. “I used to be a priest,” Joe recalled telling him. “And now,” he said, his voice growing quieter so as not to scare anyone in earshot, “I’m the archbishop of Indianapolis. ” “I was like, for real?” Mr. Yeary recalled. “This guy is benching two and a quarter!” — gymspeak for 225 pounds. Joe, also known as Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, recently became one of the 120 men in the world who will choose the next pope. But he wants to be judged by his actions, not his lofty position in the Roman Catholic Church. Though he has led the Archdiocese of Indianapolis since 2012, a status that usually comes with perks like a driver, he drives himself around in a Chevy Tahoe and helps with the dishes after lunch meetings. He introduces himself simply as Padre José to the children at a local Catholic school. He showers and shaves at the Community Healthplex gym like any other member, and calls his workout buddies his Band of Brothers. In short, he is just the kind of leader Pope Francis is elevating to realign the church in the United States with his priorities. As the pope has made clear over the past three years, fancy lifestyles, formality and regal titles like Prince of the Church are out of style for cardinals. So is an emphasis on the divisive issues of abortion and marriage, even though the church’s underlying position on those issues has not changed. Instead, in the pope’s view, the church should emphasize humility and service to the poor. It should be multicultural, welcoming different styles of worship. It should reach out to other faiths and stand up for immigrants, refugees and nuns. And that, church experts and members of his flock say, is a close description of the priorities of Cardinal Tobin, who will be heading east just after Christmas to lead the approximately 1. 5 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Newark. He is replacing Archbishop John J. Myers, 75, who preferred to be addressed by the formal title Your Grace, and who achieved notoriety when the church spent some $500, 000 to outfit the house he will retire to with an indoor exercise pool and an elevator. Cardinal Tobin’s appointment in October as one of the nation’s 18 cardinals came as a surprise to many, including the man himself. But perhaps it should not have. For what his unassuming bearing does not reveal is that he is no stranger to the corridors of power in the church. He is a friend of Pope Francis. And under Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, he had helped lead the Vatican office that oversees the roughly one million men and women in religious orders around the world. That position did not end so well. It was an open secret that Cardinal Tobin was sent to Indiana as a kind of exile most likely because he questioned an inquiry by his office into supposed doctrinal lapses among the roughly 50, 000 nuns in the United States. As he got to know the faithful in the chancery of Indianapolis, he would joke with them about it. “I was kicked out and I’m grateful for it,” the chancellor of the archdiocese, Annette Lentz, recalled his saying about how he turned up on her doorstep. And she would tell him, “Their loss is our gain. ” How Cardinal Tobin, 64, an amiable who likes Bob Seger, plays piano and speaks five languages, went from being the oldest of 13 children living in Detroit to the pinnacle of the global church is a story that bears telling. He grew up in a neighborhood where the big houses were perfect for the large families of Irish, Polish and other Eastern European backgrounds that filled them. The local parish, Holy Redeemer, was run by an order of priests called the Redemptorists, and was unusually large, with 14 Masses each Sunday for up to 20, 000 worshipers, he recalled in a Dec. 5 interview. His mother was a teacher who quit her job to raise her brood nine of her cousins and three of her aunts were nuns. Growing up in a deeply Catholic environment, Cardinal Tobin had two role models: the parish priests and his father, a cost analyst at General Motors who attended 6 a. m. Mass daily. Joe Tobin was a child, who once crashed through the window when he was being chased. But he also learned the deeper lessons taught by the nuns at the parish school. “Joe came home in second grade and said to me, ‘Mom, I need a pair of socks,’” his mother, Marie Tobin, 93, recalled before Cardinal Tobin’s emotional farewell Mass in Indianapolis on Dec. 3. “And I looked at his feet and saw his socks were fine. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘there’s a boy in my class who has rags around his feet and a safety pin. ’” In 1977, when the cardinal was in seminary in Esopus, N. Y. his father died of a heart attack. By that time, the family had moved across the border to Canada, and his father had been commuting to Michigan. “I idolized my dad,” Cardinal Tobin said. “He was everything I think a man should be. He was strong, he played in the Orange Bowl as a freshman in Boston College. He lost his leg in World War II, so he never played football again. He had a quiet, unpretentious faith. He was chivalrous with women. “And I remember when he died,” he added, “and I was waiting at the seminary for someone to drive me to La Guardia, and one of my teachers came and said, ‘If you can be a man like your father, when they call you Father you will be all right.’ And I suppose I am still trying to do that. ” He remains close with his siblings. And in the Redemptorists, an order that requires a vow of poverty and emphasizes missionary outreach, he found a second family. He dreamed of being sent to locales once he was ordained in 1978. Instead, because he spoke Spanish, he was sent right back to Holy Redeemer, which had a growing Hispanic population. There, he learned about serving the poor. An older priest modeled what was to become a signature of Cardinal Tobin’s ministry: an intense focus on each person. “When he is there and you are talking to him, it’s as if you have known him all your life,” said Bernice Guynn, 89, a parishioner at St. Rita in Indianapolis. From Detroit, he was moved during the AIDS epidemic to Chicago, where he ministered at the bedsides of the dying. The church’s stance against homosexuality was not a barrier to him. “It’s important to be there for people,” he said. By 1991, the of his order had taken notice and he was moved to Rome. For 12 years, he led the Redemptorist order, finally traveling the world to missions in more than 70 nations. In that capacity, he made an impression on Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the Vatican official responsible for enforcing Catholic doctrine. In 2010, five years after Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict, he offered Father Tobin the title of archbishop and the position of secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in the Vatican. Cardinal Tobin recalled that he was painting his mother’s porch in Ontario when he got the call from the Vatican secretary of state. “I turned white and started stuttering,” he said. He did not want the job, he said, but how does one refuse the pope? The office he had been tapped to administer was investigating American nuns for supposedly adopting a “secular mentality” and straying from Catholic orthodoxy. In other words, the nuns were accused of being too liberal, and Cardinal Tobin was to oversee the inquiry. But he had an “extremely positive” view of the nuns, he told The National Catholic Reporter at the time, and he wanted to explain their good works. “My first job, I thought, was to ask, ‘What were people trying to accomplish with this? ’” he said this month. But the problem, he came to believe, was structural: the investigation of 55, 000 religious women by a tiny staff for the alleged errors of a few. “It made as much sense as an ophthalmologist trying to do cataract surgery standing in center field in Yankee Stadium and pointing his laser gun up at the bleachers,” he said. Two years into his term, his priest secretary surprised him with the news. “We are so sorry you are going,” Cardinal Tobin recalled him saying. “And I said, ‘Really, where am I going?’ And he said, ‘Indianapolis. ’” The official news did not come for four months. “It was like death by 1, 000 cuts,” he said. When he arrived in Indiana in December 2012, most American Catholics had never heard of him. But to the nuns he was something of a hero. “We thought that he was a tremendous individual,” said Mother Anne Brackmann, the prioress of the Carmelite Monastery in Terre Haute, Ind. “And he was welcomed very, very warmly. ” Someone else took note of his dismissal: Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, who would become Pope Francis. The two men met in 2005 during a synod of bishops in Rome, and they bonded over a shared view of the church. There were conservative bishops in their group who wanted, for example, to ban girls from being altar servers. “I have eight sisters, and at the time, I had nieces who were serving at the altar, and I didn’t see the justification for it,” Cardinal Tobin said. “Bergoglio was on the same page. There are more important things to talk about. ” They had also laughed together: Cardinal Tobin recalled telling Cardinal Bergoglio that he had been his mother’s choice for pope that year, because she had read how he picked up after himself and cooked his own food. Still, Cardinal Tobin was surprised to get a note from Cardinal Bergoglio in 2010 wishing him luck in his Vatican position. “He said: ‘I remember our time together, I remember our conversations, and I remember your mother’s good taste. I’m praying for you. ’” By the time Cardinal Tobin came to the Vatican in 2013 to receive his pallium — the cowl that would mark his status as the archbishop of Indianapolis — Pope Francis had been elected. He was not sure the new pope would remember him. But Francis again surprised him. “I’ve been praying intensely for you since I heard what happened,” Cardinal Tobin said the pope had told him. What happened next was a kind of rehabilitation. Francis appointed him to the oversight committee of the same Vatican office he had been removed from. Then, in October, came the announcement: The pope was naming him a cardinal. He would be the youngest one in the United States. Cardinal Tobin was shocked. “It’s kind of like you are sleeping in class and all of a sudden the spotlight is on you,” he said. At a news conference last month in Newark, he put it this way: “Sometimes I think Pope Francis sees a lot more in me than I see in myself. ” Cardinal Tobin said he loved his time in Indianapolis, where he visited parishes in 39 counties, ministered to prisoners on death row and baptized about 1, 000 new Catholics each Easter. He was up by 4 many mornings to pray before arriving at the gym by 5:30. With the help of a trainer, Shane Moat, he learned how to deadlift 425 pounds. “Big breath, explode, keep it close,” Mr. Moat coached him earlier this month. Cardinal Tobin strained and hoisted the weight to his waist. “You the man!” someone shouted. “No, I’m not,” Cardinal Tobin said after dropping the weight with a bang. That morning, Mr. Yeary, the salesman, presented him with a goodbye gift: a framed photo of the cardinal with his seven workout buddies, whose ages range from 27 to over 70. “Oh, man, that’s wonderful, thank you,” the cardinal said. Then he reverted to his lighthearted tone: “None of those Sopranos are going to mess with me. This is my crew. ” Cardinal Tobin has had a hard time saying goodbye. He choked up at his farewell Mass and had only one request of the congregation that had packed the cathedral: Pray for him. But his admirers here and elsewhere are hoping that Cardinal Tobin will become a more public voice for Pope Francis and his priorities. He has already done that once, in a showdown with Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, a Republican who is now the vice over welcoming Syrian refugees. In November 2015, Mr. Pence announced that he would suspend Syrian refugee resettlement programs, citing security fears. Cardinal Tobin felt that was not only illegal, but also immoral. He met with Mr. Pence, discussed his objections and told him he would continue the Catholic Charities resettlement program. A federal court has since overturned the governor’s directive. In an email, Mr. Pence said, “Cardinal Tobin is a personal friend, and I deeply respect his commitment to his faith and his ministry. ” While Cardinal Tobin did not tell anyone whom to vote for in the presidential election, he said he was disturbed by appeals to fear during the campaign of Donald J. Trump, particularly his views of refugees and immigrants. Mr. Trump, he said, “was appealing to the dark side of the divisive forces, to the unredeemed part of us. ” And while the cardinal believes American democracy will ultimately resist such appeals, “you can’t be too Pollyannish about things. ” In Newark, he said, his first job after his installation on Jan. 6 will be to listen. Encompassing Bergen, Essex, Hudson and Union Counties in northern New Jersey, the archdiocese has pockets of great wealth and poverty, and an array of immigrants so diverse that Mass each Sunday is celebrated in 20 languages. About 30 percent of the parishioners are Hispanic. It is also a community in need of healing. In July, citing the failure of the archdiocese to effectively remove priests accused of sexual abuse from contact with children, the editorial board of The of Newark called the departure of Archbishop Myers a “true blessing. ” “During his tenure as New Jersey’s Catholic, he protected pedophile priests,” the board said. “He urged his flock to vote based on two issues — abortion and gay marriage — at the threat of being denied Holy Communion. ” Jim Goodness, the spokesman for the archdiocese, denied those allegations, saying that Archbishop Myers had permanently removed from ministry some 20 abusive priests and that he had “never threatened to deny Communion to anyone. ” Cardinal Tobin will bring a different message. One of his priorities, he said, would be to ensure that the archdiocese is fully compliant with church and criminal protocols on handling sexual abuse allegations. At the Vatican in the late 1990s, the cardinal recalled, it was difficult to convince people that the abuse issue was serious. “I think they just believed it was an American problem,” he said, adding, “I don’t want to make it like I was a great crusader over there, but I did take it seriously. ” He later led an effort to establish protocols for abuse claims in his order. Yet the most outspoken American victims group, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said that Cardinal Tobin, like the church as a whole, must do more, such as posting the names of all credibly accused priests online. “Certainly there are worse bishops, but that fact should comfort no one,” David Clohessy, the organization’s national director, said. Cardinal Tobin assumes his role in an uneasy time. He said that he hoped to lead with joy and transparency, and that he intended to encourage dialogue to bridge divisions. But he would go further if he believed that policies ran counter to the moral values that Jesus taught. On the threats by Trump to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants, for example, Cardinal Tobin was clear. He recalled how Pope John XXIII, before he became pope, issued false baptismal certificates to help Jews escape the Nazis in World War II. “We have to resist,” he said. “With public statements, and then, you do what you got to do. ” | 1 |
Robert Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, said Wednesday that ABC News has been “extremely fair” in its coverage of the 2016 election and the Trump administration and that complaints of political bias on ESPN are “completely exaggerated. ”[Disney, which owns both ABC News and ESPN, held its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, where Iger responded to a question about the leftwing political bias at the networks by Justin Danhof of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Iger insisted that ABC News has been entirely on the level in its coverage of the 2016 campaign and President Trump. He said: ABC News has reported to me, directly or indirectly, for almost 25 years. I’m an expert on ABC News, and I can stand here today, look you in the face, and say I’m proud of the efforts of ABC News. I respect ABC News, and I believe they work very, very hard to present news in an extremely fair way. There are always going to be people — yourself included and perhaps the president — who are going to believe that it is not being presented in a manner that’s consistent with their own beliefs. There’s an indictment made about the press simply because some of the press do not necessarily tow the line with positions being taken by others. Danhof, whose organization buys stocks in firms so it can attend shareholder meetings and ask tough questions, pointed out that Iger sidestepped the toughest parts of his query on Wednesday. The CEO simply ignored the part of his question that dealt with George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton White House aide and now ABC News personality. Stephanopoulos was found in the Wikileaks hacks of the Democratic National Committee to have colluded with the Clinton campaign on story ideas, editing questions and lines of attack on Peter Schweizer, who wrote the book Clinton Cash a New York Times bestseller that detailed conflicts of interest and other misdealings by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Danhof said of Iger: How he lined up his response was telling. He wouldn’t address the question. He was sticking his head in the sand. His response was that I was making this up. But this has reached a nexus. Will his network continue to ignore or mock the millions of Americans in flyover country, or will we work to make his networks more inviting to other points of view? Right now, he’s saying he doesn’t want us as customers. Iger was even more determined when it came to ESPN, the sports giant that has announced in recent days it plans another round of layoffs because of massive financial losses that some attribute to its sharp leftward ideological turn. In his questioning, Danhof mentioned an exchange between two personalities for the network about how, if they said, “Coming up, why Donald Trump is awesome,” they would “not last until the first commercial. ” Iger insisted the network exhibited no bias. “The charge that ESPN is exhibiting significant political bias in its programming is just completely exaggerated,” Iger said. “One small communication and blowing it up into something that sounds a lot larger than it is. Watch ESPN and you’re not going to see political bias at ESPN. ” Critics say there is, in fact, a lot of bias at ESPN. They point to Caitlyn Jenner winning the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, the network’s endorsement of Black Lives Matter at the ESPY Awards, ’s aggressive coverage of the Women’s March on Washington in January, and the firing of Doug Adler — a tennis commentator — after he referred to the “guerrilla effect” of Venus Williams moving closer to the net on second serves at the Australian Open. There is also daily bias from commentators such as Michael Wilbon and Tony Kellerman. And then there is Kevin Blackstone, an sportswriter who appears on ESPN talk programs and once referred to the Star Spangled Banner as a “war anthem. ” Curt Schilling, the former big league pitcher who was fired in April 2016 after he tweeted out support for the North Carolina law that required people to use the bathroom of their anatomical sex, scoffed at the notion ESPN is unbiased. “We recognize Abby Wambach and her stance on the gay lifestyle in the sports world, but not Milo Yiannopoulos and his gay perspective as a victim of molestation,” Schilling said in an email to Breitbart News. “We recognize that every issue Stephen A. Smith has in sports is based on black and white, not talent. But we don’t recognize Ben Carson, a conservative man from the worst of the worst backgrounds who never allowed color to taint his world perspective. ” | 1 |
President Barack Obama’s administration institutionalized a drone program that involves a targeted assassination policy for individuals put on kill lists. It not only devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in countries, like Afghanistan, but it traumatizes the military officers, who are part of the system which makes strikes possible. But for them, there is little to no support for the depression, suicidal ideations, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they develop as a result of the horrible things they are asked to do.
As the documentary, “National Bird,” shows, the officers struggle with the morality of their actions, but they face a presidential administration, which has criminalized more whistleblowers than all other previous presidential administrations combined. Officers who speak out about the drone program face the prospect of harsh prosecution under the Espionage Act, as if talking about what they saw as officers is treasonous. That weighs heavy on veterans of the drone program and makes them terrified to be labeled whistleblowers because they know how the government could destroy their lives if they become known to the public as whistleblowers.
The film highlights the lives of three former officers: Heather, a former drone imagery analyst, Daniel, a former private contractor and signals intelligence analyst, and Lisa, a former technology sergeant for a drone surveillance system. Director Sonia Kennebeck centers their experiences instead of simply using them to explore the mechanics of the drone program. Each one of them is painfully aware of how they could attract the government’s attention by participating in the film, and the credits note, “No person on this film disclosed classified material to the filmmakers.”
Lisa travels to Afghanistan with a friend named Asma, who was born in Afghanistan. Once a population she viewed remotely through a massive surveillance system, it is her chance to see Afghans as human beings. She shares, “I lost part of my humanity working in the drone program,” and plans to make reparations for the role she played in the drone program with this trip.
The trip provides a means for the filmmakers to highlight the perspectives of survivors of a drone attack by U.S. forces on February 21, 2010, which according to an official military investigation was carried out by a Predator drone crew at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The attack killed 23 people, including children. General Stanley McChrystal signed off on the investigation, and a reenactment of the drone crew’s exchanges during the bombing highlights the bloodlust of those involved.
“Why didn’t he say possible child? Why are they so quick to call fucking kids but not a fucking rifle?” the pilot asks. The sensor replies, “I really doubt that children call, man. I really fucking hate that.” Later, the pilot says, “Adolescent near the rear of the SUV.” The sensor replies, “Well, teenagers can fight.” A military officer states, “12-13 years old with a weapon is just as dangerous.” Right before the strike, the sensor cheers, “Let the party begin.”
The video footage, combined with the reenacted radio exchange, evokes memories of the infamous “Collateral Murder” video disclosed by Manning and released by WikiLeaks. The drone crew is quite eager to kill. If they can claim in the aftermath the children were teens with possible access to weapons, they have no qualms with putting a Hellfire missile through a pickup truck with kids.
Daniel considers whether he is afraid of possibly going to prison for speaking out (Credit to Ten Forward Films)
What stands out about Daniel’s story is how careful he is to choose his words and even backtrack during his answers to questions. He wears a pin for U.S. Army whistleblower Chelea Manning in one scene in the film. He watches “Democracy Now!”, including a broadcast covering CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling’s prosecution. He has a copy of Wired magazine with Snowden on the cover wrapped in the American flag. There are posters with radical political messages in his apartment, and he participates in antiwar demonstrations. But he does not want to take any chances that he will invite the ire of the global security state. Nevertheless, as the film progresses, Daniel winds up in the crosshairs. The FBI conducts a raid against him on August 8, 2014, while the film is still in production. It deeply frightens Daniel, and clearly undermines his ability to contribute to the film. He reaches out to prominent whistleblower attorney, Jesselyn Radack—just as Heather did—and receives legal assistance in order to defend himself while the government investigates him for “espionage.”
Radack communicates the severity of the situation. Such an investigation paints a person as an “enemy of the state.” It is a “David versus Goliath struggle,” a “single person against the entire executive branch of the United States government.”
Heather grapples with the anxiety and fear of whether speaking to citizens at public libraries or bookstores or through a column published by the Guardian will make a difference. At a bookstore, she breaks down, as she shares the fact that she does not speak out for herself. She does it for her veteran friends struggling with alcoholism, who cannot talk to citizens as well as she can. Or, she does it in honor of veteran friends who died. But will it make a difference? Is it really worth it to detail how the government does not want to acknowledge the drone program traumatizes the people carrying out attacks?
She shudders at the thought that anyone would cast her as the “next Edward Snowden,” especially if policymakers are not going to listen to the message she has for the public. “If I am going to get all this awful horrifying attention from the government, what’s the point? If someone comes to my house and puts a bag over my head and hauls me away, what was the point in anything I did? Am I really changing people’s minds or are people going to just share it on Facebook and move along?”
It is a tremendously powerful moment that communicates the sacrifice of former military officers or government officials, who speak out about the unspeakable things they did. As Heather says, she could try to live a normal life. She has psychological problems and was a suicide risk before she left the U.S. Air Force. She would be better off spending time with family and friends. Plus, she adds, the left sees people like her as “baby killers.” They believe she should be put on trial for war crimes. The right is unconvinced that drone strikes cause trauma because officers involved are not in combat zones. So, why open up about what drone crew do and attempt to educate the public when insensitivity and indifference is what follows?
“National Bird” gives voice to people on both sides of a Hellfire missile. These are individuals who the U.S. government will not hesitate to silence if at all possible. It also challenges the way in which the drone program normalizes and makes war permanent. And, as Donald Trump prepares to take over control of this apparatus entrenched by Obama, the film encourages audiences to reflect on whether they have any problem with a government that assassinates and destroys the lives of entire villages and punishes any officers involved, who cannot bear the sins they committed and dare to speak out so they may heal their soul.
The post Film Review: ‘National Bird’ Confronts Perils Of Becoming Drone Whistleblower appeared first on Shadowproof .
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Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin is a member of the Facebook group, By Any Means Necessary, which orchestrated the riots that occurred ahead of a scheduled lecture by Milo Yiannopoulos. [Berkley Mayor Jesse Arreguin was revealed to be a member of the group, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) on Facebook. BAMN orchestrated the violence that shut down a scheduled lecture at UC Berkeley featuring Milo Yiannopoulos in early 2017. Arreguin is allegedly also friends with BAMN leader, Yvette Felarca, on Facebook. They were also involved in the violent clashes earlier this month. @CassandraRules #Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin not only member of #BAMN but also friends of #RadicalLiberalTerrorist Yvette Falarco #AntiFA #DefundBerkeley pic. twitter. — TX Intense TV (@TxIntenseRadio) April 21, 2017, Felarca defended the violence that occurred ahead of Yiannopoulos’ scheduled event in a local television interview following the riots. BAMN was investigated for engaging in terrorist activities in 2005 by the FBI. In 2009, the Department of Defense classified the group’s activities as “ terrorism. ” In June 2016, BAMN led a violent outside a white nationalist rally that resulted in ten people being hospitalized with stab wounds. Often described as a “militant ” activist group, BAMN frequently engages in violent forms of protests. A Berkeley newspaper noted in 2001 that the group was a front for an “an obscure Trotskyist political party called the Revolutionary Workers League. ” Breitbart News has reached out to Mayor Arreguin for comment. 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 |
MALIBU, Calif. — Barbra Streisand — whose coming album of duets, “Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway,” features a stellar supporting cast that includes Melissa McCarthy and Jamie Foxx — is talking about another duet with another celebrated singer, now long dead. That would be Judy Garland, whose television show Ms. Streisand visited in 1963 in what feels like a watershed moment in the history of fabled American vocalists. In the course of my recent visit with Ms. Streisand at her cloistered estate here, she says several times that she doesn’t like revisiting her past. But since she’s been researching a memoir, she’s in a more retrospective state of mind than usual. And before the afternoon is over, she will take me on a circuitous tour of her long life in the spotlight, with frequent side trips into the persistent problems of being Barbra. Ms. Streisand, you see, has always been in charge — of her image, of her career and, whenever possible, of her immediate environment — ever since she started singing in Greenwich Village nightclubs as a gawky teenager in clothes in the early 1960s. It is a determination that has made her one of the most enduring — and adored and disliked — of all American stars. It is also why she seems unlikely to retreat entirely behind the iron gates of the estate she says is the one place she is entirely comfortable. She needs to make sure that the version of Barbra that the world knows — onscreen, in recordings, in biographies — is the version she sees, as exactly as possible. Unlike many female stars of her generation and stature, she has rarely ceded control to any manager, or mate, or Svengali. Which brings us back to the subject of Garland, a singer with whom Ms. Streisand has been tellingly compared and contrasted over the years. Ms. Streisand was barely into her 20s when they met, but already on the cusp of astronomical stardom Garland, 41, would be dead six years later, one of Hollywood’s most notorious casualties of devouring fame. Yet when they sang two American standards in counterpoint — “Happy Days Are Here Again” (Ms. Streisand) and “Get Happy” (Garland) — they seemed like a matched set. Each interpreted an upbeat song with a big, trumpeting voice that nonetheless hinted at a small, solitary figure within. Happiness, as hymned in these renditions, would never be won easily. You can find that video on YouTube, and it is impossible to watch it without shivering. “Afterward, she used to visit me and give me advice,” Ms. Streisand says. “She came to my apartment in New York, and she said to me, ‘Don’t let them do to you what they did to me.’ I didn’t know what she meant then. I was just getting started. ” Whoever “they” were — studio moguls, a voyeuristic press, parasitic cannibalistic fans — it was never likely that they could do to Ms. Streisand what they did to Garland. From the earliest days of her career, Ms. Streisand exuded a Garlandesque fragility and emotional openness. But her long nails and eyes, both quizzical and confrontational, spoke of the toughness of someone singularly capable of protecting herself. Both sides of that dichotomy are still very much in evidence when I visit Ms. Streisand at her estate here, a compound of three main buildings that evoke a fantasy New England, incongruously situated above the glittering expanse of the Pacific Ocean. To step behind its gates after experiencing the brown and smoke shades of the adjoining highway on a hazy summer’s day is to feel like Garland’s Dorothy stepping from Kansas into the Technicolor of Oz. Ms. Streisand — who is promoting both her album, due Aug. 26, and her concert tour this month (called “The Music … the Mem’ries … the Magic! ”) — is waiting at the open door of the house she lives in. That’s as opposed to the one she works in — called “Grandma’s House” — or “the Barn,” which she describes as “an art project. ” That’s the one with a subterranean mall of shops, a marvel of themed décor and room after room of impeccably arranged artifacts. At 74, she looks like, well, Barbra Streisand, albeit a softer, more subdued version than the one you know from six decades of movies, from her Oscar in the musical “Funny Girl” (1968) in which she recreated her Broadway performance as the Ziegfeld entertainer Fanny Brice, to the comedy “The Guilt Trip” (2012) with Seth Rogen. Though the rooms behind her beckon in carefully coordinated shades of pale, Ms. Streisand is wearing the uniform black of an East Coast urban dweller. “I am a New Yorker!” she exclaims, when I point out the discrepancy. “A Brooklynite. That means it’s an earthy place to come from. It’s reality, as compared to reality TV. ” In conversation, she is a paradoxical mix of spontaneity and preoccupied vigilance. She may shoot from the hip when she talks about herself, but she also backtracks a lot, as if to retrace the bullet’s trajectory and make sure it hit its target. It’s when she’s guiding me through her homes — gleefully annotating their contents (while noshing from the plates of snacks that keep materializing, courtesy of her longtime housekeeper) — that she seems most at ease. Ms. Streisand has created her own sui generis alternative reality here, one she shares with her husband, the actor James Brolin. (On this afternoon, the day before their 18th wedding anniversary, he is filming a movie in Canada, but he has sent her “four beautiful arrangements of flowers. ”) This world is arranged and maintained according to her highly exacting standards, though even here there are annoying signs of imperfection. “Vicky, whose truck is that?” she calls out to an assistant, as she’s showing me her gardens. “It’s in the shot. Whenever I show my house, I never want a car in it. Also, tell somebody there’s a mop in the lavender room in Grandma’s House. ” Ms. Streisand has written a book about the creation of this private Xanadu, “My Passion for Design,” which became the unlikely basis for a play about her, Jonathan Tolins’s “Buyer Cellar. ” No, she hasn’t seen it. One of the first things she says to me, chummily, is “I understand you’ve seen ‘Buyer Cellar’ well, now you can see the real thing. ” Ms. Streisand says she hates to leave her Malibu property, the place where she can be in control. Almost as soon as she set foot onstage, during rehearsals for her first Broadway show, “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” she has known, she says, that she was born to be a director, in all senses of that word. She has become one behind the camera, as the pioneering female director, star and producer of “Yentl,” “The Prince of Tides” and “The Mirror Has Two Faces. ” Being that kind of director, though, means waiting — and waiting — for and money and rights to material. Though it had been announced a few weeks earlier that she would be making her version of the musical “Gypsy” — in which she would portray the ultimate stage mother, Mama Rose — that project is again in limbo. “I’m at their mercy,” she says. “One day you’re going to do ‘Gypsy,’ the next day it’s off. And then this is the only place — writing a book, making a record or doing a tour — where I can do what I have to do, my work. ” The record is “Encore,” the 35th of Ms. Streisand’s studio albums. (To date, her records have sold about 245 million copies worldwide and with “Partners,” her 2014 compilation of duets, she became the only singer to land a No. 1 album in six successive decades.) She says that working on the numbers with the other singers — performers known principally for film work, and including Antonio Banderas, Alec Baldwin, Anne Hathaway and Seth MacFarlane — was rather like producing a series of . She added dialogue and, in some cases, altered lyrics from Broadway classics. For her interpretation of Irving Berlin’s “Anything You Can Do,” from “Annie Get Your Gun,” she devised a prologue in which she and Ms. McCarthy sparred after learning they were up for the same film role. This allowed Ms. Streisand to interject a joke about how to say her name: It’s Streisand, as in “sand on the beach,” not “” a mispronunciation that has plagued her at least since she first appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the early 1960s. Recently, she heard John Mayer (with whom she sang on “Partners”) being interviewed by the producer and TV host Andy Cohen, and to her dismay, “they both called me Barbra . ” She says she can’t wait for them to hear the duet with Ms. McCarthy. “Maybe they’ll get it now,” she says, managing to sound both amused and annoyed. The world is riddled with such exasperating errors, and Ms. Streisand sees herself as burdened with the Sisyphean task of uprooting them. Working on her memoir — scheduled for publication in 2017 (although she says, “Don’t hold your breath”) — she has become more agonizingly aware than ever of misrepresentations in the many, many accounts of her life that already exist. Writing about herself is not a process she enjoys. She says if she can speak fluently these days about events, it is “only because I’ve had to look it up. ” She is grateful to have discovered the existence of the superfan Matt Howe’s online archive of all things Streisand. Not that she looks at it herself. “Because, again, it’s like the play [“Buyer Cellar”],” she says. “How do I look at myself? I can’t do it. But my researcher tells me what’s on that thing, like Marvin Hamlisch singing ‘The Way We Were’ [the theme song of her 1973 hit movie with Robert Redford] before I changed the melody and some of the lyrics. ” For someone like me, who came of age watching and listening to Ms. Streisand in the early years of her career, her forced focus on the way she was is a godsend. It means that I get to see, in the screening room in the Barn, Ms. Streisand’s uncut sequence of herself as Fanny Brice performing “Swan Lake” in “Funny Girl. ” (She supplies a running annotation as we watch, which includes speaking, in character, the unrecorded dialogue that Fanny was saying onscreen.) I also get to hear about the Rialto of yore, where, as a young woman just a few years out of Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, Ms. Streisand became a star in two musicals, “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” (1962) and “Funny Girl” (1964) the first and last Broadway shows in which she has appeared. When Ms. Streisand showed up at the Tony Awards in June (to present the award for best musical to “Hamilton”) it was her first appearance at the ceremony in 46 years. She never intended to make her career in live theater, she says. For one thing, she hated making the rounds of casting offices (“I’ve never wanted the humiliation of having to ask people for jobs”). There’s something, she says, about being judged — live and on the spot — that unnerves her, especially since her appearance in Central Park in 1967, when 150, 000 people showed up and she forgot lyrics onstage. Since then, “I always got frightened when I had to perform live. ” She was absent from commercial concert stages for the following 27 years. “I’m killing myself for this tour, because there’s a painting I want,” she says. She is a “auction freak,” and the covetable paintings in her house include works by Munch and Modigliani, as well as a portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. (She performs at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Aug. 11 and 13.) She says she never sings a song the same way twice, which presented problems when she worked on Broadway. Her habit of continually tweaking her role as Miss Marmelstein, the overworked secretary in “Wholesale,” provoked its director, Arthur Laurents, into criticism that stings her to this day. “He said: ‘You’re never gonna make it in showbiz. You’re too undisciplined. You never do it exactly the same way. ’” Ms. Streisand says she visited Laurents — who also wrote the screenplay for “The Way We Were” — not long before he died in 2011. “And I said: ‘Arthur, what do you feel now about the way I work? Do you understand why I change things, or had a hard time freezing the same thing?’ He said, ‘I absolutely do understand.’ That was very rewarding for me. ” Though she had no previous Broadway experience at the time of “Wholesale,” Ms. Streisand had her own specific notions about the staging of it. And for the record, she says, the idea of performing her character’s big solo in an office chair on wheels was hers, not the choreographer Herbert Ross’s. She seems to look back on her younger self with a certain wonder. “I don’t know that I would have the chutzpah now,” she says. But where did that original immense confidence — and hunger — come from? Much has been written about Ms. Streisand’s Brooklyn childhood: the gap left by the death of her father, a scholar and schoolteacher, when she was a toddler the mother who never complimented her and thought she should become a secretary. (For the record, that’s how the signature nails came about, since they kept Ms. Streisand from being able to type.) “She had talent,” she says of her mother, who worked as a secretary but who Ms. Streisand describes as also having had “a beautiful voice. ” “She didn’t have the drive. I said, “Why didn’t you do this, why didn’t you go after your dream?’ You know what I’m saying? You can have a dream, but how do you manifest it, how do you make it happen? Hard work, heart, taking chances — that was always my philosophy. ” It’s all the more surprising, then, when Ms. Streisand says: “The thing is, I was always kind of lazy. On the one hand, I am — or I was — ambitious. On the other hand, if I was having a great love affair or something, I’d say, I don’t want to do anything else. I mean, searching for personal happiness was more important. ” That is why, she says, she turned down a number of plum roles in her first decade in Hollywood, including the starring roles in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? ,” “Klute” and “Julia. ” Those all went, memorably, to another actress. As Ms. Streisand says, in a deadpan aside, “I made Jane Fonda’s career. ” So will we ever get to see her as Mama Rose in “Gypsy”? Ms. Streisand is now several decades older than that character, modeled after the mother of the celebrated stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. But when you hear her talk about “Gypsy” — and to see the “sizzle tape” she made, which ends with a concert performance of her defiantly singing the climactic number “Rose’s Turn” — the mouth still waters. Ms. Streisand has given much thought to Rose. She has talked to her friend Stephen Sondheim, the show’s lyricist, about potential revisions to the songs. She has an ace idea for the delivery of the broken words “mama, mama” in “Rose’s Turn,” based on her belief that the key to Rose’s blind ambition to make a star of her daughter can be found in the mother who walked out on her. Another description Ms. Streisand offers of Rose seems closer to : “I think she’s tough as nails, but a tough person who’s vulnerable inside, you know? It’s like a crab, something that’s jelly inside. What makes for anger is also hurt, and that gives you the depth of playing somebody like that. ” The Malibu residence, as tailored to her tastes and needs as a couture dress might be, would seem to offer a place where a person might shed her shell. I ask her if she feels serene here. She doesn’t answer immediately. So I ask: “Do you ever feel serene?” “That’s a good question,” she says. So I ask it again. Her muttered response: “No, not really, sad to say. ” | 1 |
Ads Michelle Malkin SCHOOLED The Idiots On ‘The View’ On Obama’s LIES To America. They’re SPEECHLESS! Oct 29, 2016 Previous post
For those of you who don’t know who Michell Malkin is, she is an author, blogger, columnist, and has recurring appearances on Fox News and other conservative media outlets. Malkin is one of the smartest and most accurate proponents in all of conservative media. If Ann Coulter is at the top, Malkin is in a close second.
