text
stringlengths 1
134k
| label
int64 0
1
|
|---|---|
California becomes second state to raise legal smoking age to 21
Ethan A. Huff, staff writer Tags: smoking age , California , prohibition (NaturalNews) If you're between the ages of 18 and 21, live in California and are a smoker, expect to be denied your favorite pack at the convenience store. Beginning in June, the new minimum age for officially jumped from 18 to 21, a prohibition move that lawmakers claim will curb the number of smokers in the Golden State, and ultimately help save lives.Joining both Hawaii and the city of Needham in Massachusetts, California is the third locale in the U.S. to raise the legal smoking age to 21. Officials there hope that, like in these other places, age restrictions on smoking will help reduce the number of smokers and minimize the number of individuals who develop smoking-related health conditions like emphysema and lung cancer.Citing statistics from Needham that show a nearly 50 percent reduction in the number of smokers in the five-year period following the change that was made in 2005, April Roeseler, head of the California public health department's Tobacco Control Program, told the Los Angeles Times that she expects similar reductions in her state.In Needham, the number of high schoolers smoking cigarettes fell by nearly half, according to a study published last year. And adult smoking rates in the town also fell from about 18.1 percent to a mere 8 percent – statistics that experts say can be replicated all across the country."If we can push that age up where fewer and fewer people start smoking as a teen, it's likely that we will start to have some tobacco-free generations ," the Times quotes her as saying. Prohibition never works; people who want 'contraband' will find a way At this point, though, very little, if any, evidence exists to show that the rule change is working as intended. University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor Dr. Stanton Glantz, for instance, admitted to the Times that the policy still needs time to "settle in." The California Smokers' Helpline also says it hasn't noticed any increases in the number of callers in the prohibited age range trying to quit, which suggests that not much has changed.There's also the contraband factor – older kids still buying cigarettes for younger kids, for example, including those younger than the former threshold age of 18. Illegal buying has always been an issue, law or no law, which is something that the government never really seems to understand when it comes to issues of prohibition ."They're hanging out and partying together, so they'll just get someone else to buy," says Leonard Charles, the owner of a liquor store in Oakland. Charles says he strictly enforces the new cigarette age law, but believes that if somebody wants cigarettes, he or she is going to find a way, regardless of the law.In the internet age, cigarettes are also freely available to anybody with a WiFi connection. People can order cigarettes off the web and have them delivered right to their doorstep, which means that state-level restrictions are basically moot.And what about e-cigarettes? The State of California classifies e-cigs as a "tobacco product" just like cigarettes, and they are subject to the same laws. However, everybody has them these days, they're very discreet, and they don't produce that typical tobacco smell that's so hard to get out of a room , so trying to enforce restrictions against their use is next to impossible, say experts familiar with the reality of how easy it is to obtain tobacco, regardless of what the law says.When asked how the new law will realistically work in light of the fact that smoking laws often aren't effective, Glantz responded, "The short answer is I don't know." Sources for this article include: | 0 |
Country: Philippines Perhaps the biggest challenge the US faces regarding its credibility globally is the self-inflicted damage it does to its alleged principles and values as a center of global power. A perfect example of this is unfolding in the dramatic unraveling of US-Philippine relations where any and every means of finding leverage over Washington’s wayward ally is being brought to bear on Manila. The most recent manifestation of this occurred when the US blocked the shipment of US rifles destined for the Philippines’ police forces. PhilStar Global’s article, “ Duterte cancels rifle sale blocked by US over rights concerns ,” would report that: The US State Department had earlier halted the sale of about 26,000 rifles to the Philippines when US Sen. Ben Cardin said that he will oppose it due to concerns over human right violations attributed to the government’s war on drugs. At face value, and ignoring any wider context, it would appear that the United States took a moral stand on what would have otherwise been a lucrative arms deal and would have helped draw Washington and Manila closer together politically. However, zooming out slightly from Manila, the situation in Asia Pacific finds the US being incrementally pushed out of the region as a geopolitical power broker. As nations, including the Philippines rebuff the United States and its attempts to reassert itself vis-à-vis China, Washington has resorted to leveraging human rights issues, economic pressure and even covert political and military pressure to maintain its grip on each respective nation in the region. Putting pressure on Manila through a humiliating political stunt, not adhering to moral convictions, is the primary factor driving Washington’s decision to block its own delivery of weapons to the Philippines’ police forces. And beyond simply identifying the true motive of America’s recent stunt, there is the matter of overt hypocrisy to account for. Philippines Denied Rifles, Saudis Given Tanks, Warplanes and Bombs While the US poses as morally bound to block its weapons deal with the Philippines, it continues to supply the nation of Saudi Arabia with billions of dollars of advanced weaponry, including air-delivered munitions, warplanes and main battle tanks. In fact, according to the Guardian , in 2010 the US approved of a record weapons deal amounting to $60 billion, the largest such deal in US history. It included the delivery of additional F-15 fighters, Apache gunships and Black Hawk transport helicopters, many of the weapons now being used in armed aggression against neighboring Yemen. The war in Yemen prosecuted by Riyadh with US and European weaponry, has become a growing humanitarian disaster with even the US and Europe’s own human rights advocacy groups forced to acknowledge the growing abuses being carried out by America and Europe’s close Arab ally. And just this year, Reuters would report that the US Senate approved of an additional $1.15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia for the delivery of over 130 M1 Abram main battle tanks as well as 20 armored recovery vehicles and addition equipment to support the newly acquired systems. Absent amid these immense weapon deals with Saudi Arabia, noted globally as a dictatorship, guilty of brutalizing its own people including through the use of public beheadings and torture, was any semblance of hesitation based on moral convictions. Indeed, the torrent of weapons the United States supplies the Saudis, in the face of a recent block on rifle sales to the Philippines, proves the United States places politics over principles. Special interests in Washington use such principles merely as a politically-convenient prop when the opportunity presents itself, and otherwise views such principles as a surmountable obstacle to be effortlessly skipped over. A United States guided by true convictions would be arming neither nation. A United States that sees convictions as politically convenient gimmicks, easily denies the Philippines rifles based on selective moral outrage while propping up a regime on the Arabian Peninsula that is brutalizing its people at home, prosecuting a devastating war in a neighboring nation and sponsoring terrorism worldwide. It is this lack of genuine, consistent moral principles that undermines the United States’ own self-declared status as a global leader, undermining its credibility along with the faith both Americans and foreigners alike have in the waning superpower. Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook ”. Popular Articles | 0 |
WASHINGTON — With little affection or trust between them, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders met privately for nearly two hours on Tuesday night to size each other up as they started exploring what kind of alliance they might build for the general election battle against Donald J. Trump. Yet Mr. Sanders chose to withhold his endorsement of Mrs. Clinton, several Sanders advisers said, because he wants her to take steps to win his confidence before the Democratic convention, where his supporters expect him to speak and Clinton advisers hope he will give her his backing. Aides to Mrs. Clinton said she had never expected his endorsement Tuesday night. A statement from the Clinton campaign after the meeting described it as “a positive discussion about their primary campaign, about unifying the party and about the dangerous threat that Donald Trump poses to our nation. ” They discussed issues like raising wages and reducing college costs, and “agreed to continue working on their shared agenda, including through the platform development process for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. ” The Sanders campaign released a nearly identical statement, though it emphasized that the two candidates also spoke about “how best to bring more people into the political process” — a reflection of the strong support for Mr. Sanders among young people and independents. Neither Democrat entered the meeting on sure footing, and both were a little tense, advisers in each camp said beforehand. At the end, they left the Capital Hilton through separate exits without speaking to the roughly two dozen reporters gathered there. Mrs. Clinton, who became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee last week, spent the meeting trying to deduce what it would take to earn Mr. Sanders’s endorsement and whether he would seek policy concessions or political promises, several advisers said. Mr. Sanders focused on gauging the depth of Mrs. Clinton’s commitment to progressive goals like a higher minimum wage and lower financial burdens on college students, and to making the Democratic nomination process more open in the future. The chemistry between the two candidates was strained, in part, because Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders had not had any real chances to air grievances or blow off steam with each other away from the television cameras during their fight for the nomination. Mrs. Clinton had a few such moments with Barack Obama before they sat down for their own in 2008, which made it a little easier for them to come together, unite their party and win that November. In a sign that they are still adjusting to each other, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders were joined in their meeting by Jane Sanders, Mr. Sanders’s wife Jeff Weaver, his campaign manager John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman and Robby Mook, her campaign manager. Two advisers to Mr. Sanders said he thought Mrs. Clinton had said many of the right things at the meeting, but described him as concerned that she might embrace more politically moderate positions later if she thinks it necessary to win states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia. The advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the campaign had not authorized them to speak, said Mr. Sanders felt no pressure to endorse Mrs. Clinton quickly. And he has leverage: He accrued about 12 million votes and nearly 1, 900 delegates, and in a New York News poll last month, 28 percent of his supporters said they would not vote for Mrs. Clinton if she was the Democratic nominee. Mrs. Clinton picked up nearly 16 million votes and 2, 800 delegates. Whether Mr. Sanders endorses her enthusiastically and campaigns for her, or recognizes her as the nominee but otherwise withholds his blessing, is a significant concern for some Clinton advisers. Others in her campaign think that Democrats will ultimately unite because the possibility of a Trump victory is too great to ignore. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders met on the day of the Democratic primary in Washington, D. C. the final contest of the nominating process. Mrs. Clinton won 79 percent of the vote. Mr. Sanders received a standing ovation when he dropped in at the Senate Democrats’ weekly lunch to speak about his campaign and pose for an official Senate photo with his colleagues. He has not been in the Capitol much of late according to his website, he has not cast a vote since Jan. 12. “It was very upbeat, very optimistic,” said Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan. | 1 |
http://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/dduke/112216.mp3 Dr. Duke & Andrew Anglin the True Voice of the Republican Party! Today Dr. Duke had Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin as his guest for the hour. The talked about the revolution that has occurred within the Republican Party. The Republican establishment did everything they could to stop Donald Trump, and now he is the president elect in spite of them. Andrew Anglin suggested that all Alt-Right people and white nationalists join the Republican Party in order to replace the establishment.
They also talked about the agenda of the incoming Trump administration. The personnel decisions he has made thus far and his communications with the press indicate that he will not back down from the platform he enunciated during the election campaign.