The View on the other hand, is filled with the biggest liberal dummies you can imagine. None of which are bigger or more insane than Joy Behar. Every time a political pundit or personality comes on the show, Behar always has to throw in her $.02 even though she has never held any office in her life, yet she talks like her s*** doesn’t stink and she knows everything.
Well this time when Malkin was on, she had enough. As they discussed her book about corruption in the Obama campaign, Malkin let her have it.
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Panic has set in across the world as anti-establishment candidate Donald Trump looks to be set to take the Presidency of the United States.
Dow Jones futures are down 754 points as of this writing.
Gold prices are up $47 and silver us up $0.75, like as a result of a panic into safe haven assets:
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A pair of gang members — one of whom was reportedly out on the streets because of Jerry Brown’s sentencing reform to allow “ ” offenders to be released early from state prison to county supervision — were arrested in the early morning hours last Friday. [The two allegedly went on a violent crime spree in Murrieta and Temecula that included allegedly stealing two cars, reckless driving and firing multiple shots at pursuing police officers. According to Sun News and Review, Fernando Alonso and Jose Perez Rodriguez have been booked on a long list of charges: Since their initial booking, both Alonso and Rodriguez have also been booked by Murrieta PD detectives for the added booking charge of PC — Attempted Murder of a Peace Officer, which carries a $1, 000, 000 bail. It all reportedly started at approximately 2:35 am on Friday, May 5th, according to a Valley News report, when a Murrieta police officer attempted a traffic stop on a vehicle as it entered the Las Brisas Apartment complex. “As the officer was approaching the vehicle on foot, the driver of the vehicle sped off at a high rate of speed with the vehicle’s headlights off,” Murrieta Police Lieutenant Ron Driscoll stated in a written press release reported by multiple news sources. The driver, later identified as Alonso, led police on a chase through Murrieta, Temecula and outlying areas, endangering the public and showing no regard for the safety of the pursuing officers. In fact, according to Driscoll, Alonso, the driver of the vehicle leaned out of the speeding vehicle “and fired multiple gunshots at the officers, striking one of the patrol vehicles. ” Murrieta PD sought help from Riverside County Sheriffs, who dispatched a unit along with a helicopter known as “Star 9. ” It took about 3 hours of searching in the air and on foot to locate one of the subjects hiding in the backyard of a residence, near some trash cans. Several officers were injured in the ensuing struggle to arrest Alonso, according to news reports, but finally the unit was deployed, and he was subdued, handcuffed and taken away. The other suspect, Rodriguez, was arrested a short time later near a second stolen vehicle. Stolen property from multiple vehicle all over the city of Temecula were allegedly recovered. “Rodriguez is a product of Assembly Bill 109, which is the California State Realignment Act that was signed into law in 2011,” Driscoll explained in a Press Release obtained by Valley News. “AB 109 allows for thousands of [supposedly] less serious felony offenders to remain out of custody on supervision (county probation instead of state parole) whereas they would have previously been eligible for state prison. ” Both suspects are now being charged with attempted murder of a peace officer, and likely will not be able to make their $1 million dollar bail. Repeated calls to Gov. Jerry Brown for comment by Breitbart News went unanswered. Tim Donnelly is a former California State Assemblyman and author who is doing a book tour for his new book: Patriot Not Politician: Win or Go Homeless. He ran for governor in 2014. FaceBook: https: . facebook. . donnelly. Twitter: @PatriotNotPol | 1 |
Leaked Audio Of Hillary Clinton Proposing ‘Rigging Election’ Ξ [October 29, 2016] BLOG New Study Claims Life DOES Exist On Mars And It Was Found By The Viking Lander in 1976 posted by Eddie A new study published in the Journal Astrobiology suggests that the 1976 Viking (LR) experiment found evidence to support microbial life on the surface of Mars. Forty years ago, before we had any idea there was liquid water on Mars, and that the red planet was the closest thing to Earth within our solar system, the 1976 Viking (KR) experiment found conclusive evidence to support the existence of life on Mars, a new study claims. Strangely, forty years ago ‘traces of life’ on Mars were dismissed as an error, but scientists today beg to differ. The question whether or not Mars is inhabited has captured the interest and imagination of millions around the globe. In 1976, an experiment known as the Viking Labeled Released returned POSITIVE results for traces of LIFE on Mars. Both Viking Landers, which touched down over 6,000 kilometers apart returned ver similar results which led many researchers to conclude Martian life had been detected. However, as skeptics, as we are in our nature, the discovery was dismissed and labeled as non-biological. Soil material that supports this explanation remained a mystery. Now forty years after the Viking Labeled Released experiment, and with a new database of fresh knowledge; water on the surface in liquid form, complex organic molecules and METHANE on Mars, experts around the globe indicate we cannot RULE OUT the possibility there is life on the surface of Mars. Astrobiologists argue that there is enough evidence to support the theory Mars is inhabited. A recently published article in the Journal Astrobiology has researchers from Arizona State University, Tempe, and the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda discussing the idea there is life on Mars. Experts argue that evidence is ‘consistent with a biological explanation,’ which means that it is very probable that some sort of microorganisms on Mars managed to adapt and evolve enough to become resistant to the harsh and dangerous environmental conditions that rule on the surface of the red planet. What experts did was dig into the LR experiments from the 1976 Viking Labeled Release and evaluate the ‘non-biological hypothesis. In the LR tests, researchers subjected samples from Martian soil from both lenders to nutrient injection, pre-heating and were left to ‘lay it off’ in a dark room for nearly two months. Researchers found that there were similarities to responses seen in terrestrial soil, including data from samples collected in California, Alaska, and Antarctica. The authors of the study wrote: “Each of these characteristics is reminiscent of responses by a compendium of terrestrial microorganism species, including the initial positive responses, the 160C and 50C heat controls, the reabsorption of evolved gas upon second injection of nutrient, and death from isolated long-term storage.” Since Mars has been the subject of debate for over half a century, numerous explanations and theories have been proposed to address certain discoveries. Researchers had to consider all possibilities, including those which suggested that the results obtained from the LR experiments were ‘most likely caused by a non-biological soil oxidant.’ However, no such oxidation, that can satisfy all of the discoveries has ever been found, and experts didn’t perform any further metabolic experiments on the surface of Mars. All of this could change in the near future as experts warn we must adequately prepare for a manned mission to the surface of the red planet. Since such missions are obviously inevitable, it is imperative for health, safety, and biology to explain the results the Viking landers came across in 1976. The authors write in the study: “Plans for any Mars sample return mission should also take into account that such a sample may contain viable, even if dormant, alien life.” “We cannot rule out the biological explanation. This has implications for plans for sample return from Mars and future human missions.” Source: | 0 |
US Hypocrisy: Bombing of Aleppo is no Worse than what Happened in Gaza and Iraq By Gareth Porter " MEE " - The Russian-Syrian bombing campaign in eastern Aleppo, which has ended at least for the time being, has been described in press reports and op-eds as though it were unique in modern military history in its indiscriminateness. In an usual move for a senior US official, Secretary of State John Kerry called for an investigation of war crimes in Aleppo.
The discussion has been lacking in historical context, however. Certainly the civilian death toll from the bombing and shelling in Aleppo has been high, but many of the strikes may not be all that dissimilar from the major US bombing campaign in Iraq in 2003, nor as indiscriminate as Israels recent campaigns in densely populated cities.
The impression that the bombing in Aleppo was uniquely indiscriminate was a result of news reporting and commentary suggesting, by implication, that there are no real military targets in east Aleppo.
But in fact, al-Nusra Front turned Aleppo into the central hub of a massive system of conventional warfare in Aleppo province in late January 2016 when it sent an enormous convoy of at least 200 vehicles with troops and weaponry into eastern Aleppo. A dramatic three-minute al-Nusra video shows what appears to be hundreds of vehicles full of troops and trucks with weapons mounted on them.
The Russian command in Syria has drones observing the routes in and out of Aleppo, so it certainly knew where many of those military sites were located. Syrian opposition sources also revealed that Nusra began immediately to put the military assets at its disposal underground, digging deep bunkers to protect troops, military equipment and tunnels through which troops and weapons could be moved unseen.
The move underground explains the Russian use of bunker-buster bombs for the first time in the war. As the Guardian reported , Justin Bronk of the British defence think tank Royal United Service Institute concluded that the Russians have high-grade intelligence of the whereabouts of Syrian opposition positions, mainly because bunker buster bombs are too expensive to use simply to destroy buildings at random.
But like Hamas fighters in Gaza in 2014, the Nusra Front-led command in Aleppo has moved its troops, weapons and command centres around in the tunnels that they have built. So many of the Russian and Syrian air strikes are almost certainly hitting targets that have already been abandoned. And in other cases, the wrong target has undoubtedly been hit.
The Aleppo Health Directorate, a local monitoring group, estimated that 400 civilians had been killed in the first three weeks of bombing in east Aleppo. The United Nations put the death toll at 360 .
Drop the superiority act As terrible as that toll of civilian lives is, the United States should drop the stance of moral superiority. When the US military invaded Iraq in 2003, it made no effort to keep track of how many civilians were killed in its bombing and artillery fire, claiming it had no way to tell who was civilian and who was not.
And the best estimates of civilians killed in US and Israeli urban wars dont provide any basis for moral superiority. A survey of Baghdads hospitals by the Los Angeles Times in May 2003 produced an estimate of at least 1,700 civilians killed in the first five weeks of American war. The estimate included those who had died in ground fighting and from unexploded ordnance, but even with those contributing factors subtracted from the total, it would still be far greater than those killed in the assault on east Aleppo on a weekly basis.
The three-week Israeli war on Gaza City in 2009 and the seven-week war on Gaza in 2014 were also far deadlier than Aleppo. The former killed 773 civilians, according to an investigation by the Israeli human rights organisation BTselem. The latter killed 1,473 Palestinian civilians, according to the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs .
Attacks on hospitals The one feature of the Russian-Syrian air offensive on east Aleppo that seems most clearly to violate the laws of war is the targeting of hospitals. Media accounts have referred to air strikes with barrel bombs that have hit two major hospitals in the rebel-held part of the city.
The Syrian government has been acting as though it regards the hospitals in eastern Aleppo as serving the Nusra Front command, and the hospitals, which are under intense pressure from the militants who run that part of Aleppo, have fed the governments suspicions.
As a detailed report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on the air strikes that hit the Al Quds hospital on 27 April explains, the local organisation that created a new system of hospitals in 2011 decided not to declare the hospitals openly but to keep them underground meaning secret from the government.
In fact, of course, the government knows perfectly well where all 10 hospitals in east Aleppo are located. The 27 April air strike that damaged the Al Quds hospital shows how the government has responded. It began with an air strike that destroyed a building across the street from the hospital. The building was a school, but former residents of east Aleppo who have gotten out have confirmed that organisations associated with the al-Qaeda-dominated command have located their offices in schools to try to hide their staff.
Within a few minutes of the initial strike, according to the MSF account, Al Quds hospital staff were pulling survivors out of the rubble and taking them across the street to the emergency room, whereupon the Syrian air force dropped a barrel bomb at the entrance to the emergency room, killing several of the hospital staff, including one doctor. Then it dropped one close enough to the side of the hospital to hit the emergency room and, minutes later, hit a building down the block where hospital staff were staying.
Such attacks on those who try to save the lives of survivors of bombing attacks sometimes called double tap attacks - are rightly condemned as violations of humanitarian law. And the belief that the staff at the hospital are operating in effect as medics for the adversarys military does not justify attacking it and the wounded sheltered there.
But such violations of the laws of war are hardly unique to Aleppo or Syria.
Hardly unique US drone strikes in Pakistan have hit rescuers or mourners after hitting their initial targets in numerous documented cases . In the 2009 Gaza attacks, the Israeli military argued that Hamas fighters were using hospitals to hide from Israeli bombing, but offered no valid evidence to support it, as the Goldstone Report showed .
In 2014, the Israelis completely destroyed the Al-Wafa hospital in an air strike recorded for public release after claiming falsely that it had been fired on by Palestinian gunmen.
In its wars in Gaza and in Lebanon, the IDF has gone well beyond the Russian and Syrian Aleppo campaign in refusing to recognise any distinction between civilian targets. It not only targeted civilian offices in both Gaza wars, but treated entire areas of the city as a legitimate target, on the premise that all civilians had been ordered to leave.
And in both Gaza and in Beirut suburb of Dahiya , it levelled several high-rise buildings where they believed Hezbollah had offices. The IDF called it the Dahiya doctrine, and threatened great damage and destruction on any adversary in any future war in the region.
Heavy bombing in a city is inherently fraught with moral risk, and attacks on genuine civilian targets can never be excused. But such practices have been carried out and legitimised in the past by the very government that is now claiming the role of moral and legal arbiter. That hypocrisy needs to be recognised and curbed as well.
- Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . | 0 |
The new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) retired Marine General John Kelly, believes he can make good on President Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall on the U. S. border in 2 years or less. [In an interview with Fox News late Wednesday, Secretary Kelly said, “The wall will be built where it’s needed first, and then it will be filled in. That’s the way I look at it. I really hope to have it done within the next two years. ” Kelly’s attitude toward border enforcement is 180 degrees from previous heads of DHS — even under President Bush, whose Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson halted all interior enforcement in Southern California due to political outcry back in 2004. As a General, Kelly is as accustomed to giving orders as following them. While it may be an ambitious schedule, unlike his predecessors, Secretary Kelly will not have to fight the executive branch in order to secure the border. In the same interview, he sounded optimistic about Congress, saying that the money will come. “I think the funding will come relatively quickly and like I said, we will build it where it’s needed first as identified by the men and women who work the border,” Kelly emphasized. Speaker Paul Ryan confirmed Kelly’s optimism in an interview Thursday with Fox Friends. “We have already authorized this, meaning the law was passed almost 10 years ago,” Ryan said. “And then we will give the financing to Secretary Kelly and the border security plan. So, it’s really up to them as to how fast they can execute this policy. I think that’s great. He’s the kind of guy that can get this sort of thing done. He will have the funding to do it and he already has the authorization to do it. ” Ryan is referring to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was passed by Congress, signed into law by President Bush, but never adequately funded and never fully executed. According to a Yahoo News story, cost estimates are all over the map: “Trump has said that his cost estimates for building the wall range from $4 to $10 billion, but other estimates put the price at $11 billion for 400 more miles of fencing. The MIT Technology Review estimated that a 1, 000 mile steel and concrete wall would cost $27 to $40 billion. ” Whatever the cost, a wall is only one part of the solution — but according to those charged with securing the border, it is a critically important and welcome tool in their arsenal. Even though Democrats are likely to throw up road blocks, citing environmental and other concerns — which have succeeded in the past in delaying construction indefinitely — Secretary Kelly has the backing of the President and his advisors. Whatever roadblocks arise, the retired Marine General is likely to steamroll over, tunnel under or just blow up. Until today, the single most important component required to complete the border wall has not been money or materials, but political will. Tim Donnelly is a former California State Assemblyman. Author, Patriot Not Politician: Win or Go Homeless, FaceBook: https: . facebook. . donnelly. Twitter: @PatriotNotPol | 1 |
NTEB Ads Privacy Policy More Electoral College Members Receiving Death Threats From Hillary Supporters Ahead Of December Voting Hillary voters around the country are bombarding Electoral College with emails, some of them threatening, in an effort to force them to vote against the outcome of the presidential election. by Geoffrey Grider November 21, 2016 A member of the electoral commission in Texas says his colleagues are getting death threats as angry Hillary supporters ramp up the pressure before electors cast their vote on December 19th.
Hillary voters around the country are bombarding Electoral College with emails, some of them threatening, in an effort to force them to vote against the outcome of the presidential election. “At first everyone was kinda enchanted by it. Now all the electors are starting to get beaten down. There are some electors who have been threatened with harm or with death,” Texas elector Alex Kim told NBC 5. “When people ask me to vote for Hillary Clinton, there’s no way,” he said. “I reject the Democratic Party principles and I reject Hillary Clinton .” Kim said he had a message for all the people who are trying to pressure him into changing his vote; “Go to hell”. Hillary Supporters Send Death Threats to Electors: As we previously reported , another elector in Michigan said he has also received a number of death threats, including a promise that he would be shot in the head if he voted for Trump. “I’ve had people talk about shoving a gun in my mouth and blowing my brains out. And I’ve received dozens and dozens of those emails. Even the non-threatening-my-life emails are very aggressive,” Michael Banerian told the Detroit News, adding that he has been labeled a “hateful bigot” by the same people who are violently threatening him. A petition to demand electors change their vote to Clinton has also surpassed 4.5 million signatures. Meanwhile on Twitter , Hillary supporters are organizing on how to pressure electors under the hashtag #HamiltonElectors , a reference to Mike Pence being lectured by a cast member of the musical show. Unfortunately for them, conservatives found the hashtag and have now largely taken it over to decry leftists attempting to overturn the results of a democratic election. source SHARE THIS ARTICLE | 0 |
US election claims against Russia expose Clinton: Analyst US election claims against Russia expose Clinton: Analyst By 0 166
The United States government is trying to distract people from the true nature of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by accusing Russia of influencing the election against her.
Don DeBar, a New York-based author and radio host, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Thursday, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to Washington’s accusations of sponsoring hacking attacks against the US.
Speaking to foreign policy experts during a Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Sochi, southern Russia on Thursday, Putin said Washington was using Russia as a distraction to cover the fact that this year’s White House contenders had nothing to offer on real issues.
“The subject matter of what is being revealed here is definitely an action item that defines who Clinton is,” DeBar said.
“Also, the thing that is really galling is the fact that we are told to ignore the content, and the content is something that goes to the… | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The meeting between tech executives and Donald Trump included leaders of some of the world’s most successful companies, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, above. Three of Mr. Trump’s children attended. What unfolded is less immediately clear — the press was quickly ushered out of the room. Mr. Bezos had already made news, announcing that Amazon made its first commercial drone delivery this month, in Britain. _____ 2. A deal to end the brutal assaults on the Syrian city of Aleppo fell through. Artillery shelling resumed, in the latest bitter turn for the thousands of civilians and medical workers unable to flee the ruined city for territory held by the government. A nurse said he hoped the world would hear “our final scream. ” _____ 3. In Washington, congressional Republicans face a vexing dilemma over Russia. The party’s catechism teaches a tough line on what it calls Russian adventurism, and Republican leaders have been infuriated by evidence of Russian cyberattacks affecting the presidential election and even some House races. But Mr. Trump, who has dismissed the idea that the attacks were in support of his campaign, wants votes for his pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil’s chief executive and a longtime friend of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. _____ 4. North Carolina’s bitter election battle is over, but the struggle for control of state government is not. In a surprise special session, Republicans in the Legislature moved to strip the incoming Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, of power over election boards, his own cabinet and many state employees. “It appears this fourth special session will be to nullify the vote of the people,” the leader of House Democrats said. _____ 5. Yahoo disclosed a second enormous hack that compromised user accounts. The company says that 1 billion users were affected and sensitive information may have been obtained. The breach happened in 2013, a year before hackers stole data from 500 million users. _____ 6. The Federal Reserve, citing the steady growth of the U. S. economy, will increase its benchmark interest rate for just the second time since the 2008 financial crisis. The move means that all sorts of expenses — including the cost of housing, cars, student loans and even the interest on your credit card — will eventually go up. The rate, close to zero for years, remains low by historical standards. _____ 7. “I was really looking for a confrontation, so I could kill. ” That’s what President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said, boasting that he had personally killed criminals during his time as mayor of Davao City. He is now overseeing a bloody crackdown on drug dealers and users in the country, above. Mexico is also grappling with bloodshed: An increasingly volatile criminal landscape has fueled a surge in homicides, with 17, 063 cases recorded in the first 10 months of this year. _____ 8. The Obama administration issued a rule to stop states from withholding federal funds for health clinics that provide abortions. Federal law already prohibits government financing for abortions, with some exceptions. The new rule is meant to prevent states from cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates and other groups for unrelated health services. Separately, a new study undermines the claim that women who terminate pregnancies experience emotional and psychological trauma. _____ 9. In yet another jolt to the auction world, the chief executive of Christie’s has decided to step down. Patricia Barbizet, above, will hand the reins to Guillaume Cerutti. The news came just a week after Brett Gorvy, Christie’s top announced that he would be leaving. Auction houses have been struggling for inventory amid political and economic uncertainty. _____ 10. The legions of bots operating on Twitter may be best known for incessantly spewing spam or insults, but there’s an emerging class of politicized bots taking hold. “You could think of them as ‘protest bots,’” our media critic writes. Some fight disinformation with facts and others are meant to distract trolls. One is identifying every American who donated to Mr. Trump’s campaign. _____ 11. The act of running may not seem to require much thought, but a new study suggests that it enhances cognition. Research shows that for certain cognitive skills, like multitasking and concentration, the brains of competitive distance runners were more finely honed than those of inactive people. _____ 11. Finally, Super Mario is coming to our iPhones (and iPads). The release of Super Mario Run on Thursday means that one of the games in history (or at least one based on it) can be played on one of the most popular electronic devices in the world. It’s not cheap: $9. 99 for full access. And to limit piracy, it requires a full internet connection. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
.. "SEC in recent months has raised concern that public companies may be straying too far too often from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles."
^ belly laughs | 0 |
Attacks Destroyed Villagers' Homes, Burned Farms by Jason Ditz, October 30, 2016 Share This
While the biggest single Saudi airstrike over the weekend in Yemen targeted a prison in Hodeidah, dozens of other strikes were reported over the weekend by villagers around Taiz and in the Maarib Province, with attacks killing at least 27 civilians , and wounding a number of others.
Most of the casualties were in Taiz, where attacks destroyed several homes and caused a large number of injuries. With hospitals in the area having very limited access to medicine because of the naval blockade, many of those injuries proved fatal.
The attacks in Maarib and Saada, however, may prove more devastating to the country in the long run, targeting some of the very limited farmland Yemen has, destroying a number of villagers’ homes and burning a lot of that farmland. Yemen has to import some 90 percent of its food under normal circumstances, with such imports severely limited by the blockade, and the loss of farmland just adds to food insecurity in the nation.
Saudi Arabia has been coming under growing international criticism for its air war against Yemen, with massive numbers of civilians killed and little sign that the promised improvements to targeting will ever amount to anything. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
A Australian woman stirred controversy recently when she took out a classified ad to sell her virginity for $250, 000, reports say. [In her ad, the young woman described herself as having an athletic body. She says she stands at 5 feet, three inches and weighs 97 pounds. The woman posted to a classified ad website called Locanto this week, the Daily Mail reported. Photos associated with the ad show a slender girl with long, dirty blond hair standing in her underwear. She began her ad telling potential clients that she had several conditions for the sale of her virginity. “We have to go to a restaurant, so we can go out for a dinner, and we can meet,” the ad said. “It will happen in a hotel which you can choose. If I don’t want to do this, I can rescind from the deal. ” She also put a ban on any sort of sex toys and insisted there could be no violence involved. “The price is $250. . Send me your questions and offer. I am open for everything,” the ad concluded. This is far from the first time a young woman has offered her virginity for sale online. As the paper notes, an German girl did the same thing in May. In March, a Romanian girl reportedly sold her virginity for $2. 6 million, despite the warning from her parents that they would disown her if she went through with the deal. In 2014, a medical student said she would sell her virginity for $800, 000. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
posted by Eddie New York Police Department (NYPD) detectives have uncovered evidence of a ‘child sex ring’ on Anthony Weiner’s laptop that they say could “ put Hillary Clinton away for life “. According to NYPD sources, files found on Weiner’s newly found laptop which he shared with his wife Huma Abedin, show evidence of a political pedophile ring operating within Washington, involving members of Congress as well as numerous top Clinton aides and insiders. According to reports , a folder on Weiner’s laptop named “ life insurance ” contains explicit evidence that both Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin helped run and cover-up a Washington pedophile sex ring. NYPD sources said these new emails include evidence linking Clinton herself and associates to: Money laundering Sex crimes with minors (children) Perjury Pay to play through Clinton Foundation Obstruction of justice Other felony crimes NYPD detectives and a NYPD Chief, the department’s highest rank under Commissioner, said openly that if the FBI and Justice Department fail to garner timely indictments against Clinton and co- conspirators, NYPD will go public with the damaging emails now in the hands of FBI Director James Comey and many FBI field offices. “What’s in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach,” the NYPD Chief said. “There is not going to be any Houdini-like escape from what we found. We have copies of everything. We will ship them to Wikileaks or I will personally hold my own press conference if it comes to that.” The NYPD Chief said once Comey saw the alarming contents of the emails he was forced to reopen a criminal probe against Clinton. “People are going to prison,” he said. Meanwhile, FBI sources said Abedin and Weiner were cooperating with federal agents, who have taken over the non-sexting portions the case from NYPD. The husband-and-wife Clinton insiders are both shopping for separate immunity deals, sources said. “If they don’t cooperate they are going to see long sentences,” a federal law enforcement source said. NYPD sources said Weiner or Abedin stored all the emails in a massive Microsoft Outlook program on the laptop. The emails implicate other current and former members of Congress and one high-ranking Democratic Senator as having possibly engaged in criminal activity too, sources said. Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara have issued a subpoena for Weiner’s cell phones and travel records, law enforcement sources confirmed. NYPD said it planned to order the same phone and travel records on Clinton and Abedin, however, the FBI said it was in the process of requesting the identical records. Law enforcement sources are particularly interested in cell phone activity and travel to the Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands and other locations that sources would not divulge. The new emails contain travel documents and itineraries indicating Hillary Clinton, President Bill Clinton, Weiner and multiple members of Congress and other government officials accompanied convicted pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein on his Boeing 727 on multiple occasions to his private island in the U.S Virgin Islands, sources said. Epstein’s island has also been dubbed Orgy Island or Sex Slave Island where Epstein allegedly pimps out underage girls and boys to international dignitaries. Both NYPD and FBI sources confirm based on the new emails they now believe Hillary Clinton traveled as Epstein’s guest on at least six occasions, probably more when all the evidence is combed, sources said. Bill Clinton, it has been confirmed in media reports spanning recent years, that he too traveled with Epstein over 20 times to the island. source: | 0 |
DAHIYAT AL BARID, West Bank — At 4:15 a. m. on a street, a Palestinian man came running from the shadows between buildings with a rickety wooden ladder. He slapped it against the hulking concrete wall and climbed up, hoisting himself the last six feet because the ladder was too short. The wall, which Israel began building more than a decade ago to thwart the suicide bombers of the second intifada, is supposed to prevent Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank from entering into Israel outside military checkpoints where their papers can be examined. But the Palestinian man perched in a gap in the concertina wire that tops much of the snaking route of the wall. He motioned to a white Daewoo sedan that had lurched to a stop below, and one by one, four young men stepped out of the car, climbed the ladder, and slid down a rope on the other side. Within minutes, another car was speeding the men to construction sites in Israel, where they did not have permits to work, and the man with the ladder was leaving to look for more willing to pay to scale the wall. “In the West Bank, you have hustlers,” said the man, who, like more than two dozen other Palestinians interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was breaking the law. “You can either call them hustlers, or you can call them brokers. ” This furtive predawn crossing is part of a thriving smuggling industry that allows untold numbers of people to pass over, under, through or around what Israelis call the security barrier — for a price. The industry offers economic benefits for everyone involved: Palestinian workers earn double or quadruple the wages they can in the West Bank Israeli contractors and restaurant owners pay less for illegal labor than for Palestinians with permits and the smugglers collect $65 to $200 for each person that passes. Punishment for those caught is generally being sent back to the other side. The system punches a hole in Israel’s system for regulating Palestinians’ access to work inside Israel, and has security implications: Attackers like the two Palestinian men who fatally shot four people this month at a Tel Aviv cafe sneak through as well. The two men lived in Yatta, a village in the West Bank’s south, near where the unfinished barrier consists mostly of a metal fence with numerous gaps and holes. Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said they had entered Israel illegally, “most probably via one of the areas which are open or not completed. ” The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, says that from Oct. 1 of last year to Feb. 1, 21 Palestinians who attacked Israelis were in the country illegally. Since the Tel Aviv attack, Israel’s Defense Ministry has promised to extend a more effective form of the barrier to the south, an area heavily trafficked by smugglers. But the government’s other response to the shooting, the cancellation of 83, 000 special permits for Palestinians to cross during the holy month of Ramadan, may reveal how difficult it will be to stanch the flow. At the Qalandiya checkpoint outside the city of Ramallah on the Friday after the attack, men stood at the edge of the restive crowds no longer able to pass through, shouting “tahreeb, tahreeb” — Arabic for “smuggling, smuggling. ” “We have to understand that you will never solve the problem,” said Nitzan Nuriel, a retired Israeli brigadier general and the former head of the prime minister’s counterterrorism bureau. “Whenever you have illegal workers, it is part of the reality, it is part of the economy. ” The challenge, said Mr. Nuriel, now a counterterrorism expert at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, is filtering potential terrorists from ordinary workers. “You have to decide,” he said, “which fish to catch and which fish you can allow to swim. ” The economics of the smuggling business are straightforward — and irresistible. Unemployment among West Bank Palestinians is about 20 percent over all, and is even higher for young people. Starting wages per day, according to Khalil Shikaki, the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, are 70 to 80 shekels, or $20. Numerous Palestinians working illegally at Israeli construction sites said they made $80 to $100 a day. That is still a major bargain for Israeli companies, who have to treat Palestinians with work permits similar to Israeli workers in terms of wages and benefits, covering sick days, vacations, health insurance and pensions. There are currently about 55, 000 Palestinians with permits working legally in Israel, and an estimated 20, 000 in the settlements, according to Palestinian Labor Ministry. That is down from a peak of 140, 000 before the second intifada in 2000, the ministry says (when the population was about the size). Estimates vary widely on the number of illegal workers. Mr. Shikaki said 30, 000 was a reasonable guess Mr. Nuriel said it was closer to 60, 000, depending on the time of year. Most work in construction, agriculture or restaurants. Mr. Rosenfeld, the police spokesman, said that hundreds of illegal workers were picked up each week, but that the authorities were “focusing on arresting those that are attempting to bring in the Palestinians illegally. ” The first time someone is caught in Israel illegally, he said, the police simply record the incident and release the worker back to the West Bank. Repeat offenders “will appear before the courts” and may face other penalties, Mr. Rosenfeld said, adding that anyone suspected of links to terrorism is referred to the military. But Palestinian workers who have been arrested multiple times said in interviews that the most serious consequences they have faced have been an interrogation and being dropped off at a checkpoint as far as possible from where they were picked up. Mr. Nuriel, the counterterrorism expert, said that it would be too costly to keep such a large population in jail and that even widespread arrests were impractical, asking, “Who is going to interrogate them?” At a large construction site in Israel, an illegal worker in a yellow hard hat who goes by the name Abu Khalid estimated that he had gone over the wall dozens of times in the last year alone. Like many others interviewed, he said his routine was to cross the wall, work inside Israel for a few days or weeks, and then go back to the West Bank for a short rest. Some employers house workers in trailers, some workers stay with relatives or friends, and some, like Abu Khalid, camp outside. At 50, he has a lined, deeply tanned face and, the sign of his seniority on the job, a in his pocket. Abu Khalid said that a package deal for the jump over the wall and transportation to his work site costs about 800 shekels for a solo trip when three men go in together, he said, they can cross for perhaps 300 shekels each. “That’s a lot of money,” Abu Khalid said. Workers “punch in” as soon as they arrive at a job site, he added, and both Israeli and Palestinian contractors know they have no permits. At day’s end, Abu Khalid continued, “we go find a water pipe to take a shower, and then we find a nice tree and sleep under it. ” Passage is not always as simple as going up a ladder and down a rope. Two young workers — Ahmad, 19, and Bassem, 21 — sat on a terrace in their village, north of Ramallah, and chuckled about a time when tight security forced them to go under the wall, not over it. “We used to go through a water main like snakes,” Bassem said. Ahmad’s father, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of legal repercussions, said his son provided a prime source of income for the family. But Ahmad is also a source of deep anxiety because of how he travels to work. “When he goes and he comes, I have my hand on my heart in fear of something happening,” the father said. Nowhere is passage more perilous than the West Bank’s south, where the Tel Aviv suspects, who are cousins, most likely crossed. “You don’t know who you are walking with,” said Mahmoud Khalil, 19, a Palestinian who was working at an Israeli construction site but had no permit. Mr. Khalil is from Yatta, like the suspects, but he said he did not know the cousins and came to Israel only to earn money for his family. He said he paid 250 shekels for safe passage through a large gap in the barrier near the village of Dahriya, southwest of Yatta, and transportation to the work site. One recent day near Dahriya and neighboring Ramadin, pickups jammed with illegal workers played with Israeli military Humvees, racing from gap to gap as smugglers chattered on phones nearby. Workers and smugglers alike understand that terrorism is bad for business. A driver for the smugglers in Dahriya who spoke on the condition that he be identified only as Abu Ramzi said that he and his colleagues alert Palestinian security forces at the first hint that a client intends to commit violence in Israel. He complained that the Israeli military had stepped up patrols of the southern barrier since the Tel Aviv shootings. “Before this last attack, the army would act as if nothing was going on — 30 or 40 workers would cross into Israel all at once,” said Abu Ramzi, 34. “This last attack has temporarily complicated our operation. ” Still, he said, “we will always find ways to get these workers in. ” That resolve was tested after nightfall last Monday, when five pickups and a Mazda sedan filled with workers massed in the center of Dahriya. With their lights off, the vehicles made two attempts to cross the web of rutted, rocky dirt roads and reach gaps in the fence, but they turned back because spotters saw Israeli Army Humvees converging on the same areas. Finally, the smugglers’ vehicles roared toward another spot, throwing up thick billows of dust and bouncing the workers mercilessly in the beds of the trucks. At the bottom of the hill, two lookouts were talking on their cellphones under an olive tree. To the west, past the fence, nothing was visible but the distant lights of Israeli towns and cities. Then the lights of the cars sent to pick up the workers on the Israeli side could be seen approaching on the bare hills. A smuggler yelled, “Yalla, yalla!” — “Go, go!” — and workers leapt from the trucks and began running toward a gap in the fence that had been flimsily repaired. Someone pulled it open, and someone else carefully lifted a few strands of razor wire that had been tossed in the dirt to make the passage more difficult. The workers, many toting backpacks stuffed with clothing, slid under the razor wire and met the cars. The last man lifted the razor wire himself, slipped under and ran toward the cars, which drove off toward job sites among the distant lights. | 1 |
BANGKOK — Thailand’s crown prince ascended to the throne on Thursday, seven weeks after the death of his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died after reigning for seven decades. In a formal ceremony at the Dusit Palace in Bangkok, the prince, crowned as King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, 64, accepted the invitation to take the throne offered by the National Assembly president. Afterward, Prime Minister Prayuth said in a televised speech that the new monarch would be declared king retroactively to the day his father passed away. He also will be known as King Rama X of the Chakri dynasty. “The heir to the throne graciously accepted the invitation,” the prime minister said. “A kingdom should not be without a monarch on the throne. The commencement of the new reign is therefore effective as of 13 October 2016. ” The crown prince had declined to take the throne immediately after his father’s death, saying he needed time to grieve. Thailand’s royal succession is an elaborate process that can extend for many months. King Bhumibol’s cremation will take place about a year after his death. King Vajiralongkorn’s coronation will take place at some point after that. King Bhumibol was revered by many Thais who saw him as an advocate of the common people and a promoter of economic development. The official mourning period for the public has ended, but even now many people still wear black clothing or a black ribbon to honor him. The country is sharply divided but the military, which has held power since a 2014 coup, remains firmly in control. King Bhumibol was a unifying figure and many Thais have been anxious about what kind of leadership they can expect from King Vajiralongkorn, who has lived primarily in Germany for years. “Although we all know that to be parted from the person we love and respect is suffering,” the prime minister said, “although the loss and sadness are an undeniable crisis, we should turn this crisis into an opportunity and turn grief into the strength of the land. ” | 1 |
Store Exclusive: Christ’s Burial Place Exposed for First Time in Centuries Restorers working in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Israel uncover stone slab venerated as the resting place of Jesus Christ Image Credits: Wiki Commons .
For the first time in centuries, scientists have exposed the original surface of what is traditionally considered the tomb of Jesus Christ. Located in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, the tomb has been covered by marble cladding since at least 1555 A.D., and most likely centuries earlier.
“The marble covering of the tomb has been pulled back, and we were surprised by the amount of fill material beneath it,” said Fredrik Hiebert, archaeologist-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, a partner in the restoration project. “It will be a long scientific analysis, but we will finally be able to see the original rock surface on which, according to tradition, the body of Christ was laid.”
According to Christian tradition, the body of Jesus Christ was laid on a shelf or “burial bed” hewn from the side of a limestone cave following his crucifixion by the Romans in A.D. 30 or possibly 33. Christian belief says Christ was resurrected after death, and women who came to anoint his body three days after the burial reported that no remains were present. | 0 |
Army chief asks Putin for permission to resume airstrikes in Aleppo area October 28, 2016 TASS syria Sergei Rudskoi: Russian fighter planes in Syria have steered clear of the 10-kilometer zone around Aleppo for a 10th successive day. Source: Mil.ru
The Russian military have asked President Vladimir Putin, who is the supreme commander of the armed forces, to permit the resumption of airstrikes against militants in eastern Aleppo, Gen Sergei Rudskoi, the chief of the main department for operations at the General Staff of the Armed Forces said on Oct. 28.
"Since civilians continue dying and the militants have resumed active combat actions against government forces, we've asked the Supreme Commander to authorize resumption of airstrikes on illegal paramilitary formations in eastern Aleppo," he said.
Rudskoi noted that Russian fighter planes in Syria have steered clear of the 10-kilometer zone around Aleppo for a 10th successive day.
"All flights by Russian and Syrian warplanes inside the 10-kilometer zone around the city have remained paused for a 10 day running, although the situation around Aleppo remains complicated," he said. | 0 |
“Jaws,” they say, invented the blockbuster. But damn if Muhammad Ali didn’t get there first. From 1971 to 1974, he starred in two of the greatest events in the history of American sports, fights with Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden and George Foreman in Kinshasa that had names that belonged on a movie studio’s release schedule: “The Fight of the Century” and “The Rumble in the Jungle. ” In October 1975 came a rematch with Frazier. They called that one “The Thrilla in Manila. ” But with all due respect to Francis Ford Coppola, everyone who saw Ali and Frazier nearly kill each other that oppressively sticky Manila morning knew it was the original “Apocalypse Now. ” In 1965, the photographer Neil Leifer captured Ali after he had knocked out Sonny Liston two minutes into their match — Ali stands over a Liston, roaring in conquest, making you think the man is playing a totally different sport. To stick with the “Jaws” comparison, he was the shark, the ocean and the boat captain, and if he was fighting, you were going to need a bigger bout — the biggest. It wasn’t just the matches that were blockbusters. It was Ali himself. He was the most important figure to survive the deadly tumult of the 1960s and flourish in the 1970s. Ali licked Liston, Frazier, Foreman and dozens of other men. But he was at the center of American culture in part because he had turned boxing into a condition of the American self: Punch or be punched. With him, boxing wasn’t just a sport but a referendum on the state of the country. He had become larger than life, but without forgetting how much black lives matter. The legacy of his bodacious charisma was built to last well beyond his death on Friday. Ali was telegenic, funny, clever, blunt, fearless and, above all, politically principled. His beliefs transfixed and polarized the country: What would he say next where would he take us? The short answer to that second question is “on a public journey. ” Ali was a politically black Zelig, but instead of merely lurking within the times, he shaped them. He was complicated and contradictory as both a man and an embracing and shedding radical black Islam, wielding racist imagery to rile opponents, refusing to play the black clown for the press. The journey led the baddest boxer in the world to shake hands with Gerald R. Ford, one of the blander presidents. He acted on Broadway and wrote braggadocio raps that we called poetry because, at the time, we didn’t know what rap was. By the time he lit the Olympic torch for the Atlanta Games in 1996, he was an elder statesman, visibly shuddering with signs of Parkinson’s disease, a powerful, poignant distance from his 1960s self but still . The day after he upset Liston in 1964, he hooked up with the Nation of Islam and announced that he would no longer be going by his birth name, Cassius Clay. Sure, it was the name of a white abolitionist — from Ali’s own Kentucky, no less — but it felt like a slave name, too. The news media took its sweet time coming around to “Muhammad Ali. ” Many reporters kept calling him Cassius, in a childish, style. So he had to fight for that, too. By 1977, when LeVar Burton’s Kunta Kinte chose in “Roots” to be whipped for refusing to repeat his new name, you can imagine a portion of the 30 million people who watched exhaling something like, “Oh. I get it!” Nonetheless, Ali’s embrace of the Nation of Islam alarmed the country. Almost overnight, a cocky young fighter became a scary black man. In 1967, he claimed status and refused the Army induction to fight in Vietnam, saying to the press: “I ain’t got no trouble with them Vietcong. It ain’t right. They never called me ‘nigger.’ ” His defiance brought out competing paradoxes: Until America reconciled its war with itself, how could it ask a citizen to fight somewhere else? He was fined $10, 000, sentenced to five years in prison, stripped of his boxing title and forced to wait three and a half years for the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction. He lost prime fighting years and gained honor. The roaring monster in Leifer’s photo now appeared on the cover of Esquire, in his boxing trunks, his bare chest shot with arrows just like poor, martyred St. Sebastian. Another astonishing transformation: The scary black man had become a national folk hero. Ali’s objection to the war came the same year that Sidney Poitier, long a symbol of the possibilities of racial integration and of turning the other cheek, hauled off and slapped an old white racist in “In the Heat of the Night. ” (He’d finally run out of cheeks.) By the 1970s, Poitier had found a second, less gusty wind, directing and starring in slick comedies that pushed the kind of cultural politics of appearing respectable (if not accommodating) that Ali sometimes espoused. Take this moment from 1974 on “The Mike Douglas Show. ” Douglas asks his guest Sly Stone, to introduce Ali. And Sly — cool, stoned, enthusiastic — brings Ali out like this: “I love Muhammad Ali. ” Out strolls Ali. He looks crisp in a great dark suit, white shirt and tie. They shake hands, and Sly, in a goes in for a hug. Ali has barely taken his seat when Douglas’s joshing sarcasm sets the tone: “You’re happy again today. I can tell. ” The audience laughs, and then Douglas completes his thought: “You never walk out with a nice smile. You always look troubled,” as if Ali — the world’s greatest athlete, least likely sufferer of fools, and most famous living civil right activist — was supposed to be Soupy Sales. If Douglas was going there, Ali was going to follow. “I am troubled. We have so many problems in the world,” he says, reclining a bit in his chair, generating suspense with his terrific, meaty Louisville accent, as to whether he would respond with comedy or gloomy candor. With Sly staring at him, he succinctly dispels the suspense: “These shows are so phony. Everybody’s laughing. Everything is a laugh here in America. Ain’t nobody serious. People hungry, war, all kind of trouble. ” Ali questions the complicity of black entertainers in this circus, while Sly mockingly repeats what Ali says and tells him to lighten up: “We ain’t planning on going to church now. ” The more Sly leans toward him, the more Ali seems to lean away — it’s the physics of temperament but also of racial disposition. On this day, Ali has everyday black folks on his mind. Sly doesn’t not share the same concerns, but he makes a passable case for the values of peace and love. This isn’t a disagreement over philosophy but of presentation: Ali didn’t want to be seen smiling if he didn’t feel like it. Much of America had probably seen Ali chop it up with Howard Cosell on “Wide World of Sports. ” But tension between two black men on the subject of their own race wasn’t a regular spice in the diet. Even in 2016, it’s arresting, especially with two men this outwardly different. Officially, black is a who. But with Ali, it was always a how. How do you use your blackness both for and against? How is it helping? How might it hurt? How is our own blackness being turned against us? When he left boxing after his last fight in 1981, he took the majesty of the sport with him. He took the symbolism and grim spectatorial history, too. Boxing is a contest. But if Ali was in the ring, so was the rest of the country. After him, blackness as a point of public pride had also drifted away from American popular culture — or rather it had been absorbed by the gradual mainstreaming of and the proliferation of a black middle class. It found shelter in such apolitical spaces as the Huxtables’ Brooklyn home and Will Smith’s adopted Bel Air mansion. But in the last few years, something has changed. There’s been increased political awareness of the inequality of black life and outrage over unjust black death. Technology has given megaphones to previously voiceless people. At the same time, major black artists and stars have reconnected blackness, history and politics — from Kanye West and Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar to LeBron James, who in 2012 put the Miami Heat in hoodies for an iconic photo after Trayvon Martin’s death. Even our black president has come further unfettered, not simply addressing race but almost luxuriating in his blackness. He told Howard University’s most recent graduating class to embrace its black identity — more or less, as he publicly has. Some of what’s happened in this period has been rightly received as radical. These are hardly boring times we’re living in. But when the country is seen through the prism of Muhammad Ali, words like “radical,” “truth,” “fame,” and “risk” suddenly feel as if they should come with an asterisk. | 1 |
By Dawn Phillips / medium.com The Trump victory is devastating. Devastating for communities of color, immigrants, women, Muslims and queer communities. Devastating for us. Trump has given new voice to deeply rooted white supremacy, gender violence, xenophobia and hatred. Hatred of everything that we are. Hatred of everything that we have struggled against. There are no illusions, we have lived a long time with terror and injustice. But there should be no illusions, that this marks a new phase. A new phase in the development of fascist demagoguery in the belly of the beast. We were not ready to jump on the Clinton bandwagon. Not ready to support her neoliberal agenda at home and promotion of American empire abroad. Not ready to forget her tone-deaf engagement with Black and immigrant organizers and lack of interest in taking action on race. She was not our grandmother and she did not speak for us. But despite her limitations there should be no illusion that we have ended up with the greater of two evils. Trump’s fascism over Clinton’s neoliberalism. We have always resisted. Resisted the lies of the two-party electoral game. Resisted police beatings and murders. Resisted environmental degradation and the evils of corporate polluters. Resisted male violence and transphobia. Resisted the rich bosses and landlords who own the airwaves and politicians. Resistance is our legacy. Resistance is our duty. We have resisted a long time. We will continue to resist. Our goal is transformation. A world where housing is a right and there is a guaranteed living wage for all. A world where neighbors come together to decide the future of their communities and development serves human need, not profit. A world where treaties are honored, where there is self-determination for Native and Black peoples. A world where women, young people and queer folks make decisions about public resources and policies. A world without borders, where we are free to move for health, for love, for work, for family. We want to transform racial divisions between and within our communities of color. We want to transform structures of hetropatriarchy in our families. We want to transform the very nature of our relationships from the individual, to the community, to the societal. This is not about an election or a policy or a political party. Our vision of transformation is deeper and will require not only a change in the system, but a change within ourselves. Our strategy is to organize and build power. We will continue to talk to our neighbors, to those facing evictions and deportations. We will come together in our living rooms and kitchens to share our struggles, articulate vision, strategy and plans. We will take collective action to fight and win locally where we have had the greatest impact in improving lives and conditions. We will build movement. We will engage our differences with respect and honesty. We will connect our humanity and unite around our shared needs and interest. We will build trust and solidarity. Local Organizing Matters A renter movement has emerged in the Bay Area that is as concerned with racial justice as it is with housing justice and this vision is reverberating nationally. Immigrant women are growing a domestic worker movement that is invigorating the labor movement and winning local and state level fights across the country. In Maricopa County, thousands of Latinos organized to oust Joe Arpaio and end 24 years of racist policing. Local organizing matters. Local power matters. Change and transformation will rise up from our neighborhoods and cities, it will not flow down from D.C., the President or the Democrats. The outcomes and impacts of this election are still unfolding. While our assessments and interventions are still in development, one thing is clear. Now more than ever, there is a need for our resistance, our vision of transformation and the hard work of organizing, building power and growing our movement. There was no illusion that things were going to get easier, only the reality that our struggle continues and must become stronger and more effective. Onward. Dawn Phillips is Co-Director of Programs at Causa Justa :: Just Cause and Executive Director at Right to the City Alliance. 0.0 · | 0 |
Did Trump TV Just Get Axed Before It Even Hits The Air? By Darrell Lucus
For much of the summer and fall, there’s been talk that if Donald Trump loses to Hillary Clinton, he will launch a right-leaning cable news channel. Well, it turns out someone may have just axed this latest Trump deal before it even got off the ground. The trademark for the network’s most likely name has already been snapped up –by of all people, a Democrat.
Earlier this week, the Trump campaign launched a live newscast on Trump’s Facebook page, complete with guests. The campaign branded it as “TrumpTV,” leading to speculation that it was a test for a Trump-branded network. The Trump campaign has been mulling such a venture since the primaries .
However, they may have reckoned without Mark Grabowsky, a public health doctor from Manhattan and a lifelong Democrat. Grabowsky told Fortune magazine that he was watching on the debates when, purely at random, he did a search for “Trump TV”–and discovered that the trademark was still available. He filed copyright protection for it, jokingly describing it as a chance to “get Russian investment money, go bankrupt, take a big claim and not pay taxes.”
Grabowsky says he has no plans to actually launch a network, leading trademark expert Ann Ford to suggest that his claim could get axed by the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office. But this could still have the effect of pulling the plug on Trump’s planned network. If the trademark office decides not to award the trademark to Grabowsky, he would have six months to respond–possibly longer than that, if he strings out the process.
Ford says that on paper, Trump would have an advantage in any trademark dispute given his fame, which gives him “a kind of superpower.” But if others file for the trademark before Trump can do so, it will make it that much more difficult for Trump to claim it. That could cost Trump valuable time spent on promoting his new network, as well as getting cable and satellite providers to carry it.
So when all is said and done, one of the richest men in the world may have had his latest venture axed because he was slow on the draw to get the trademark locked up. That would be more than fitting, given how anemic Trump’s campaign has been at actually selling itself to voters. The cratering of Trump’s brand may have already started.
( featured image courtesy Michael Vadon, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license) About Darrell Lucus
Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC . Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook . Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello. Connect | 0 |
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government has refused to release an internal review that found investigators broke the law in their search for 43 missing students, a conclusion that threatens the legal foundations of a case that has roiled Mexico. The report says crucial suspects were arrested and moved illegally, throwing into question any evidence they provided. The investigators’ conduct, in the words of the government report, violated “the right to truth” and damaged the victims’ right to justice. The students’ disappearance from the southern city of Iguala in September 2014 remains an open wound in Mexico, evidence of the country’s failure to protect its citizens and impunity within a corrupt criminal justice system. Now the report provides the first evidence from inside the attorney general’s office showing how the case was mishandled. The internal review was completed four months ago, 177 pages printed out and ready for delivery to the students’ parents. The families arrived expectantly for a meeting with the attorney general on Aug. 18, bearing posters of their missing sons. But the inspector general of the attorney general’s office told them that his superiors needed to approve the report first, which he said was a simple formality. That approval never came. Instead, the report is still under study, according to the attorney general’s office, which gave no indication when it would be finished, if ever. The inspector general who prepared the review, César Alejandro Chávez Flores, abruptly resigned four weeks after that meeting. A copy of the report obtained by The New York Times suggests why it remains in bureaucratic limbo. It depicts a series of violations, including the government’s top investigator’s taking a suspect to identify the supposed crime scene without a defense lawyer present. A record of that visit was never placed in the case file, and the site was left unguarded overnight. The existence of the internal report, and that of the first draft of a broader audit by the inspector general’s office, were first made public by the magazine Proceso and by the investigative journalist Anabel Hernández in a book about the case. The choice not to approve the report and release it to the families “was a clear sign of a lack of political will, not only from the attorney general’s office but from the federal government, to finish the internal investigation,” said Santiago Aguirre, deputy director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center in Mexico City and the families’ legal representative. “It showed us that the inspector general tried to do honest work and that he couldn’t find the political and institutional conditions to carry his work to its final consequences,” Mr. Aguirre added. But the attorney general’s office said legal reasons prevented it from releasing the report. The inspector general who succeeded Mr. Chávez Flores did not “recognize” the report’s conclusions because it lacked unspecified required formalities. “As such, it is a document that is legally nonexistent,” a spokeswoman, Natalia Briseño, wrote in an email. She added that the review was continuing. The possibility that the report will be suppressed is a worry for the Commission on Human Rights, which is evaluating the case’s progress and has pressed the government to open new lines of investigation. “We’re quite concerned and disturbed about the allegations raised recently,” said the commission’s president, James L. Cavallaro. He added that the review was “clearly an important document, and we hope and expect to receive it. ” The students were part of a larger group of young men who were studying to become rural teachers at a college in the village of Ayotzinapa, in the Pacific state of Guerrero. They had arrived in Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014, to commandeer buses to travel to Mexico City a few days later. But as the five buses left the city, municipal police officers attacked them and three students were killed. The police also attacked a bus carrying teenage soccer players, killing three more people, apparently mistaking their bus for one of the students’ buses. During a chaotic night, students traveling on two buses disappeared, hauled off by the police and, officials have said, handed over to the local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos. The government’s account of what happened next rests on a series of confessions from suspected drug hit men who said they had killed the students and burned their bodies on a giant pyre in a remote garbage dump. The next day, they scooped the ashes into plastic bags and threw them into the nearby San Juan River. Only one student’s remains have been identified from the charred bones found at the riverbank. But the inspector general’s report describes how six suspects, picked up in different locations in one day, spontaneously confessed with identical wording that they were members of Guerreros Unidos, and admitted to having killed the students and burning the remains. The subsequent arrests, based only on those statements, were arbitrary and illegal, the review said. Under the Mexican Constitution, an illegal arrest nullifies any evidence obtained as a result. There were other problems. Dates were muddled, records missing. An investigating prosecutor signed documents in two different places on the same day. What the report describes is not uncommon in Mexican criminal investigations, experts say. In their zeal to close cases, the Mexican police and prosecutors have long skirted the law. Suspects are picked up to give a statement and then held on the slimmest of proof on suspicion of ties to organized crime. Although the police are adapting to a broad overhaul in Mexico’s justice system intended to eliminate those practices, “old habits die hard,” said Agustín Acosta, a prominent criminal defense lawyer who is not involved in the students’ case. The day after the arrests, one suspect was released to the lead investigator, Tomás Zerón de Lucio, who flew him to the river. There, the suspect later said, he was told to point to a spot on the riverbank. None of the activities of that day — Oct. 28, 2014 — were included in the case file. Mr. Zerón’s presence at the river with the suspect, Agustín García Reyes, was first noted by a group of outside experts from the Commission on Human Rights. Among the experts’ findings, which they presented in April, was detailed evidence that 17 suspects were tortured, including Mr. García Reyes and two other suspected gang members detained the same day. The inspector general’s internal investigation was a response to the experts’ report. The attorney general at the time, Arely Gómez, also asked the inspector general to begin the broader audit. The Times has obtained a copy of the audit’s first draft. Ms. Gómez is now the federal comptroller. Mr. Zerón has said the riverbank visit was appropriate police procedure. The omission of that visit in the case file was inadvertent, he said. In September, he resigned as the head of criminal investigations at the attorney general’s office. But Mr. Zerón, who has worked closely with President Enrique Peña Nieto for almost a decade, was immediately appointed as the technical secretary of the National Security Council. The first draft of the broader audit raises many of the same questions that the experts from the Commission on Human Rights first identified. It asks why the federal police and the local military battalion stood by while the municipal police attacked the students’ buses. The draft calls for further investigation and interrogations to determine whether that negligence amounts to obstruction of justice. One of the enduring mysteries of the case is why the municipal police were never stopped by the state and federal authorities in Iguala. If the state police had acted, the students and others who were attacked that night “would not have been injured or killed” the way they were, the draft concludes. | 1 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Sitting in a basement office that she rents by the hour, Shannon Coulter ticks off the activities she gave up in defiance of President Donald J. Trump: renting movies with her husband on Amazon, and shopping at Nordstrom, Macy’s and other retailers that sell Ivanka Trump’s products. A Nordstrom bag sat on a nearby table. It represents a victory lap of sorts for Ms. Coulter, who has almost spearheaded a retail revolt against the president and his family. She was wearing a new silver Elizabeth and James lariat necklace purchased at the department store soon after it scrubbed Ms. Trump’s name from its website. “The goal,” Ms. Coulter said, “came originally from a place of really wanting to shop the stores we loved again with a clear conscience. ” It’s been a wild ride these past few months for Ms. Coulter, who runs her shoestring movement from her home, or from cheerfully decorated work spaces like this one — surrounded by furniture, clam chairs and decorative pillows that feel more Silicon Valley than war room. Enraged by a video that emerged last October of Mr. Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, Ms. Coulter began a boycott of any sort of product connected to Mr. Trump. At first, it was just a tweet — a list she had compiled of companies that sold Trump products — but the ember quickly turned into a blaze. Thousands of people have contacted the stores Ms. Coulter has on her boycott list, including Macy’s and Amazon. Retailers including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and T. J. Maxx have backed away from products connected to Ms. Trump, the president’s oldest daughter, since Ms. Coulter’s efforts began. A herd of activists and celebrities, including the feminist writer Gloria Steinem, the Olympic diver Greg Louganis and the actress Lucy Lawless of “Xena: Warrior Princess,” have expressed support. The attention has transformed Ms. Coulter, 45, a digital marketing specialist, into the unlikely general of the digital army now supporting her campaign, Grab Your Wallet. “People describe me as an activist in media coverage, I don’t know who they’re talking about,” she said. “I’ve never done anything this organized or structured or purposeful. ” The new role has taken up much of her time, and has made her the target of criticism and attacks from Trump supporters. She’s lost count of how many times she has been called a “bully” or a “disgrace. ” The abuse gets more menacing with each victory a recent email included her mother’s name in the subject line, with threats to publish more of her personal information. In the latest twist, the boycott has drawn Ms. Coulter, a progressive liberal, into a growing debate over whether targeting Ms. Trump is sexist. And she said she worries that people will think she is profiting from the venture. Ms. Coulter was particularly upset when a knockoff “Grab Your Wallet” group sold clothing and other merchandise on Facebook. “We don’t even have a we don’t have stickers, nothing,” she said, adding that she does not accept compensation from companies, or donations. “I don’t think either of us envisioned that some of the things that have happened would happen,” said Sue Atencio, who helped Ms. Coulter get the site started. In many ways, Ms. Coulter has embraced her new position. She answers emails at all hours and scours Twitter for tips on companies to add, or remove, from the boycott list. Then there are the phone calls — lots and lots of phone calls — from angry Trump supporters or journalists or the companies that want to get off her list. There is no doubt that it has changed her life. She doesn’t sleep or socialize as often as she used to. Most of her work on Grab Your Wallet is done after she eats dinner with her husband, taking up what free time she has. “She went underground, basically,” said Amie Penwell, a fellow San Francisco resident who hasn’t seen much of her friend of seven years recently. The negative attention has made Ms. Coulter careful about her privacy. She insisted on meeting at the work space for an interview, to avoid having a reporter at her home, out of fear that it could be targeted. She would not let her husband, whom she met online in 2010, be interviewed. Born in Indiana, Ms. Coulter studied journalism at Penn State. She said she began her career by “piggybacking” on the Bay Area’s technology boom, helping with their email marketing. A year ago she started her own agency, DoubleKnown, which helps executives and small businesses build their online presence through blog posts, social media feeds and other digital tools. The company has one other employee and a handful of education and technology clients, but has stopped taking on new accounts since Grab Your Wallet took off. Political activism has not been a big part of Ms. Coulter’s life since college, when she spoke at a rally raising awareness about violence against women. Her most recent organized effort came after the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon in 2015, when she circulated a list of lawmakers who had voted against tougher gun control measures. “Maybe that gave me a taste of what something like this would be like,” she said, describing herself as a chronic list maker. “I like the efficiency of them. ” After becoming incensed by the video, Ms. Coulter began searching retailers’ websites for products and collecting the names on a spreadsheet. Wondering who else might be interested in a boycott, she looked at Twitter, and found Ms. Atencio, who had tweeted “fashion not fascism. ”Ms. Coulter contacted her and suggested they announce the boycott together. Since then, most of the work has fallen to Ms. Coulter, though she refers to Ms. Atencio as her “spiritual guide” and sounding board. Ms. Atencio, 59, sees herself as the less visible half of a musical duo. “I feel like I’m the Garfunkel and Shannon is Paul Simon,” Ms. Atencio said. Grab Your Wallet now includes a list of places to shop and not shop, and a short script for people who want to call companies to complain. As many as 32, 000 people visit her site in an hour, Ms. Coulter said. When the women’s marches took place across the country in January, 350, 000 people arrived during a period. In early February, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus removed Ms. Trump’s name from their websites. Employees at T. J. Maxx and Marshalls were instructed not to display Ivanka Trump products and to throw her signs in the trash. None of the retailers credited Grab Your Wallet with their decision — the department stores blamed poor sales — and it is not possible to know to what degree Ms. Coulter and her followers have influenced the companies’ decision making. But in the waning days of January, complaints, many of which mentioned Grab Your Wallet, were Nordstrom’s most common customer feedback, according to a person with direct knowledge who was not authorized to speak publicly. Nordstrom said it did not have “specific numbers” on the number of customers it had heard from. “I attribute it directly to the Muslim ban,” Ms. Coulter said, referring to the executive order on immigration that Mr. Trump issued on Jan. 27. “I can see when the numbers spike when certain news events happen. ” Monitoring those spikes, updating her list and responding to emails, tweets and press inquiries have become Ms. Coulter’s second job. “My life is so completely here,” she said, gesturing to her MacBook, “that it all just sort of overlaps and is an endless stream of emails and tweets and Facebook posts. ” She does get some help from volunteers, like the woman who helps run the legitimate Grab Your Wallet Facebook group, which has more than 12, 000 members. But for the most part, Ms. Coulter is on her own. That means the threats and negative attention are also directed largely at her. People ask her why she’s “attacking another woman,” or call her a bully. People like the Fox host Jeanine Pirro have argued that Ms. Trump’s brand has nothing to do with the White House, and that she is being unjustly targeted. Defenders also point to a proposed maternity policy that Ms. Trump developed with her father’s campaign, and her brand’s hashtag, WomenWhoWork, as examples of how she promotes women. “We have to stop destroying women based on the men in their lives,” Ms. Pirro said during a recent episode of her show. S. E. Cupp, a conservative author and commentator, stopped short of calling the boycott of Ms. Trump’s products sexist. But in an email, Ms. Cupp said that it seemed “misdirected. ” “I’m never a fan of going after the kids, grown or not, of presidents,” she said. “Nor does it feel consistent with the argument — that he’s ‘ ’ — to economically punish his daughter, a working wife and mother. ” A spokesman for Ms. Trump’s brand declined to make someone at the company available for an interview. In a statement, the company said it had been “swept into the political fray, becoming collateral damage in others’ efforts to advance agendas unrelated to what we do. ” Ms. Coulter finds such comments perplexing. She pointed out that Ms. Trump moved to Washington and has taken on an informal advisory role in the White House. She frequently sits in on her father’s meetings with foreign leaders. Ms. Trump’s husband, the real estate developer Jared Kushner, is a top adviser to President Trump. In addition, Ms. Coulter said, Ms. Trump played a prominent role in the presidential campaign. “Someone who passionately campaigned for a man who likes to grab women by the genitals will never convince me that she’s on the side of women,” she said. “Ever. ” Ms. Steinem also said that Ms. Trump was fair game, particularly after the election, when it can no longer be argued that she is just doing her “filial duty” on the campaign trail. “It’s appropriate to boycott her not because he is her father,” Ms. Steinem said, “but because she supports his policies. ” Ms. Steinem specifically faulted Ms. Trump’s proposed policy for its exclusion of fathers and mothers. Despite the long hours, Ms. Coulter said she could continue running Grab Your Wallet indefinitely. She’s considering turning the campaign into a nonprofit and running it full time, and is struggling to figure out what to do with her fledgling business. “I’m trying to understand what the right next step is,” she said. “I think as long as he’s in office, this will be alive. ” | 1 |
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein ( ) said she believes that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and they did alter the outcome. Partial transcript as follows: TODD: Let me go to the investigation. You’ve seen the unclassified version of this Intel report. Do you have any doubt in your mind that Russia tried to interfere in the election and then second, do you believe it altered the outcome? FEINSTEIN: The answer is yes on both cases. TODD: You truly, you believe — FEINSTEIN: That’s what I believe. I’ve had all of the major classified briefings. I have been astonished at what has been a effort at Russia to spearfish, to hack, to provide disinformation, propaganda wherever it really could — I think this has been a very sophisticated effort. I think in our classified sessions we will be able to get down to the depth and breadth of it. I hope so. I spoke yesterday twice with Senator Warner who is our new vice chairman, and he reviewed with me the terms of this agreement. This investigation has to be full and robust. If it isn’t, both of us will go toward an outside panel. We cannot ignore what has happened. To ignore it is really to commit ourselves to a very bad future. TODD: What is the scope? I’ll be honest. I read it, and it comes across as it’s an investigation into the investigation. It’s an investigation into the intel community’s assessment. Is the intel committee going to do its own investigation? FEINSTEIN: Well, it’s a review of the intelligence that informed the declassified report about Russia’s interference in the election. Now last night I read the declassified report. The declassified report is pretty certain about what Russia did. There are some particulars which are classified which are not part of it, but it’s pretty clear that the hacking was in both political parties, but with the aim of hurting Hillary Clinton, and then if Hillary Clinton were to win the aim clearly was to weaken her. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
— Magnus Dahlgren (@MagnusDahlgren) October 26, 2016
Here’s something Hillary Clinton routinely said during her primary battle against Bernie Sanders. Wait, no she didn’t: Clinton says she has "the support of real billionaires." Names Buffett, Cuban, Bloomberg
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) October 26, 2016 Clinton: "I love having the support of real billionaires & they've been speaking up because … Donald gives a bad name to billionaires"
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) October 26, 2016 . @HillaryClinton : "I love having the support of real billionaires." https://t.co/4L9GKRaxG9 https://t.co/asuMpnjBzm
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 26, 2016
It seemed to take Clinton a couple seconds to convince herself it was OK to admit that because Bernie’s out of the race: After @HillaryClinton says she loves having the support of real billionaires, watch as she pauses to look back at her script pic.twitter.com/rN7Wzu97nf
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) October 26, 2016
Hey, why didn’t she mention some billionaire supporters from Saudi Arabia too? She was thinking, "wait,……what did I just say" @charliespiering https://t.co/RRYgjhJ2xl | 0 |
Breitbart News’ Washington political editor Matthew Boyle joined One America News Network (OANN) to discuss the future of repealing and replacing Obamacare in the wake of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s failure to pass the American Health Care Act (AHCA) last month. Boyle made the point that the way House Republicans can succeed in passing any health care legislation is to keep Ryan on the sidelines, and continue forward with negotiations directly between House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows ( ) and House Tuesday Group Rep. Tom MacArthur ( ) since Ryan’s unpopularity jeopardizes the Republican Party’s chance at success. “Mark Meadows and Tom MacArthur have gotten together and negotiated out a fix, a new bill, a series of compromises from both sides that likely could pass the House of Representatives,” Boyle said. Boyle noted that the House Freedom Caucus has been trying to get legislation that would lower Americans’ healthcare premiums, something Ryan’s original bill did not do. “The number one goal of House Republicans, especially conservatives, is to lower people’s premiums so that they’re paying less for health insurance but they still have health insurance,” Boyle said. “That’s the impetus here. That’s the key thing these guys are negotiating on. The reason why there’s a chance for success right now is because of the fact that the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus Mark Meadows as well as the of the Tuesday Group, Tom MacArthur, have gotten together. ” “Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House who is very, very unpopular across the country right now, has taken a step back,” he continued. “He’s not been really involved in this. He was out in Hollywood, he was over in Europe, while this whole thing has been going on, so as long as Paul Ryan stays out of the picture here they have a chance at passing an Obamacare repeal and replace and following through on President Trump’s campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare and they might even be able to do it in the first 100 days. ” Follow Breitbart News on Twitter @BreitbartNews | 1 |
PARIS — Searchers in the Mediterranean have found the first sunken wreckage of the EgyptAir flight that mysteriously veered off course and plunged from 37, 000 feet last month, the Egyptian government reported Wednesday. All 66 people aboard the jetliner, EgyptAir Flight 804 bound for Cairo from Paris, were killed in the crash on May 19, as the plane was on the final leg of its trip in Egyptian airspace. News of the discovered wreckage was reported in a statement from the Egyptian Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee, established by the government to find out what happened to the plane, an Airbus A320. The statement said a search vessel, the John Lethbridge, had found and “identified several main locations of the wreckage” and that investigators had been provided with photographic images taken from the seabed, roughly 10, 000 feet below the surface. There was no immediate word on the precise location of the wreckage or whether it included the data recorders that are essential for helping determine why the plane crashed. The discovery was the first significant breakthrough in the search for the plane since investigators said they had detected signals from one of its two flight recorder beacons, or “pingers,” nearly two weeks ago. With the battery life of those beacons expiring by next week, investigators are hoping to retrieve the recorders — which contain cockpit conversations and data from the plane’s onboard computers — before they fall silent. Investigators and search teams will begin mapping the debris field on the ocean floor, the Egyptian committee said. Even in the absence of the data from the flight recorders, air accident experts have said that the distribution of the wreckage would yield significant clues. If the debris contains large pieces of the plane that are concentrated in a relatively small area, that would suggest that the plane hit the water largely intact. Smaller debris scattered across a wide area would suggest that it broke up in midair — possibly the result of an explosion. Remi Jouty, the director of France’s air accidents bureau, which is advising Egypt in the investigation, said last week that investigators were still “very far” from understanding what may have caused the crash. Earlier this week, the Egyptian authorities appeared to back away from suggestions that Flight 804 had disappeared abruptly from radar screens — a scenario that had fanned theories that the plane might have been brought down by a terrorist bomb or other deliberate act, rather than a mechanical or other failure. In a statement published Monday, the Egyptian investigation committee said it had validated radar data provided by the Greek authorities in the days after the crash that indicated that the plane had swerved abruptly off course, first making a sharp left turn before veering to the right and spiraling down into the sea. With the wreckage found, the French Navy said it had recalled its survey ship, the Laplace, from the search zone. Investigators aboard the John Lethbridge will now deploy an underwater robot and sonar equipment to locate the flight recorders and bring them to the surface. The Egyptian authorities this week invited experts from the United States National Transportation Safety Board to join the EgyptAir crash investigation team, as well as engineers from Honeywell, the manufacturer of the flight recorders. Besides the radar tracks now confirmed by both the Greek and Egyptian authorities, the only confirmed data received from the plane were a series of seven automated messages sent to an EgyptAir maintenance base. Those messages included two smoke alerts — one in a bathroom, and another in an electronics bay near the cockpit and close to many of the plane’s computerized control systems. But while the alerts indicate that there was an emergency on board, experts have said they are not sufficient to explain the disaster. | 1 |
Videos Hacker Guccifer 2.0 Says Election Could Be Rigged, Promises To Monitor ‘From Inside’ “I’d like to warn you that the Democrats may rig the elections on November 8. This may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies. A vote counter inserts a tally card from an electronic voting machine into a card readers as they count votes at the Lake County Government Center in Crown Point, Ind., Nov. 4, 2008.