This is another great show that you won’t want to miss. Please share it widely.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern. | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — It’s one of Hollywood’s most secretive and unusual jobs: Brian Cullinan, a partner at the accounting firm PwC, and a colleague are tasked with making sure the statuettes at the annual Academy Awards are correctly distributed. He stands in the wings of the Dolby Theater here in a tuxedo and pulls sealed envelopes out of a briefcase, giving the correct one to presenters as they walk onto the stage. This is the one night a year when the PwC really gets to shine. The firm’s chief executive sits with stars in the audience. Mr. Cullinan walks the red carpet, where reporters often say he resembles Matt Damon. He told one TV crew that he had no nerves. “We’ve done this a few times,” he said before Sunday night’s show, “and we prepare a lot. ” He was so at ease, he even found time to tweet from backstage about Emma Stone as the show neared its climax. Whoops. In an epic bungle before 33 million viewers — one that could get his company fired as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ accountant after 83 years and which robbed “Moonlight,” an film, of its proper moment of celebration — Mr. Cullinan caused the musical “La La Land” to be mistakenly named best picture at the 89th Academy Awards. PwC’s chief executive watched the scene from the third row. At the climactic moment backstage, a crew member shouted “Oh my God” as the jubilant producers of “La La Land” thanked their families. “He got the wrong envelope!” “He” was Warren Beatty, who, along with Faye Dunaway, presented the final award of the night. Mr. Beatty opened the envelope and, after some hesitation, handed it to Ms. Dunaway. She said that “La La Land,” about young California dreamers, was the winner. The crowd erupted in applause, and the “La La Land” team rushed the stage. Why did it take minutes to fix the error? “PwC sounded the alarm, but not right away,” Gary Natoli, the telecast’s stage manager, said in a text message. “It wasn’t until just before I jumped onstage that it was confirmed by both Brian and Martha as the winner being incorrect. ” Martha L. Ruiz, a PwC colleague of Mr. Cullinan’s who stood on the opposite side of the stage, and Mr. Cullinan apparently needed to find each other backstage to confer before speaking up. It was one of the most surprising reversals in Oscar history, as human error combined with live television to powerful, effect. It also warped and dampened the euphoria of film executives and artists who had spent years working on the two movies. And for the academy, which had been criticized last year for failing to nominate any minority actors for the second consecutive year, there was a missed moment: Instead of a proper celebration of “Moonlight,” there was a televised scene of confusion, disbelief and astonishment. Backstage, Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd, the telecast’s producers, were sitting at their monitors, Diet Cokes in hand. They were under the impression that the show was a wrap. But the scene quickly became chaotic, as it emerged that the winner was, in fact, “Moonlight,” a tender drama about a young, black man coming to terms with his homosexuality. “I’m holding the envelope and the award, and I had just given my speech, and there are people on the stage with headsets and I thought, ‘That doesn’t seem right,’” Jordan Horowitz, a “La La Land” producer, recalled. Exactly what happened in the moments leading up to the mistaken announcement was still being sorted out on Monday, but pieces of the story began falling into place. Mr. Cullinan — perhaps distracted by his Twitter feed — handed Mr. Beatty an envelope containing the name of the best actress winner, an award that had already been given to Ms. Stone of “La La Land. ” The next seven humiliating minutes would find Ms. Dunaway blurting out the wrong best picture winner, the audience gasping and and a dance onstage as “La La Land” producers gracefully made way for the “Moonlight” team. “I haven’t received any formal explanation,” Marc Platt, another member of the “La La Land” producing team, said on Monday afternoon. “There may have been disappointment in the moment, tremendous disappointment, but the good news is that I feel a unity in our community today. ‘Moonlight’ won best picture. But many voices in many kinds of films were honored. ” This account of the awards show’s frantic final moments was based on interviews with producers of both “La La Land” and “Moonlight” academy officials crew members for the telecast and PwC executives. Some provided information on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. An academy spokeswoman directed queries to PwC. Another academy official said the organization had initiated a review of the backstage process and of the group’s association going forward with the accounting firm, which extends beyond balloting for the Oscars. “I read the card that was in the envelope,” Mr. Beatty told reporters on his way to the Governors Ball, a party. “I thought, ‘This is very strange because it says best actress on the card.’ And I felt that maybe there was some sort of misprint. ” Pressed further, he said, “That’s all I have to say on the subject. ” Ms. Dunaway declined to comment. For its part, PwC expressed remorse. “We are owning this mistake,” said Tim Ryan, the United States chairman of PwC. “I’ve reached out to the academy. I’ve shared my personal apology, the firm’s apology, and I’ve begun to talk to them about things we can do to make it right. ” The firm declined to make Mr. Cullinan available for an interview, but it later said that once he mistakenly handed out the wrong envelope, “protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough by Mr. Cullinan or his partner. ” In keeping with past practice, PwC prepared two identical sets of sealed envelopes before the Oscars show. Ms. Ruiz kept a complete set on one side of the stage, while Mr. Cullinan had another set on the other. It was Ms. Ruiz who handed the best actress envelope to Leonardo DiCaprio, who presented the award to Ms. Stone. (As they walked off the stage, Mr. DiCaprio handed her the envelope and said, “Make sure you keep this. ”) Next up: Mr. Beatty and Ms. Dunaway, reuniting to mark the 50th anniversary of “Bonnie and Clyde” and announce the best picture winner. It was then that Mr. Cullinan handed Mr. Beatty the spare envelope instead of the envelope. What led to the mistake by Mr. Cullinan was not known, but it could have to do with the envelope’s design. The academy used a new envelope this year, featuring red paper with gold outside lettering that specifies the award inside. That may have made the outside of the envelopes more difficult to read than last year’s, which featured gold paper and red lettering. Mr. Natoli, the stage manager, was the one who approached Mr. Horowitz, the “La La Land” producer, to see that the envelope he was holding was the spare announcing Ms. Stone’s acting win. “The guys in headsets were going around with urgency looking for the other envelope,” Mr. Horowitz said. “One of the guys opens it, and it says ‘Moonlight,’ and I took it onstage and went to the microphone and said what I said. ” Mr. Horowitz reacted quickly. “You guys, I’m sorry, no,” he said from the stage. “There’s a mistake. ‘Moonlight,’ you guys won best picture. ” For the filmmakers and actors in “Moonlight,” those final minutes were no less stunning. “We all looked at each other and were like, ‘Is this a joke? ’” the actor Andre Holland said later. “We waited and kept watching. We didn’t want to celebrate until we knew if it was a joke and whether this was really happening. ” As soon as the show ended, Dawn Hudson, the academy’s chief executive, jumped from her seat in the theater and marched backstage. Ms. Hudson and Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the academy’s president, gathered Ms. Dunaway, Mr. Beatty, the PwC accountants and other crew members into the theater’s green room. “I’ve never seen Dawn look that mad,” a crew member said. | 1 |
Military forces in Turkey attempted a coup on Friday, plunging the country into a long night of violence and intrigue. Hundreds of people were killed, and the embattled president’s location was unknown for hours. He later emerged, and by Saturday morning, the coup appeared to be unraveling. • President Recep Tayyip Erdogan returned to Istanbul early Saturday. Speaking at Istanbul Ataturk Airport, he blamed “a minority within the armed forces” for the coup attempt and said those responsible would “pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey. ” He suggested that the plotters had tried to assassinate him on Friday with a bombing in the Turkish Mediterranean resort town of Marmaris. • Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 265 people had been killed and 1, 440 had been wounded. Seventeen police officers were killed in a helicopter attack on the outskirts of Ankara, and 12 people were killed after a bomb was detonated at Parliament. • Thousands of soldiers and officers linked to the coup were arrested on Saturday. “All of these guys will go to prison for life,” said Ilnur Cevik, an aide to Mr. Erdogan. • The White House said there were no indications that Americans were killed or injured in the violence. President Obama reiterated the United States’s “unwavering support for the democratically elected, civilian government of Turkey,” according to a statement. • Mr. Erdogan called on the U. S. to arrest or extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania, whom Mr. Erdogan accused of plotting against him. Mr. Gulen denied any role in the coup attempt, saying in a statement that he condemned it “in the strongest terms. ” Secretary of State John Kerry said the U. S. would listen to any inquiries. • It was not clear to what extent the coup forces had managed to gain control of important state facilities and institutions. • It was not clear who was behind the coup attempt, how much of the Turkish military supported it or why it had been mounted now. • It was not clear how the coup would affect strike missions against the Islamic State from the Incirlik air base. The Pentagon said on Saturday that Turkish authorities had at least temporarily halted flights. • Turkish Armed Forces The country’s military is a trusted institution, seen as the guardian of the secularist principles on which modern Turkey was founded. It has intervened in national politics a number of times, including three previous coups since 1960, and it maneuvered to oust an Islamist prime minister in 1997. The military has historically opposed interventions abroad, but it is not known how senior officers, many of them appointed by Mr. Erdogan, feel about his recent interventions in Syria. • President Recep Tayyip Erdogan An Islamist and populist who has been the dominant figure in the country for more than a decade, Mr. Erdogan came to power promising to overhaul the economy and give the country’s rural, more religious majority a bigger voice in the capital. More recently, he has grown increasingly autocratic and alienated many Turks as he cracked down on protests, took control of the news media and renewed war with Kurdish militants in the country’s southeast. • Fethullah Gulen Mr. Gulen is a former imam and onetime ally of Mr. Erdogan who now lives in exile in the United States, with an extensive following in Turkey. He has promoted a more liberal stream of Islam, and his ideas are popular with the country’s police and intelligence establishments, though not necessarily the military. Mr. Erdogan accused Mr. Gulen and his supporters, whom he has called terrorists, of being responsible for the coup he has repeatedly accused Mr. Gulen of plotting against him in the past. The Gulen movement denied involvement in the coup attempt and denounced any military intervention in Turkey’s domestic affairs. • Republican People’s Party The leftist main opposition party is considered not as as the governing Justice and Development Party. It has been trying to find a way to break Mr. Erdogan’s political grip, but it would not be likely to benefit from a coup in the past, the military has tended to sideline leaders of all political parties when it took power. • NATO and the United States Turkey has been an American ally and a NATO member since 1952. Though the Obama administration has criticized Mr. Erdogan’s crackdown on civil society in Turkey, the United States sees him as a stabilizing and mainly leader in a volatile region. The coalition fighting the Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq makes heavy use of Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. | 1 |
These women are changing the world as we speak. Credit: Jiri Rezac
Women are typically at a disadvantage in nearly every country in the world, but just how much depends on that country’s culture. For some, it’s a struggle of equality in a variety of areas and for others it’s the immense problem of barely being seen as a person, let alone someone with rights. That’s why many women are facing these issues head on and working to make a huge difference in the world as we know it.
Though many people hear about the female activists that made great strides to get their country to where it is today, people often don’t know about today’s activists. Read about the amazing women below to find out who is advocating for women and humanity around the world. Asieh Amini: Honor Killings Credit: Norsk Literatturfestival
Born in northern Iran, the region allowed women to own property, work on farms, and wield social power. Amini didn’t see the true injustices that women in her country faced until she was working as a journalist and heard of young girls being sentenced to death, by being hanged or stoned, if they engaged in sex without being married, even if they had been raped.
She first advocated for a 19-year-old girl named Leyla who had the mental capacity of an 8-year-old and was repeatedly raped by family members throughout her life. She was sentenced to be stoned to death, but Amini took charge of the situation and pressured the presiding judge into releasing Leyla.
These “honor killings” take place because the honor held in the family is more important than a woman’s life, whether she made the choice to have sex or was raped.
Amini has dedicated her life to fighting this horrific practice in her nation, despite the dangers she faces in doing so. She uses her literary background and passion to raise awareness and save the lives of women throughout the country. Though she advocates for this in Iran, she works from Norway because the death threats against her became so severe. Rashmi Misra: Education in India Credit: Namu Kini
Many children, especially girls, are being left behind as the fastest-growing country in the world has failed to improve their system of education. India has not improved their infrastructure for schools, has a huge shortage of teachers, and most of their students drop out for various reasons.
Rashmi Misra was first struck by the irony of the educational system when she witnessed 5 young girls playing in a drain pipe by an IIT campus in 1985. While the institute worked to educate young adults, mostly men, these girls had no access to even a primary school education. She opened her home to these young children to help them learn and wound up helping 200,000 underprivileged children, youth, and women in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore thus far.