Before the recent torrent of daily Podesta email dumps brought renewed attention to Wikileaks (and accusations Julian Assange was working with the Kremlin despite his recent denial, which ultimately cost him his internet access), the media’s attention was closely focused on the recently emerged hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be behind the hacking of the nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails and other documents distributed over the summer by WikiLeaks, and who likewise was accused of cooperating with Russia.
Earlier today, after a two week silence, Guccifer 2.0 reemerged, with a post on his blog , in which he alleges that he has information from inside the Federal Election Commission, according to which “democrats may rig the elections.” He then adds “this may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies.” “INFO FROM INSIDE THE FEC: THE DEMOCRATS MAY RIG THE ELECTIONS “I’d like to warn you that the Democrats may rig the elections on November 8. This may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies. “As I’ve already said, their software is of poor quality, with many holes and vulnerabilities. “I have registered in the FEC electronic system as an independent election observer; so I will monitor that the elections are held honestly. “I also call on other hackers to join me, monitor the elections from inside and inform the U.S. society about the facts of electoral fraud.”
It is unclear what FEC information the hacker was in possession of, or was referring to, and how he intends to observe the elections. A recent video by Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting provided a real-time demo of the GEMS vote-fraud system, “fraction magic,” an election theft mechanism with context and explanation. There is much more detail on the BlackBoxVoting website .
The demonstration below used a real voting system and real vote databases and takes place in seconds across multiple jurisdictions. Over 5000 subcontractors and middlemen have the access to perform this for any or all clients. It can give contract signing authority to whoever the user chooses. All political power can be converted to the hands of a few anonymous subcontractors. It’s a product. It’s scaleable. It learns its environment and can adjust to any political environment, any demographic. It runs silently, invisibly, and can produce plausible results that really pass for the real thing.
It is possible that this is the process that Guccifer is referring to, although we are merely speculating. We are confident he will provide more detail shortly.
While we wait, watch the following video explaining how elections can be (and perhaps are) rigged. | 0 |
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So reddit has banned the pizzagate subreddit…but the investigation continues. A pizzagate forum has sprung up on voat.co and awareness of the scandal is spreading on YouTube, Twitter and other social media outlets. And now The Corbett Report community can collate information on the pizzagate scandal in this new open source investigation. Corbett Report members are invited to login to the site and start posting, collecting, collating, analyzing and discussing information related to the scandal in the comment section below.
SHOW NOTES: | 0 |
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s National Assembly voted Friday on a motion to impeach President Park whose government has been consumed by a corruption scandal. The motion accuses her of “extensive and serious violations of the Constitution and the law. ” Prosecutors have also accused her of crimes in connection with the scandal, though as president she cannot be indicted. Here are the accusations against Ms. Park, which she has dismissed, through her spokesman and her lawyer, as a “house of cards”: Extortion and abuse of power In their indictment of Ms. Park’s longtime friend Choi which named Ms. Park as an accomplice, prosecutors made the following accusations: • In 2014, Ms. Park told an aide, Ahn to help a company run by one of Ms. Choi’s associates secure a contract with Hyundai Motor. Mr. Ahn relayed the request to Hyundai, and the company won an $860, 000 contract. Ms. Choi received kickbacks worth $44, 000, including a Chanel handbag, from her associate. • In a series of meetings in July 2015, Ms. Park asked the chairmen of eight large companies to contribute to two new foundations, meant to promote South Korean culture and sports. Ms. Park asked Ms. Choi to build and run them. With the help of presidential aides, Ms. Choi pressured the companies into donating the equivalent of $69 million to the foundations. • In January of this year, Ms. Choi started a sports management company called the Blue K. With the backing of Ms. Park and Mr. Ahn, she coerced the conglomerate Lotte into donating $6 million for a sports complex that the company hoped to build and manage. In February, Ms. Park asked the steel maker Posco to help Ms. Choi’s company under pressure from Mr. Ahn, Posco agreed to create a fencing team so that the Blue K could manage it. • In February, again under Ms. Park’s orders, Mr. Ahn asked Hyundai and KT, a telecommunications firm, to hire Ms. Choi’s advertising agency. Both complied, and the agency made $1. 2 million from the contracts. Prosecutors say these companies feared tax investigations or other forms of official retaliation if they refused the requests. At a recent hearing in the National Assembly, the companies’ chairmen confirmed that the requests had come directly from Ms. Park or her aides and said it would have been difficult to say no. Ms. Park acknowledges that she met with the tycoons but denies that coercion occurred. She has said that she helped create the foundations for the public good and that she never personally profited from them. Ms. Choi has also denied the accusations against her. Leaking confidential government documents Prosecutors say Ms. Park told another aide, Chung to give 180 sets of government documents, 47 of them classified, to Ms. Choi between January 2013 and April of this year. They contained, among other things, information about who would be appointed to senior government jobs, including national intelligence director. Ms. Choi held no official post and had no security clearance. Violating the Constitution In their motion to impeach Ms. Park, opposition parties cite the accusations listed above, calling them violations of her constitutional obligations to defend democracy and the market economy. In addition, they say she violated the Constitution in the following ways: • By conspiring to install associates of Ms. Choi in her government, then letting Ms. Choi use those people to wield influence and win lucrative contracts. The opposition also says Ms. Park caused people in the government to be demoted or fired for trying to draw attention to Ms. Choi’s activities. • By forcing a newspaper to fire its president in 2014 after it published articles about Ms. Choi’s purported influence. That undermined the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press, the opposition says. • By failing to provide a full account of her activities on April 16, 2014, the day more than 300 people were killed when a ferry sank in South Korean waters. Ms. Park did not emerge from her residence for several hours that day, and the opposition says the public has a constitutional right to know what she was doing. This accusation has little if anything to do with the others, but Ms. Park’s critics have long held her government responsible for the sinking, one of the country’s worst peacetime disasters. Bribery The impeachment motion also accuses Ms. Park of soliciting bribes, arguing that the donations to Ms. Choi’s foundations were made with the expectation of favors from the government. The companies’ chairmen have denied this. | 1 |
Email
Time to say goodbye to politics as usual.
In another stunning game changer that has further upended the political establishment, President-elect Donald Trump this morning announced the nomination of a mysterious cloaked man to serve as his secretary of the Hook.
Yep. Trump promised change, and right away he’s appointing a nameless robed man to lead the Department of the Hook. How’s that for a shock to the system?
The silent man, whose face is completely shrouded within a thick, hooded cloak, is rumored to have topped the shortlist of candidates for secretary of the Hook after emerging alone from a dense forest at night and immediately causing all greenery within the Washington beltway to wilt.
Trump has already lauded his nominee as “a wonderful man with an absolutely tremendous cloak” whom he trusts do an “unbelievable job” discharging the duties of the position, which include abiding by the Hook, interpreting the Covenant of the Hook, and holding aloft the candle whose flame subtracts light from its surroundings.
“The man in the cloak is going to be a fantastic secretary of the Hook. Just fantastic,” said Trump, who added that the secretary will be second in the presidential line of succession. “No one is better qualified to enforce the covenant than this man. His cloak is dark, he was born before Christ, I don’t know his name, he has the Hook now, and he’s ready to fight for us!”
And don’t look now, but the presumptive secretary of the Hook is already making waves. At dawn this morning, he led the Zealots of the Hook in a procession through the streets of Washington, toward the open entrance to the Onyx Pyramid, an edifice by the Lincoln Memorial that residents could not remember ever having existed but that the cloaked man assured Americans in a terse press release “has always been and shall forever be.”
One thing’s for sure: This appointment signals a whole new political era in the nation’s capital. We can’t wait to see how this bold move turns out! | 0 |
Friday, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that the league is looking into the controversial Cleveland Indians Chief Wahoo logo, adding they will be “responsive” to concerns. Host Ryan Smith asked Manfred if the MLB would consider moving its game if the Indians chose not to get rid of the logo, much like other sports have done in response to North Carolina’s bathroom bill. While Manfred stated he does not want to deal with hypothetical questions, he did say the league is discussing the logo. “I think it’s important for the commissioner’s office to engage with the owner in terms of addressing the offense that some people take with respect to that logo,” Manfred told Smith. “We’ve begun those conversations, and I think you will see that over the relatively short term that we’ll be responsive to those concerns. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Home › POLITICS › LYNCH OBJECTED TO COMEY’S DECISION TO NOTIFY CONGRESS OF EMAIL REVIEW LYNCH OBJECTED TO COMEY’S DECISION TO NOTIFY CONGRESS OF EMAIL REVIEW 0 SHARES
[10/29/16] Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates objected to FBI Director James Comey’s decision to notify Congress about his bureau’s review of emails related to Hillary Clinton’s personal server, law enforcement officials familiar with the discussion said.
Comey decided to disregard their objections and sent the letter Friday anyway, shaking the presidential race 11 days before the election and nearly four months after the FBI chief said he wouldn’t recommend criminal charges over the Democratic nominee’s use of the server.
The officials acknowledged there was little Lynch and Yates could do given the fallout over Lynch’s controversial meeting over the summer with former President Bill Clinton.
Lynch and Yates objected after Comey gave advance notice to top officials at the Justice Department before sending the letter to lawmakers, law enforcement officials briefed on the matter said. Justice officials didn’t sign off on Comey’s decision and he didn’t seek their approval, one official said.
Instead, he made an independent decision to go against longstanding Justice Department and FBI practice to not comment publicly about politically sensitive investigations within 60 days of an election, the official said.
Comey later explained his decision to provide Congress with the information in a letter to FBI employees.
“We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Comey said. “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
Clinton’s campaign and allies quickly decried the decision’s timing, and the candidate herself on Friday forcefully called on the FBI to release the “full and complete facts” about its review.
“Voting is underway, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” Clinton said at a brief news conference in Des Moines, Iowa, adding it was “imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay.”
Clinton said she was “confident whatever (the emails) are will not change the conclusion reached in July,” when Comey said he wouldn’t recommend criminal charges in the matter.
Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has spent the past several weeks on defense, seized on the issue.
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we’ve never seen before,” Trump said at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. “We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”
He later responded to Clinton’s statement, saying she “tried to politicize the investigation by attacking and falsely accusing the FBI director of only sending the letter to Republicans.”
In a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen Friday, Comey said investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Post navigation | 0 |
(AFP) — Some 300 migrants stormed the border between Morocco and Spain at Ceuta on Monday, authorities said, days after hundreds more forced their way over the frontier. [The young migrants climbed over the high border fence into the Spanish North African territory, ecstatic to have finally crossed into a European Union state. Their arrival comes just days after nearly 500 migrants made it over the fence on Friday, one of the biggest entries since the border barrier was reinforced in 2005. Ceuta and Melilla, also a Spanish territory in North Africa, have the EU’s only land borders with Africa, so are entry points for migrants who either climb the border fence, swim along the coast or hide in vehicles. The enclave has been ringed by a double wire fence eight kilometres (five miles) long. The high fence also has rolls of barbed wire. | 1 |
In his first remarks since WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of his hacked emails, John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, said Tuesday that Russian intelligence officials intent on swaying the election to Donald J. Trump had been responsible for the illegal breach into his account. “I’ve been involved in politics for nearly five decades,” Mr. Podesta told reporters aboard the Clinton campaign plane. “This definitely is the first campaign that I’ve been involved with in which I’ve had to tangle with Russian intelligence agencies,” he added, “who seem to be doing everything that they can on behalf of our opponent. ” Without verifying the authenticity of the emails, Mr. Podesta said that he had spoken with the F. B. I. “as a victim” of hacking. The Obama administration, like Mr. Podesta, believes the Russian government has been trying to help Mr. Trump with its hacking, including the theft of emails of the Democratic National Committee this year. Mr. Podesta said Mr. Trump had “essentially adopted lock, stock and barrel” a foreign policy that would favor the interests of President Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Podesta also cast blame on Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks and an avowed critic of Mrs. Clinton. He said WikiLeaks had strategically released the first batch of his emails Friday afternoon to distract attention from the damaging video that had just emerged of Mr. Trump making lewd comments about women. “It wasn’t any coincidence, I think, that within minutes of the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape coming out, they decided that this was their countermove,” Mr. Podesta said. The hacked emails have not done much to help Mr. Trump in the polls, but they have proved to be a persistent distraction. Earlier on Tuesday, some newly released emails suggested that a senior Clinton campaign aide had been in touch with government officials about the release of her State Department emails, exchanges that prompted accusations of collusion from Republicans on Tuesday. The timing of the release of Mrs. Clinton’s State Department emails was critical information for her aides, who were devising strategy on how to respond to any story lines that could emerge. But the communication between the campaign and the Justice Department appeared to have simply been updates on a court case related to the emails, information that was publicly available. Brian Fallon, the campaign’s press secretary, told other campaign aides in May 2015 that he had just received information about a case from someone at the department. “DOJ just filed a briefing saying the gov’t proposes releasing HRC’s cache of emails in January 2016,” Mr. Fallon wrote. “Get out! ???” replied Cheryl D. Mills, a lawyer and longtime adviser to Mrs. Clinton. The correspondence came months before the F. B. I. which is part of the Justice Department, opened an investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified emails at the State Department. In July, the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, said Mrs. Clinton had been “extremely careless” but recommended no charges, which the Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, accepted. Though the information Mr. Fallon passed on reflected no internal Justice Department thinking, the connection between a senior Clinton aide and the department stoked accusations that the Obama administration had conspired with Mrs. Clinton’s camp. The correspondence released Tuesday showed “a level of collusion which calls into question the entire investigation into her private server,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign. Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Mr. Trump’s running mate, also brought it up at two events in Iowa. The day after Mr. Fallon’s exchange on the Justice Department’s court filing, he provided additional information to other campaign aides on the case. “DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning,” he wrote. “So we could have a window into the judge’s thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today. ” Mr. Fallon declined to comment on the exchanges. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment. | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. “I know how resilient the people of Louisiana are,” President Obama told survivors of last week’s vast flooding, “and I know you will rebuild again. ” He was welcomed by the governor and toured damaged areas. But he drew criticism from some Republicans and local residents for not going to the area sooner. _____ 2. Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times and otherwise brutally tortured after being mistaken for a Qaeda operative involved in the attacks, argued for his release from Guantánamo Bay. He said he had no intent to harm the U. S. or any other country. Video of the hearing streamed to the Pentagon offered reporters and human rights advocates their first glimpse of him, appearing calm, since he was captured 14 years ago. A review board will recommend continued detention or transfer. _____ 3. Researchers published detailed images of the brains of babies born to mothers, urging doctors around the world to study them and know what to look for. The scans show not just microcephaly, but also damage to the parts of the brain that govern movement, balance, speech, thinking and emotion. That suggests that affected babies born with sized heads may still prove to have serious developmental problems. _____ 4. Donald Trump held a rally in Austin, Tex. Regardless of his shakier polling these days, rising partisanship and the parties’ firmer ideological grip means fewer voters cross party lines, making landslides a thing of the past. Meanwhile, we can help you understand how Facebook categorizes your politics. And if you’d like to help decipher how political campaigns are targeting voters, send us the political ads you see on Facebook. _____ 5. Planning a vacation? searches on Instagram can compile a graphic guidebook. The results “give a feel for a place that you can use to decide if a place feels fun and seems safe — whatever that means to you,” our writer says. _____ 6. A sharp rise in the price of the EpiPen has outraged people dealing with serious allergies. The device, which injects epinephrine to stop airways from closing in a severe allergy attack, has gone from 2007’s wholesale price of less than $100 for a set to more than $600. The maker, Mylan, is facing questions and pressure from Congress. _____ 7. A Native American protest against an oil pipeline in North Dakota has swelled by hundreds of people ahead of a federal court hearing on Wednesday. The planned Dakota Access pipeline runs mostly on private land, but occasionally enters federal jurisdiction, and a Sioux tribe has sued to halt construction. Above, Lakota riders demonstrated this month. _____ 8. An American soldier was reported killed by a bomb in southern Afghanistan, days after the arrival of a contingent of more than 100 U. S. soldiers. The deployment is aimed at helping plan for the defense of a strategically important city, Lashkar Gah, from a fierce Taliban assault. The insurgents’ strength forced President Obama this year to drop his plans to draw down troops. _____ 9. Capital punishment is in regular use in only 16 of the country’s more than 3, 000 counties, all in the South and West. One of our stories today examines a murder in one of these locales, Jacksonville, Fla. and how the area’s history of racism plays into a case that has divided the victim’s family between those who want the killer executed and those who don’t. _____ 10. Finally, even we have to have the occasional cat story. When a baby squirrel monkey was rejected by its mother at a Russian zoo, the director tried a surrogate — her own elderly cat. It’s been three weeks, she says, and Rosinka seems to have adapted to having a monkey on her back. 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 |
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 / American Funhouse: Manufacturing Consent Essential Reading By Smoking Mirrors on September 8, 2011
Smoking Mirrors at his creative best writing about … well you decide what he’s writing about Hellstorm – Exposing The Real Genocide of Nazi Germany (Full Documentary) By wmw_admin on May 10, 2015
What happened in the aftermath of World War II has been one of the darkest and best kept secrets in world history. The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop! By wmw_admin on August 21, 2010
The sacrifice of “six million Jews” was being talked about before Hitler rose to power. A photocopy from the American Hebrew dated Oct. 1919, speaks openly about a holocaust of six million Jews before declaring “Israel is entitled to a place in the sun”!! The Advent of the Anti-Christ By Rixon Stewart on August 2, 2010
A few words on the market meltdown and how it may assist the debut of a truly sinister figure Does God Play Dice with the Universe? By Rixon Stewart on December 1, 2003
Research into particle physics is revealing a world full of almost magical qualities. Could it be that this mysterious, puzzling world is in fact the world of the spirit – the spiritual world that saints and mystics throughout history have sought to explo “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 Magic Thermite and the 9/11 Fairytale By Smoking Mirrors on April 15, 2009
The evidence is in and it’s irrefutable: scientists have discovered traces of hi-tech explosives in the WTC debris. Which means the UK/US/Israel will have to stage another event on the scale of 9/11 to counter the brushfire this report will ignite | 0 |
The Bruno Mars machine has been one of pop’s most reliable tools in the last few years, and it rarely falls short of complete, uncanny accuracy. His skill for manipulating the past has made him something of an outlier: a soul singer, songwriter and producer interested not in strict nostalgia, but in illuminating old styles so they shimmer in a way that’s appealing to a listener not much interested in looking backward. This precision comes at a price, though. At times, Mr. Mars is a sideshow to his presentation. The sound is the star, and he is the vehicle, not the driver. “24K Magic,” his third album — and first in four years — is the story of that tension. Mr. Mars is by turns a showman and an analyst, a preservationist and a peacock. The new songs — his most diverse set to date, and mostly rigorously executed and fun — show Mr. Mars to be interested in different musical eras, different production approaches and different singing voices without veering into chaos. Mostly his songs are like cotton candy: sweet, sticky, structurally impressive but not especially deep. What’s most striking about this album is how it expands upon Mr. Mars’s longstanding interest in American soul music. Rather than linger in one time period, with one production approach, he’s all over the map, from the 1950s to the ’90s, and sniper sharp throughout. The title track, this album’s lead single, is set to around 1980, when funk and machines were doing some of their earliest dances, and when black pop was still teeming with disco exuberance. It has less to do with the presence of Mr. Mars — ecstatic, slick, ambient — than the sheen of the production. The synthesizers are sympathetic and covered in burrs, and the vocals are in a manner indebted to Zapp, who pioneered the sort of liquid digital funk Mr. Mars is repurposing (talkbox vocals pepper the song) and also to the duo Chromeo, who have been faithful revivalists of the style for years now. As for Mr. Mars, he’s doing more emphatic talking than singing and is backed up by a barking chorus, adding punch to his mellifluous boasts. Then there’s “Perm,” which jolts back to the ’60s, with its and James horn stabs and drums. Here, Mr. Mars trades his tender coo for a vocal, as if sheer lust were rendering him hoarse. When he comes closer to the present day, or at least to the music he was raised on, Mr. Mars sounds most at home. Take the pairing of “Versace on the Floor” and “Finesse,” a punch of ’80s RB evolution. “Versace on the Floor” is dreamy New Edition homage, with cool synthesizers forming a cradle for Mr. Mars, who begins the song singing tenderly, à la Ralph Tresvant, “Underneath the ’re dancing all alone. ” Later, though, is where he tweaks the original style, unleashing the more forceful side of his voice to curdle sweetness into hunger. A couple of songs after that comes “Finesse,” which takes the leap from 1984 to ’88, with crackling drum machine production that harkens back to “Don’t Be Cruel,” Bobby Brown’s Edition solo breakthrough album. That Mr. Mars can leap so effectively among sounds says a great deal about his strengths and weaknesses. He’s not an especially imposing singer instead, he’s a chameleon, without a signature flourish or tone. But that’s fine, because it’s as a producer — he’s credited here as Shampoo Press Curl — that he’s most excited to show off his range. His ear is often astonishing, his gift for mimicry almost without equal. Other producers are credited here on certain songs — the Stereotypes, Emile Haynie, Jeff Bhasker — but they’re all minor moons in Mr. Mars’s fully realized soul universe. | 1 |
The head of Hispanic media relations at the Republican National Committee is resigning this month in what appears to be another indication of the lingering discomfort some party officials have about working to elect Donald J. Trump president. Ruth Guerra, who is of Mexican descent and was in charge of carrying the party’s message to Hispanic voters, is joining the American Action Network, a “super PAC,” she confirmed in a brief interview on Wednesday. The American Action Network is expected to spend millions on congressional races, and the new job is in essence a promotion, one said. But Ms. Guerra told colleagues this year that she was uncomfortable working for Mr. Trump, according two R. N. C. aides who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the difficulties surrounding the party’s presumptive . It is relatively rare for party staff members to leave the national committee in the midst of a presidential campaign unless they are going to work directly for the nominee. Ms. Guerra declined to discuss her feelings about Mr. Trump, who is deeply unpopular with Hispanic voters, but said, “I’ve had a great nearly two years at the R. N. C. and I’m excited for the new opportunities that I will have at A. A. N. ” Ms. Guerra, 28, joins a handful of other R. N. C. aides who have left the party or started looking for new work since Mr. Trump became the party’s presumptive nominee. Discontent with Mr. Trump runs deep among Republican strategists and staff members, particularly with younger ones. After suggesting that Mexican migrants were drug dealers and rapists upon entering the race last year, Mr. Trump has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign and at times has veered more directly toward racial demagogy. Last week in San Diego, a few miles from the Mexican border, he invoked the ethnic heritage of the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit filed by former Trump University students against the developer. “The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican,” said Mr. Trump, about Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, who was born in Indiana to parents of Mexican descent. In her R. N. C. job, Ms. Guerra, a Texan who speaks fluent Spanish, was a frequent guest on television networks. In her new job, she “will be expanding her role as a conservative voice into congressional districts across America, on both policy and political issues,” said Mike Shields, president of the American Action Network. In a profile of young Republicans last year, Ms. Guerra said her party had an opening with a community that has increasingly supported Democrats in recent presidential elections. “As a Hispanic, I know that we have an opportunity with — they want to hear from us and want to know that we care,” Ms. Guerra said at the time. | 1 |
It’s not nice to harm wildlife – nor is it financially intelligent. Two guys, one named Ricky Rogers and his unnamed friend, found this out the hard way after they posted a photo of themselves... | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — The investigation into the San Bernardino massacre produced criminal charges on Thursday against the brother of one of the attackers and two other people — not for contributing to the mass shooting, but for their roles in a sham marriage designed to skirt immigration laws. On Dec. 2, Syed Rizwan Farook, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, armed themselves with assault rifles and pipe bombs, and carried out one of the worst terror attacks on American soil, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20 others at a social services center in San Bernardino, Calif. The couple then died in a shootout with the police. The only person arrested in connection with the massacre has been Enrique Marquez Jr. a longtime friend of Mr. Farook’s, charged with providing material support to terrorists, making a “straw purchase” of a gun for Mr. Farook, and other crimes. Federal officials have said that Mr. Marquez also admitted that in exchange for money, and as a favor to the Farooks, he entered into a fraudulent marriage with a Russian immigrant, Mariya Chernykh, so she could gain legal residence in the United States. On Thursday, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced felony charges against Ms. Chernykh, 26, her sister, Tatiana Farook, 31, and Ms. Farook’s husband, Syed Raheel Farook, 31, the brother of the San Bernardino gunman. All pleaded not guilty and will be released on bond. A trial is set for June 21. Law enforcement officials stressed they did not believe that any of the three had advance knowledge of the December attack, or took steps to conceal evidence afterward, but that major investigations often lead to the discovery of unrelated offenses. The F. B. I. continues to comb through the backgrounds of the San Bernardino attackers, looking for motives and possible accomplices, and until recently the bureau was engaged in a very public legal battle with Apple over Syed Rizwan Farook’s cellphone. The company refused to help the F. B. I. unlock the phone to search his contacts and messages, but the bureau dropped the matter after cracking the phone’s security with help from an unknown outside group that was apparently paid at least $1. 3 million. The indictment, announced Thursday, represents an unusually tough stance for the government in a marriage fraud case. Five criminal charges are leveled at Ms. Chernykh, including fraudulent use of immigration documents and lying to federal agents, with combined maximum prison terms of up to 30 years. Syed Raheel Farook, a U. S. Navy veteran who worked as a computer technician aboard an aircraft carrier, and his wife, are also charged in one of those counts, conspiracy to make false statements under oath on government documents, and face a maximum sentence of five years. Ordinarily, the authorities do not pursue criminal charges for a sham marriage, just an admission by the U. S. citizen, and deportation of the immigrant, said Carl Shusterman, an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles who has formerly handled immigration cases for the government. “I’ve never seen anything like these kinds of charges in a sham marriage case,” he said. “I think it has to be related to the fact that there’s a link to the shooting. ” On immigration forms, Ms. Chernykh and Mr. Marquez stated that they lived with the Farooks in their townhouse in Corona, Calif. Federal agents, who had searched the home this year, did so again Thursday, and also searched a residence in Ontario, Calif. that was identified as Ms. Chernykh’s. In fact, the indictment says, neither Mr. Marquez nor Ms. Chernykh lived with the Farooks, and she “resided with her child and an adult male other than Enrique Marquez Jr. ” in Ontario. The couple had wedding pictures taken and opened a joint bank account, but the indictment shows that they were far from expert at creating a false front. At one point, Tatiana Farook told her sister to stop posting pictures of herself posing with her real boyfriend to her social media page, the indictment says, and another time, Ms. Farook told Mr. Marquez that he needed to change the address on his driver’s license to match the one on the immigration forms. They also left a considerable electronic trail, particularly as Mr. Marquez and Ms. Chernykh prepared last fall for an interview with immigration agents, who would try to determine if their marriage was genuine. Last November, they exchanged messages that “discussed their mutual anxiety for their upcoming immigration interview due to the lack of contact with each other,” and he told her he was afraid of going to prison for immigration fraud, the indictment says. At about the same time, someone using Mr. Marquez’s Facebook page indicated that he might be in trouble, writing “involved in terrorist plots, drugs, antisocial behavior, marriage, might go to prison for fraud, etc. ” But the planning to hide the sham marriage continued. The day before the shooting, the indictment says, Ms. Farook sent an electronic message to her husband, asking him to create a backdated lease agreement to make it appear that Mr. Marquez and her sister lived with them. The indictment said that the Farooks helped the pair open their joint account and buy a wedding band, and served as witnesses on their marriage license. On Thursday, the Farooks’ neighbor, Brittani Adams, said she had maintained a friendly relationship with the couple after the December attack. “It is rough they are good people just twisted in family stuff,” she said. If the coupled feared arrest, she said, they kept it bottled up ‘real well.’ The Farook brothers were born in the United States, to parents who immigrated from Pakistan. Ms. Malik was born in Pakistan and spent much of her life in Saudi Arabia, before marrying Syed Rizwan Farook and moving to the United States in 2014. Officials have said they have no indication that the couple had any connection to a terrorist group or mentor, but instead, it appears they “ . ” They seemed unlikely candidates for it. Mr. Farook worked for several years as an inspector for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, where he reportedly had no conflicts with . Ms. Malik had a college degree in pharmacology, and the couple had a baby daughter. | 1 |
The Trump administration’s first budget would shutter the fifty year old Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). [The MBDA hands out grants and runs federally funded “management consulting operations” around the country. It has long been targeted by conservatives as a form of corporate welfare. The agency has also been criticized for encouraging a “flight from white. ” Since it offers aid only to business owned by officially recognized minorities, it creates an incentive for Americans to seek to have themselves recognized as minorities. In 1977, Americans Indians successfully had their classification changed from white to Asian. More recently, some Americans of Middle Eastern descent have been lobbying to be recognized as minorities as well. One effect of designating more Americans as officially recognized minorities has been to dilute the benefits of affirmative action and the MBDA to the originally intended recipients, African Americans. The MBDA was created by Richard Nixon with a 1969 executive order under its original name of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise. The idea was that the agency would work to remedy the effects of past discrimination. It was a precursor to a series of programs that what would later be labeled “affirmative action” policies. At its creation, the MBDA was tasked with the mobilization of federal and local resources for the promotion of minority business efforts in the United States with a focus on Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans. In more recent years, this group was expanded to include Hasidic Jews, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders. The agency currently maintains approximately forty centers across the US, designed to provide consultation to minority businesses. These centers assist with loan acquisitions, grant applications, and the navigation of forms and certifications for the purpose of securing government procurement contracts. In addition to their centers, the MBDA establishes guidelines for all federal agencies in attracting and selecting minority enterprises for the purpose of procurement contracts. Though the details of this agency’s closure are still up for approval by the House and Senate, it is expected that the Small Business Administration (SBA) will continue to support a subset of the functions that the MBDA currently provides. The Small Business Administration (SBA) the MBDA, but has historically worked side by side with the agency on its initiatives. Funding for the SBA in the 2018 budget proposal is reduced slightly (by about five percent) but has fared better than most agencies outside of national security sectors. Nonetheless, the SBA itself has also been in the firing line in recent decades, itself having narrowly survived termination during the Clinton administration. The MBDA will not go quietly, of course. Lobbyists are already besieging lawmakers to restore funding to the agency. As proposed, closeout of the MBDA is expected to cost six million dollars, and is slated to begin at the start of 2018. | 1 |
Hawks vs. doves: Who will dominate in the Kremlin before the 2018 elections? Carnegie Moscow Center’s Andrei Kolesnikov discusses the links between the 2016 parliamentary and 2018 presidential elections, focusing on Russia’s political future and the rivalry between the “hawks” and “doves” within the Kremlin RD Interview: Carnegie Moscow Center’s Andrei Kolesnikov discusses the links between the 2016 parliamentary and 2018 presidential elections, focusing on Russia’s political future and the ongoing rivalry between the “hawks” and “doves” within the Kremlin’s inner circle.
From right to left: Speaker of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Director of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov and Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin. Photo: RIA Novosti
Russia’s recent parliamentary elections were, by and large, a dress rehearsal for the more important presidential elections coming up in 2018. Between now and then, members of the political establishment will be able to try on new roles, experiment with new campaign slogans, and determine who will play a starring role within the Kremlin’s inner circle. The central consideration is how to consolidate power in a way that balances the interests of the government and the population.
To get an inside look at Russia’s current political landscape, Russia Direct sat down with Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. According to him, the 2016 parliamentary elections provide a preview of what to expect in 2018 and beyond.
Russia Direct: To what extent were the 2016 parliamentary elections fair and legitimate, in your view? Andrei Kolesnikov: In fact, they were juridically legitimate because they were conducted in accordance with Russian law. However, the degree of the political, not juridical legitimacy is a debatable question because of the low turnout: It means that the representation of Russian citizens in the parliament became even less than previously. About one-third of the Russian population voted at the elections. ;
Even though the United Russia ruling party garnered four million fewer votes than during the 2011 elections, it received more seats in the parliament. In addition, liberal politicians are not included in the parliament at all. Thus, politically, the legitimacy of the elections is a matter of question.
Regarding honesty, these elections were fair in the polling stations with observers, to a large extent. They were honest in the regions, in which the Central Election Commission controlled the electoral process in cooperation with observers. ;
To a lesser extent, these elections were fair and transparent in the distant Russian regions or — in the words of prominent political expert Dmitry Oreshkin — “zones of peculiar electoral culture,” which saw an abnormally high electoral turnout. I mean, for instance, the republic of Tuva in southern Siberia, the North Caucasus, Kemerovo region etc. ;
These regions were controlled by the Central Election Commission to a much lesser extent — no wonder that people were compelled to vote in accordance with the orders of local authorities. The violations in these regions were likely to be common. ;
Andrei Kolesnikov, ;Senior associate and Chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Press Photo
RD: Does Russia’s Central Election Commission have any tools to influence voting in the distant regions? A.K.: There are some instruments, but local authorities limit and restrict them. I don’t think the administration of the Russian president hampered the work of the Central Election Commission Head, Ella Pamfilova. She tried to balance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the interests of the country’s civil society. ;
This is the middle-of-the-road position and it is very difficult. She just tried to take into account all positions and signals that were coming from the regions during the electoral campaign and could not ignore them. There were so many of these signals that she objectively and physically could not control the ­elections throughout the country, especially, in the distant regions. ; ; ; ;
RD: What kinds of violations took place during the 2016 elections, if any? A.K.: Violations took place, even though they were not large-scale, like previously during the 2011 elections. These violations included the use of administrative resources for influence, rigged and fabricated voting, stuffing the ballot box, and dirty political techniques against the liberal and communist parties during the political campaign and before Election Day. ;
There was also orchestrated voting, when cadets, students and governmental employees were ordered to vote. This also should be taken into account. All these violations took place not only in distant regions, but also in those under the steady control of the Central Election Commission.
RD: Why did the United Russia party win despite its declining popularity throughout Russia? ; A.K.: The fact the United Russia won the majority in the State Duma and the party’s popularity are basically different things. Its popularity has been decreasing indeed. It is one reality. But it doesn’t prevent the party from winning most of the seats. That is the other reality. ;
Russian citizens don’t see the party as a body that deals with the problems of the population . The credibility and approval rankings of almost all governmental bodies, except law enforcement agencies and the president himself, are dropping. And United Russia is not the exception, because people perceive it not as a party, but as a kind of a governmental body. Its rating will keep going down, but slowly, step by step. ; ; ; ;
Usually, if you vote for United Russia, it means a mechanical, symbolic process, a sort of political law-abiding ritual. If you are law-abiding and go to the polling station, you are likely to vote for United Russia, because it is necessary. This is the very logic and motivation that drive average voters to elect United Russia. ;
Even though some people preferred not to vote for the ruling party, they voted for the current authorities, because there were no real alternatives: They voted either for one of the three systemic parliamentary parties or the spoiler parties, which aimed at distracting the attention of voters and preventing the opposition from gaining parliamentary seats. ;
RD: Why did the Russian opposition fail and what is its key problem? A.K.: The reason why they failed can be traced back to the personal ambitions of the opposition leaders. They couldn’t team up and compete with each other. In addition, they have different values, in fact. I mean right-leaning liberals and left-leaning liberals don’t always agree. This does matter, after all. Moreover, these leaders don’t have enough political heft. Most of them cannot be considered powerful and influential political figures. ;
Another problem is that the authoritarian regime in Russia will prevent the emergence of new powerful liberal forces in Russia. If such a party emerges and poses a serious challenge to the authorities like opposition leader Alexei Navalny did, it will be either destroyed or discredited and marginalized. So, in such a situation, it is very difficult to come up with a pragmatic solution. However, this year’s parliamentary elections proved that the only political democratic force ;noticeable on a scale of a whole country is the Yabloko party and its leader Grigory Yavlinsky, no matter how you view them. ;
Indeed, it is losing popularity year after year, but this party remains firmly within the country’s political landscape and if the opposition is able to persuade voters that Yabloko brings together different representatives of liberal and democratic forces as well as well-educated intelligentsia, they might succeed in the future. But in reality it’s hardly probable. ;
RD: You said that the Kremlin would prevent the emergence of a new powerful liberal political force in Russia, because the existence of such a force contradicts the nature of the authoritarian regime. Yet why are the Russian authorities afraid of everything that is associated with liberals, if those within the Kremlin are pretty confident, if their approval rankings are high among the majority of Russians, if people don’t trust liberals and the idea of liberalism is totally discredited in the country? A.K.: Well, first, it is a matter of the logic of development of any authoritative regime. It adds up to total political control. Second, in fact, the authorities are not so confident that they are so popular among the people, as implied by the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who came to the United Russia headquarters after the elections and said that, despite economic challenges and the difficult situation, people voted for United Russia. If you read between the lines, you can detect the feeling of the lack of confidence. ;
It means that the social contract — economic well-being in exchange for political freedoms (“we restrict your political freedoms, but feed you instead”) — doesn’t work anymore and might be not so relevant. That’s why the authorities find it necessary to feed people with imperial pride, wars, Crimea and increase political control and establish a political monopoly, which also means creating fake liberal parties such as the Party of Growth. After all, it is a good example of the spoiler artificial party created within the Kremlin’s test tube. And this control is likely to persist as long as this regime exists. ;
RD: What will the 2016 parliamentary elections change in Russian politics? A.K.: Basically, there won’t be big changes. Tactically, these elections aimed at preparing the groundwork for the 2018 presidential elections and testing Russia’s current political system . And in this regard, this task was fulfilled. By 2018 Putin is going to look for new faces and figures to renew his team, but this is going to be a different political process, even though it is partly related to the parliamentary elections. ;
RD: You said the 2016 parliamentary elections were a proving ground for the 2018 presidential elections and tested Russia’s current political system. Could you be more specific? ; A.K.: These elections confirmed the legitimacy of the current Russian authorities. Once again, the Kremlin sees that it does have the mandate to rule the country. Putin himself does have this mandate, because the ruling party is associated with his name, and the country’s political unity is based on the Crimea narrative and the parliament itself. ;
The system passed the test successfully. So, it can work for a certain period of time as long as everybody is satisfied with this model. Thus, the system is ready to live for another 18 months until the 2018 presidential elections, with the parliament organically embedded in this system and ready to fulfill blindly all orders from the president. ;
The other question is how will these elections be conducted in terms of obvious predictability and the absolute absence of interest toward them given the fact that nobody can compete with Putin. In fact, he is the only candidate who will win. So, there is the lack of motivation for voters to come to the polling stations in 2018. ; ;
RD: Do you mean that the turnout at the presidential election will be low? ; A.K.: The turnout is going to be the key question. In fact, the 2018 election is a referendum that will test the credibility and approval of one person [Putin]. In this situation, the authorities have to create an artificial rivalry to Putin, but it is hardly likely to work. The real rival won’t be allowed to compete with Putin openly, if we are talking about Navalny. Thus, if Putin is once again elected president, there is no motivation to vote. ;
On the other hand, as indicated by this year’s parliamentary election, those who came to the polling stations observed a sort of political ritual. It is a matter of carrying out a law-abiding commitment. And this might drive people to vote in many Russian regions and have an impact on the electoral turnout. However, I expect it to be lower than during the parliamentary elections, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Importantly, the turnout will be low not because people do not trust Putin — it will be low because of the absolute predictability of the elections, because of the absence of competition. ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
RD: To what extent were this year’s parliamentary elections different from the ones in 2011 — and why didn’t they lead to protests ? ; A.K.: Well, the situations are totally different. In 2011, people were waiting for changes and the continuation of modernization, with urbanites frustrated by the rigged voting and obvious violations during the parliamentary elections. They were also disappointed with the presidential swap, when then President Dmitry Medvedev decided not to stand for the 2012 presidency and let Putin come to power once again, depriving them of the opportunity of a choice. Eventually, they took to the streets. ;
Yet their protests failed to bring changes among the authorities. Moreover, these protests brought about a series of arrests, which had a chilling effect on the protesters. Afterwards, the authorities took very repressive legal measures — including “the Dima Yakovlev law” that bans foreign families from adopting Russian orphans, the laws that restrict the right to organize rallies, laws on foreign agents and undesirable organizations, and other restrictive measures. ;
Thus, by the beginning of this year’s elections, people had been very discouraged. They didn’t believe that they could change something. They were not ready to take to the streets. They were totally apathetic and disappointed politically. On top of that, there was the incorporation of Crimea. This narrative played its role in bringing people together around the authorities.
Also read Russia Direct's report: " Decoding Social Transformations in Russia " RD: Remarkably, those who took to the streets in 2011 supported Crimea’s incorporation. ; A.K.: Statistically, it is difficult to make any conclusions, yet the correlation does exist. Indeed, Crimea helped to mobilize people, even part of the liberal-minded citizens. It became the key narrative that mobilized the nation. Those who didn’t support the incorporation of Crimea are seen as outcasts. They are considered to be outsiders. ;
RD: How long will the Crimea effect be able to unite people around the authorities? ; A.K.: It is difficult to say for sure. Probably, the abrupt worsening of living standards and drop in income might influence the behavior of the population. Yet this is just a hypothesis, because people are still very satisfied with Crimea’s return to Russia: They see themselves as being part of a great power. ;
According to the polls of the Levada Center, people are still supporting the Kremlin’s foreign policy, they don’t want the sanctions to be canceled, and they believe they are above these sanctions. They think that Russia should keep the counter-sanctions policy instead of trying to persuade the West to lift these sanctions. This mobilization — being in the state of quasi-war — helps them to deal with the economic crisis and adjust to it. Honestly, there are no signs of political indignation, which means that people won’t orchestrate large-scale political protests. ; ;
RD: Shortly after the parliamentary elections, Russian media reported about the Kremlin’s plans to create the Ministry of State Security (or MGB in the Russian abbreviation), which is expected to bring together all Russian law security agencies. So, it seems to be a reanimated version of the old KGB. What does it mean for Russia’s political future? A.K.: Russian law enforcement officers play today a significant role [in the country’s decision-making process]. So, if these plans come true, it means that the authorities are trying to hedge political risks: It is a matter of the system defending itself in advance. One of the goals [of the MGB] is to provide security for the President and this problem will be more relevant by the end of the State Duma’s tenure, by 2021, because it will be the time when the future of Putin will be determined. ;
After 2021, there will be the questions from people and political elites if Putin will remain at the helm after 2024 or not, if he will nominate his successor or not, if he will be a lame duck or not. All these questions need to be clarified. And to feel more confident and secure, he needs absolute control. And the creation of such a monstrosity like the MGB is quite logical in such a situation. But this leak about MGB was no more than proving public and elite’s opinions. Presumably, right now this body will not be created. ; ; ; ; ;
RD: There is some speculation that Putin might be concerned with a plot prepared by some members of Russia’s political elite. Is it really the case? A.K.: In fact, today there are not any signs of a conspiracy against Putin. The stakeholders within the Russian political elites are not interested in it, given a great deal of solidarity and unity around the Crimea narrative. Even though Putin is autocratic in his nature, nevertheless he is very popular among the elites. He builds such a political machine that guarantees him security and prevents any possibility of a coup d’état. ; ;
RD: Yet recently Putin reshuffled his political deck and asked his chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov , a former KGB officer, to resign. Anton Vaino , who was seen by some experts as a political unknown and a neutral technocratic political figure, replaced Ivanov. Does this resignation mean that Putin hedges the risks and just wants to get rid of those who might compete with him? ; A.K.: Actually, this is the trend, which means the 2018 new team of the president will consist of docile, absolutely loyal bureaucrats, who will be distant from the leader and won’t have any claims for power. This is in contrast to Putin’s cronies — governmental oligarchs and his close friends. ;
This team will also comprise the bureaucrats and average men from law enforcement agencies, including security guards and representatives of the special services. This is how Putin sees effective governance; this is how he is going to reform the governance system. This is part of his strategy to save his personal security during his next presidential term. These people will have to provide Putin with security when he either retires or hands over power to his successor.
"Putin is an observer. He is like a weighing-machine that takes into account all views and tries to balance them." ; Photo: RIA Novosti ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
RD: There is also speculation that Putin is trying to fuel an artificial rivalry between different law enforcement agencies to strengthen his positions in the Kremlin. Do you agree? A.K.: Partly, it is the case. The logic of the MGB is to control this rivalry, watch over it closely and make it more transparent within one big entity. After all, Putin is an observer. He is like a weighing-machine that takes into account all views and tries to balance them. He gives them room to compete with each other up to a point and makes certain conclusions. It is a matter of effective political management. ;
Look at Alexander Bastrykin, the chairman of the Russian Investigative Committee. He has been very influential until recently, but he started expressing political claims and got in trouble [In July 2016 the Federal Security Service (FSB) conducted a series of inspections in the Investigative Committee’s offices and arrested high-profile officials suspected of corruption and embezzlement — Editor’s note]. ;
Today, Putin doesn’t need independent and very corrupt figures. He is ready to put up with the riches of his governmental oligarchs, but as long as they can hide it and fulfill their commitments within their governmental corporations. ;
Summing up, Putin is creating the environment that can provide him with security and insurance and control the wars with the Kremlin’s inner circle . Russia’s political elites have already received a lot of signals from him: If somebody behaves in a wrong way, he will be either dismissed or accused of corruption.
RD: How do you see the role of Medvedev, given that he has acquired the reputation of a very weak and docile politician? To what extent does he fit into the system? ; A.K.: His weakness is his power. His purposefully technocratic nature is his competitive capability. He is convenient, docile. He is between the loyal systemic liberals and law enforcement officials. In addition, his informal agreement with Putin is still intact and relevant. Politically, it is not in Putin’s interest to replace Medvedev with a more powerful and independent politician. ;
In this case Putin should choose between liberals and “hawks” — between [former Finance Minister] Alexei Kudrin and Igor Sechin [the head of Russia’s largest oil company Rosneft]. Yet Putin cannot do it right now. He has to choose a middle-of-the-road, technocratic and docile figure like Medvedev, who will become a very convenient way to shift responsibility for the economic crisis after 2018. ;
In this regard, the ideal candidate to replace Medvedev is Anton Vaino, Putin’s current chief of staff, or his deputy Sergei Kiriyenko, who in the eyes of Russians was responsible for the 1998 economic default. However, Medvedev is a much more experienced politician.
Also read: " Inside the anti-corruption campaign against Russia's liberals " RD: You mentioned the “hawks” and liberals within the Kremlin’s inner circle. Who is more influential today? A.K.: You can look at this hierarchy both simplistically and from a more sophisticated point of view. If we tend to simplify, there are the “hawks” or conservatives and “doves” or liberals: While the former are responsible for politics and foreign policy, the latter deal with the economy, business, the budget and fiscal policy. ;
On the other hand, all these players, especially, law enforcement officials [“hawks”] are involved in clan wars to a larger extent than the liberals, who, basically, have nothing to compete for (if we don’t take into account the debates between the Economy Ministry, Finance Ministry and the Central Banks about the nuances of Russia’s economic policy). ;
The closer we look at the political groups within the Kremlin, the more obvious it becomes that all these players are included in Putin’s team: In fact, they have less differences than commonalities. After all, all of them support the Crimean consensus. They support Putin’s domestic and foreign policy, even though some of them [liberals] don’t approve it. They are just adjusting to the current political situation without openly expressing their disagreement.
RD: Sooner or later Putin will have to step down. To what extent will the transition of power be difficult in Russia? A.K.: This transition will be very difficult at any rate. After all, there hasn’t been a rotation of power for years. The nuance is Putin can accelerate the transition to democracy only if it brings benefits to him to save his personal security. If technocrats and liberals are able to persuade him that his security depends on democracy, he might chose this path, yet, again, not because he likes democracy. Today he is not ready for liberalization.
The article was initially published ;in Russia Direct Report " Russia's political drama heading into 2018 ." | 0 |
PARIS — Dozens of museum attendants at the Louvre went on strike on Thursday to protest what they said was the museum’s poor handling of crowds at a temporary exhibition dedicated to Vermeer, with another strike possible on Friday. “Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting,” which includes 12 of the Dutch painter’s 34 known works, drew 9, 400 people the first week after it opened on Feb. 22 — more than double the museum’s expectations — resulting in hourslong waits for some visitors. This week the museum put in place timed visits to the temporary shows on its online ticketing system, limiting the waiting time to 45 minutes. But there have still been bottlenecks. “It’s been a big mess,” Françoise Pinson, the secretary general of a museum workers union, said of the situation, which prompted 70 to 80 of its members to strike. “The signage wasn’t good the planning wasn’t good. ” On Friday morning, museum workers will meet to decide whether to continue their strike. Only 2 percent of the Louvre’s employees went on strike, and the museum was operating as usual, with temporary workers filling in, the museum said. The Vermeer exhibition, which runs through May 22 and will travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington this fall, argues that the Dutch master may not have been the solitary genius that some believe him to have been. Media attention, a small viewing space and the steady allure of Vermeer have resulted in crowds twice as large as those for several of the Louvre’s recent exhibitions, including ones devoted to Raphael and Ingres. The Vermeer show is one of three temporary exhibitions that opened at the same time, along with “Masterpieces of the Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt” and “Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio,” which was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year. The shows have helped lift attendance at the Louvre, which had seen a striking drop in visitors since a spate of terrorist attacks in France. The Louvre had 7. 4 million visitors in 2016, down from 8. 6 million in 2015. The Vermeer exhibition is on view in one of the underground spaces where many temporary exhibitions are held and that can accommodate only 250 people at a time, the Louvre said. After the crowds of the first week, attendance has dropped to around 4, 000 people per week, the museum said. | 1 |
DaisyLuther.com October 31, 2016
According to a report in the New Yorker, James Comey, Big Kahuna of the FBI, went full-on cowboy in releasing details of the new Clinton email inquiry. Apparently, the Department of Justice advised him not to release the information just days before the presidential election.
Gosh. I wonder if the same advice would have been given if it was Donald Trump who was being investigated by the FBI.
Comey explained his decision in a letter to FBI employees :
“We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
The DoJ – and by DoJ I mean Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who famously had a secret meeting on an airport tarmac with Bill Clinton to talk about her non-existent grandchildren – is implying that Comey is not playing fair and that the move is inconsistent with the rules which have been designed to make it seem like they are not interfering in an election.
Here’s Comey’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Really?
The DoJ thinks that the public shouldn’t know that the person they may be voting for is being investigated by the FBI?
That’s the most absurd thing I have heard for quite some time, and considering this election, that’s really saying something.
This is from the New Yorker report, emphasis mine.
On Friday, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, acting independently of Attorney General Loretta Lynch , sent a letter to Congress saying that the F.B.I. had discovered e-mails that were potentially relevant to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server. Coming less than two weeks before the Presidential election, Comey’s decision to make public new evidence that may raise additional legal questions about Clinton was contrary to the views of the Attorney General, according to a well-informed Administration official. Lynch expressed her preference that Comey follow the department’s longstanding practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations, and not taking any action that could influence the outcome of an election, but he said that he felt compelled to do otherwise .
Comey’s decision is a striking break with the policies of the Department of Justice, according to current and former federal legal officials. Comey, who is a Republican appointee of President Obama, has a reputation for integrity and independence, but his latest action is stirring an extraordinary level of concern among legal authorities, who see it as potentially affecting the outcome of the Presidential and congressional elections. ( source )
Is this investigation the iceberg to HRC’s Titanic campaign?
Hillary Clinton has said she finds the development “unprecedented and deeply troubling.” (source )
Oh, I’ll bet she does.
I’ll bet if Trump had been the target of the investigation she would have been up on the stage, gripping the podium to stay upright, saying how wonderful it was that Comey decided to break the news so that voters could be aware that they might be voting for someone who was suspected of having broken federal laws. I’ll bet she’d be saying that the public has a right to know if a candidate was under investigation. I’ll bet she’d take the high road and say that those elected to the office of President of the United States have to be above and beyond reproach.
Of course, when it’s her, things are a little different, aren’t they?
We do have a right to know. We absolutely have a right to know that a person who could be elected to know all of the secrets was careless when she only knew some of the secrets. It seems like a no-brainer that the public should know that a candidate is being investigated for a second time for being criminally negligent with information entrusted to her.
And the fact that we know has severely damaged Clinton’s campaign. Although previous polls were incredibly skewed to the point of being outright fake , it looks like the mainstream is now trying to save face with a new batch of polls. A poll from ABC news and the Washington Post , both hotbeds of liberal voters, has shown that her lead has dropped to within a single point over Donald Trump due to the Clinton email scandal.
“About a third of likely voters say they’re less likely to support Clinton given FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure Friday that the bureau is investigating more emails related to its probe of Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state. “
Finally, some people are actually paying attention to the character of Hillary Clinton.
But it may not be enough. There was one finding that was astonishing to me, even though it probably shouldn’t be:
“Given other considerations, 63 percent say it makes no difference.”
Meanwhile, on social media, the FBI emails are somehow not a trending topic. It certainly appears that Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Buzzfeed are blacking out the topic.
My biggest question is this: Why now?
Why did James Comey, who has probably committed career suicide, along with a potential actual “suicide” via a shot to the back of his own head like others who have run afoul of the Clintons, feel the need to break the news, particularly after giving her a pass during the last investigation?
Opponents will jump on the fact that he’s a Republican and will say that he did it for political reasons.
They won’t admit that perhaps he felt guilty for being complicit in letting her off the hook in the first investigation into the Clinton email negligence.
They will never, ever admit that maybe his integrity and belief in the office he holds made it impossible for him to keep quiet until after the election and that, perhaps, when he was given a chance to right a previous wrong, he took it.
Clinton isn’t taking it gracefully.
Clinton’s complaints, which have appeared in the press around the world, make her look even worse than she did before.
This is from The Telegraph , a UK publication:
Hillary Clinton was furiously fighting to keep her Presidential bid on track on Saturday night as her lead in the polls narrowed, after the FBI’s bombshell announcement that it had reopened its investigation into her emails.
James Comey announced on Friday afternoon that fresh evidence had emerged for his investigation into whether Mrs Clinton was criminally negligent in her handling of classified material.
On Saturday, the latest poll of polls by tracker site RealClearPolitics put Clinton 3.9 percentage points ahead of the Republican nationwide, down from 7.1 points just 10 days previously.
But wait – it gets better:
The Clinton campaign has responded with what amounts to a declaration of open warfare against Mr Comey, alleging that his actions are backed by a political motive. And Mrs Clinton herself called the decision “unprecedented” and “deeply troubling”.
“It’s pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election,” she complained, addressing cheering supporters at a rally in the must-win state of Florida.
Democrats questioned the timing of the agency’s decision, which comes as polls showed Mrs Clinton’s lead falling just 10 days before the presidential election.
“This is like an 18-wheeler smacking into us, and it just becomes a huge distraction at the worst possible time,” said Donna Brazile, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
“The campaign is trying to cut through the noise as best it can.
“We don’t want it to knock us off our game. But on the second-to-last weekend of the race, we find ourselves having to tell voters, ‘Keep your focus, keep your eyes on the prize.’”
Hillary’s campaign manager sounds pretty desperate to me. As for the complaints from HRC, they just make her sound like the out-of-touch, money-grabbing, power-hungry, deceitful | 0 |
SEOUL, South Korea — Less than a week after Donald J. Trump taunted North Korea over its ballistic missile capabilities, North Korea has said that it could conduct its first test of an intercontinental missile “anytime and anywhere” in a rebuke to the incoming president. Although North Korea has vowed to develop the ability to attack the United States with nuclear warheads and has tested missiles that can reach throughout the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity, it has never tested a missile that could fly over the Pacific. In a New Year’s Day speech, Kim North Korea’s leader, said his country had reached a “final stage” in preparing to test an intercontinental ballistic missile. That drew a Twitter post the next day from Mr. Trump that said, “It won’t happen!” On Sunday, an unidentified spokesman of the North Korean Foreign Ministry told the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, “The ICBM will be launched anytime and anywhere determined by our supreme leadership. ” The spokesman’s remarks, made public on the KCNA website Monday, were in response to comments last Thursday by Antony J. Blinken, the United States deputy secretary of state, that North Korea had made “a qualitative improvement” in its missile capabilities over the past year. And he said Washington and its allies would continue “comprehensive, sustained pressure and sanctions” against the North. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Ashton B. Carter, the departing secretary of defense, said the United States would shoot down a North Korean missile “if it were coming towards our territory or the territory of our friends and allies. ” It remains unclear how close North Korea has come to building a reliable ICBM. Although it has displayed the believed to be its first ICBM, during military parades in recent years, it has never that system. In the past year, however, North Korea has boasted of successfully testing key technologies, such as missile engines and heat shields for an ICBM. Last Tuesday, John Kirby, a spokesman for the State Department, said Washington did not believe that North Korea had achieved its goal of tipping missiles with nuclear warheads, though it continued to “march in that direction. ” North Korea has sought to develop by early 2018 miniaturized nuclear weapons that can fit atop a missile capable of reaching the United States, Thae a former North Korean diplomat who defected, told the Yonhap news agency of South Korea on Sunday. | 1 |
Senate investigators plan to question Jared Kushner, President Trump’s and a close adviser, as part of their broad inquiry into ties between Trump associates and Russian officials or others linked to the Kremlin, according to administration and congressional officials. The White House Counsel’s Office was informed this month that the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, wanted to question Mr. Kushner about meetings he arranged with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, according to the government officials. The meetings, which took place during the transition, included a previously unreported with the head of Russia’s development bank. Until now, the White House had acknowledged only an early December meeting between Mr. Kislyak and Mr. Kushner, which occurred at Trump Tower and was also attended by Michael T. Flynn, who would briefly serve as the national security adviser. Later that month, though, Mr. Kislyak requested a second meeting, which Mr. Kushner asked a deputy to attend in his stead, officials said. At Mr. Kislyak’s request, Mr. Kushner later met with Sergey N. Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, which the United States placed on its sanctions list after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia annexed Crimea and began meddling in Ukraine. A White House spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, confirmed those meetings, saying in an interview that nothing of consequence occurred and portraying them as routine diplomatic encounters that went nowhere. But Mr. Gorkov, who previously served as deputy chairman of the board at Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, said in a statement issued by his bank that he met with Mr. Kushner in his capacity as the executive of Kushner Companies, his family’s sprawling real estate empire. Members of presidential transition teams routinely meet with foreign officials, and there is nothing inherently improper about sitting down with the Russian ambassador. Part of Mr. Kushner’s role during the campaign and the transition was to serve as a chief conduit to foreign governments and officials, and Ms. Hicks said he met with dozens of officials from a wide range of countries. She added that Mr. Kushner was willing to talk to Senate investigators about the meetings with Mr. Kislyak and the banker, saying, “He isn’t trying to hide anything and wants to be transparent. ” Still, meetings between Trump associates and Russian officials or others linked to Mr. Putin are now of heightened interest as several congressional committees and F. B. I. investigators try to determine the scope of the Russian intervention in the election and links between Russians and anyone around Mr. Trump. The Senate panel’s decision to question Mr. Kushner would make him the closest person to the president to be called upon in any of the investigations, and the only one currently serving in the White House. The officials who initially described that Senate inquiry to The New York Times did so on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly about Mr. Trump’s . The F. B. I. declined to comment. There are no indications that Mr. Kushner is a focus of its investigation, and Ms. Hicks said he had not been questioned by the bureau. Mr. Kislyak’s contacts with Trump administration officials have proved problematic: Mr. Flynn was fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of the conversations he had with the Russian envoy, claiming he had not discussed the sanctions against Russia when communications intercepts showed he had. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from any Russian inquiries led by the Justice Department after he failed to disclose at his Senate confirmation hearing that he had met with Mr. Kislyak during the campaign. The meetings Mr. Kushner arranged with Mr. Kislyak all took place in December, during the transition, Ms. Hicks said. Mr. Kushner attended the initial meeting with Mr. Kislyak to explore whether a channel could be set up between the Russian government and the incoming administration to improve relations between the United States and Russia, Ms. Hicks said. They also discussed how the United States and Russia could cooperate on issues in the Middle East, an area Mr. Kushner has been deputized to take the lead on, she said. Mr. Kislyak asked for a second meeting to “deliver a message,” Ms. Hicks said. Mr. Kushner sent Avrahm Berkowitz, a White House aide and longtime associate. At that session, Mr. Kislyak told Mr. Berkowitz that he wanted Mr. Kushner to meet Mr. Gorkov, the Russian banker, Ms. Hicks said. Mr. Gorkov is a graduate of the academy of Federal Security Service of Russia, a training ground for Russian intelligence and security forces. And as the head of Vnesheconombank, Mr. Gorkov presides over a bank whose supervisory board is controlled by members of Mr. Putin’s government, including Prime Minister Dimitri A. Medvedev. It has been used to bail out oligarchs favored by Mr. Putin, as well as to help fund pet projects like the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Around the time the Russian ambassador asked that Mr. Kushner meet with Mr. Gorkov, American intelligence agencies were concluding that Russian spies, acting on the orders of Mr. Putin, had sought to sway the election by hacking political targets, like the Democratic National Committee, and passing stolen emails to WikiLeaks. Mr. Kushner had not yet stepped aside as chief executive of Kushner Companies, which was trying to attract investment for the company’s crown jewel, an overleveraged Manhattan office tower on Fifth Avenue. The company was in the midst of negotiations to redevelop the building with Anbang Insurance Group, a Chinese company with ties to the Beijing government. Senate investigators plan to ask Mr. Kushner if he discussed ways to secure additional financing for the building during his meeting with the Russian banker, a government official said. Ms. Hicks said that no such business was discussed at the session, during which Mr. Gorkov expressed a desire for an open dialogue. Nor did the issue of the American sanctions against Russian entities like Vnesheconombank arise, she added. “It really wasn’t much of a conversation,” she said. Mr. Gorkov, in the statement, went further. He said that bank managers, as part of a new strategy for the institution, met with international financial institutions in Europe, Asia and America to talk about promising trends and sectors. He also met with representatives of “business circles of the U. S. including with the head of Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner. ” And in an interview on the Rossiya 24 TV channel on Dec. 29, the same month that he met with Mr. Kushner, Mr. Gorkov said he hoped that the situation caused by Ukraine sanctions imposed by the Americans against Russian banks like his “would change for the better. ” The inquiry into Mr. Kushner’s dealings with the ambassador and Mr. Gorkov may further complicate Mr. Trump’s efforts to move past the Russia situation. Last week, the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, confirmed in testimony to Congress that his agency had begun a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and whether any associates of the president might have colluded with the Russian government. Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has been under scrutiny in the F. B. I. investigation because of his ties to politicians in Ukraine. In August, he was forced to step down as the chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign amid reports that his name emerged in a secret ledger in Ukraine listing payments for consulting work he did for a government there. He has denied any wrongdoing and has said he never worked for the Russian government. Other Trump associates who have been drawn into the F. B. I. investigation include Roger J. Stone Jr. a longtime Republican operative who has acknowledged contacts with Guccifer 2. 0, the mysterious online figure that is believed to be a front for Russian intelligence officials, and Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the campaign who has done extensive business in Russia. Both have denied doing anything unlawful. The Senate investigation is proceeding on a separate track from the F. B. I. investigation while drawing on some of the same material, like routine electronic surveillance of the Russian ambassador and his embassy cohort. The committee chairman, Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, has told the White House he plans to interview all Trump aides who had contact with Russian officials, according to White House officials. Depending on those interviews, some may be called upon to testify in sessions. Mr. Burr and Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and the committee’s vice chairman, said in a statement: “Mr. Kushner has volunteered to be interviewed as part of the committee’s investigation into the Russian activities surrounding the 2016 election. ” They added that their inquiry would “follow the intelligence wherever it leads. ” The extent of Mr. Kushner’s interactions with Mr. Kislyak caught some senior members of Mr. Trump’s White House team off guard, in part because he did not mention them last month during a debate then consuming the White House: how to handle the disclosures about Mr. Flynn’s interactions with the Russian ambassador. Ms. Hicks said that Mr. Trump had authorized Mr. Kushner to have meetings with foreign officials that he felt made sense, and to report back to him if those meetings produced anything of note. She said that because in Mr. Kushner’s view the meetings were inconsequential, it did not occur to him to mention them to senior staff members earlier. “There was nothing to get out in front of on this,” she said. | 1 |
Donnerstag, 17. November 2016 Krankenhaus führt Operationen nur noch nachts durch, um Narkosemittel zu sparen Berlin (Archiv) - Ob dieses Konzept Schule macht? Als erstes deutsches Krankenhaus hat das Pantaleon-Klinikum in Berlin angekündigt, operative Eingriffe nach Möglichkeit nur noch zwischen 22 und 5 Uhr durchzuführen. Weil Patienten um diese Uhrzeit in der Regel ohnehin schlafen, kann auf eine Vollnarkose und damit auf teure Sedativa verzichtet werden. Den natürlichen Schlaf des Menschen für chirurgische Eingriffe zu nutzen, ist laut Chefarzt Dr. Jürgen Michels ein eigentlich naheliegender Ansatz: "Narkosemittel sind ja dazu da, den Patienten in einen künstlichen Schlafzustand zu versetzen, bedeuten aber gleichzeitig jede Menge Stress für den Organismus. Nachts hingegen schlafen die meisten Menschen ganz ohne Sedierung, was es uns abseits der gesundheitlichen Vorteile außerdem ermöglicht, auf lange Sicht eine Menge Geld zu sparen, das wir an anderen Stellen gezielt einsetzen können." "War was?": Aufwachen am Morgen nach der OP Die Vorteile der neuen Methode liegen auf der Hand: Viele Patienten schlafen nachts bis zu acht Stunden, was auch komplizierte, langwierige Eingriffe ohne Vollnarkose ermöglicht. Kleinere Routine-Eingriffe können aber auch nachmittags während des Mittagsschlafs durchgeführt werden. Der Ablauf einer solchen OP unterscheidet sich kaum vom bisherigen Prozedere: Nachdem alle Vorbereitungen getroffen sind, wird lediglich gewartet, bis der Patient selbstständig eingeschlafen ist. In schwierigen Fällen hilft ein Anästhesist mit warmer Milch und Schlafliedern nach. Sobald der Patient auf Fragen wie "Hallo? Schlafen Sie schon?" nicht mehr reagiert, kann er aufgeschnitten werden. Operationen am schlafenden Patienten müssen möglichst leise durchgeführt werden. Anweisungen an das medizinische Personal ("Skalpell", "Tupfer", "Zigarettenpause") haben nur noch in Flüsterlautstärke zu erfolgen. Außerdem ist stets dafür zu sorgen, dass das Licht im Operationssaal auf ein akzeptables Maß gedimmt ist. Lediglich bei Not-OPs sollen nach wie vor herkömmliche Sedativa zum Einsatz kommen, weil schwerverletzte Unfallopfer in der Regel aufgrund ihrer Schmerzen nur mühsam in den Schlaf finden. fed, dan, ssi; Fotos: Shutterstock; Hinweis: Erstmals erschienen am 13.11.15 Artikel teilen: | 0 |
Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Fundraising Benefited From Loophole In Federal Anti-Corruption Rule Source: IBT
Despite an anti-corruption rule that was designed to reduce the financial industry’s political power, top officials from the investment firm BlackRock hosted Hillary Clinton at campaign fundraisers earlier this year.