She provides a rigorous education for children from poor families and her efforts have garnered international recognition. Her schools are now called Vidya Schools and one of their focuses is on empowering young girls and women by providing free education, lessons on entrepreneurial skills, microfinance, and other areas that are invaluable to a woman’s livelihood and career. Nanfu Wang and Ye Haiyan: Sexual violence in China Credit: China Film Insider
These two women go hand-in-hand as they worked together to expose cases of sexual violence that occurred in China and were swept under the rug because they involved powerful figures. Haiyan is called “Hooligan Sparrow,” and Wang helped to visually document their work by filming a documentary.
As the government learned of their activist work, they were subjected to harassment, interrogations, and even imprisonment. But their findings forced them to question what was more important: revealing the truth to stop these injustices or protecting themselves by remaining quiet.
One case they worked on together was the reported sexual abuse of 6 elementary school girls by their school principal. Using secret recording devices, such as those in her glasses, Wang filmed an alarming number of undercover security agents on the streets placed there to prevent the activists from continuing on.
Despite these obstacles, Wang was able to leave the country with her smuggled footage to created the film Hooligan Sparrow, which exposes the injustices and has become a world-renowned documentary. Safa al Ahmad: Free speech in Saudi Arabia Credit: Janne Louise Andersen
The number of restrictions that women face in Saudi Arabia is shocking, and for Safa al Ahmad these limitations are continuously made possible because the government-controlled media. She has famously said, “Facts are a special commodity in Saudi Arabia.”
When the Arab Spring shook the nation, Al Ahmad illegally filmed the peaceful uprisings that took place in an effort to raise awareness about what was actually occurring in the nation. She had to smuggle the footage out in order to distribute “Saudi’s Secret Uprising,” but her work didn’t stop there.
The lack of freedom of speech became so bad that teenagers were arrested and sentenced to death from posting on Facebook, and this is one reason that Al Ahmad continues to document the uprisings throughout the Middle East to advocate for freedom of speech and women’s rights.
Despite receiving death threats both online and in-person as she returns to the ground to document the unrest, Safa has no plans of yielding. Liya Kebede: Safe childbirth in Ethiopia Credit: Lemlem
Everyday, over 800 women die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth and another 30 are sent home from the hospital with long-term illnesses and injuries.
Supermodel Liya Kebede, who was born and raised in Ethiopia, had knowledge of the unsanitary and unsafe conditions mothers are subjected to when giving birth and decided to take action. She started her foundation, named after herself, after first becoming a WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health.
The foundation focuses on training healthcare professionals, mostly in Africa, to ensure safer births and to provide low-cost technology and community-based education programs. In one of the health centers that the foundation works with, successful hospital deliveries rose by 50% in 12 months .
Kebede has used her celebrity to further her goals for improving the health of women by writing for The Huffington Post and discussing her foundation when featured in Vogue and The Daily Beast. Brittany Packnett: Racial equality in the US Credit: The Huffington Post
The U.S. has always faced issues in regards to racial equality, and the most recent attacks against the systematic suppression of black people involves police disproportionately shooting and killing unarmed black men.
In the fight for social justice, as instances of these shootings are being made more public through social media, Brittany Packnett has become a leader in the movement of demanding justice for these crimes and in improving impoverished black communities.
According to the Guardian , “She’s a co-founder of We The Protestors and Campaign Zero, a platform to end police violence. She served on the Ferguson Commission, the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and builds culturally responsive educators at Teach For America.”
Packnett’s extensive background in addressing issues that people of color face makes her a force to be reckoned with, and she has even acknowledged that the conversations need to include black women and the LGBTQ community to make the movement for racial equality more effective. Sonita Alizadeh: Child marriage in Afghanistan Credit: The Salt Lake Tribune
When Sonita Alizadeh was 10 and living in Afghanistan, her parents attempted to sell her off as a bride, but the deal fell through when her family fled the Taliban instead and moved to Iran. Alizadeh has said that she was so young that she didn’t understand what being married off even entailed.
At the age of 16, her parents attempted to sell her again because they wanted to raise $9,000 for her older brother to buy a bride. By selling Sonita, they figured they could get that money from whomever bought her. She had been self-educating herself and knew that this was not what she wanted, and instead rebelled and refused to move back to Afghanistan, where her parents were living.
Her outrage over child marriages manifested itself in a video she filmed of her rapping about the injustice. Titled “Brides for Sale,” the song became immensely popular amongst women that faced this issue and attracted the attention of a U.S. nonprofit, who brought Sonita over to the states, where she now lives in Utah and attends school on a full scholarship.
She continues to write songs that are fiercely feminist and address the barriers that women face around the world. A documentary was made about her fight for gender equality, titled Sonita , and has been met with exceptionally good response.
Since 57% of Afghanistan’s girls are married off before they are 19, Sonita’s work has the potential to inspire women to stand up against child marriages and effect change in their nation. Melina Laboucan-Massimo: Indigenous rights in Canada Credit: Jiri Rezac
In Canada, it’s suspected that there are over 4,000 missing and murdered indigenous women whose cases were swept under the rug. The nation has long struggled with appropriately working with indigenous people to bring justice to these crimes and end the oppression of aboriginals.
Melina Laboucan-Massimo’s sister was murdered, and when she was met with law enforcement officials who didn’t care about the case, she took action. Her history of advocating for indigenous rights helped her take her activism to the next level as she fought against this horrible tragedy and her nation’s inappropriate way of dealing with it.
Now she works as an advocate for the environmental and the cultural revitalization of indigenous people as well as an advocate for these missing and murdered indigenous women. Fortunately, Prime Minister Trudeau has now taken office after conservative Stephen Harper and has made this issue a priority to help aboriginal people going forward.
Laboucan-Massimo’s work is far from over, but it’s always great when the country an activist is working in gains an ally that is high up and ready to help. Mary Beard: Internet harassment Credit: BBC
Children, young adults, and women experience bullying and abuse on social media everyday and, since the Internet is such an open and lucrative space, it’s difficult to stop it. Girls and women are faced with harassment more often because of sexist views that exist in every country, and that’s what Mary Beard is trying to put an end to.
The scholar of classical literature is one of the many women who knows what it’s like to be attacked online for her beliefs but is one of the few people who confronts the perpetrators. She says that the content of the messages is a “predictable menu of rape, bombing, murder, and so forth.”
While most sit back and ignore or block the people sending hateful messages, she broadcasts the messages to shame the people so that they don’t go unpunished. She also responds to them by trying to enlighten them and is surprisingly effective in her efforts.
Dubbed “The Troll Slayer” by The New Yorker, the profile hails her online activism as courageous, hilarious, and ingenious. Her troll slaying is making social media a safer place for women as she continues to combat and convert trolls into never trolling other women again. Esther Ibanga: Women-led peaceful protests Credit: Niwano Peace Foundation
Nigeria has been a place of perpetual periods of peace and conflict for several years because of the diverse ethnicities and religious groups that exist within the nation.
Esther Ibanga recognized this destructive pattern of tentative peace and war and realized that empowered women could stop this madness. As a Nigerian pastor, she has already defied social norms and was no stranger to feminist values and beliefs.
She started the Women Without Walls Initiative , which brings together women from a variety of backgrounds and trains them to make peace between their groups. By educating women and building conflict-resolution, mediation, and dialogues between warring parties, her goal is for ethno-religious violence to become a thing of the past and to create peace in the country.
Her efforts also focus on developing poor communities, aiding displaced persons, and empowering the youth. She has also continuously advocated for the “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign, which is listed in more detail below. Obiageli Ezekwesili: #BringBackOurGirls Credit: All Africa News Desk
The “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign demands that the 230 girls that are still missing after being stolen by Boko Haram terrorists be returned to their families. The girls are suspected of being forced into marriages, rape, and conscription as suicide bombers.
Though a handful of girls were able to escape in the beginning, most of the 270+ girls taken in the mass abduction have not been recovered since they went missing in 2014. Obiageli Ezekwesili quickly mobilized the activists that followed her through grassroots efforts to bring attention to the issue, and the campaign garnered international attention.
Ezekwesili still works to bring the remaining girls home, and continues her work against corruption and social injustice. Her work within the government and as co-founder of Transparency International has helped to bring an end to corruption. Berta Caceres: Environmental activism Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
Being an activist in any country is inherently dangerous, as that means going up against people of power with endless money and resources to keep activists quiet. In 2015, 185 environmental activists were murdered around the world for their opposition to destructive practices by industrial corporations, meaning their work is dangerous but necessary.
Berta Caceres was one of the people murdered in Honduras, as she used her voice to oppose the construction of a damn on indigenous land. Similar to what’s happening with protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the U.S. right now, indigenous people opposed construction because it was unlawful and unnecessary.
Caceres’ tireless work led her to be shot and killed in her own home. She ousted people with power for their involvement in the coup that led to the fall of democratic Honduras, including Hillary Clinton , and was killed for her efforts in exposing this injustice.
The activists’ death has sparked more outrage towards the government and against destructive practices as they try to combat climate change.
What are your thoughts on these activists’ work? Please share, like, and comment on this article!
This article ( These 12 Female Activists Are Making The World A Better Place Right Now ) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com
Do you like our independent & investigative news? Then please check these two settings on Facebook to guarantee you don't miss our posts: | 0 |
tweeted his support for L. L. Bean, the clothing and outdoor equipment company, in response to a leftist effort to boycott the company because one of its 50 donated money to a political action committee (PAC). [The donor, Linda Bean, is one of the members of the family that founded the company. She donated $60, 000 to the Making America Great Again LLC PAC, which is reportedly being converted to a super PAC so that it can accept the donation legally. The maximum individual contribution to a regular PAC allowed in the 2016 election was $5, 000 per individual. A campaign called “#GrabYourWallet” subsequently added L. L. Bean to its list of companies to consider boycotting, solely because, according to its online boycott spreadsheet, “Company leader raised funds for Trump PAC. ” In response, and in apparent reaction to media coverage of the controversy over the past few days, Trump tweeted his support for Bean and the company: Thank you to Linda Bean of L. L. Bean for your great support and courage. People will support you even more now. Buy L. L. Bean. @LBPerfectMaine, — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2017, Critics, such as Mara Liasson of National Public Radio, argued that Trump was not just defending a business from a boycott, but attempting to pick “winners and losers” in the economy for political reasons. Obama frequently plugged his favorite companies at several points in his presidency. In 2012, he called JP Morgan Chase “one of the best managed banks there is. ” At the time, Obama had more than $500, 000 in funds in an account at the bank. 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 |
French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has said German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mass migration policy has “saved our collective dignity,” and warned that criticism of Merkel was a “disgusting simplification. ”[Macron affirmed that even after the Islamic State attack in Berlin, committed by Tunisian migrant Anis Amri, he supports the migrant policy of Chancellor Merkel. Expressing his admiration for Germany, he told German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, “Chancellor Merkel and the whole of German society were at the same level of our [French] common values. They saved our collective dignity, by accepting, accommodating, and educating distressed refugees. ” The former economy minister, who announced his presidential candidacy in added it was a “disgusting simplification” when Merkel was accused of surrendering her own capital and the whole of Europe with the admission of over one million migrants from the Middle East and Africa. In response to questions of securing the continent against terrorism, Macron called for more European Union (EU) integration, including an expansion of the European Border Agency. He said EU nations “also need to overcome national unwillingness and create a joint intelligence system. ” Macron is deemed the election’s “third man” behind the Republicans’ François Fillon and Front National’s Marine Le Pen. The former Socialist Party member and protégé of François Hollande claimed he is “neither on the left nor on the right” and that his policies are a “progressive” appeal to voters who want France to be “open” and . In October, Macron had said he believed France, after over a year of deadly terror attacks including in Nice and Paris, had disproportionately ‘targeted’ Muslims and suggested the country should be less stringent in applying its rules on secularism. Macron’s comments come following the New Year’s addresses of French President Hollande and German Chancellor Merkel, whose countries’ citizenries are set to go to the polls this year. Merkel, who is running for a fourth term as chancellor, defended her migrant policy, telling the German people that Germany will fight the “hatred” of terrorism with “humanity” and “unity. ” Hollande denounced nationalism in his address, his comments roundly criticised by presidential candidate Le Pen who stated that after the populist victories of Trump and Brexit, the French share the worldwide “aspiration for independence” in the fight against globalism. | 1 |
2016 elections by BAR editor and columnist, Dr. Marsha Adebayo
The “revolving, rigged system” that purports to be American democracy was revealed in all its corporate vulgarity on a Baltimore university stage, last week. Two U.S. Senate candidates of the duopoly parties pretended to support the Green Party’s candidate’s right to join the debate, but failed to protest when cops hauled her away. “This was their ‘Rosa Parks’ moment when they could have stood for integrity and democracy” -- but failed the test. Green Party’s Margaret Flowers Challenges US Senate Debate in Maryland as Undemocratic by BAR editor and columnist, Dr. Marsha Adebayo
“ The corporate media and the political duopoly collaborated to ensure that the Green Party message would not be heard.”
US corruption during this campaign season is on full display for the entire world to ponder. No one paying even scant attention can deny the thin veneer that is used to hide state sponsored police murder of Africans, structural poverty and the cozy relationship between the 1% rulers in the Democratic and Republican parties. Green Party candidates, such as Jill Stein, Ajamu Baraka and Margaret Flowers have forced sunlight’s disinfectant power to expose a rigged, racist and revolting political system that politically and economically devours communities of color, condones police murders of Black youth, intentionally exposes communities, like Flint, Michigan, to poisoned water, promotes drone warfare and the pilfering of the natural resources of Africa and South America.
The system, however is finding it more difficult to block out the voices of dissent. Such was the situation this week at the University of Baltimore College of Public Affairs where Dr. Margaret Flowers, the Green Party candidate for the Maryland US Senate seat, was refused the opportunity to participate in the only televised debate alongside Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen and Republican state Del. Kathy Szeliga. The corporate media and the political duopoly collaborated to ensure that the Green Party message would not be heard. The sham excuse used to exclude Flowers was that her poll numbers had not reached 15%. But, of course it is difficult to reach the magic number of 15% in the polls when one is systematically excluded from debates and public events. This is the revolving rigged system that Black people know so well.
“When the police came to escort her off the stage neither candidate provided a meaningful protest of the anti-democratic process unfolding.”
When the rigged debate started, audience members called for Dr. Flowers to join Van Hollen and Szeliga. Shouts of “let her speak” could be heard from the audience. Responding to the audience, Dr. Flowers took her place on the stage shaking hands with both candidates. Standing on the stage, she turned her attention to the audience and said:
“I think it’s important for voters to understand the differences between myself and Congressman Van Hollen and Delegate Szeliga.” With the police moving on stage to remove her, she said, …”I mean, you say you’re a public university and you want to educate the public, but without having a full public discussion, that doesn't actually happen.”
While Van Hollen and Szeliga seemed to agree with Dr. Flowers participating in the debate, when the police came to escort her off the stage neither candidate provided a meaningful protest of the anti-democratic process unfolding. Delegate Szeliga noted that a third podium was available but both politicians remained silent while Dr. Flowers was forced to leave the stage. This was their “Rosa Parks” moment when they could have stood for integrity and democracy but Van Hollen and Szeliga, failed to show the smallest amount of courage, leadership and commitment to anything greater than their individual ambitions and desire for power.
Margaret was escorted by police to a sidewalk outside the debate hall and that symbolically represents the state of US democracy.
After church on Sunday, a sister said to me, “I know a lot of Black folks are going to vote for Hilary Clinton but I can’t vote for the lesser of two evils. I’ve decided to vote for Jill Stein. I’m going to vote my conscience!” My only response after agreeing with her analysis was to add, “Don’t forget to also vote for Margaret Flowers.“
Dr. Margaret Flowers of Green Party Interrupts Maryland Senate Televised Debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix98YXLWUJg
Margaret Flowers Campaign Information: http://www.flowersforsenate.org Dr. Marsha Adebayo is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated: No FEAR: A Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA . She worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the whistle on a US multinational corporation that endangered South African vanadium mine workers. Marsha's successful lawsuit led to the introduction and passage of the first civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century: the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). She is Director of Transparency and Accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet and serves on the Advisory Board of ExposeFacts.com. | 0 |
We want to let you in on a secret. As your oncologists, we’d like to treat you with two, or three, or four different chemotherapy drugs, each of which has distinct side effects, some of which can kill you. Or, if we were cardiothoracic surgeons, we might tell you that we need to crack your chest open to repair your damaged heart valve, and for that to happen you’ll need to undergo anesthesia from which you may never wake up. As doctors, our goal is to help you, of course, and to do no harm. But we may actually hurt you, irreversibly. Not that this happens frequently, but it might. How does that sound? Ready to take the plunge? The secret is that informed consent in health care is commonly informed. It might be a document we ask you to sign, at the behest of our lawyers, in case we end up in court if a bad outcome happens. Unfortunately, it’s often not really about informing you. In schools, teachers determine what students know through tests and homework. The standard is not whether the teacher has explained how to add, but instead whether the student can add. If we were truly invested in whether you were informed, we’d give you a quiz, or at least ask you to repeat back to us what you heard so we could assess its accuracy. Instead, our script frequently looks more like this: There’s a sort of collusion that takes place, and we’re all complicit. Over your lifetime of seeing us, we have trained you that we will look impatient and concerned if you say you didn’t understand something or if you have a lot of questions. After all, we’re busy and have other patients to see. Shame on us. We’ve been on the receiving end of this, too. We have both undergone medical procedures ourselves for which a colleague asked us to acknowledge that we were properly informed. We said we were, fearing disappointing our doctor if we said otherwise. Unfortunately the farce of informed consent only worsens in medical research. Before you can enroll in a clinical trial of a cancer drug, we’ll hand you a document that describes the trial’s purpose, its design, the medications you’ll receive, other standard treatments, and the complications you may suffer. Oh, and we’ll tell you that you are responsible for any medical costs not covered by insurance or the trial sponsor. That’s for the lawyers, again. We will then ask you to sign the final page, acknowledging your understanding and your agreement to participate in the trial. When is the last time you read a document from beginning to end? But maybe it’s O. K. if you don’t read it. Some people don’t want to hear about potential bad outcomes. Others trust their doctors to recommend what’s best for their health, and find comfort in handing decisions about interventions like chemotherapy or heart surgery over to another. We tell our patients that if it makes their cancer journeys any easier, we will do the worrying for them. And we really do wring our hands about our decisions, and rend our garments over bad outcomes that result from our recommendations. A fundamental challenge with this process is that it is often unrealistic to think that you actually could be fully informed of what you’re about to undergo. How can we explain to you the experience of having your chest cracked open, or what it feels like when you go through chemotherapy? Neither of us has undergone heart surgery, or treatment for cancer, and we don’t kid ourselves that any depiction of the experience we provide will be enough. We’d love for you to help us do a better job of informing you, though. So here’s our request: ■ Ask us to use common words and terms. If your doctor says that you’ll end up with a “simple iliac ileal conduit” or a “urostomy,” feel free to say “I don’t understand those words. Can you explain what that means?” ■ Summarize back what you heard. “So I should split my birth control pills in half and take half myself and give the other half to my boyfriend?” That way, if you’ve misunderstood what we did a poor job of explaining, there will be a chance to straighten it out: “No, that’s not right. You should take the whole pill yourself. ” ■ Request written materials, or even pictures or videos. We all learn in different ways and at different paces, and “hard copies” of information that you can take time to absorb at home may be more helpful than the few minutes in our offices. ■ Ask for and most likely scenarios, along with the chance of each one occurring. ■ Ask if you can talk to someone who has undergone the surgery, or received the chemotherapy. That person will have a different kind of understanding of what the experience was like than we do. ■ Explore alternative treatment options, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each. “If I saw 10 different experts in my condition, how many would recommend the same treatment you are recommending?” ■ Take notes, and bring someone else to your appointments to be your advocate, ask the questions you may be reluctant to, and be your “accessory brain,” to help process the information we are trying to convey. We’ve seen too many patients regret decisions that they made without fully understanding their options, or the possible outcome. We encourage our patients, and our colleagues, to be partners in what are often decisions about health care. | 1 |
Recipient Email =>
Whistleblower Julian Assange has given one of his most incendiary interviews ever in a John Pilger Special, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, in which he summarizes what can be gleaned from the tens of thousands of Clinton emails released by WikiLeaks this year.
John Pilger, another Australian émigré, conducted the 25-minute interview at the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange has been trapped since 2012 for fear of extradition to the US. Last month, Assange had his internet access cut off for alleged “interference” in the American presidential election through the work of his website. ‘Clinton made FBI look weak, now there is anger’
John Pilger: What’s the significance of the FBI’s intervention in these last days of the U.S. election campaign, in the case against Hillary Clinton?
Julian Assange : If you look at the history of the FBI, it has become effectively America’s political police. The FBI demonstrated this by taking down the former head of the CIA [General David Petraeus] over classified information given to his mistress. Almost no-one is untouchable. The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that no-one can resist us. But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI’s investigation, so there’s anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak. We’ve published about 33,000 of Clinton’s emails when she was Secretary of State. They come from a batch of just over 60,000 emails, [of which] Clinton has kept about half – 30,000 — to herself, and we’ve published about half. BREAKING: #Assange : #Clinton resisted #FBI , and now they’re out for payback (WATCH FULL JOHN PILGER EXCLUSIVE ON RT) https://t.co/b4q0WfkQJn pic.twitter.com/In1VZi0WcG
— RT (@RT_com) November 5, 2016
Then there are the Podesta emails we’ve been publishing. [John] Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign manager, so there’s a thread that runs through all these emails; there are quite a lot of pay-for-play, as they call it, giving access in exchange for money to states, individuals and corporations. [These emails are] combined with the cover up of the Hillary Clinton emails when she was Secretary of State, [which] has led to an environment where the pressure on the FBI increases. ‘Russian government not the source of Clinton leaks’
JP: The Clinton campaign has said that Russia is behind all of this, that Russia has manipulated the campaign and is the source for WikiLeaks and its emails.
JA: The Clinton camp has been able to project that kind of neo-McCarthy hysteria: that Russia is responsible for everything. Hilary Clinton stated multiple times, falsely, that seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. That is false; we can say that the Russian government is not the source.
WikiLeaks has been publishing for ten years, and in those ten years, we have published ten million documents, several thousand individual publications, several thousand different sources, and we have never got it wrong. ‘Saudi Arabia & Qatar funding ISIS and Clinton’
JP: The emails that give evidence of access for money and how Hillary Clinton herself benefited from this and how she is benefitting politically, are quite extraordinary. I’m thinking of when the Qatari representative was given five minutes with Bill Clinton for a million dollar cheque.
JA: And twelve million dollars from Morocco …
JP: Twelve million from Morocco yeah.
JA: For Hillary Clinton to attend [a party].
JP: In terms of the foreign policy of the United States, that’s where the emails are most revealing, where they show the direct connection between Hillary Clinton and the foundation of jihadism, of ISIL, in the Middle East. Can you talk about how the emails demonstrate the connection between those who are meant to be fighting the jihadists of ISIL, are actually those who have helped create it.