The cash — which poured in through a loophole in the law — came in as BlackRock’s federal contracts to manage billions of dollars of retiree assets will be up for renewal during the next president’s term.
In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission looked to stop campaign donations to public officials from financial firms seeking to convince those officials to hire them to manage public employees’ retirement assets. The agency enacted a pay-to-play rule that applied such a restriction to state and local officials. The rule, however, was structured in a way that effectively exempted federal agencies from its restrictions — and it was created even though a major federal agency had just been plagued by an investment-related influence-peddling scandal.
In practice, the gap in the rule allows BlackRock executives to raise big money for presidential candidates who — if they win — will appoint the officials that run the federal Thrift Savings Plan, which awards contracts to manage retirement assets for nearly 5 million current and former federal employees. The loophole also allows Wall Street executives to give cash to presidential candidates, even as those executives’ firms get deals to manage — and earn fees from — investments for the federal government’s separate pension insurance agency, which is run by presidential appointees.
In all, the loophole in the SEC rule effectively leaves nearly a half-trillion dollars of retirement assets unprotected by the nation’s major anti-corruption measure. Clinton’s presidential campaign has raised more than $1 million from financial firms that are contracted to manage those assets. | 0 |
New Wikileaks email dumps have revealed massive corruption surrounding Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta . In one email dated February 29, 2016, an article sent by Hillary advisor Sara Solow to Podesta and Hillary’s foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan indicates that the Clinton campaign is considering House Speaker Paul Ryan’s relative for the Supreme Court .
Ketanji Brown is the subject of the article. She is related to Paul Ryan by marriage and is a judge on the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
The email reads, “She was confirmed by without any Republican opposition in the Senate not once, but *twice*. She was confirmed to her current position in 2013 by unanimous consent – that is, without any stated opposition. She was also previously confirmed unanimously to a seat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission (where she became vice chair).”
“Her family is impressive. She is married to a surgeon and has two young daughters. Her father is a retired lawyer and her mother a retired school principal. Her brother was a police officer (in the unit that was the basis for the television show * The Wire *) and is now a law student, and she is related by marriage to Congressman (and Speaker of the House) Paul Ryan.”
Earlier this month, he even said he would not campaign for nor support his party’s nominee, Donald Trump . In fact, some supporters of Trump have theorized that Ryan was somehow behind or involved in the leak of the tape in which Trump made sexually crude comments about women.
If you claim this is merely circumstantial, then I think there is no hope for you understanding just how corrupt DC has gotten, and this is the very Paul Ryan I warned you about in 2012, which everyone said was “so conservative.” Sadly, many didn’t listen and voted for liberal Mitt Romney and him. Perhaps Paul Ryan’s records and emails should be leaked and maybe we just might see that he’s willing to engage Hillary in a pay-to-play scheme .
Courtesy of Freedom Outpost
Tim Brown is an author and Editor at FreedomOutpost.com , SonsOfLibertyMedia.com , GunsInTheNews.com and TheWashingtonStandard.com . He is husband to his “more precious than rubies” wife, father of 10 “mighty arrows”, jack of all trades, Christian and lover of liberty. He resides in the U.S. occupied Great State of South Carolina. Tim is also an affiliate for the Joshua Mark 5 AR/AK hybrid semi-automatic rifle . Follow Tim on Twitter . Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 0 |
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A cathedral founded on pure faith, and its creator who has dedicated more than 50 years of his life to building it. 91-year-old Don Justo, of the small Spanish town of Mejorada del Campo, is a former monk. On a whim and a dream, he decided to build a monumental house of God, and since 1961, he has been doing just that – using junk, recycled building materials, and as much good will as he can find. For his single minded determination, some say he’s a madman, and others, a saint. SUBSCRIBE TO RTD Channel to get documentaries firsthand! http://bit.ly/1MgFbVy FOLLOW US RTD WEBSITE: http://RTD.rt.com/ RTD ON TWITTER: http://twitter.com/RT_DOC RTD ON FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/RTDocumentary RTD ON DAILYMOTION http://www.dailymotion.com/rt_doc RTD ON INSTAGRAM http://instagram.com/rt_documentary/ RTD LIVE http://rtd.rt.com/on-air/ | 0 |
Economic Divide People pay respects to late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej near the Grand Palace in Bangkok, October 28, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
The passing away of Thailand’s king has put the country into an uncertain state. The military junta, which has been in power after a coup, has announced one year of mourning. That will affect one of the largest industries in Thailand, namely tourism.
Thailand’s economy was sluggish to begin with. Ever since the coup, retail business activity has experienced a slump, the agriculture industry has been hit with falling commodity prices, and exports, which accounts for 70% of Thailand’s GDP, has dropped five percentage points.
It is interesting to note that the Thai stock exchange actually experienced growth after the coup, for the 20th consecutive month; yet, it then abruptly slowed down. Also of note: Thailand’s unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the world, at 1%. Loading ... | 0 |
Now it is USA Today Lying to us that the Anti-Trump Protests are Spontaneous
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-13/anti-trump-protests-proof-professional-activist-involvement
The post Now it is USA Today Lying to us that the Anti-Trump Protests are Spontaneou appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org . | 0 |
GET VISIBLE! Advertise Here. Find Out More Reactors Dooms The Nuclear Industry By Yoichi Shimatsu 9-17-16 A murky web of international supply chains is being exposed in the flawed-steel parts scandal rocking the French and Japanese nuclear industries. Serious anomalies have been discovered in key steel components for the European Pressurized Water Reactor (E-PWR) being constructed at Flamanville, France, on the English Channel. The recent exposure of brittle steel has led to a sullen admission by nuclear-tech supplier AREVA of metallurgical defects in at least 400 different types of reactor parts produced by its subsidiary Le Creusot Forge since 1964. Oddly, nearly identical inconsistencies in steel alloys were found in parts imported from Japan for the Flamanville project. Dozens of steel items, which have also been supplied to nuclear plants worldwide, were produced by the Japan Casting and Forging Company (JCFC), a joint venture of three of that nations biggest defense contractors, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metals. Its industrial base in Kitakyushu on the southern island of Kyushu was a major hub of weapons production by Yawata, the forerunner of Nippon Steel, which supplied the Imperial Navy, including the armor for the super-battleship Yamato, and Mitsubishi Aircraft, which built the Zero attack plane. The list of defective steel parts reveals how the allied French and Japanese nuclear industries are now joined at the hip like mutant twins. Mitsubishi and AREVA are partnered in the ATMEA third-generation PWR design program. AREVA is a shareholder in Japan Steel Works, based in northern Hokkaido, a producer of 6-ton single-cast reactor vessels. TEPCO has been allied with AREVA for the decommissioning of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. These interlocking relationships hidden under global marketing campaigns make it difficult to tell where key components are actually sourced. How did Le Creusot Forge evade detection of its defective components for more than two decades? What accounts for the chronic failure of the French and European nuclear-regulatory agencies, along with the UN watchdog IAEA, to properly inspect key parts for the worlds biggest nuclear reactors? Did defective steel have a role in innumerable accidents and leaks at nuclear plants in Japan, Britain, France and the United States? Is endemic bribery of high-ranking politicians and state bureaucrats by the energy industry at the root of a blanket cover-up of radioactive releases and equipment breakdowns at nuclear stations worldwide? While the quick answers are obvious to anyone whos not a nuclear apologist on the secret payroll, further exposure of the ugly details is important toward breaking the code of silence that grips the nuclear sector and large utility companies along with their political flunkies, who together comprise a nuclear mafia that operates exactly like an organized crime family. Meltdowns in the Works Its important to remember that AREVA and Mitsubishi represent the creme de la creme of the global nuclear industry as producers of third-generation PWRS and advanced pressurized water reactors (APWRs). Other major players are still stuck with antiquated systems such as boiling water reactors (BWRs), including Hitachi-GE, Toshiba-Westinghouse, and their Russian and Chinese competitors. These nuclear players, beset with the wreckage at Fukushima, still try to redeem their horrid performance record with slick graphics and fast talk, as if those meltdowns in Japan never happened. If the undisputed technology leaders are covering up hundreds of defective components, then the rest of the pack must be over their heads in production problems and technical failures. The global scale of Areva and Mitsubishis debacle is just one indicator of a grossly inefficient and incompetent global nuclear technology industry. Among the nuclear facilities stuck with shoddy components from Creusot, JCFC and Mitsubishi: Reactor vessel cover heads (RVCH, sealing below and on top of the cylindrical reactor vessel): - 15 reactor closure units in the United States; - 3 units in Sweden - 1 in Brazil - in planning, Hinkley Point in Britain, the Sinop plant in Turkey, a project in Jordan, proposed plant in Indonesia, and 10 planned reactors in Vietnam. Steam Generators (SG), a high-pressure chamber that powers the electricity turbines: - 15 units in France; - 10 units in Belgium, now under guard due to terrorist threats; - 6 units in Mexico JCFC channel heads, which move coolant water into the steam-pressure unit: - 18 reactor vessels at 9 nuclear plants in France; - 13 reactor vesselss at 6 nuclear plants in Japan, including two restarted Mitsubishi reactors at Kyushu Electrics restarted and operational Satsuma-Sendai plant, located near several faults. JCFC also produces 5-ton reactor vessels, which are cast as single block and not welded as in the more vulnerable Chinese and Russian designs. The durability of these PWR vessels, which operate under high temperature and pressure, has been fundamentally challenged by the rapid breech of the much heavier and thicker-walled boiling waters reactors at Fukushima. Mitsubishi had planned to install neutron reflectors to raise efficiency while limiting high-speed particle damage to APWR reactor vessels, but has so far failed to admit how these reflectors can act like beryllium mirrors that intensify chain reactions inside nuclear bombs. Notably, the U.S. Department of Energy withdrew its participation in Mitsubishi APWR development immediately after the Fukushima reactor meltdowns, which proved that nuclear reactors are bombs waiting to be detonated. Zones of Weakness Suspecting quality-control problems at the Flamandville project, lAutorite de Surete Nucleaire (ASN), or French nuclear safety authority, in 2014 ordered AREVA to conduct material tests on its steel components. That occurred seven years after the E-PWR project was started at the existing nuclear plant site in view of Jersey and Guernsey islands and located on the same peninsula as Calais. In April 2015, the ASN announced: The results of these tests revealed the presence of a zone in which there was a high carbon concentration, leading to lower than expected mechanical toughness values. Initial measurements confirmed the presence of this anomaly in the reactor vessel head and reactor vessel bottom head of the Flamanville European Pressurized Reactor (EPR). That is bad news indeed, since it was the top head that got blown off at the Fukushima Dai-ichi No.3 reactor on March 15, 2011, sending a mushroom cloud into the jet stream moving toward North America while showering cascades of metallic micro-pellets containing radioactive isotopes over northern Japan. The bottom head plates of all three melted-down reactors at Fukushima were breached, allowing molten uranium and plutonium to flow like lava into the soil below the plant and subsequently releasing an unstoppable stream of radioactive isotopes into the Pacific Ocean to cause the greatest extinction event in human history. Even though nuclear engineers predict most criticality events in civilian reactors to be less damaging than the Fukushima catastrophe,, the vulnerability of the vessel heads is a serious threat that can wipe out all of Frances agricultural and livestock production overnight, as well as pose a lasting threat to public health across Europe. Chernobyl is proof of that. Not Quite Carbon Copies The mechanical lab tests on the Creusot heads showed 0.22 percent of carbon content in the steel alloy, significantly higher than the 0.16 limit. While a variance of 0.06 percent may not seem like much, it could mean the difference between a near-accident and a reactor breach that ends in a total meltdown. Carbon is the prevalent alloy in the steel-making process. A higher carbon content forms stronger bonds with steel atoms by creating a cubic cage-like structure. As shown in carbon-steel knives, however, an increasing amount of carbon makes hardened steel more brittle. In contrast, low carbon steel is softer but also more ductile. Malleability or toughness (as in resilience) is desirable in pots, kettles and nuclear reactors, since these vessels must expand when heated and shrink while cooled, without breakage or fracturing after repeated use. Pressurized water reactors operate at temperatures of more than 300 Celsius and internal pressures of about one metric ton per square inch. In event of an uncontrolled nuclear reaction, however, both temperature and pressure can rise rapidly. There can also be an additional threat from the Wigner effect of neutron bombardment, which blows apart iron atoms in the crystal matrix of steel. Inside pockmarked steel, radioactive releases hasten a reactor breach. Under sufficient heat and cooling, steel anneals, or rebuilds its crystal structure. But that will not happen during a meltdown due to rising internal temperatures, as shown at Fukushima, ad water-cooling becomes a futile gesture once a reactor is holed. A folk saying often wrongly attributed to King Richard III goes: For want of a nail the shoe was lost. for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the rider was lost . . . and so on to the loss of a kingdom. The global nuclear industry is now suffering an avalanche of losses due to a minuscule surplus of 0.06 percent of carbon in steel, sparking a change of events that threatens the future of nuclear power. Complicated Traceability The only publicly stated recommendation from the French nuclear authority was to install a mechanical analysis laboratory inside the Creusot Forge facility in the Saone-et-Loire district. A modern engineering facility like Creusot already has equipment with computer controls and monitoring systems, which have failed to solve the carbon anomalies. Technology may have reached the limits of materials science, and the brittleness program may not be fixable. Omitted from the ASN safety review, AREVA, Le Creusot Forge, JCFC or Mitsubishi is any mention of the underlying cause of the potentially dangerous anomaly in the carbon content of steel components. Exactly where and when in the production process does the metallurgical ratio structure of steel become inconsistent? For people unfamiliar with steel-making, a basic perception problem is rooted in the assumption that steel is impermeable. At the nano-level, however, the lattice of iron is a sponge-like material, which allows passage of gases like oxygen (the cause of rust) and carbon monoxide (which depletes rust). Despite its limitations, no other metal can match the strength and cost-effectiveness of steel. In the steel-making process, carbon is released inside a blast furnace by burning coke, a porous form of coal after its impurities have been removed by intense heat. The burning coke melts the pellets of ion ore. Carbon monoxide gas from coke combustion is reductive(removes oxygen) and restores iron oxide (rust) back into pig iron. Then oxygen is introduced to bond with the carbon monoxide to form carbon dioxide, which is then removed from the blast furnace. In the next phase, oxygen lowers carbon levels inside the steel, emitting more carbon dioxide, leaving the end product of low-carbon steel with fairly uniform consistency. It is not possible to maintain uniformity of carbon content through many rounds of reheating. The steel block is repeatedly heated for hot forging, which involves heavy-duty hammering of the metal after it becomes ductile in a gas-fired oven. The forging required for curved reactor vessel covers and channel heads likely puts sufficient stress on the steel to displace carbon atoms. The final results can be affected by the uneven contours of the object and differing densities of the metal, especially where it has been heavily forged, potentially causing displacement of carbon into denser clusters. That at least is a plausible explanation for the carbon anomalies as opposed to the closed-mouth silence from the nuclear industry, which has been totally unable to explain why it produces hundreds of types of products with metallurgical flaws. There are possible industrial design solutions to this morass of failed production techniques, but thats none of my business. Then again, there may be no solution to the fundamental problem of carbon drift in steel-making, at least nothing that is within reasonable cost to a nuclear industry already beset by 300-percent contact overruns at Flamanville. Qualifications at Question Who am I to impudently challenge the entire nuclear establishment over issues of quality-control that are heading toward another Fukushima-scale disaster? One does not have to be a genius to figure out whats wrong with the nuclear industry. My blue-collar competence comes from being a former licensed welder and a millwright (an equipment fixer) at U.S. Steel Southworks in Chicago and also in the seamless tube mill at Republic Steel in Gary, Indiana, where products of large dimension on a massive scale were produced from molten steel to build oil tankers and the Alaska pipeline. Working in the industry can inspire cynicism about corporate assurances of product quality. Once on the midnight shift at the 92-inch plate mill, I witnessed an entire train of defective inch-thick steel clanking back to the steelworks. Instead of lining a super-tanker, the vast stacks of brittle metal was left to rust in a huge pile of scrap. Inspection reports were routinely fudged or completely faked to placate the corporate bosses, whod do anything to fill an order to earn revenues for the near-bankrupt facility. On the other hand, there were outstanding moral examples of otherwise unheralded team leaders and champions of workers rights, but thats another story, which the latecomer to Southside Chicago named Barack Obama knows nothing about. The nearly century-old mill, a vast maze of wreckage on the shore of Lake Michigan where long ore ships from open-pit mines in Minnesota docked, was littered with giant ingots glowing red as they set to cool, the only trustworthy source of heat against the icy winter gusts. Despite the constant risks of injuries and accidental death, metalwork was still practiced as an art by older workers at the fire-spewing ovens, as they judged the readiness of steel in its stages by noticing subtle changes in its glowing hue, faint differences in the smell of its fumes, and the onset of scintillating sparks. My knowledge of steel actually began before then as a weekend blacksmith during university days, when I helped my welding instructor set up forges in an old barn near the rocky site of the fateful war dance of The Prophet Tenskwatawa who emboldened Chief Tecumsahs Shawnee warriors against the encroaching 4th U.S. Infantry in the Indiana territory during the year prior to the War of 1812. Blood and steel on the land that was once the worlds greatest stand of hardwood forest, since decimated down to flat fields of gene-modified corn and soybeans. Although a power hammer was installed in the beamed barn with hard effort, the dull mechanical beast was rarely used since nothing could match the ring of a hammer dropping in rhythmic cadence onto red-hot metal over an anvil. At the forge, my hand turned the rotary bellows to raise blue flames out of the self-made coke, while my eyes stared into that fiery cradle of every civilization that has ever risen and fallen since the start of the Iron Age, from the Hittites and the Mycenaeans of Homer, the Aryan realm of Zoroaster to the Mauryan Empire of the Buddhist king Asoka, to ancient China, Rome, the Arab world and Europe, and culminating in the Industrial Revolution, on down to that very hour when B-52s were mercilessly pummeling Vietnam with tons of ordnance. Steel holds the power over life and death, crafted into swords or ploughshares, and therefore must be imbued with virtue and justice, as pledged by every master swordmaker and authentic gunsmith. Only in our time has a crazed pseudo-scientific priesthood willfully and foolishly violated the sacred union of fire and metal, so that their abominable faith in atom-splitting can be proven in a false cosmology disguised as scientific theory, while bringing devastation upon humanity, from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Chernobyl and Fukushima, and on until their abuse of technology ends with the total extinction of life on this planet. The demented cult of nuclear believers have since thrown their support behind Shinzo Abe, a minion of the apocalyptic guru of the Aum Shinrikyo cult and his predecessor, the founder of Sukyo Mahikari, Yoshikazu Okada. In an exhortation that resonates in todays defect-ridden global nuclear industry, the militarist Okada urged his followers to plant nuclear bombs everywhere, and to occasionally detonate an atomic explosion to keep lesser peoples in fear and servitude. Every reactor is a time bomb ticking down to zero hour. That heinous injunction, which explains the murderous secrecy of Japans nuclear industry, and for that matter of the entire global nuclear sector, is the only explanation for the installation of defective reactors in more and more countries. Intentional or not, their common endgame is mass death through the spread of radioactivity, sending a plague of cancer everywhere and afterthe Fukushima meltdowns the start of a global extinction event. Theirs is the mad vision of the Final War preached by Shoko Asahara, now apparently pardoned of the death penalty for his role in the gassing 20,000 subway commuters at the morning rush hour in Tokyo, that opening act in this last harvest of souls. Against grotesque lies of the deceivers, along with public indifference and mental servitude, rusted metal must be purged with fire. After iron is refined in smoke and purified in flames to become steel, and metal rod is hammered into blade, then as a thin blue wave ripples toward the tapered edge, ready for quenching with a thrust into cold water, the sword is tempered. Honest men will rise and step forward to their calling so that life might triumph over evil. | 0 |
On Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily, guest Peter Schweizer talked about President Trump’s Jared Kushner, and his role in the controversy over meetings between Trump transition team members and various foreign interests. [On Wednesday, Kushner Cos. and the Anbang Insurance Group of China reportedly agreed to end talks about securing investment in an office tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The deal had been criticized as an effort by the Chinese to win favor with the Trump administration. “The biggest concern that I’ve had is whether Jared Kushner, whether it’s the president’s sons who are running the real estate business, that they are going to be offered or they are going to seek out sweetheart deals with foreign government entities — Chinese, Russian, Kazakhstan, you name it,” Schweizer told SiriusXM host Alex Marlow. “That’s where the vulnerability is, because they will make a killing financially, and a foreign entity will then gain leverage or favors from the Trump administration,” he said. “These things are very worrisome. Again, there’s no deals that seem to have been sealed, and there’s no evidence that there have been financial transfers,” he noted. “But this needs to be monitored — and monitored, I think, with great intensity because this has been a repeated pattern in American politics. ” Peter Schweizer is a senior editor at large for Breitbart News, president of the Government Accountability Institute, and author of the Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 1 |
Where is the announcement from Ivanka that you promoted? | 0 |
A student at James Madison Memorial High School in Madison, Wisconsin is seeking to change the name of the school, citing that President James Madison was a slave owner, a fact she says makes the school “unsafe” for black students. [Mya Berry, a senior, says the fact that President James Madison inherited slaves, along with his Montpelier plantation, from his father means her school — which, like the city of Madison, Wisconsin, is named after the fourth U. S. president — is hostile to black students, reports the Capital Times. In a change. org petition, which currently has nearly 1, 500 supporters, Berry states: The significance of this name in association with my school has a negative effect on memorials black students. The lack of representation I feel in this school makes me feel more than unsafe. I do not feel supported by the majority of staff at memorial, especially considering the fact that I’ve gotten called n word multiple times, along with having an individual threaten me by telling me they would lynch me. Berry continues in her petition that when race is discussed at school, she is “told my perspective is just an opinion, and not anything valid to take into consideration. ” “With all the injustice I and others face in James Madison Memorial High School, do you truly think it’s appropriate to glorify a man that enslaved my ancestors?” she writes, adding that another reason to remove Madison’s name from the school is the “education disparity” between white and black students. Berry also told the Capital Times she has never reported incidents in which she was allegedly threatened because she did not feel comfortable doing so. She also said the incidents did not happen over the course of the current school year. “At the time, I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t know who to reach out to. Now that I’m a senior and I’ve become more comfortable speaking out, I’ve told more people about it,” she said. “I feel like faculty overhear injustice and they know it’s wrong. Some of them don’t speak up, and that adds to the unsafe environment. ” James Madison High principal Jay Affeldt said he was unaware of Berry’s issues. “I have met and will continue to meet with Ms. Berry and other student leaders to discuss how we can best move forward to have this dialog as a larger school community in a safe and healthy way,” he told the Capital Times. “Also, I do not believe the specific incidents mentioned in the petition were ever reported to school staff, and I am trying to learn more about these incidents from Ms. Berry. ” “It’s important to me that every student feels safe, and we take all reports of hurtful behavior very seriously,” he said. | 1 |
Posted on October 26, 2016 by Edmondo Burr in News , UK // 0 Comments French authorities hope to clear all immigrants from the Calais jungle by Wednesday.
A French politician says the dismantling of the camp will have no effect on the thousands of refugees who seek to cross the channel to England for its generous welfare system.
RT.com reports:
Philippe Mignonet, the deputy mayor of Calais, believes the demolition of the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp will not stop the thousands of migrants from congregating in the French port town in the hope of crossing the English Channel.
“ The UK government says it does not want any more migrants but it never expels migrants who get there, ” Mignonet told the Daily Mail .
“ They claim benefits and housing, and all we get is the British-funded wall and fences. ”
For Mignonet, the £2 million (US$2.4 million) British-funded wall being built around the loading area of the Eurotunnel, which allows goods trucks to come from France into Britain, is simply not enough.
“ What English city would accept a fence and a wall being built by another country on their land? If the British government want to improve matters, they should come and talk to the city of Calais, ” he added.
Mignonet invited Prime Minister Theresa May to visit the town, and even offered to give her a covert ride from the airport.
“ I have a car with dark windows, so she doesn’t have to be seen, ” Mignonet said.
“ Calais was once part of England, and we have often worked together in the past. We can work together again. The people of Britain made their choice about Brexit, and some of those choices mean they will face difficulty, but putting walls and fences up here is not right. ”
The wall, which is seen as a blight on the coastal town, could also affect the price of the land once occupied by the Jungle camp, which will soon be ready for private development.
“ This is at the door of England, and near to the shuttle terminal for trucks, ” Mignonet said. “ What better place for British businesses to come? ”
Tighter border
The British public appears unmoved by French concerns. A new poll suggests most Brits would rather see their borders tightly secured than stay in the single market.
According to a poll commissioned by ITV, 58 percent of Brits approve of May’s Brexit strategy of prioritizing immigration controls over the negotiation of the UK’s access to the single market. Only a quarter were against.
Just over 40 percent of those asked insisted EU trade benefits should be prioritized throughout the divorce. However, a similar Sky News poll found the opposite to be the case.
A breakdown of the data, however, showed twice as many older Brits support May’s ‘hard Brexit’ and immigration control policies as the younger demographic. | 0 |
Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is reportedly considering a run for U. S. Senate in 2018, when incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein ( ) is said to be considering retirement. [Several media outlets report that Schwarzenegger, who recently raised his profile with a series of Twitter clashes with President Donald Trump, is thinking of the political fray after several years’ absence. Politico’s Carla Marinucci reports: “The prospect of Schwarzenegger’s return to elected politics in a 2018 U. S. Senate run — possibly as an independent — is generating increasing buzz in state Republican circles, fueled by the former governor’s seeming ability to get under the skin of President Donald Trump on social media. ” Schwarzenegger also opposed Trump in the Republican presidential primary, backing Ohio governor John Kasich instead. If elected, Schwarzenegger could pose a significant opposition threat to the Trump administration on issues such as climate change. California’s controversial system was introduced under Schwarzenegger’s administration. However, Schwarzenegger will have to confront his own political record along the way. Though he was to a second term in 2006, Schwarzenegger is mostly remembered for leaving the state in a fiscal mess after abandoning the reform agenda that brought him to office in the first place. The East Bay Times recalls: The Republican governor’s approval ratings fluctuated while he was in office and were as high as 63 percent in March 2007. But five months after he left office, a Field Poll found that three of four California voters surveyed had a negative image of Schwarzenegger in the wake of revelations he had fathered a boy with a former household staff member while married to TV journalist Maria Shriver. Whether he runs as an independent or as a Republican, Schwarzenegger would face stiff competition from a long line of California Democrats who have been waiting, patiently, to angle for Feinstein’s seat. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
There’s another whopper in Obamas lie about hillarys email, he says the administration strives for transparency. Not true Jonathan Gruber , ACA architect was recorded admitting specifically that transparency is a liability so the ACA was written to be long and convoluted. | 0 |
“Revolution is probably the only solution.”
That seems to be the conclusion of Paul Craig Roberts, a respected member of Reagan’s Administration and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
The crisis has simply been building.
Like others, Dr. Roberts highlights the promises of Donald Trump and the reasons behind his sweeping populist victory.
However, he warns that if Trump “pulls an Obama” and sells out the people to whom he has promised change, violent revolution will likely be the result – because the rage against the machine is “permanent.”
He told the Richie Allen Show :
Paul Craig Roberts: “The good thing about the election is it showed the American people could defeat the establishment; it could defeat the oligarchs; it could defeat their candidate. So that is a good thing; it shows that the people finally woke up. They understood that a lot was at risk. They were not being served by the government – and the fact that they realized this. They are not as insouciant as they have been. They are more aware. They were determined; they were not influenced by the propaganda against Trump. And so that’s what’s good, and this will stay. I think this will be permanent.
Now if Trump pulls and Obama and sells them out, the question is will they get demoralized and give up, or do they get more angry and the next time we see a bloody revolution. You know, sometimes, when you had so much corruption – in the United States, every institution is totally corrupt, everyone. The oligarchy have corrupted everything. When you get so much corruption, sometimes you can’t have a change without bloodshed. People have to die.
Richie Allen: “And you’re a pacifist.”
Roberts: “Our founding fathers were aware of this. Thomas Jefferson was explicit about it. So what we may see if Trump is blocked or he gives up or nothing can happen, people they could just give up or they could just get angry.”
Why? Because people are fed up with the establishment, hungry for change and too desperate to ignore the crisis they are in.
The economic situation alone has driven the masses to the edge. Without a decent standard of living and a secure place in or near the middle class, things are going to be unstable and ripe for a volatile chemical reaction .
Although Paul Craig Roberts statements seem alarming, they are in line with everything that has been happening economically, and secondarily politically, for the past several cycles and through the entire Obama presidency.
Watch the full interview via The Richie Allen Show :
Paul Craig Roberts “The People Spoke But We’ll Have Violent Revolution
If Trump Lets Them Down!”
History proves that things are teetering towards revolution, and if a President Trump doesn’t offer satisfaction, then people may very likely turn towards their only remaining alternative. Allen : “So we could see more than civil disobedience, we could see violence.”
Roberts : “I think it only could be violence, because if you try to do civil disobedience, you’re individually acting and you have no protection, but violence requires large numbers and there’s protection in numbers. If I tell them, ‘I’m not having anything to do with you, I’m not paying my taxes,’ they’ll just come pick me up. But there’s tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions saying, ‘Screw you, we’re going to kill you’, you can’t pick them up.”
“And so, I think that if – you see, look, Richie, everyone needs to understand this. The living standards of the average American have collapsed. All this b.s. about America being rich, and they’re always so wonderful and the streets are paved with gold, but it’s all B.S. For 20, 30 years the living standards have been collapsing – since the Clinton regime. Collapsing. We have half of the 25 year old Americans living at home with their parents because they cannot get employment that lets them have an independent existence. They cannot pay their rent. We have huge numbers of university graduates suffocated by student loans. They can’t get jobs that let them pay the loans off. We have more people aged 24 through 34 years of age living at home with their parents than living independently.”
“There are no good jobs created. The jobs reports, to the extent that they aren’t just fabricated, they are part-time, low-pay jobs without any benefits. No pension. No health benefits. They country, the people are being destroyed. The retired people have had no interest income on their savings for eight years – they’re having to draw down the money they expected to produce an income to see them through their retirement. People are suffering. They can’t buy houses – if you can’t form a household, you can’t buy a house. You can’t buy home furnishings, appliances.”