JA: There’s an early 2014 email from Hillary Clinton, not so long after she left the State Department, to her campaign manager John Podesta that states ISIL is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now this is the most significant email in the whole collection, and perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the Clinton Foundation. Even the U.S. government agrees that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIL, or ISIS. But the dodge has always been that, well it’s just some rogue Princes, using their cut of the oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves.
But that email says that no, it is the governments of Saudi and Qatar that have been funding ISIS.
JP: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the Saudis and the Qataris, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation while Hilary Clinton is Secretary of State and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly to Saudi Arabia.
JA: Under Hillary Clinton, the world’s largest ever arms deal was made with Saudi Arabia, [worth] more than $80 billion. In fact, during her tenure as Secretary of State, total arms exports from the United States in terms of the dollar value, doubled.
JP: Of course the consequence of that is that the notorious terrorist group called ISIl or ISIS is created largely with money from the very people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation.
JA: Yes.
JP: That’s extraordinary. ‘Clinton has been eaten alive by her ambition’
JA: I actually feel quite sorry for Hillary Clinton as a person because I see someone who is eaten alive by their ambitions, tormented literally to the point where they become sick; they faint as a result of [the reaction] to their ambitions. She represents a whole network of people and a network of relationships with particular states. The question is how does Hilary Clinton fit in this broader network? She’s a centralising cog. You’ve got a lot of different gears in operation from the big banks like Goldman Sachs and major elements of Wall Street, and Intelligence and people in the State Department and the Saudis.
She’s the centraliser that inter-connects all these different cogs. She’s the smooth central representation of all that, and ‘all that’ is more or less what is in power now in the United States. It’s what we call the establishment or the DC consensus. One of the more significant Podesta emails that we released was about how the Obama cabinet was formed and how half the Obama cabinet was basically nominated by a representative from City Bank. This is quite amazing.
JP: Didn’t Citybank supply a list …. ?
JA: Yes.
JP: … which turned out to be most of the Obama cabinet.
JA : Yes.
JP: So Wall Street decides the cabinet of the President of the United States?
JA: If you were following the Obama campaign back then, closely, you could see it had become very close to banking interests. Assange ‘sorry for Clinton as a personality’ (John Pilger exclusive, courtesy of Dartmouth films) https://t.co/6Yw748WCnb pic.twitter.com/Abf0VFg6zy
JA: So I think you can’t properly understand Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy without understanding Saudi Arabia. The connections with Saudi Arabia are so intimate. ‘Libya is Hillary Clinton’s war’
JP: Why was she so demonstrably enthusiastic about the destruction of Libya? Can you talk a little about just what the emails have told us – told you – about what happened there? Because Libya is such a source for so much of the mayhem now in Syria: the ISIL, jihadism, and so on. And it was almost Hillary Clinton’s invasion. What do the emails tell us about that?
JA: Libya, more than anyone else’s war, was Hillary Clinton’s war. Barak Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it? Hillary Clinton. That’s documented throughout her emails. She had put her favoured agent, Sidney Blumenthal, on to that; there’s more than 1700 emails out of the thirty three thousand Hillary Clinton emails that we’ve published, just about Libya. It’s not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state — something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President.
So in late 2011 there is an internal document called the Libya Tick Tock that was produced for Hillary Clinton, and it’s the chronological description of how she was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around 40,000 deaths within Libya; jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European refugee and migrant crisis.
Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilisation of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself err was no longer able to control the movement of people through it. Libya faces along to the Mediterranean and had been effectively the cork in the bottle of Africa. So all problems, economic problems and civil war in Africa — previously people fleeing those problems didn’t end up in Europe because Libya policed the Mediterranean. That was said explicitly at the time, back in early 2011 by Gaddafi: ‘What do these Europeans think they’re doing, trying to bomb and destroy the Libyan State? There’s going to be floods of migrants out of Africa and jihadists into Europe, and this is exactly what happened. ‘Trump won’t be permitted to win’
JP: You get complaints from people saying, ‘What is WikiLeaks doing? Are they trying to put Trump in the Whitehouse?’
JA: My answer is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he’s had every establishment off side; Trump doesn’t have one establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment, but banks, intelligence [agencies], arms companies… big foreign money … are all united behind Hillary Clinton, and the media as well, media owners and even journalists themselves.
JP: There is the accusation that WikiLeaks is in league with the Russians. Some people say, ‘Well, why doesn’t WikiLeaks investigate and publish emails on Russia?’
JA: We have published about 800,000 documents of various kinds that relate to Russia. Most of those are critical; and a great many books have come out of our publications about Russia, most of which are critical. Our [Russia]documents have gone on to be used in quite a number of court cases: refugee cases of people fleeing some kind of claimed political persecution in Russia, which they use our documents to back up.
JP: Do you yourself take a view of the U.S. election? Do you have a preference for Clinton or Trump?
JA: [Let’s talk about] Donald Trump. What does he represent in the American mind and in the European mind? He represents American white trash, [which Hillary Clinton called] ‘deplorable and irredeemable’. It means from an establishment or educated cosmopolitan, urbane perspective, these people are like the red necks, and you can never deal with them. Because he so clearly — through his words and actions and the type of people that turn up at his rallies — represents people who are not the middle, not the upper middle educated class, there is a fear of seeming to be associated in any way with them, a social fear that lowers the class status of anyone who can be accused of somehow assisting Trump in any way, including any criticism of Hillary Clinton. If you look at how the middle class gains its economic and social power, that makes absolute sense. ‘US attempting to squeeze WikiLeaks through my refugee status’
JP: I’d like to talk about Ecuador, the small country that has given you refuge and [political asylum] in this embassy in London. Now Ecuador has cut off the internet from here where we’re doing this interview, in the Embassy, for the clearly obvious reason that they are concerned about appearing to intervene in the U.S. election campaign. Can you talk about why they would take that action and your own views on Ecuador’s support for you?
JA: Let’s let go back four years. I made an asylum application to Ecuador in this embassy, because of the U.S. extradition case, and the result was that after a month, I was successful in my asylum application. The embassy since then has been surrounded by police: quite an expensive police operation which the British government admits to spending more than £12.6 million. They admitted that over a year ago. Now there’s undercover police and there are robot surveillance cameras of various kinds — so that there has been quite a serious conflict right here in the heart of London between Ecuador, a country of sixteen million people, and the United Kingdom, and the Americans who have been helping on the side. So that was a brave and principled thing for Ecuador to do. Now we have the U.S. election [campaign], the Ecuadorian election is in February next year, and you have the White House feeling the political heat as a result of the true information that we have been publishing.
WikiLeaks does not publish from the jurisdiction of Ecuador, from this embassy or in the territory of Ecuador; we publish from France, we publish from, from Germany, we publish from The Netherlands and from a number of other countries, so that the attempted squeeze on WikiLeaks is through my refugee status; and this is, this is really intolerable. [It means] that [they] are trying to get at a publishing organisation; [they] try and prevent it from publishing true information that is of intense interest to the American people and others about an election.
JP: Tell us what would happen if you walked out of this embassy.
JA: I would be immediately arrested by the British police and I would then be extradited either immediately to the United States or to Sweden. In Sweden I am not charged, I have already been previously cleared [by the Senior Stockholm Prosecutor Eva Finne]. We were not certain exactly what would happen there, but then we know that the Swedish government has refused to say that they will not extradite me to the United States we know they have extradited 100 per cent of people whom the U.S. has requested since at least 2000. So over the last fifteen years, every single person the U.S. has tried to extradite from Sweden has been extradited, and they refuse to provide a guarantee [that won’t happen].
JP: People often ask me how you cope with the isolation in here.
JA: Look, one of the best attributes of human beings is that they’re adaptable; one of the worst attributes of human beings is they are adaptable. They adapt and start to tolerate abuses, they adapt to being involved themselves in abuses, they adapt to adversity and they continue on. So in my situation, frankly, I’m a bit institutionalised — this [the embassy] is the world .. it’s visually the world [for me].
JP: It’s the world without sunlight, for one thing, isn’t it?
JA: It’s the world without sunlight, but I haven’t seen sunlight in so long, I don’t remember it.
JP: Yes.
JA: So , yes, you adapt. The one real irritant is that my young children — they also adapt. They adapt to being without their father. That’s a hard, hard adaption which they didn’t ask for.
JP: Do you worry about them?
JA: Yes, I worry about them; I worry about their mother. ‘I am innocent and in arbitrary detention’
JP: Some people would say, ‘Well, why don’t you end it and simply walk out the door and allow yourself to be extradited to Sweden?’
JA: The U.N. [the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention] has looked into this whole situation. They spent eighteen months in formal, adversarial litigation. [So it’s] me and the U.N. verses Sweden and the U.K. Who’s right? The U.N. made a conclusion that I am being arbitrarily detained illegally, deprived of my freedom and that what has occurred has not occurred within the laws that the United Kingdom and Sweden, and that [those countries] must obey. It is an illegal abuse. It is the United Nations formally asking, ‘What’s going on here? What is your legal explanation for this? [Assange] says that you should recognise his asylum.’ [And here is]
Sweden formally writing back to the United Nations to say, ‘No, we’re not going to [recognise the UN ruling], so leaving open their ability to extradite.
I just find it absolutely amazing that the narrative about this situation is not put out publically in the press, because it doesn’t suit the Western establishment narrative – that yes, the West has political prisoners, it’s a reality, it’s not just me, there’s a bunch of other people as well. The West has political prisoners. Of course, no state accepts [that it should call] the people it is imprisoning or detaining for political reasons, political prisoners. They don’t call them political prisoners in China, they don’t call them political prisoners in Azerbaijan and they don’t call them political prisoners in the United States, U.K. or Sweden; it is absolutely intolerable to have that kind of self-perception.
JA: Here we have a case, the Swedish case, where I have never been charged with a crime, where I have already been cleared [by the Stockholm prosecutor] and found to be innocent, where the woman herself said that the police made it up, where the United Nations formally said the whole thing is illegal, where the State of Ecuador also investigated and found that I should be given asylum. Those are the facts, but what is the rhetoric?
JP: Yes, it’s different.
JA: The rhetoric is pretending, constantly pretending that I have been charged with a crime, and never mentioning that I have been already previously cleared, never mentioning that the woman herself says that the police made it up.
[The rhetoric] is trying to avoid [the truth that ] the U.N. formally found that the whole thing is illegal, never even mentioning that Ecuador made a formal assessment through its formal processes and found that yes, I am subject to persecution by the United States. (Reprinted from RT by permission of author or representative) | 0 |
So-called ‘Patient Zero’ not behind the spread of HIV in US Published time: 27 Oct, 2016 00:50 Get short URL Gaëtan Dugas (February 20, 1953 – March 30, 1984), Canadian flight attendant and alleged patient zero for AIDS. © Wikipedia Since 1987, the so-called “Patient Zero” of HIV was believed to be a Canadian flight attendant, blamed for importing the virus that causes AIDS into the US. New research has determined that he was not the first infected person in the US, however.
Gaetan Dugas has been blamed for the appearance of AIDS in the US. However, research from the University of Arizona has exonerated Dugas, no longer the first villain in the deadly epidemic.
Dugas was first identified as “ Patient Zero ” in Randy Shilts’ 1987 bestseller about the AIDS epidemic, titled ‘And the Band Played On.’ The former Air Canada flight attendant died of AIDS in 1984, but new discoveries about the genetic makeup of the AIDS virus have revealed that Dugas was not the source of the infection in the US, merely another victim of the disease during its earliest days. New antibody therapy suppresses #HIV for 2+ months without side effects – study https://t.co/bZWJQrHf5o pic.twitter.com/8YFtN0oK8w — RT America (@RT_America) June 25, 2016
Michael Worobey, the evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, led the study that pieced together the genetic sequence of the HIV virus, using eight blood samples collected from gay and bisexual men during a hepatitis B study between 1978 and 1979, Reuters reported .
What Worobey and his team discovered was that AIDS first came to the US by way of the Caribbean in 1970 or 1971. Instead of originating in California and spreading eastward via Dugas, as it was long believed, the spread of AIDS was actually the opposite.
Dugas did link cases in New York City to California and was found to carry HIV-1 sequences attributed to early mutations of the infection, but the study found “ no evidence that Patient O was the first person infected by this lineage. ”
" The virus got to New York City pretty darn early ," Worobey told NPR.
Dugas’ reputation for being the first AIDS patient did not come from science, but rather a simple misinterpretation of the letter “ O. ” The urban legend began in the early 1980s, when behavioral scientist William Darrow was working with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to try to discover what was behind the mysterious deaths of gay men in Los Angeles, NPR reported.
Darrow caught a break when he learned of rumors that the early cases of AIDS actually involved lovers.
“ Whoa! This is the first indication that we had that the disease might be sexually transmitted from one person to another ," Darrow told NPR.
Dugas appeared on Darrow’s radar when three unconnected men named him as a lover. His name was mentioned by more men, until he was connected to eight early AIDS cases.
When Darrow went to write up his findings, he coded the men’s names to preserve their anonymity. The majority of them were from the Los Angeles area and were identified as such.
" There was LA1, LA2 ... and so forth, " Darrow explained.
But when it came to the French-Canadian flight attendant, Dugas was identified as "Patient O,” the outside-of-California case. That is an O, as in Oscar. Not a zero.
" I never labeled him Patient Zero, ” Darrow said. Insurers discriminating against HIV/AIDS patients via drug costs – study http://t.co/kYYil7NjxZ pic.twitter.com/bs92vGJV54 — RT America (@RT_America) January 29, 2015
However, the designation caused some confusion back at the CDC, where someone referred to Dugas as “ Patient Zero. ” This error was not corrected and Darrow went with it, but explained that “ Patient O ” was meant to show “ there was some person who was very important in this cluster of cases. "
This mistake followed Dugas even after his death. When Shilts first read about the Canadian, he originally believed he was described as “ Patient O, ” but then heard CDC employees call him “ Patient Zero. ”
“I thought, 'Ooh, that's catchy’,” he told Life magazine.
From that point onward, Dugas became known as “ Patient Zero ” in Shilts’ book. Amid the panic surrounding the disease, the media ran with Dugas being to blame for the epidemic and spread misinformation that the Canadian was the first person diagnosed with the disease in the US.
The fact that Dugas’ HIV sequence offered little difference from the many other people who were infected at the time was often forgotten and his reputation as “ Patient Zero ” overshadowed the assistance he offered the CDC in recognizing and studying HIV, according to Darrow.
" To me, there's something nice about going back and correcting the record, " Worobeysays. " He has been blamed for things that no one should be blamed for. " | 0 |
Nation Puts 2016 Election Into Perspective By Reminding Itself Some Species Of Sea Turtles Get Eaten By Birds Just Seconds After They Hatch WASHINGTON—Saying they felt anxious and overwhelmed just days before heading to the polls to decide a historically fraught presidential race, Americans throughout the country reportedly took a moment Thursday to put the 2016 election into perspective by reminding themselves that some species of sea turtles are eaten by birds just seconds after they hatch. Cleveland Indians Worried Team Cursed After Building Franchise On Old Native American Stereotype CLEVELAND—Having watched in horror as their team crumbled after a 3-1 World Series lead, members of the Cleveland Indians expressed concern Thursday that the organization has been cursed for building their franchise on an incredibly old Native American stereotype. Report: Election Day Most Americans’ Only Time In 2016 Being In Same Room With Person Supporting Other Candidate WASHINGTON—According to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, Election Day 2016 will, for the majority of Americans, mark the only time this year they will occupy the same room as a person who supports a different presidential candidate. Nurse Reminds Elderly Man She’s Just Down The Hall If He Starts To Die DES PLAINES, IL—Assuring him that she’d be at his side in a jiffy, local nurse Wendy Kaufman reminded an elderly resident at the Briarwood Assisted Living Community that she was just down the hall if he started to die, sources reported Tuesday. | 0 |
DIETRICH, Idaho — Anonymous phone callers from distant area codes have unleashed tirades of invective on the residents of this tiny rural town. Strangers cruise its paved and dirt roads, seeming to drive through just for a look. And come fall, Dean Grissom’s and grandchildren will be going to another school. “Their parents think the kids aren’t safe,” said Mr. Grissom, 57, who works for the Idaho Fish and Game agency. He said that sending the children to classes in Shoshone, eight miles away, was unnecessary in his view, but that he understood the parents’ fears. A town he loves has been damaged. There is a lot of debate here about what happened at the town’s only school on Oct. 23 after a football practice: an assault, a racist attack, bullying, a failure of supervision by school officials, or some combination. Hardly anyone disputes, though, that this town of 350 people has been shaken to the core. State and local prosecutors say that several white football players bullied and brutally assaulted a mentally disabled black teammate in a locker room that October day, shoving a coat hanger into his rectum while other boys held his arms. Two of the players accused in the attack were charged as adults with felony sexual assault and could face life in prison if convicted. A third teammate has been charged as a juvenile. A preliminary hearing on the criminal charges is scheduled for Friday. In addition, a $10 million federal civil suit was filed last month by the boy’s adoptive parents, Tim and Shelly McDaniel, who are white. In it, they accused the school district and its administrators, trustees, employees and volunteers of failing in their legal duty to protect the McDaniels’ son, who they say endured months of racist taunts, humiliation and physical abuse. After the attack, the boy required treatment at two hospitals for rectal injuries. “The school district and individual defendants acted with deliberate indifference to the harassment, humiliation, mental and physical abuse and mistreatment of the plaintiff by students of the district and thereby permitted and caused him to be bullied, beaten and raped,” the lawsuit said. In big ways and small, the repercussions of both the crime and the family’s response are already rippling out, no matter what happens in court or at the school, which has 245 students in grades . Mr. McDaniel, 60, who has taught science at the school for 21 years, put the family’s house up for sale last month and is looking for work elsewhere. The cars and trucks that sometimes slowly cruise by out front, he said, and the funny looks he gets around town have unnerved him and his wife, who is 51. On July 1, a state law allowing Idahoans to carry a concealed weapon without a permit will take effect, and Mr. McDaniel said he planned to be armed after that. “If I could be gone today, I’d be gone,” he said, sitting outside in the yard on a recent afternoon as dogs wandered about near chicken and goat pens. The McDaniels stood out here in rural Idaho even before the episode. Over the years, they have adopted 20 children of various races — white, Hispanic and black — many of them with physical, mental or emotional troubles, including autism and fetal alcohol syndrome. A few years ago, Mr. McDaniel raised hackles by teaching sex education in his science classes with illustrations that some critics said were too graphic, and one of his daughters led a campaign on Facebook to save his job. The legal terrain to come is a minefield in itself, education law experts said. Courts have generally recognized that school officials cannot be everywhere all the time, and have not typically held teachers, administrators or coaches legally responsible for occasional bullying. But that deference can fade when race, religion or disability is involved, said John Dayton, a professor of education law at the University of Georgia. In those cases, courts have sometimes tilted hard the other way, he said, if they find that a clearly vulnerable group or category of students was not sufficiently protected. Other education experts said the central question raised by the McDaniels’ lawsuit — whether school officials should be held responsible for failing to stop a culture of bullying before it escalates to violence — had become harder to answer as new and different ways of bullying have proliferated. “The expectation of supervision has increased,” said Ann E. Blankenship, an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Southern Mississippi. Technology, she added, “opens the door to bullying opportunities 24 hours a day. ” Don Heiken, Dietrich’s mayor, has publicly called on the school to fire people involved in the football program, who he said must have been aware that bullying, if not outright racism, was getting worse. The boy, according to his parents’ suit, was stripped of his pants on the bus after one football game, while other students took photos. He was “continuously” subjected, the suit said, to “wedgies” — his underwear yanked sharply upward, sometimes so violently that he came home with torn shorts. “They had to have known,” Mr. Heiken said in an interview. It probably did not help, Mr. McDaniel said, that in a school where sports are hugely important, his son was unskilled at football. Unable to remember the plays, the boy was called offsides — crossing the scrimmage line before the ball was snapped — six or seven times in a row in a single game, his father said. Dietrich itself, about 35 miles from Twin Falls and about 60 miles from the resort community of Sun Valley, is changing and growing, which has become part of the discussion about what happened here. The population has doubled in the last couple of decades and is expected to double again even faster, according to a planning presentation made recently to the town council. Lynn Johnson, 78, said “outsiders,” as he called the wave of newcomers, were changing the town where he has lived for the past 42 years, and not always for the better. Both of the students charged as adults in the case — Tanner Ray Ward, 17, and John R. K. Howard, 18 — were relatively new to the community, for example. The defendant being tried as a juvenile has not been named in court documents. “Neither of them boys are from Dietrich,” said Mr. Johnson, who drove a school bus and did maintenance work for the school for 17 years. “It wouldn’t have happened without them. ” A lawyer for Mr. Ward declined to comment, and a lawyer for Mr. Howard did not respond to phone messages. The school superintendent and principal, both defendants in the civil suit, did not respond to emails and phone messages. Mr. Grissom, who lives just a few blocks from the school, said that he knew and admired the McDaniel family, and that he thought that admiration was shared in much of the town. That they would move away was one more piece of the damage, he said. “People look at this and say a lot of people are prejudiced here,” Mr. Grissom said. “They’re not. ” | 1 |
Jazz y Chistes #05: Muerte en otoño EL MUNDO TODAY PODCASTS Este sitio web utiliza cookies para analizar cómo es utilizado el sitio. Las cookies no te pueden identificar. Si continuas navegando supone la aceptación de la Política de Cookies. Estoy de acuerdo. Más info. | 0 |