“The whole economy is hurt. So it’s a really serious economic situation. The domestic market is almost non-existent; it can’t grow because there’s no income growth for anybody except the 1% – and there’s a limit to how much the 1% can consume. So the economic situation is very bad. There’s debt everywhere. Individuals don’t have any discretionary income – except for a very few. And so that type of situation, if it worsens, at some point people say ‘I can’t survive… I’ve nothing to lose’. […] This is a situation here. We’re talking about the United States is degenerating into a third world country.”
This is not just a question of Trump’s performance, qualifications or ego in office.
This is a systematic problem that spans decades of the American history. The Clintons and Bushes are symptoms of that problem, and the system underestimated the intense angry and dissatisfaction against those entrenched oligarchs and elites.
However, as Paul Craig Roberts makes clear earlier in his interview here , Trump faces a significant threat of being undermined by his “advisors,” staff, cabinet appointments and so forth, particularly if they are loyal to the establishment, as nearly every ‘experienced’ individual in these positions seems to be.
Neocons and the like could swiftly pervert yet another “change” administration into an establishment cover operation for the continuity of their control system. Indeed, even with the best of intentions, Trump faces an uphill battle at overturning the status quo. Indeed, the system may well be plotting to unleash a new wave of economic decline that they can blame him for, and break the dam of unrest that has been swelling.
The larger storm is still brewing. Roberts argued in his column, ‘ The working class won the election ‘ that:
The US presidential election is historic, because the American people were able to defeat the oligarchs. Hillary Clinton, an agent for the Oligarchy, was defeated despite the vicious media campaign against Donald Trump. This shows that the media and the political establishments of the political parties no longer have credibility with the American people.
It remains to be seen whether Trump can select and appoint a government that will serve him and his goals to restore American jobs and to establish friendly and respectful relations with Russia, China, Syria, and Iran.
It also remains to be seen how the Oligarchy will respond to Trump’s victory. Wall Street and the Federal Reserve can cause an economic crisis in order to put Trump on the defensive, and they can use the crisis to force Trump to appoint one of their own as Secretary of the Treasury.
[…] We won’t know what to expect until we see who are the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries. If it is the usual crowd, we will know Trump has been captured.
[…] If Trump is advised to be conciliatory, to hold out his hand, and to take the establishment into his government, the American people will again be disappointed. In a country whose institutions have been so completely corrupted by the Oligarchy, it is difficult to achieve real change without bloodshed.
The post-election riots against Trump, the Black Lives Matter protests that have pitted police against inner-city people of color and the quieter exercises for martial law and the containment of a domestic uprising all prove that the elite understand what is coming, and while they may have no way to stop it altogether, they may succeed in steering it into meaningless fights and divisions which they can use as a buffer.
Economic devastation and the collapse of the system means that literally tens of millions of people will have nothing left to lose , and nothing better to turn to than mob revolt.
Beware of what’s coming, prepare for long periods of instability and roaming violence, and pray that the system corrects for the benefit of the people of this country once again.
Read more:
“The Second American Revolution Is Happening” – U.S. Intelligence Agencies Have Started A Counter Coup Against Clinton
“It Is Really Hard To Argue With Trump About This”: Face It, America Is In Decline
“Revolt of the Elites”: Society Is Divided, Self-Absorbed and Powerless to Stop Them
Triggers For Revolt: Rising Resource Costs Escalate Odds of Global Unrest
Who Are The “Deplorables” And Why Do They Refuse To Be Trampled Upon?
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Throughout this bitter election campaign, liberal celebrities like Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lawrence, Lena Dunham and Miranda used their powerful media platforms to sing Hillary Clinton’s praises. Now they’ve invited their online followers to join them in processing her loss and protesting the impending administration of Donald J. Trump. “I want to live in a #CountryOfKindness where #LoveTrumpsHate,” Lady Gaga wrote on Twitter the day after the election. She added a photo of herself at a protest outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, where she had climbed onto a truck in a strapless black jumpsuit and raised a sign. While the angry tweets, therapeutic Instagram testimonials and fiery speeches may comfort their fans, these celebrities are also inadvertently energizing the opposition. Conservative news outlets — most notably Breitbart News Network, the populist enclave — are perfecting the art of sapping Democratic stars’ name recognition and repurposing their words and actions into material. The enormous reach that celebrities enjoy, and the privileged bubble they live in, is wielded against them here, refashioned as evidence of the outsize control that the rich and famous have over regular Americans. This new battle in the culture wars is being waged not by bombastic, commentators like Rush Limbaugh, but by nimble, often nameless online aggregators who quickly churn through popular culture and throw the most evocative stories to their readers, often without much commentary. All it takes is a pointed headline, an unflattering photo and a few (and real) quotes. Like this: “Lady Gaga Protests on Sanitation Truck Outside Trump Tower,” read Breitbart’s headline for its article on her tweet. America is divided by its politics, its media, and as this election made even clearer, by its celebrity influencers. In the weeks before the election, the “Avengers” director Joss Whedon booted up his own online public service announcement factory, Save the Day, and recruited stars like Robert Downey Jr. Don Cheadle and Scarlett Johansson to churn out web videos for Mrs. Clinton. Katy Perry, America Ferrera, LeBron James and Beyoncé joined Democratic candidate at rallies. And when Vice Mike Pence caught a performance of the Broadway hit “Hamilton” on Friday, one of the show’s stars addressed him on behalf of “the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us. ” No offense to Paris Hilton and Pat Boone, but the doesn’t have the biggest stars on his side. Instead, Breitbart mostly uses its culture pages to aim spitballs at Hollywood lefties. As part of its coverage of what it calls Big Hollywood, the glamour of celebrities becomes grist for the site’s overarching narrative about the corrosive influence of the cultural elite. The image Ms. Dunham posted to Instagram of a restorative trip to Sedona, Ariz. may have played as soothingly aspirational for an audience concentrated with young, coastal women, but to Breitbart’s demo, under the headline “‘Grieving’ Lena Dunham Seeks Answers in Arizona Wilderness After Trump Win,” it looks like a damning shot of a celebrity who decided to jet into a red state for a quirky vacation retreat. As the “Hamilton” controversy raged, prodded by Mr. Trump’s demand that the cast apologize to Mr. Pence, Breitbart pointedly reminded readers of the private Mr. Miranda hosted for Mrs. Clinton during the campaign, where ticket prices ranged from $2, 700 to $100, 000. And just like that, a celebrity speaking out against Mr. Trump becomes a point in his defense. Breitbart’s postelection Hollywood coverage appears largely to be a cool cataloging of aggrieved celebrities, including Rick Ross (who just dropped a video for the song “Free Enterprise,” which includes a lyric that makes reference to assassinating Mr. Trump). Beneath the surface of these articles, though, is subtle signaling at work. A piece about a postelection Vice essay by Jennifer Lawrence, in which she railed against the barriers still facing women in the workplace, includes an underhanded accolade about her: She was “recently named the actress in Hollywood for the second straight year. ” This recent headline — “‘Depressed’ Robert De Niro: Trump Election Makes Me ‘Feel Like I Did After ’” — packs a punch, pairing the image of a pathetic, weepy liberal with a flip attitude toward terrorism. Breitbart’s article on the Hamilton titled “Tolerance: ‘Hamilton’ Cast Lectures Mike Pence From Broadway Stage,” is threaded with buzzwords — tolerance, lectures, Broadway — that cast liberals as elite, pedantic hypocrites. While Breitbart produces its share of original content — it ran an essay by Ann Coulter ridiculing whining celebrities last week — most of the conservative media outlets doing this work are scrappy, spammy and surprisingly banal. On Regated, a conservative aggregator, the “Hamilton” incident was inflated into a class war: “Just like clockwork, the rich elitist liberals come out to mock the poor. Hamilton cast members along with other liberals took to Twitter to mock and bully the less fortunate people in America. ” But much of the text generated by these sites is barely politicized. The conservative online outlet Patriotic Folks recently aggregated quotes from a Lady Gaga essay, published in Harper’s Bazaar, about how she was “depressed and hurt” about Mr. Trump’s remarks about women, and worked in just a whiff of commentary: “Women are fighting for their lives because of the leaked ‘Access Hollywood’ tape where Donald Trump makes lewd comments, or at least that’s what Lady Gaga thinks. ” Highlighting words like “hurt” and “depressed” works like a conservative dog whistle, signaling to readers who want to revel in liberals’ pain or ridicule them as emotional children. Postelection, Breitbart may appear little different from any aggregator. But the site’s greater political context, as a breeding ground for extremists, adds another layer. Breitbart is the site that boosted Stephen K. Bannon to a thought leader. (Once the site’s executive chairman, he took a leave of absence to steer Mr. Trump’s campaign and now has a top White House position.) With that in mind, an article calling attention to Ms. Dunham’s Jewish faith feels like a bone thrown to the site’s white nationalist readers. And the catalog of slighted celebrities starts to read like something of a enemies list. The real ideological action is undertaken by the audience, whose members read between the lines of these culture pieces and then scribble in the margins. Breitbart’s two posts on Ms. Dunham have amassed more than 10, 000 comments, including this insight: “Lena was an awesome Trump vote recruiter. ” Meanwhile, the muted Patriotic Folks piece on Lady Gaga soon migrated to a Facebook page that reaches millions, Make America Great Today, which shared it with a baiting line, “More white women voted for Donald J. Trump than Hillary Clinton. ” Lefty celebrities have long been preaching to the choir, but they are increasingly galvanizing the other side when their chatter is rerouted into an online conservative echo chamber. A study last year by the Bowling Green State University professors David Jackson and Melissa Miller found that celebrity political statements were highly polarizing to a sample set of Ohio voters, and that no celebrity — not Trace Adkins, not Ted Nugent, not even Oprah — was likely to inspire net positive votes for his or her candidate of choice. These aggregators make sure that any leftist celebrity’s political reach will be neutralized by a backlash from people who don’t idolize and agree with them. None of that is likely to stop celebrities from using their own soapboxes to promote their politics. But they would be smart to consider how their words will play on other platforms, too. | 1 |
Woman awarded $70M after contracting cancer from Johnson & Johnson talcum powder
Wednesday, November 02, 2016 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer Tags: talc , ovarian cancer , jury award (NaturalNews) Once again, a St. Louis jury has ruled that Johnson & Johnson damaged women's health by engaging in a decades-long coverup about the potential risks of talcum powder ("baby powder") as a feminine hygiene product. On October 27, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $70.1 million to Deborah Giannecchini of Modesto, California, who received an ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2012.For 40 years, Giannecchini had used Johnson & Johnson's Baby Powder to keep her genital area dry, a use promoted by the company.The main ingredient in talcum powder is talc, a mineral widely used in paints and plastics as well as cosmetics, where it is used to absorb moisture. Some evidence suggests that regular exposure to talc, particularly in the genital area, can increase the risk of ovarian cancer.The jury found Johnson & Johnson guilty of negligence for failing to warn customers of this fact. Conspiracy to conceal risks Ovarian cancer is a rare but highly lethal disease. Well-established risk factors include obesity, not having children, estrogen therapy after menopause, and a family history of ovarian or breast cancer.The evidence linking talc to ovarian cancer is compelling but not yet conclusive. The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists talc as a "possible" carcinogen.Among the robust studies suggesting a connection are two meta-analyses that found a roughly one-third increase in ovarian cancer risk among women who were regularly exposed to talc . The first, published in 2003, found the connection in all cases. The second, published in 2013, found it only in women who applied talc directly to the genital area.The case marks the third guilty verdict against Johnson & Johnson over this issue. St. Louis juries have previously slapped the company with $55 million and $72 million judgments.The first case was filed by the family of Jackie Fox of Birmingham, Alabama, who had died of ovarian cancer after long-term use of talcum powder. In that case, the jury found the company guilty not just of negligence, but also of "failure to warn and conspiracy to conceal the risks of its products."Another 2,000 lawsuits are pending. Thirty years of deception Even after the recent verdict, Johnson & Johnson continues to insist on the safety of its product, including for genital use. In its home state of New Jersey, the company has successfully gotten two lawsuits over the issue dismissed. It is appealing all three guilty verdicts from Missouri.Investors seem to believe the company will prevail. Its stock price seemed unaffected by the recent guilty verdict.Alexandra Scranton, director of science and research at Women's Voices for the Earth, has characterized Johnson and Johnson's behavior as typical of Big Pharma and other companies that go to extreme lengths to keep selling products even as evidence mounts of their dangers.Scranton said that documents uncovered during the Fox trial show that for decades, Johnson & Johnson sought to take advantage of the scientific uncertainty over the talc-ovarian cancer link, downplaying the potential risk rather than pursing a "clearly more ethical role, to take a precautionary approach." Indeed, Scranton notes, the company "poured money over years into defending talc."Among the documents revealed during the Fox case are internal memos showing that Johnson & Johnson had been preparing to be sued over the health risks of talc for 30 years. In one 1997 memo, a medical consultant warned that anyone who continued to deny a connection between ovarian cancer and genital talc use would eventually be seen as on par with tobacco companies denying a cancer link: "denying the obvious in the face of all evidence to the contrary."Another memo laid out a strategy to counter falling talc sales caused by health concerns by more aggressive marketing to minority communities. Sources for this article include: http://www.naturalnews.com/053112_Johnson_&_talc_ovarian_cancer.html Health Ranger Approved AquaTru Water Filter Back in Stock
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The BBC has lauded an Australian photographer’s response to what he calls a “tragic” rise in “ sentiment” in his homeland by taking the piece of Islamic female clothing known as the burqa and using it as an art prop. [Fabian Muir started his project in 2014 after former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott called for a ban on the burqa being worn on the premises of the National Parliament in Canberra. Mr. Abbott cited security concerns, calling the clothing a “fairly confronting form of attire and frankly I wish it weren’t worn”. According to the BBC, Mr. Muir’s Urban Burqa project is a critique of “the rising far right and Islamophobia” in general and Australians who feel that immigration from Islamic countries delivers less than desirable outcomes in particular. “Tragically, [ sentiment] has only become more magnified since 2014,” Mr. Muir told the BBC, pointing to 49 per cent of Australians who, in a 2016 poll, supported a total ban on Muslims entering the country. “The refugee crisis … is always such an easy target for politicians. There’s always going to be a percentage of the population who swallows that because it seems like an easy solution to problems. ” Mr. Muir said Urban Burqa outlines a “cultural clash” that his art could overcome. “It’s still about simulation but there’s also a sense of confrontation and adaptation, hence this darker, edgier feel to it,” he said. All the images in his series take the burqa and place it in everyday suburban scenes, from supermarkets to subway tunnels. Mr. Muir does not give historical nor religious context to the burqa which is the most concealing of Islamic female clothing. It covers the entire face and body, leaving just a tiny mesh screen as a window to the world. The burqa is worn when a woman leaves her home and is compelled to wear it until she returns. Critics regard it as a symbol of Islamist radicalism and supremacy. Rather than a religious symbol of oppression, Mr. Fabian likes to think of the burqa as an ennobling prospect for those who wear it. He told the BBC that the last image in his series shows a woman in a burqa standing in a skate park. “For me it’s a nice closing image, it’s optimistic — because of the reaching out,” he said. “[But] there’s a sense that there are a lot of barriers that have to be overcome. ” | 1 |
By Alice Salles The 2016 U.S. election shocked everyone. But while the results did not look like anything pundits and pollsters predicted, American voters stayed mostly consistent on at least one... | 0 |
Next Prev Swipe left/right A lawyer explains how Ariel could have got out of her contract with Ursula in The Little Mermaid
The internet is a wonderful thing, with all kinds of information – case in point, writer and lawyer Shon Faye has provided this comprehensive account of the legal ways Ariel could have annulled her contract with Ursula The Sea Witch in Disney’s The Little Mermaid . one of the cutest/saddest things I ever did was write out the legal ways Ariel could have annulled her contract with Ursula The Sea Witch pic.twitter.com/xyaGiuXW5U | 0 |
Former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan, David Stockman, warns that regardless of who wins the US presidential election, Americans can expect the stock market to drop by... | 0 |
November 7, 2016 Michelle Obama Warns That ‘Playing Around With A Protest Vote’ Will Lead To A Trump Win (VIDEO)
Speaking at Hillary Clinton’s rally in Philadelphia on the eve of the election, Michelle Obama had a warning for American voters: Choosing not to vote or casting a protest vote will put Donald Trump in the White House.
The first lady also tried to make sure that the voters listening to her speech, whether in person or on television, understand just how important their vote really is.
“And here’s the beauty of it all, this election is on us. It is on us. If we get out and vote tomorrow, Hillary Clinton will win,” she said. “But, if we stay home or if we play around with a protest vote, then Hillary’s opponent will win. Period. End of story.”
“Look, it is important to understand that presidential elections are breathtakingly close. They are decided by just 5, 10, 15 votes per precinct,” she added.
Michelle Obama’s passionate plea comes after a long and contentious campaign. Some people are convinced their vote doesn’t matter. Some people are still pouting because their favorite candidate didn’t win the primary. Others have swallowed the kool-aid and believe both candidates are the same. But Michelle Obama is right, not voting or voting for a third party candidate is the same as casting a vote for Trump. Quite frankly, there is just too much at stake for that this time around.
Watch Michelle Obama give warn Americans about the importance of their vote, here:
Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Share this Article! | 0 |
Study Finds Racial Discrimination by Uber and Lyft Drivers Eric Newcomer, Bloomberg, October 31, 2016
Drivers for Uber Technologies Inc. in Boston canceled rides for men with black-sounding names more than twice as often as for other men. Black people in Seattle using Uber and Lyft Inc. faced notably longer wait times to get paired with drivers than white customers. The findings come from a study published on Monday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Washington.
{snip}
A new generation of technology companies have begun to grapple with how they can minimize racial discrimination. Airbnb Inc. recently released an extensive report studying racial bias on the site and proposed some changes to its policies. The home-rental company committed to offering more training for its hosts and hiring a more diverse workforce. It sent e-mails to customers over the weekend saying they must agree not to discriminate in order to use the site starting next month. However, Airbnb has resisted advocates’ calls to remove photos of guests and hosts from its platform.
In the case of ride-hailing apps, researchers similarly believe that names and photos are an issue. Such information gives drivers the means to discriminate against prospective riders. Uber doesn’t show customer photos to drivers. Lyft does, but passengers aren’t required to provide a headshot. Both San Francisco-based companies give riders’ names to their drivers.
{snip}
The study, conducted in Seattle and Boston, included almost 1,500 rides. Four black and four white research assistants–split evenly among men and women–ordered cars over six weeks in Seattle. All used their photos on the ride-sharing apps. A second test was held in Boston with riders “whose appearance allowed them to plausibly travel as a passenger of either race,” although they used either “African American sounding” or “white sounding” names, the researchers said. The study found that Uber drivers disproportionately canceled on riders with black-sounding names, even though the company penalizes drivers who cancel frequently.
{snip}
The research also observed discrimination in the taxi industry–a well-known, decades-old issue. The paper doesn’t compare the rate of discrimination between traditional drivers for taxis or ride-hailing apps. Uber has suggested that it doesn’t offer tips in its app, as many drivers have asked for, because they can introduce racial biases.
Lyft and Uber face different issues. While researchers found that drivers took noticeably longer to accept ride requests from black men on both services in Seattle, total wait times were the same for both races on Lyft. On Uber, total wait times were longer for black men. Drivers using Lyft didn’t cancel on black riders disproportionately, but the researchers said that because Lyft shows riders’ names and faces upfront, its drivers could simply screen out black passengers. Uber doesn’t show names until after the driver accepts the fare. “In Lyft, you can discriminate without ever having to accept and hit cancel,” Knittel said.
{snip} | 0 |
Congressman Jeff Duncan ( ) spoke Tuesday with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow about the deep state, as well as the administration’s new executive order on immigration and travel, which he supports. [“I honestly think there’s something to it,” Duncan said when asked about the notion of a deep state. “You go back to October. The New York Times reported that there were wiretaps. There were transcripts of things that were said in private conversation. ” Added Duncan, “In broader context, we need to think of the entrenched bureaucrats and whether they can be fired once they’re ratted out for leaking information, how we fire folks that have worked for the government for a long time — career or not. ” Shifting to immigration, Duncan said, “We are a very benevolent country. We have always taken refugees. ” Paraphrasing the Statue of Liberty inscription, he said, “Give us your tired, your poor, your hungry. ” “But folks had to go to Ellis Island,” added Duncan, “and wait to be screened before they were able to come into the country. And then once they came, they were required to assimilate. ” “We have thrown assimilation out the window,” he stated. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
By Jon Rappoport
Breaking: leaked 2008 memo from attorney Kumiki Gibson to Clinton Foundation chairman Bruce Lindsay. Gibson had been hired to do an independent assessment of the Foundation’s practices.
Below are key quotes from Gibson’s findings. Keep in mind that the Clinton Foundation’s very existence depends on it being legally certified as a non-profit entity, in compliance with laws governing non-profits. Break those laws and its non-profit status would be revoked, and the whole operation would go down the drain.
Gibson: “Important responsibilities regarding corporate filings are delegated to the [Foundation] CFO, who appears to delegate them to an outside organization, with very little oversight by the legal department. As a result, the Foundation is not in compliance with the filings rules, including in New York, which requires the Foundation to be certified to do business in the State.” [Apparently, the Clinton Foundation was not legally registered as a non-profit in New York.]
Gibson: “No matter what the leadership decides about the larger, over-arching question, it must act immediately to bring the Foundation into compliance with the law and standards that govern not-for-profits, and must create strong legal and HR offices so to prevent any lapses in the future.”
Gibson: “The Foundation does not have a record retention policy[!], and the procedures currently utilized in Harlem [headquarters] may violate the law.”
Zero Hedge writes: “Furthermore, and more troubling, the [Gibson] review pointed to a high-ranking but unnamed foundation executive who was ‘being paid by [President Clinton], the government and the foundation’ who ‘allowed the foundation to host what may have been (or may have been viewed as) a political event, apparently without official pre-approval from the foundation’s legal department and without regard, before the fact, to the impact of that decision on the foundation’s tax exempt status.’”
This memo was written in 2008. It would have taken then, and it would now take, about a month of investigation by New York State and US Dept. of Justice officials to nail down the particulars and sink the Clinton Foundation.
That didn’t happen then. Will it happen now? Not if the Dept. of Justice has anything to say about it. The Clintons are protected.
But evidence of the Foundation corruption is spreading like wildfire. Some fires are impossible to contain.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix , click here .)
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED , EXIT FROM THE MATRIX , and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX , Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29 th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine . | 0 |
As a child, you played Laura Ingalls Wilder in the TV adaptation of “Little House on the Prairie. ” Now you’re running to represent the Eighth District of Michigan in Congress. If you win, will this be your first job? I’ve done volunteer work, but I’ve never been paid for it. So, yes, it will be my first. There was no salary for the presidency of the Screen Actors Guild. Famously, the SAG presidency was the thing on Ronald Reagan’s résumé that supporters pointed to when he first got into politics. Does it actually prepare you for political office? Like Washington, SAG is a system there’s a liberal and a conservative party. The names change, but when I was there, my party was called the Restore Respect Party, and my opposition was the Membership First Party. I reached across the aisle to a few people from my opponents’ party who I thought had really terrific ideas. Are there any other that you look at and see as role models? Because I am a woman doing this, I don’t know that there is anyone else out there like me. Have you heard the expression that “Washington is Hollywood for ugly people”? What a horrible thing to say. It’s far from the worst thing that’s been said about D. C. and I think there’s some truth to it: Both are full of very ambitious people who network all the time and who sometimes forget the reason they came in the first place. So, what is Hollywood the Washington for? Well, the best way I can liken the two is the Republican debates, which are the single greatest reality program on television today. How does it feel to be an entertainer running in this cycle, which has been unprecedented in its levels of theatricality? There is no theatricality going down here in the Eighth District of Michigan. You used to have a blog, and one post goes into great detail about your decision to do breast augmentation, and then your decision to have the implants removed. Do you think that your habit of being so candid is an asset as a politician, or do you think you’ll need to be a little more disciplined? Well, I’m not a traditional politician. I was not raised to be a politician. I am a citizen. I think leaders should be more candid, frankly, and less political. Unlike most people, you had a profession as a child. Did you ever go through a period in your youth when you thought about what you were going to be when you grow up? I actually wanted to be a neurosurgeon specializing in pediatric oncology. My mother practically told me, “You know that what you’re doing is a career, right?” I said, “Is it, really?” I’ve stayed in entertainment in various forms, and it’s extraordinary that all those decisions led here — I never thought I would be running for office. If you could wave a magic wand and pass any bill through Congress, what would it be? The first thing I would do is the Paycheck Fairness Act. In your 2009 memoirs, you wrote that you were considering a second career as a nurse. And on your blog, you’ve said you’re bad at . Why should voters think that running for office is more than just a whim for you? Because this campaign is my primary focus. I have the ability to focus when need be. You’re in recovery — and in recovery, it’s highly recommended that you develop a spiritual practice. What does yours look like? I have absolute belief in a higher power. I believe that I can do nothing without a community of people around me. How do these beliefs inform your politics? I have faith in people. I have a faith that love will win out. But if you look at the headlines, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of love in politics these days. I’m sorry. That doesn’t feel like a question. | 1 |
WikiLeaks Director Gavin MacFadyen Has Passed Away WikiLeaks Director Gavin MacFadyen Has Passed Away By 0 125
WikiLeaks Director and founder of the Centre for Investigative Journalism Gavin MacFadyen has died. WikiLeaks confirmed on their official Twitter account that the journalist had passed by posting a tribute to the man they say is now taking “his fists and his fight to battle God.”
Gavin Macfadyen, beloved director of WikiLeaks, now takes his fists and his fight to battle God. Sock it to him, forever, Gavin. -JA pic.twitter.com/7zyzs1Qxxk
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 23, 2016
The publication announced the death of the beloved director by posting a photo and tribute to their Twitter account. The message was signed “JA” indicating that it came directly from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; however, it is currently unknown at this time how Assange gained internet access as he recently had his access cut by the Ecuadorian Embassy over potential election “interference” charges.