In an extensive feature in the Hollywood Reporter, CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker revealed his ambitious plans to take his cable news empire into the digital domain and beyond. [From the Hollywood Reporter: “Did you enjoy that?” asks Jeff Zucker as he walks into his office at CNN’s Manhattan headquarters. By that, Zucker means President Donald Trump’s chaotic press conference Feb. 16 from the East Room of the White House, which had just finished up. In addition to claiming that his administration is running like a “ machine” despite scandals and dustups, the president continued his assault on the news media that, a week later, would result in CNN and others being banned from a daily briefing. “I watch CNN,” said Trump. “The tone is such hatred. ” Zucker, whose network has thrived of late despite (or, more likely, in part because of) its status as presidential punching bag, seems to have enjoyed that. By the time I join Zucker in his modest office, Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer are offering a recap from the anchor desk in Washington. We watch it on the largest of the 11 screens mounted on the wall opposite Zucker’s desk. “It was unhinged it was wild,” says Tapper. Then CNN contributor and Trump loyalist Jeffrey Lord appears via Skype to offer a counter from Trump land. “I’ve been listening to you, and I think we saw two different press conferences,” says Lord. “He was relaxed, he was funny, he was on point. ” … Zucker, known throughout the industry as a masterful poacher of talent, has been relentless in his search for original voices to augment the success of Bourdain and others. In the fall, in the heat of the presidential campaign, he hired away BuzzFeed’s entire KFile team, which had broken several major stories, including Trump’s appearance in a Playboy video. In January, that team had the scoop on former Fox News personality Monica Crowley’s brushes with plagiarism, which torpedoed her nomination to a top National Security Council post. Another recent addition is comedian and social commentator W. Kamau Bell, whose show United Shades of America premiered last spring on CNN (the debut episode had Bell interviewing hooded KKK members). Bell, who will launch a new series on the Great Big Story platform this summer, notes that while Trump may dismiss the network as fake news, the standards and practices apparatus at CNN holds even his show to a high bar: “We can’t just say random facts. They’re like, ‘Where did you get that from?’ So the pressure to make things smarter is always a good pressure, and I’ll take care of the making things funnier part. ” … Read the full story at the Hollywood Reporter. | 1 |
Shopping for consumer electronics can get overwhelming. The staff of The Wirecutter and The Sweethome, product review websites owned by The New York Times, do the hard work of narrowing down the options. We spoke with Lauren Dragan, the headphone editor, about — what else? — headphones. There are so many choices for earphones and earbuds. How do I decide what to buy? It’s tough! There really isn’t any one headphone that works for all situations, so sometimes the best option is having two less expensive headphones that are suited to your lifestyle and listening habits. If you know how you’ll use them, you can better figure out what features will be important. What do you use? Because of my job, I get to know the perfect headphone for every situation. I think I regularly rotate among seven pairs. I have a Plantronics Backbeat Fit for running — they’re unsealed so I can hear traffic and my surroundings — an Oppo for longer listening sessions, a Bose QC25 for flying (and vacuuming) a Plantronics Voyager Focus UC headset for business calls, a JLab Epic 2 Bluetooth for the gym, my custom UE 11 for when I’m trying to get work done at a coffee shop, and then I rotate in whatever I’m currently testing. I always spend a week using any potential top pick before we post a review so I can troubleshoot. I’ve caught a few problems that way. And yes, I’ve even done that with the kids’ headphones. I have a surprisingly small hat size. Why aren’t the new Apple cordless earbuds on the list? Ah, the AirPods. The current working term for those kinds of headphones is “true wireless. ” Aside from not having a cord to tangle and being decent at taking phone calls, the AirPods didn’t improve much over the corded EarPods. The sound quality is the same (which is to say, meh, with no bass). Plus the battery life is less than a full day at work, so you had better remember to charge them at lunch time. And this for $130 more than a replacement pair of EarPods? I don’t think they’re fully cooked yet. Do headphones and earbuds really have to cost so much? Some technology, like a Bluetooth antenna or an active circuit, is going to cost a manufacturer a certain amount for the components and licensing fees. A manufacturer can’t get them into a product for any less. That sets a base manufacturing cost. So a good pair of sport Bluetooth headphones, a solid product that will last you a few years, costs about $99. Anything below that will likely suffer in some way. To some people, that’s O. K. But you can’t expect magic for $30. On the other end, when you’re paying over $300, you are getting a combination of innovation, product quality and sound quality. But a lot of times, anything much above that, it’s just plain old marketing and hype. Are you thinking of any particular headphones? In the audio quality category, there’s the planar magnetic Oppo, Audeze, Mr. Speakers, brands like that. They range from $400 and up. Bose has the best technology available, and it’s because the company spent a ton of money on research and development. And of course, Beats has the market cornered on branding. They’ve been making a lot of improvements to their sound quality. But the difference between them and others priced that high is that you’re paying $150 to $200 for sound and adding on another $100 or so for the Beats label. What’s your dream product? There’s the elusive unicorn: headphones that do everything well and work in any situation. That could be possible with what’s available to purchase today, but nobody has made it just yet. But I’m also really fascinated with where companies like Bragi and Here One are going with “hearables. ” Those are devices that are computers worn in your ears — like what Google Glass was trying to do with vision, but in your ears instead. | 1 |
The combination of a shallow fault and old, unreinforced masonry buildings led to widespread devastation in the earthquake that struck central Italy early Wednesday. The .2 quake killed at least 241 people and left hundreds more injured. Many people were trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings. Like other villages and towns in the mountainous area, Amatrice, where the mayor lamented that “half the town no longer exists,” has stone churches and other buildings that were constructed centuries ago, when little if anything was known about earthquakes. Unless they have been reinforced in recent years, such structures are easily damaged or destroyed by shaking. “Even 100 years ago, they didn’t know how to build structures to withstand earthquakes,” said David A. Rothery, professor of planetary geosciences at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England. The earthquake was less powerful than many recent deadly quakes. The .8 earthquake that struck Nepal in April 2015, for instance, killing 8, 000 people, released roughly 250 times more energy. But the Italian quake was very shallow: According to the United States Geological Survey, it occurred about six miles below the surface. “Shallow earthquakes cause more destruction than deep earthquakes because the shallowness of the source makes the at the surface worse,” Professor Rothery said. Video from Amatrice and other towns near the quake center showed heaps of masonry rubble from buildings that had been shaken apart. Earthquakes are set off by the movement of the earth’s crust, which is divided into large sections called tectonic plates. The Apennine Mountains, where the quake occurred on Wednesday, are in an area where one plate, the African, is moving under another, the Eurasian. Because of the complex interaction between the plates, the basin of the Tyrrhenian Sea, off Italy’s west coast, is spreading. It is this spreading, and the tension it creates in the Apennines, that led to the quake. The area of Wednesday’s temblor experienced significant earthquakes in the past, including one with a magnitude of 6. 3 near the town of L’Aquila in 2009 that killed at least 295 people, injured more than 1, 000 and left 55, 000 homeless. The two quakes had much in common in terms of genesis and depth,” said Massimo Cocco, a geologist with the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome. After the 2009 quake, seven members of a national commission on risk prevention were arrested on charges of failing to adequately warn L’Aquila about the earthquake risk. They were found guilty of manslaughter in 2012 and sentenced to six years in prison, but they were cleared in 2014 by an appeals court. Mr. Cocco said that Italy had construction laws for new buildings, but that little has been done to reinforce existing buildings. “Resilience is just too low compared to the frequency and the high impact of natural phenomena,” he said. | 1 |
Karolina Petersson was nesting. Pregnant with her first child, she stood in the kitchen of her home on the North Fork of Long Island and stirred a pan of cabbage and butter. Her husband, Vincent Catalano, was upstairs painting the baby’s room. Petersson had a bowl of ground meat on the counter beside her, some potatoes, a small glass of cream. It was her grandmother’s recipe she was making, she said, a kind of cabbage meatloaf that she remembered from childhood outside Gothenburg, in Sweden. Kalpudding, it’s called. You serve it with lingonberries. I wanted to eat it right away. These are hard days for cooking, as winter too slowly gives way to vernal rain and sunshine. Farmers’ markets are bare in many precincts, and for some a kind of fatigue has set in, an exhaustion with soups and stews, with root vegetables and pot roasts, with salads built of factory greens and flavorless tomatoes. Soon there will be strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, snow peas and watercress, the paschal lamb, the Easter ham. But soon is not now. Early March can leave cooks adrift in home and restaurant kitchens alike, unsure of themselves, desirous of inspiration. And here was mine. I wasn’t staying for dinner. I had only dropped by for a brief, neighborly before the birth, a what’ and see you soon. But the scent of the cabbage was ambrosial: approximating caramel on the razor’s edge of burned. I could imagine the vegetables stirred into and enrobing the meat, and I knew if I couldn’t find lingonberries, I could swap them out for cranberries and be happy with the result. I cooked a kalpudding the next day. I cooked a lot of them after that: ground beef and pork mixed with bread crumbs and some of the caramelized cabbage, formed under a cloak of more cabbage and baked until the top went dark and almost dry at the edges, delicious crunch above the succulent meat. I served them with lingonberry preserves (thanks, Internet!) cut with vinegar and Worcestershire sauce, made velvet with butter, alongside boiled potatoes. One day in the middle of all this cooking, I called Magnus Nilsson, the chef at Faviken, a restaurant on a large estate in northwestern Sweden that regularly appears on lists of the world’s best. Nilsson is fanatical in his devotion to Nordic cuisine. In 2015, he published “The Nordic Cookbook,” an invaluable guide to the region’s cooking, from the braised guillemot of the Faroe Islands to the taco quiche of suburban Stockholm. He has a recipe for kalpudding in the book. It was as much casserole as meatloaf. Kalpudding, he told me — “and I’m just theorizing here” — is just an version of the stuffed cabbage the Swedes call kaldolme, a dish Nilsson traces back to the 18th century, a Nordic version of the Turkish dolmas that Swedish soldiers tasted in the Ottoman Empire when they sought refuge there after an unsuccessful military campaign against the Russians. “It’s an infidel’s version, with pork,” he said. “But hard to make, with all that stuffing and rolling. So kalpudding is what you’d make at home. ” Nilsson said he was once particular about the preparation of the dish. When he set out to compile the cookbook, he said, “it was a big documentary project. I was dead set on accuracy. There was no room for adaptation. ” But making the recipes work for the regular home cook put the lie to that goal, he said, and so did the hundreds of regional differences in particular dishes prepared in different parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. (What, you don’t have any goose blood around to make the svartsoppa?) Nilsson used as an example the binders that are used in kalpudding, to help the meat hold together. “Historically, there are breadcrumbs in kalpuddings made in Stockholm,” he said. “That’s because there were bakeries there. You don’t see that to the north, where there were no bakeries,” and crushed barley is used instead. Some bind their kalpudding with rice, or shredded potatoes. That’s good, I said, because Nilsson calls for the use of “golden syrup” to help caramelize his cabbage, and the rest of the world doesn’t easily have access to the Swedish version of that syrup, amber and very different from our own (the Internet isn’t perfect). Nilsson laughed. “And we don’t use molasses,” he said. But you can. The result will be no less Nordic, Nilsson said. “Cabbage smells in a very special way when it almost burns,” he told me. “It gets savory, almost like a beef stock. It tastes almost brown and umami yummy. ” How you get it to that point, he added, is “what’s interesting, what happens when you cook a dish elsewhere, with what you have available to you. It always, always, makes sense. ” Recipe: Kalpudding (Meatloaf With Caramelized Cabbage) | 1 |
This looks like a fake letter. Especially this part; "His analysis is impeccable and his grasp of facts masterly. And his writings are devoid of any prejudice against any ethnic group or nation."