WikiLeaks also posted a statement from MacFadyen’s wife, Susan Benn, to the social media account. | 0 |
To help explain why the British voted to leave the European Union, look to Switzerland. The famously neutral Swiss rejected membership in the European Economic Area, a potential steppingstone to the European Union, in a 1992 referendum, but Switzerland didn’t formally withdraw its dormant application until last week, when the Swiss Parliament — caught up in a burst of nationalism fueled in part by Britain’s vote on Thursday on whether to leave the European Union — decided overwhelmingly to terminate it. Only “a few lunatics” still want to join the European Union, said the Swiss lawmaker Thomas Minder, a staunch proponent of “Swissism,” after last week’s action. That may be an overstatement, but it’s easy to see why the Swiss would feel vindicated. With a per capita gross domestic product of $80, 675 in 2015, according to the International Monetary Fund, Switzerland ranks second in the world (after Luxembourg) far ahead of Britain ($43, 771) and the United States ($55, 805.) Switzerland’s unemployment rate was 3. 3 percent in May, lower than that of Britain or the United States, which have both been hovering around 5 percent this year. Switzerland has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, and there have been no terrorist incidents there in the last 30 years. Known for its religious tolerance since a civil war during the Reformation, Switzerland accommodates four national languages and has a higher percentage of Muslims (5 percent) than Britain. Roughly a quarter of Switzerland’s population is made up of foreigners. Switzerland’s reputation for cleanliness, punctuality and efficiency is so widespread that the Swiss tourism board pokes fun at the stereotype. The only problem? It’s doubtful that Britain (or any other European country, for that matter) could replicate what’s widely known as the “Swiss miracle” by abandoning the European Union. “It’s all an illusion,” said John McCormick, an professor of European Union politics at Indiana University Indianapolis and the author of “Why Europe Matters for Britain: The Case for Remaining In. ” This isn’t simply because the island kingdom of Britain is so different from landlocked Switzerland, though it is. Its population of 65 million is much bigger than Switzerland’s eight million, as is its economy ($2. 85 trillion in economic output in 2015 compared with Switzerland’s $664 billion). Switzerland owes its highly productive economy to an overwhelming focus on lucrative jobs in financial services and precision engineering — in contrast to Britain, where the City of London financial district is a sparkling crown jewel encased in a broader, duller economy laced with generally aging manufacturers and a large, comparatively inefficient public sector. Moreover, the Swiss all but invented the notion of the Protestant work ethic. (In 2012 Swiss voters firmly rejected an initiative to extend their annual paid vacation time to six weeks from four.) “Switzerland’s prosperity has nothing to do with independence from the E. U.,” Professor McCormick said. “Services tend to be more profitable than industry, so Switzerland will always be ahead of the U. K. because of the way their economy is structured. ” He noted that Luxembourg, another small, landlocked European country with an economy oriented toward providing financial services for the world’s wealthy, is a founding member and staunch supporter of the European Union. Luxembourg’s per capita gross domestic product was $101, 994 in 2015 — by far the highest in the world. An argument can be made that Switzerland’s economy would be in even better shape if it had joined the European Union. Its Alpine neighbor, Austria, joined in 1995 after years of debate. Its economic growth outpaced Switzerland’s in the ensuing years. More fundamentally, the notion that Switzerland is less dependent on the European Union and enjoys a higher degree of sovereignty than Britain is also a “fantasy,” said Caroline de Gruyter, European affairs correspondent for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and the author of a book about the impact of globalization on a Swiss village. Switzerland, with its heavily economy, hardly exists in isolation. After the Swiss rejected European Union membership, Switzerland negotiated bilateral agreements giving it free access to European markets. In return, Switzerland agreed to abide by most European Union policies, including immigration and the relatively free movement of workers among countries. But Switzerland has no say in determining those policies. The European Union is now Switzerland’s largest trading partner, and Switzerland is the European Union’s . Norway has a similar status outside the European Union. Both countries are economically dependent on the much larger European market. “Switzerland and Norway cannot survive on their own,” Ms. de Gruyter said. “They want to participate in a lot of common E. U. projects. ” But the “E. U. countries can decide on these projects, while Switzerland and Norway cannot. During European summits in Brussels, the Norwegian ambassador would often sit with me in the press room, waiting for decisions to be announced. ” “Sovereignty is relative,” said Christophe Crombez, a Belgian economist and specialist in European Union politics at the Europe Center of Stanford University. “Even the United States has to abide by World Trade Organization rules and other treaties. If you really wanted to be completely sovereign, you’d look to a country like North Korea. ” The extent of Swiss sovereignty will soon be tested anew. In 2014 the Swiss voted to impose immigration quotas on European Union countries, a blatant violation of the union’s principle of free movement of labor. The Swiss vote, which closely followed the admission of Croatia into the European Union, was aimed at curbing immigration from Eastern Europe and requires Switzerland to renegotiate its immigration policies with the European Union within three years. The European Union has rejected the idea out of hand, saying Switzerland can’t pick and choose which policies to embrace, and that it risks losing unfettered access to European Union markets. Negotiations were suspended pending the British vote. But now that the British have made their decision, Brussels is expected to take a hard line. The European Union has little choice, Professor Crombez said. “Within the E. U. some countries benefit in some ways, and other countries in others. That’s what has made the E. U. a success. If each country said it only wanted to participate in the policies that benefited it, the whole thing would fall apart. ” The Swiss vote also suggested there were limits to Switzerland’s . In addition to imposing immigration quotas, Switzerland is much more restrictive in granting asylum to refugees from places like Syria than many other European countries are. “No one will say this, but there’s an element of racism,” Professor McCormick said. “What they want are white, Christian, European immigrants. They want to make sure they stay culturally homogeneous. ” The Swiss seem to be waking up to the consequences of defying the rest of Europe. Swiss citizens have gathered enough signatures to force a referendum on whether to retract the proposed immigration restrictions before the 2017 deadline. “The Swiss have access to the European market, but they have very little leverage,” Professor McCormick said. Now that Britain has voted to leave, it, too, will lose a good deal of influence, he said. “The economic reality is that Britain would still be subject to the rules of the single market even if it left the E. U. ” Everyone I consulted saw similarities between the Union movements in Europe and supporters of Donald J. Trump in the United States. “There’s a lot of correlation,” Professor McCormick said. “Many are nostalgic for the idea of the good old days, which in reality were never all that good. But in their imaginations they thought life was so much better. The E. U. makes an easy scapegoat. ” As in the United States, the underlying cause of so much voter resentment isn’t trade agreements or immigration. “The problem for individual European countries, whether they are members of the E. U. or not, is globalization,” Ms. de Gruyter said. | 1 |
Scott MacConnell cherishes the memory of his years at Amherst College, where he discovered his future métier as a theatrical designer. But protests on campus over cultural and racial sensitivities last year soured his feelings. Now Mr. MacConnell, who graduated in 1960, is expressing his discontent through his wallet. In June, he cut the college out of his will. “As an alumnus of the college, I feel that I have been lied to, patronized and basically dismissed as an old, white bigot who is insensitive to the needs and feelings of the current college community,” Mr. MacConnell, 77, wrote in a letter to the college’s alumni fund in December, when he first warned that he was reducing his support to the college to a token $5. A backlash from alumni is an unexpected aftershock of the campus disruptions of the last academic year. Although are still gauging the extent of the effect on philanthropy, some colleges — particularly small, elite liberal arts institutions — have reported a decline in donations, accompanied by a laundry list of complaints. Alumni from a range of generations say they are baffled by today’s college culture. Among their laments: Students are too wrapped up in racial and identity politics. They are allowed to take too many frivolous courses. They have repudiated the heroes and traditions of the past by judging them by today’s standards rather than in the context of their times. Fraternities are being unfairly maligned, and men are being demonized by sexual assault investigations. And university administrations have been too meek in addressing protesters whose messages have seemed to fly in the face of free speech. Scott C. Johnston, who graduated from Yale in 1982, said he was on campus last fall when activists tried to shut down a free speech conference, “because apparently they missed irony class that day. ” He recalled the Yale student who was videotaped screaming at a professor, Nicholas Christakis, that he had failed “to create a place of comfort and home” for students in his capacity as the head of a residential college. “I don’t think anything has damaged Yale’s brand quite like that,” said Mr. Johnston, a founder of an internet and a former hedge fund manager. “This is not your daddy’s liberalism. ” “The worst part,” he continued, “is that campus administrators are wilting before the activists like flowers. ” Yale College’s alumni fund was flat between this year and last, according to Karen Peart, a university spokeswoman. Among about 35 small, selective liberal arts colleges belonging to the organization Staff, or Sharing the Annual Fund Fundamentals, that recently reported their initial annual fund results for the 2016 fiscal year, 29 percent were behind 2015 in dollars, and 64 percent were behind in donors, according to a steering committee member, Scott Kleinheksel of Claremont McKenna College in California. His school, which was also the site of protests, had a decline in donor participation but a rise in giving. At Amherst, the amount of money given by alumni dropped 6. 5 percent for the fiscal year that ended June 30, and participation in the alumni fund dropped 1. 9 percentage points, to 50. 6 percent, the lowest participation rate since 1975, when the college began admitting women, according to the college. The amount raised from big donors decreased significantly. Some of the decline was because of a falloff after two large reunion gifts last year, according to Pete Mackey, a spokesman for Amherst. At Princeton, where protesters unsuccessfully demanded the removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from university buildings and programs, undergraduate alumni donations dropped 6. 6 percent from a record high the year before, and participation dropped 1. 9 percentage points, according to the university’s website. A Princeton spokesman, John Cramer, said there was no evidence the drop was connected to campus protests. Carolyn A. Martin, Amherst’s president, said she was not surprised that student protests had contributed to the decline in . “I think colleges are places where complicated societywide issues are always thrashed out, sometimes across generations,” Dr. Martin, known as Biddy, said in an interview. Dr. Martin defended Amherst as a place where free speech and high standards still held sway, and said she had pushed back against protesters when necessary. Much of the alumni unrest at Amherst crystallized around the college’s decision to renounce its unofficial mascot, Lord Jeffery Amherst, known as Lord Jeff, an British commander in the French and Indian War who gave his name to the town and, by extension, the college. A new generation of students has criticized his attitude toward Native Americans he endorsed the idea of spreading smallpox among enemy tribes by giving them infected blankets. “He hated the Indians, because any general in his position would have,” said Gordon Hall III, class of ’52, a commercial real estate investor. He and Don MacNaughton, class of ’65, a retired lawyer and a history buff, wrote a booklet concluding that Lord Jeff had been unfairly maligned. Mr. MacNaughton paid for his share of its publication and promotion online with thousands of dollars he would have otherwise given to the college. “I feel that money is going to the benefit of Amherst College, in any event,” Mr. MacNaughton said. The older generation remembers Lord Amherst not as a genocidal warmonger, but as the inspiration for a beloved college fight song, written by a member of the class of 1906. The song, which Mr. Hall, 86, can still sing by heart, winks knowingly at Lord Amherst’s misdeeds with the line, “To the Frenchman and the Indians, he didn’t do a thing. ” Mr. Hall, whose grandfather, father, uncles and son went to Amherst, archly calls himself “a powerhouse of nepotism. ” But he has endowed a scholarship and says he welcomes students whose backgrounds are different from his. “I get letters every year about the recipient of my scholarship fund,” he said. “The name will always be a name that is ethnically or racially — you can tell — not like Hall. And so be it. You’ve got to go with the flow to some degree. ” But, he wonders, “where did this supercorrectness thing come from?” In the category of supercorrectness, some alumni note that in March, a new director of the Women’s and Gender Center asked to be addressed as “they,” rather than “he” or “she. ” “This is not a joke,” Paul Ruxin, who identified himself as “Old Curmudgeon class of ’65,” wrote to his classmates shortly before he died in April. David Pennock, class of ’60, one of four generations of his family to have gone to Amherst, is so invested in the college that he bridles at incorrect pronunciations of the name. “Our Amherst is pronounced without the H,” he said. His Amherst was tough but paternalistic, he said. When he fell behind in classes, the admissions dean, Eugene Wilson, class of ’29 and his father’s fraternity roommate, took him trout fishing on the Deerfield River and warned that he was headed for the “underachiever program,” a forced leave of absence. As class agent, Mr. Pennock did not reduce his giving, but he is one of a group of alumni pushing for the return of a core curriculum. Robert Longsworth, class of ’99, the seventh in his family to have attended Amherst, has been the president of the New York City alumni association and a class agent. But he has withdrawn, he said, because of his sense that the college has become “so wrapped up in this politically charged mission rather than staying in its lane and being an institution of higher education. ” Mr. Longsworth, 39, who works in the financial industry, said he thought erasing history only made people more vulnerable to racism. “When the administration and faculty and ultimately a lot of the student body spends a great deal of time on witch hunts, I think that a lot of that intellectual rigor is forgone,” he said. Mr. Longsworth said he had heard from “friends who went to Hamilton, Trinity, Williams, Bates, Middlebury, Hobart, who are not pleased at what’s happened on campus, and they’ve kind of stepped away. ” For these alumni, he said, refusing to write a check “seems to be the only lever that can make a difference. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — President Obama told Senator Bernie Sanders in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday to channel the energy of his presidential campaign’s millions of supporters behind Hillary Clinton, and said that Mr. Sanders would play a central role in shaping the Democratic agenda if he did. Less than an hour and a half later, Mr. Obama, who had tried to remain neutral in the race between Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton, formally endorsed her. Moving swiftly to unite his party after a primary campaign that has left many of Mr. Sanders’s supporters bitter and disillusioned, Mr. Obama, according to his aides, tried to mollify the maverick senator while prodding him to reorient his efforts against Mrs. Clinton into a broader bid to help Democrats in November. There was no hint after the meeting that Mr. Sanders intended to challenge Mrs. Clinton for the nomination at next month’s convention, but hours later at a rally in Washington he urged voters there to go to the polls in their primary on Tuesday and to keep pushing for a political revolution. After the White House meeting, Mr. Sanders vowed to take the ideas that have animated his campaign — addressing poverty and income inequality, increasing Social Security benefits, and reducing the role of money in politics — to the convention. But he also announced plans to meet soon with Mrs. Clinton to discuss ways they could work together to defeat Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The meeting was the set piece of a day of choreographed political theater in which Democrats treated Mr. Sanders to a visit only slightly less elaborate than that of a head of state. The White House made sure that cameras were positioned to capture the president and the vanquished Vermonter strolling animatedly along the White House colonnade to the Oval Office for their meeting. Later, Mr. Sanders met with the Senate Democratic leadership before zooming up Massachusetts Avenue for an audience with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his residence at the Naval Observatory. Democrats were hoping that if they gave time and space to Mr. Sanders, he would not cause trouble for them at their convention in Philadelphia and would eventually endorse Mrs. Clinton. But Mr. Sanders spent much of his day using back entrances and side doors and ducking into stairwells to avoid reporters’ questions, clearly unwilling to talk in precise terms about his plans. The road ahead was clearer for Mrs. Clinton, who on Thursday collected expressions of support from influential Democrats, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, perhaps more of a favorite of the party’s liberals than even Mr. Sanders. In a video posted on her campaign’s Facebook page shortly after Mr. Sanders departed the White House grounds to visit the Capitol, Mr. Obama described Mrs. Clinton as the most qualified candidate to seek the White House, and implored Democrats to come together to elect her after a divisive party primary. “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,” Mr. Obama said in the statement. Mr. Obama has made no secret of his desire to play an active role in the race to succeed him. “I’m with her, I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there to campaign for Hillary,” Mr. Obama said in the video. Mrs. Clinton immediately announced that she and the president would hold their first joint campaign appearance of the 2016 race on Wednesday in Green Bay, Wis. the start of what White House officials said would be an intense campaign push for Mr. Obama that will culminate in appearances as the November election draws nearer. White House officials had been discussing the endorsement with Mrs. Clinton’s camp for days, but they kept the timing under wraps, in part as a gesture of respect for Mr. Sanders and his highly motivated supporters. Mr. Obama told Mr. Sanders on Sunday that the endorsement would come soon, according to people familiar with the conversation, and discussed the announcement with Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday, the night she clinched the nomination. Mr. Obama recorded the Facebook message earlier on Tuesday at the White House, aides said. The president had been circumspect about declaring the race finished, even after Mrs. Clinton captured sufficient delegates in primaries on Tuesday to clinch the Democratic nomination. On Thursday, he congratulated her on “making history” and said he had personally witnessed her qualifications for the Oval Office. “She’s got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get the job done,” he said. “I have seen her judgment, I’ve seen her toughness, I’ve seen her commitment to our values up close. ” Mr. Obama also praised Mr. Sanders for what he called an “incredible campaign. ” He said the Vermont senator’s emphasis on addressing income inequality, reducing the influence of money in politics and bringing young people into the political process would strengthen the party. In their Oval Office meeting, White House officials said, Mr. Obama told Mr. Sanders that he could play a valuable role in the party by supporting Democrats in races across the country this year, and use the influence he has amassed in his campaign to press his agenda forward in the Senate. Mr. Sanders, speaking to reporters as he left the West Wing with his wife, Jane, said that “we will continue doing everything that we can to oppose the drift which currently exists toward an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires exercise enormous power over our political, economic and media life. ” “Needless to say,” he added, “I am going to do everything in my power and I will work as hard as I can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States. ” Mr. Obama’s quick endorsement irritated some of Mr. Sanders’s leading supporters, who said they could not understand why the president would not wait until after next week’s Washington primary, the last contest in the Democratic nominating process, to weigh in. “I thought they’d give him the grace to finish out what he pledged to do, which is take his campaign to the final contest,” said Paul G. Kirk, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and Massachusetts senator who backs Mr. Sanders. At the rally in Washington on Thursday night, Mr. Sanders showed no sign of slowing down his campaign, making no mention of Mrs. Clinton and saying nothing about party unity. Many in the crowd of about 3, 000 people shouted slogans like “Shun the nonbelievers” and “Stay in the race. ” On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders tried to balance their desire to be respectful of Mr. Sanders and give him room to exit the race on his own terms while firmly conveying to him that the contest has essentially ended. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, said he had invited Mr. Sanders to address the Democratic caucus on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton “has enough delegates,” Mr. Reid said after meeting with Mr. Sanders in his Capitol office. “I didn’t hear a single word about him wanting to change the fact that she’s the nominee. ” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who will most likely succeed Mr. Reid as Democratic leader next year, echoed his colleague, telling reporters after his own meeting that he knew Mr. Sanders to be “constructive. ” Privately, Senate leaders breathed a sigh of relief. Mr. Reid told Mr. Sanders during their conversation that he was entitled to wind down the campaign on his own time. And Mr. Sanders implied to Mr. Reid that he would begin that process after the final primary next week and not take his campaign to the convention floor, according to an aide briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation. But Mr. Sanders is going to try to put his stamp on a party that he adopted only when he began to seek its nomination. He told Mr. Reid that he wanted a say on both policy and process, an indication that he intends to push for a robustly liberal platform and an overhaul of the Democratic presidential nominating system that could eliminate superdelegates. There are also some personal grudges left over from the primary: Mr. Sanders’s campaign remains uneasy that two prominent Clinton supporters who fiercely attacked him — former Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut — remain of the D. N. C. ’s Rules Committee. “Of course there are hard feelings,” said Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a liberal who is friends with Mr. Sanders but backed Mrs. Clinton. “But Bernie knows she will generally take the party and the country in the right direction — and there’s the threat of Trump. ” | 1 |
November 2, 2016 Iranian Military Sending Elite Fighters Into U.S., Europe
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s elite military force, is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to recent Farsi-language comments from an Iranian military leader.
The IRGC “will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” according to the Iranian military commander, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic.
“The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran’s Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison, an IRGC command front, was quoted as saying in an Iranian state-controlled publication closely tied to the IRGC.
The military leader’s comments come as Iran is spending great amounts of money to upgrade its military hardware and bolster its presence throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran intends to spend billions to purchase U.S.-made planes that are likely to be converted for use in its air force.
Congressional leaders and others suspect that Iran has used a large portion of the cash windfall it received as a result of last summer’s nuclear agreement to upgrade its fighting capabilities war machine. | 0 |
Emma Stone, Natalie Portman, and Amy Adams are among the many movie stars who joined in to sing Gloria Gaynor’s 1979 hit “I Will Survive” ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. [The cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Hailee Steinfeld, Felicity Jones, and Taraji P. Henson, all trade verses on the disco hit, with some their own lines. While Donald Trump’s name is never mentioned, the video is apparently intended to serve as a rallying cry for those still grieving Trump’s election. Directed by W magazine editor Lynn Hirschberg, the video also features vocals from Matthew McConaughey, Michael Shannon, Andrew Garfield, Chris Pine, and Naomi Harris. The “I Will Survive” video is the latest of its kind. Last week, Jerry Seinfeld, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Leonardo DiCaprio and many other celebrities starred in an emotional “Yes We Can” farewell tribute video for President Barack Obama. And of course, during the 2016 presidential race, numerous celebrities contributed to political PSAs aimed at discouraging voters from voting for Donald Trump. Perhaps the most of these was director Joss Whedon’s “Important” video, which featured Avengers stars Robert Downey Jr. Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo and Don Cheadle reminding Americans to vote on Election Day. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
Irán reitera que el mundo internacional debe respetar al contenido de JCPOA 2016/11/12 09:15 Twitter El jefe de diplomacia de Irán insta a todas las partes implicadas en el pacto nuclear respeto a sus compromisos para beneficio de todo el mundo.
USviewer, EEUU_ “El pacto nuclear es un acuerdo internacional y todas las partes tienen que respetar su contenido (…) No se trata de un acuerdo bilateral que pueda ser destruido por una sola parte”, recalcó en Praga (capital checa) el ministro persa, Mohamad Yavad Zarif.
En una rueda de prensa celebrada junto a su homólogo checo, Lubomir Zaoralek, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores iraní rechazó rumores sobre una eventual revisión del Plan Integral de Acción Conjunta (JCPOA, por sus siglas en inglés) durante la administración del presidente electo de EE.UU., Donald Trump.
A este respecto, Zarif ubrayó que el JCPOA es un acuerdo entre Irán y el Grupo 5+1 (EE.UU., el Reino Unido, Francia, Rusia y China, más Alemania), ratificado además por el Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas (CSNU).
“Creemos que el JCPOA es un acuerdo razonable que ayuda a todos, pero esto no significa que Irán carezca de otras opciones para eventuales incumplimientos por las otras partes”, precisó.
La República Islámica de Irán quiere seguir respetando sus compromisos y pide lo mismo a las otras partes con el fin de favorecer los intereses de todos, ha proseguido el jefe de la Diplomacia iraní.
Sin embargo, añadió, es lamentable que Washington no haya cumplido con parte de sus obligaciones, cuando la parte iraní sí lo ha hecho, habiendo documentos que lo confirman.
Con respecto a las relaciones bilaterales Teherán-Praga, el canciller iraní ha elogiado el gran interés de ambas partes en extender y profundizar sus lazos en todos los campos y a todos los niveles, incluida la lucha contra el terrorismo.
“Estamos contentos con las propuestas de las autoridades checas sobre la solución de la crisis siria y la lucha contra Daesh (acrónimo en árabe para EIIL)”, concluyó Zarif. No hay comentarios para esta noticia Nombre : | 0 |
Written by Jacob G. Hornberger Thursday October 27, 2016 Several weeks ago, contemporaneously with the release of Oliver Stone’s excellent movie Snowden, friends and admirers of Edward Snowden launched a campaign to have President Obama pardon him for disclosing the NSA’s super-secret illegal surveillance scheme to the American people and the world. The reasons for the pardon request were excellently summarized in an op-ed that appeared in the New York Times entitled “ Pardon Edward Snowden ” by Kenneth Roth and Salil Shetty. Not surprisingly, the US national-security establishment and its assets within the mainstream press oppose a pardon for Snowden because, they say, he endangered “national security” with his disclosure of the NSA’s top-secret illegal surveillance programs. But notice something important: Every time someone discloses “national security” state secrets, the east coast doesn’t fall into the ocean, California isn’t hit by earthquakes, and the federal government isn’t taken over by communists, terrorists, Muslims, illegal immigrants, or drug dealers. Nothing ever happens! That’s because, as I point out in my ebook “ The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State , ever since the federal government was converted into a national security state in the 1940s, the term “national security” has been nothing more than a way to shield criminal wrongdoing on the part of the national-security establishment. Remember MKULTRA? It was a highly classified operation on the part of the CIA. It involved drug experimentation on unsuspecting Americans. It was enveloped within the concept of “national security.” It was also a criminal operation. Once it came to light, the CIA ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records so that the American people would never discover all the dark and sordid details of this Nazi-like program. The United States remained standing notwithstanding the revelation of the CIA’s national-security state secret. Consider the CIA’s assassination attempts, in partnership with the Mafia, against Cuba’s president Fidel Castro during the 1960s. Those assassination attempts were national-security state secrets. They were also criminal in nature. In fact, they were no different, in a criminal sense, from the assassination of Orlando Letelier by Chile’s DINA, the Chilean CIA-NSA type organization with which the US partnered in the aftermath of the US national-security state’s coup that brought military strongman Augusto Pinochet into power in 1973. Did the United States collapse when the CIA’s assassination plots were revealed to the world? No more so than Chile collapsed when DINA’s assassination plots were revealed to the world. Speaking of DINA, for years the US national-security establishment kept its role in orchestrating the coup in Chile secret from the American people. CIA Director Richard Helms even knowingly lied to Congress when asked about the CIA’s activities in orchestrating the coup. Why did Helms intentionally lie to Congress? To protect “national security,” of course. The CIA’s position was that if people were to discover the role that the US government played in orchestrating the Chilean coup, “national-security” would be threatened. But when the US role in the coup was ultimately disclosed, what happened? Nothing! Well, except for the fact that Helms got convicted for lying to Congress. He was lucky though. They let him off the hook with a misdemeanor plea and probation. When he returned to the CIA, he was hailed by his subordinates for his heroic effort to protect “national security.” Of course, he wasn’t as lucky as DNI Chief James Clapper, who didn’t get prosecuted at all for lying to Congress about the existence of the NSA’s illegal surveillance scheme. Why did Clapper lie to Congress? To protect “national security,” of course. But when the super-secret illegal scheme ultimately came to light, what happened to the United States? Nothing! Another false and fraudulent use of the meaningless term “national security.” It was no different with respect to the CIA’s kidnapping-murder of Rene Schneider, the overall commander of Chile’s armed forces. The CIA felt that it needed to keep its plot against Schneider secret on grounds of “national security,” including its smuggling high-power guns into the country and later its paying off the killers to keep them silent. Once again, they maintained, “national security” dictated secrecy. But when the CIA’s role in Schneider’s kidnapping-murder was ultimately discovered, nothing happened. The United States continued standing. Interestingly, not one single US official was ever charged in the felony-murder of Rene Schneider, whose only “crime” was standing in the way of the US national security establishment’s illegal and unconstitutional (in both Chile and the United States) plot to replace a democratically elected president with a brutal unelected US-supported military general whose forces proceeded to round up, incarcerate, torture, rape, execute, or assassinate tens of thousands of innocent people — that is, people whose only crime was believing in socialism. It was the same with the murder during the coup of two American men, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, a murder in which US national-security state officials were complicit. Of course, they kept their involvement in the murder secret under the principle of “national security.” Horman’s “crime” was that he had learned of US complicity in the coup and planned to disclose it to the world. In the eyes of Chilean and US national-security state officials, that obviously constituted a threat to “national security.” Teruggi’s “crime” was that he was a socialist who had opposed the US government’s war in Vietnam. Despite the fact that a top-secret US State Department investigation revealed that US intelligence had played a role in their murder, not one single US official has ever been indicted, much less summoned to appear before Congress to explain why they murdered two innocent American citizens. In a moral sense, it’s not Snowden who needs a pardon. It is the US national-security state that needs a pardon from him … and from the American people for converting our nation into a charnel house of secret, dark, illegal, nefarious actions under the guise of the sham term “national security.” Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation . Related | 0 |
SEVNICA, Slovenia — On days when Melanija Knavs could not play outside or grew tired of knitting her navy blue sweaters, she and her friends would exchange notes along the lines of yarn they strung between their apartment block balconies. In clear handwriting, Melanija mused about the boys of her dreams. She could not have seen what was coming. Melanija Knavs is now Melania Trump, and she is one election away from being the first first lady since Louisa Adams. She addressed millions of Americans on Monday night in a televised speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. But interviews with her former classmates, friends of her family and others who knew them during her youth in Slovenia suggest that her transformation owes less to chance than to the Knavs family’s determination to seize openings and avoid getting stuck. Her father, a personality who reminds her childhood friends of Mr. Trump, belonged to the Communist Party, an exclusive club whose members sometimes joined because of career ambitions as much as ideology. Her mother, an industrious and striking woman, went from harvesting red onions on her family’s farm to a career in the town’s textile factory. She always found time to make sure her two daughters dressed to impress, sewing clothes for them after her work shift ended. Ms. Trump herself trained her bright eyes on the next thing. Once she left Sevnica for high school in Ljubljana, now Slovenia’s capital, she rarely came back to see her old friends. Once she left Ljubljana for a modeling career in Milan and then elsewhere in Europe, Slovenia receded from view. And once she moved to New York, where she caught the eye of Donald J. Trump, 24 years her senior, during a Fashion Week party at the Kit Kat Club, she never looked back. “She tried to find opportunities,” said Damijan Kracina, 46, a high school classmate. “And took them. ” Ms. Trump, born in 1970, grew up in this hilly town of 4, 500 best known around Slovenia, at least until Mr. Trump entered the presidential race, for its medieval castle and annual salami festival. Then, Slovenia was the northern region of Yugoslavia, ruled by Josip Broz Tito, a Communist dictator who kept his distance from the Soviet Union and allowed more freedoms than did other Eastern bloc leaders. But under Tito, there were clear benefits to being a member of the Communist Party, to which only a tiny percentage of Slovenians belonged. Some inherited membership through parents, particularly if they had resisted the Nazis, as Tito had others by exhibiting unusual talent. While it is not clear how Ms. Trump’s father, Viktor, joined — available records in Ljubljana simply list him as a member — others from the Sevnica Communist Party mentioned his work as a driver for a neighboring mayor and then for the director of the textile factory, Jutranjka, across the river, as possible entry points. While the Knavses, along with Ms. Trump, declined to be interviewed about their years in Slovenia, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, Hope Hicks, said that Mr. Knavs had never been an “active member” of the party. Mr. Trump, in an interview last month, said he had never discussed the topic with his . “But he was pretty successful over there,” he said. “It’s a different kind of success than you have here. But he was successful. ” After being introduced by her husband on Monday night as “the next first lady of the United States,” Ms. Trump spoke about her love of the United States and her home country. “I was born in Slovenia, a small and country,” she said, adding that her parents instilled in her a love of fashion, beauty and business, and — in a part of her speech that appeared to be copied nearly from a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama — the value of working hard “for what you want in life. ” In 1972, the Knavses moved into a larger apartment in a new housing block for workers of the textile factory, including Melania’s mother, Amalija, nicknamed Malci. She drew patterns for children’s clothes and later designed them, crossing the bridge to the factory every day in heels. Mr. Knavs, a traveling car salesman, spent a lot of time on the road. But when he was home, he was noticed. Friends say he had a jocular personality and a fondness for his Mercedes sedans and his coveted Maserati. Ms. Trump’s childhood friends recalled him incessantly washing the cars, but also carrying himself in a way that now reminded them of Mr. Trump. “Donald and Melania are similar to Viktor and Amalija,” said Nena Bedek, who was close to Ms. Trump in childhood, and who added that she was “not surprised” that her friend had married someone similar to her father. “Melania was closer to her mother than her father. Viktor was often away, and Malci and the girls were often alone. ” Social life centered on the school down the block. Melania wrapped her notebooks in magazine perfume ads and kept her knitted sweaters in purple lockers. Friends say that she enjoyed geography lessons in a room adorned with maps of the world, and that she adored art class. The future creator of the QVC collection “Melania Timepieces Jewelry” made bracelets there. When Tito died in 1980, her weeping classmates threw flowers as a train carrying his body rolled past on the way to Yugoslavia’s capital, Belgrade. In 1985, Melania left Sevnica, traveling on the narrow roads along the Sava River, green from the reflection of the wooded hills, and through coal mining towns on the way to Ljubljana. There she attended the Secondary School of Design and Photography, housed in an arcaded Renaissance monastery. She lived in an apartment that her father, who had opened a bicycle and car parts shop in Ljubljana, had bought a few years earlier on the outskirts of the city. The building superintendent, Joze Vuk, lived on their floor, and he recalled that Mr. Knavs was displeased that after he had paid for his unit, the government decided to set aside some of the apartments as rentals for construction workers. “We were all angry because most of the residents were not prepared to invest in the block,” said Mr. Vuk, who also owned an apartment. “They were renters of a public property and did not care. ” Mr. Knavs sought to distinguish himself from his neighbors. “He always wore a tie, smart clothes and carried a briefcase,” Mr. Vuk said. “You could not avoid noticing him. ” Melania and her older sister, Ines, also stood out, for their looks, their wardrobe and the makeup they put on whenever they left the apartment. At school, Melania kept her distance from peers listening to the Cure or Metallica, Mr. Kracina said, and gravitated toward a clique of pop music fans who hung out at the Horse’s Tail bar by the Triple Bridge in Ljubljana. It was there that Peter Butoln, who prided himself on having Ljubljana’s only metallic blue Vespa, noticed Melania one night among the regulars dressed in bleached jeans and Benetton shirts, drinking Mish Mash (Fanta and wine) and chatting each other up. Now 17, Melania was abstemious and more wholesome than the other girls, he said, and they started dating. He would pick her up on weekends and drive her around on his Vespa, and they would dance badly to Wham in “a nice discothèque” by the cathedral. Mr. Butoln soon went into the army, and, after sending him a friendly postcard in her exact, handwriting, Melania started dating one of his friends. “He had a red Vespa,” Mr. Butoln said, shrugging. Melania had also begun a process that would carry her away from Slovenia. In January 1987, the photographer Stane Jerko spotted her and asked if she would be interested in modeling. She proved somewhat wooden, but “pridna — diligent, obedient,” Mr. Jerko said. She told him she wanted to get better. Mr. Jerko passed the photographs he snapped of Melania — hair up, hair down, gym clothes, flowing dress — to a Slovenian cultural center, which admitted her to a fashion course for models in the fall of 1987. Melania’s entire family sensed potential in her modeling. After high school, she concentrated on her career, dropping out of architecture school. (She still claims on her website to have graduated.) On one occasion, Mr. Kravs drove his Mercedes to the shop of the seamstress Silva Njegac, hours from Ljubljana, to order leather dresses for Melania that his wife had designed. In 1992, a year after Slovenia’s independence, Mr. Jerko saw Melania on the catwalk at the Grand Hotel Toplice on Lake Bled. Twenty years later, she and Mr. Trump dined there with her parents. That day trip amounted to Mr. Trump’s only visit to Slovenia. “At least I can say that I went,” Mr. Trump said. When asked if his wife, who he said spoke warmly about her Slovenian youth, hoped for him to see her hometown, he added: “I went to Slovenia. The fact that I even went there was very much appreciated. ” A finish in Jana magazine’s Slovenian Face of the Year contest in 1992 expanded Melania’s ambitions. In a fashion video for a Slovenian label, she wore a skirt suit, exited a plane shadowed by bodyguards and signed papers at the national library. “She was acting like the president of the United States,” said Andrej Kosak, the director. She would soon Germanize her name to Melania Knauss and become an international model. These days in Sevnica, where Ms. Trump made a $25, 000 contribution to a hospital after her 2005 wedding, residents are fascinated by tales of their local girl made great. The Slovenian news media brings the latest word of the Trump campaign, especially details from a recent article in GQ that revealed that Mr. Knavs had, before his marriage to Melania’s mother, fathered a child out of wedlock and then fought attempts to claim child support all the way to the country’s highest court, where he lost. The GQ reporter then began receiving messages. “Because of story about half brother Denis, journalist is targeted by anonymous Trump supporters,” read a headline, accompanied by a photograph of a Melania in a plunging dress, on the cover of the tabloid Svet 24. Ms. Trump’s parents spend much of the year with their daughter and her son, Barron, at Trump Tower in Manhattan or at Mr. Trump’s Club in Palm Beach, Fla. where they enjoy the pool. But they have also brought a whiff of the campaign back to Sevnica, where they now own a handsome house. Alongside the sloping lawn and the beige Mercedes, one finds security guards to turn away unwanted visitors. In Sevnica, Mr. Knavs has confided in Matej Novsak, his longtime mechanic, and complained recently about Mr. Trump’s inconsistency. “ ‘One time it is this, the other time that,’ ” Mr. Novsak said Mr. Knavs had told him. The mechanic said that Mr. Knavs had also said that Mr. Trump was unwanted by Republicans and that he did not understand his wealthy ’s need to pursue the presidency. “ ‘Why does he have to do it?’ ” the mechanic said Mr. Knavs had told him. When told of his ’ bewilderment, Mr. Trump said, “They are not the only ones. ” Mr. Knavs is close enough to his five years his junior, to accept his . A few years ago, Mr. Knavs took two of Mr. Trump’s leather jackets — one black, one dark brown — to Ms. Njegac’s shop in Slovenia for alterations. The sleeves were too long. Meanwhile, his daughter, who is now an American citizen, has fit well into life with Mr. Trump. She has echoed his doubts about President Obama’s place of birth, given his campaign a touch of glamour and domesticity, and fully embraced his extravagant lifestyle. Mirjana Jelancic, a classmate of Ms. Trump’s who is now the principal of their old school, recalled a conversation she had over coffee last August with Ms. Trump’s mother. Ms. Knavs told Ms. Jelancic that she had asked her daughter what to do with all the sweaters she had knitted as a child. “ ‘Throw them away,’ ” Ms. Trump told her mother, who said she replied, testily, “Come home, pick some out and throw them away yourself. ” Ms. Jelancic suggested a compromise. Ms. Knavs now intends to donate those old clothes to a planned exhibit at the school dedicated to Melania Trump, the town’s most famous brand name. | 1 |
On Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily, SiriusXM host Alex Marlow asked Breitbart News Senior Editor at Large Peter Schweizer about allegations that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman, John Podesta, may have violated federal law through his dealings with the Russians. [Schweizer said Podesta has “a very interesting relationship with Russia, going back to when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. ” “When she was secretary of state, he was an adviser. He sat on her foreign policy advisory board. We know from the Podesta emails that he was talking to her all the time on everything from speeches to personnel decisions to policy positions,” Schweizer elaborated. “In 2011, he joins the executive board of this small energy company in Massachusetts called Joule Energy,” Schweizer recalled. “And Joule Energy, about two months after he joins the executive board, gets a large infusion of cash. They get one billion rubles, which is about $35 to $45 million, invested from Russia. It comes from a very unusual entity, this entity called RUSNANO. ” “RUSNANO is this investment fund, called ‘Putin’s Child’ by the Russian Science Ministry, so it shows you how connected this fund is,” he explained. “They actually buy an equity stake in this John company, which they can do. You can raise the question of why they’re doing it while he’s advising Hillary Clinton, but they can legally do that. ” “The problem for Podesta becomes when he joins the Obama White House as counselor to the president in 2013,” he continued. “In order to do that, he’s got to file those large, cumbersome, but I think essential financial disclosure forms where you list what boards are you on, that you are connected to or have been connected to in the last year, what entities. You’re also required to disclose your stock holdings. ” “In the case of Podesta, there are two omissions. One of them is the way the Joule was structured, it has three corporate boards. It has one based in Massachusetts, one based in the Netherlands, and then it has a holding company. John Podesta, according to corporate records, was on all three of those boards. He only listed two of them on his financial disclosure. He omitted probably the most important one, which was the holding company,” said Schweizer. “Now, you could say okay, maybe it was just an omission. He listed two of the three that’s not bad,” he granted. “The problem is that he failed to disclose what he did with the 75, 000 shares of stock that he had in the company that were given to him as a board member. He gave them to his daughter through an LLC. ” “There’s a question of whether she actually owned them — and by that I mean the Podesta emails show that he had a email conversation with Joule Energy executives and people connected with them, even though he ostensibly didn’t own stock anymore. But he failed to disclose that transaction. He failed to disclose the 75, 000 shares he owned that he gave to his daughter. That is a direct, clear violation of what you are supposed to disclose on these federal forms,” Schweizer said. Marlow noted there have been “zero pieces of hard evidence connecting the Trump campaign to the Russian government,” while “there is so much evidence, much of it uncovered by you, connecting the Clintons with the Russian government. ” “And yet, the media is obsessed with one and not the other,” he said. Schweizer found the disparity of coverage interesting as well. “I’m a big believer that you need to investigate and look into things, particularly if you’re talking about foreign governments or foreign entities trying to influence our politicians,” he declared. “What we know right now about the Russia story as it relates to Trump is the relationship, as it were, amounts to meetings that some Trump officials had with people from Russia. Those Trump officials never really made it into the Trump administration — with the exception of Michael Flynn, who left pretty quickly,” he pointed out. “The thesis that everybody is operating on is the Russians helped Trump win and Trump is going to do all these favors for Russia. The problem is, when you look at the personnel decisions, who’s running Russia policy in the United States — whether that’s General Mattis at the Pentagon, whether that is McMaster, the national security adviser, whether that’s the CIA director, whether that’s the director of Russia policy on the National Security Council, who’s a very solid scholar from the Brookings Institution — none of these are remotely ” he said. “All you have is sort of this concern that the Russians were hacking during the election, which I think is a legitimate concern and a theory that hasn’t been proved, that there was a connection between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. There’s just been no evidence of that,” he noted. “My point is both should be looked into, but you actually have very substantial things that went on when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, that, number one, included the transfer of money to the Clintons and to John Podesta and number two, very serious favors done by the Hillary Clinton State Department to the Russians, including technology transfer, et cetera,” he said. “The kind of scenario that people envision happened with Trump happened in the Clinton State Department. And yet, there seems to be a lack of interest in pursuing and investigating precisely what those relationships were and how everything was carried out,” Schweizer observed. Peter Schweizer is a senior editor at large for Breitbart News, president of the Government Accountability Institute, and author of the Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 1 |
They are quiet on the whopping $2.00 increase all social security recipients will get this next year. $2.00 a month more in a check that will also be devastated by a big medicare increase. These MF'ers stole the SS funds to pay for their wars and need to hang. | 0 |
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