Hall's "analysis" is laughable, his basic understanding of the ideas he talks about is vapid, and he clearly voices prejudice against an ethnic group, in fact he relies on prejudices against an ethnic group when he uses the 'dual - loyalty Jews' argument as 'evidence' that Israel was involved in 9/11. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Here are some highlights from Day 2 of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Neil M. Gorsuch: ■ Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, pressed Judge Gorsuch on a central question: Can he hold President Trump accountable? “No man is above the law,” he said. ■ Judge Gorsuch said no one from the White House had asked him to make any commitments on legal issues. “I have offered no promises on how I’d rule to anyone on any case,” he said. ■ The nominee refused to say how he would rule on many issues, including abortion, gun rights and Mr. Trump’s travel ban. ■ Judge Gorsuch praised Judge Merrick B. Garland, but declined to wade into the partisan fight. “I can’t get involved in politics,” he said. ■ He sidestepped many efforts by Democrats to offer his views on previous Supreme Court rulings. Democrats could cite his answers later as evasive responses that persuaded them to vote against him. ■ Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, asked Judge Gorsuch about his participation in defending the George W. Bush administration’s policies in the war on terror, like torture, when the judge was a Justice Department official in . Judge Gorsuch said he was a lawyer and not a policy maker then. ■ Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he was comforted that President Trump had chosen Judge Gorsuch. “Quite frankly, I was quite worried about who he’d pick. Maybe somebody on TV. ” Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, was perhaps the most aggressive questioner so far. He turned first to the case of a truck driver who abandoned his broken rig in frigid conditions and was fired. He asked Judge Gorsuch, who in a dissent said the dismissal should be upheld, what he would have done if he were faced with the same situation as the driver. “I’m asking you a question, please answer the question,” Mr. Franken said, as the nominee demurred. When Judge Gorsuch began to defend his vote again, the senator cut in. “That’s absurd,” said Mr. Franken, a veteran of “Saturday Night Live” in a previous life. “Now, I had a career in identifying absurdity. And I know it when I see it. ” Judge Gorsuch said earlier that the case of the truck driver was “one of those that you take home at night. ” But the law, he argued on Tuesday, was clear: “The law said the man is protected and can’t be fired if he refuses to operate an unsafe vehicle. ” In fact, Judge Gorsuch said, the driver had unhitched his vehicle from the trailing cargo to get to safety in frigid weather. “He chose to operate,” Judge Gorsuch said, adding, “I think by any plain understanding, he operated the vehicle. ” The nominee expressed no fondness for this particular law — “I’ve been stuck on a highway in Wyoming in a snowstorm,” he noted — but said it was his duty to observe it. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said shadowy groups had spent millions of dollars in “dark money” to support Judge Gorsuch’s nomination. The senator asked the judge to urge his supporters to disclose what they had spent. Judge Gorsuch declined, saying that would be a political move. He noted that the Supreme Court had allowed Congress to require disclosure of political spending. “With all respect, the ball’s in your court,” Judge Gorsuch said. Judge Gorsuch has called himself an originalist, meaning that he tries to interpret the Constitution as it was understood by the people who drafted and ratified it. On Tuesday, he said his approach could keep pace with contemporary realities. “The Constitution doesn’t change,” he said. “The world around us changes. ” Judge Gorsuch said that the principles in the Constitution can adapt to the modern world, citing a Supreme Court ruling on GPS tracking devices. “I’m not looking to take us back to quill pens and the horse and buggy,” he said. Outside the hearing room, Democrats are trying to weigh down the Gorsuch nomination with the baggage of investigations into the president’s orbit and Russia. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said it was “the height of irony” for Republicans to press for Judge Gorsuch’s elevation to the court after holding the seat open last year. “Republicans held this Supreme Court seat open for nearly a calendar year while President Obama was in office,” he said from the Senate floor, “but are now rushing to fill the seat for a president whose campaign is under investigation by the F. B. I. ” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, brought up letters submitted to the committee by two former students in a legal ethics class Judge Gorsuch taught in the spring of 2016 at the University of Colorado Law School. The two students — one of whom signed her name — complained about comments they recalled Judge Gorsuch made in a class session about ethical issues that arose in the practice of the law profession. In the comments, the students claimed that Judge Gorsuch told them that employers needed to ask female job applicants about their intentions regarding pregnancy to protect their firms from women who were simply seeking maternity benefits. Judge Gorsuch said that misrepresented the discussion, citing instructions in a teaching manual to explore the subject. Judge Gorsuch also said he believed that it would be “inappropriate” for a prospective employer to ask such a question, and that he was “shocked” that every year when he asked his students whether they had been asked such a thing, many female students raised their hands. Judge Gorsuch was asked to address the nominee who never had his hearing, Judge Garland. “Whenever I see his name attached to an opinion, it’s one I read with special care,” Judge Gorsuch said, praising his peer as “an outstanding judge. ” But when Senator Leahy asked whether Judge Garland had been treated fairly, Judge Gorsuch demurred. “I can’t get involved in politics,” he said. “There’s judicial canons that prevent me from doing that. And I think it would be very imprudent of judges to start commenting on political disputes. ” Mr. Leahy had no such qualms. “I can express an opinion,” he said. “I think it was shameful. ” During the campaign, Mr. Trump said he would seek to appoint justices ready to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. But Judge Gorsuch said that no one from the White House asked him to make any commitments on legal issues that could come before him on the Supreme Court. “I have offered no promises on how I’d rule to anyone on any case,” he said. “I don’t believe in litmus tests for judges,” he said. Asked about Roe v. Wade, Judge Gorsuch said, “I would tell you that Roe vs. Wade, decided in 1973, is the precedent of the United States Supreme Court,” saying that “all of the other factors that go into analyzing precedent have to be considered. ” Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the committee, also pressed Judge Gorsuch for his views on precedent generally, naming a few cases, including a Second Amendment case and the matter of Bush v. Gore. “I know some people in this room have some opinions on that,” Judge Gorsuch joked, declining to outline firm positions. The nominee likened precedents to “our shared family history as judges. ” “As a good judge, you don’t approach that question anew as if it has never been decided,” he added. Mr. Leahy brought up Judge Gorsuch’s connections with the Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz, whom Judge Gorsuch formerly represented in private practice. The senator noted that on Jan. 10, 2006, The Denver Post reported that there were three finalists for an appeals court vacancy — and none were Judge Gorsuch. Two days later, a lawyer for Mr. Anschutz wrote on the billionaire’s behalf to the White House counsel at the time, Harriet Miers, to suggest that President George W. Bush consider nominating Judge Gorsuch. She gave him an interview in early February and he ended up getting the nomination. Mr. Leahy also noted that Mr. Anschutz finances conservative groups including the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, which put Judge Gorsuch on the list of candidates President Trump promised to use in selecting a Supreme Court nominee. “Are these areas of concern?” Mr. Leahy asked. Judge Gorsuch replied that he thought his service at the Justice Department, where he had worked about seven months, was the most important issue, noting many of his former clients had said “nice things” about him when he was up for an appeals court judgeship, including the owner of a gravel pit. Mr. Leahy scoffed, “Which one do you think the White House listened to the most, Mr. Anschutz or a gravel pit owner? I mean, let’s be realistic. ” Mr. Leahy did not ask whether Judge Gorsuch would recuse himself from cases involving Mr. Anschutz’s interests. The judge did recuse himself from such cases on the appeals court, but so far has left the door open to participating in them on the Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuch, who had criticized liberals for preferring litigation to the political process in an article written before he became a judge, distanced himself from his earlier statements on Tuesday. “American liberals,” he wrote in a 2005 essay in National Review, “have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for education. This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. ” On Tuesday, he said he had been wrong to single out liberals. “The problem lies on both sides of the aisle,” he said. He added that “the courts are a very important place for the vindication of civil rights. ” The top Democrat on the committee, Senator Feinstein pressed Judge Gorsuch on his involvement in several disputes in which he was involved as a Justice Department official: torture, the habeas corpus rights of Guantánamo detainees, warrantless surveillance, and the scope of the president’s power as to defy statutes. In December 2005, she noted, when Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which barred cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, Judge Gorsuch advocated a signing statement that would say the new statute only codified existing Bush administration interrogation practices. The context, she noted, was that the Justice Department had issued a secret memo earlier that year saying techniques like waterboarding and prolonged sleep deprivation were not cruel, inhuman or degrading. She asked whether Judge Gorsuch believed such torture techniques were lawful. Judge Gorsuch declined to answer that question. Ms. Feinstein indicated she would return to the torture issue in a second round of questioning. She also pointed out that after it emerged that Mr. Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap without warrants, despite a 1978 law requiring warrants, Judge Gorsuch had drafted a statement for Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general at the time, to deliver at a congressional hearing. His initial draft suggested that Congress lacked the authority to enact a law limiting a president’s power to conduct surveillance without warrants for national security purposes. “Goodness no, Senator, and I didn’t believe it at the time,” Judge Gorsuch replied. He said he had been only “acting in the capacity as a speechwriter” in bringing together materials submitted by colleagues in the administration. “I was the scribe. ” Under questioning from Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, about how to apply new technologies to constitutional principles written two centuries ago, Judge Gorsuch brought up the issue of whether police officers needed a warrant to attach a GPS tracker to a suspect’s car in order to monitor his movements. He spoke admiringly of a 2012 Supreme Court decision that applied the original Constitution in concluding that warrants were required. “Technology changes, but the principles don’t,” he said, adding that “it can’t be the case the U. S. Constitution is any less protective” of people’s privacy than it was at the time it was written. On the appeals court, Judge Gorsuch sometimes sided with plaintiffs in Fourth Amendment search issues even when colleagues voted for the police. Notably, though, after the Supreme Court issued its landmark GPS tracker ruling, Judge Gorsuch voted to let prosecutors in other cases use evidence that police had gathered with such a tracker in 2011, before the Supreme Court handed down that ruling, because the rule had not been clear at the time. Mr. Grassley opened his questioning by asking if Judge Gorsuch would have “any trouble ruling against the president who appointed you. ” “That’s a softball, Mr. Chairman,” Judge Gorsuch replied, in what seemed to be a scripted response. He said he would have “no difficulty” ruling for or against any party. He spoke of his legal hero and former boss, Justice Byron R. White, saying he embraced his “fierce, rugged independence. ” “I have offered no promises on how I would rule on any case to anyone,” Judge Gorsuch said. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, likes doing bits. His presidential run last year was full of them — from a recurring set of impressions from “The Princess Bride” to an elaborate of a scene from “Hoosiers” before the Indiana primary. (His plans were felled by an reference to a “basketball ring” instead of a rim.) His questioning of Judge Gorsuch was no exception. Mr. Cruz began by asking the nominee, “What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?” “” Judge Gorsuch replied instantly. (The two explained that that was a reference to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. ”) Mr. Cruz went on to ask Judge Gorsuch about the basketball skills of the nominee’s former boss, Justice Byron R. White, and to defend the Federalist Society, the conservative group that pushed for Judge Gorsuch’s nomination. Ms. Feinstein got to the heart of Democrats’ early criticisms of Judge Gorsuch: his record on workers’ rights. “How do we have confidence in you that you won’t just be for the big corporations?” she asked. “Those of us, I think on both sides, care very much about workers’ rights. But the record is such that one questions whether the court is capable in its current composition to give a worker a fair shot. ” She was, she added, “just looking for something” in his record to give her confidence. Judge Gorsuch ticked off past cases in which he ruled for the little guy, calling himself “a fair judge” and noting that members of both parties have said as much. | 1 |
Mike Ilitch, a son of immigrants who founded Little Caesars Pizza in a Detroit suburb and also owned baseball’s Tigers and hockey’s Red Wings, building a business, sports and entertainment empire that made him among America’s wealthiest men and helped change the face of his native city, died on Friday in Detroit. He was 87. His death was announced by his company, Ilitch Holdings. Mr. Ilitch and his wife, Marian, had a net worth of $6. 1 billion at his death, according to Forbes. Mr. Ilitch never went to college and failed in his bid to make it from the Tigers’ minor league chain, where he played shortstop, to the major leagues. He found his calling in the business world when he and his wife opened the first Little Caesars, in Garden City, a Detroit suburb, in 1959. It became the world’s largest carryout pizza chain, known for TV ads announcing “Pizza! Pizza!” deals. Turning to the sports world, Mr. Ilitch spent freely and eventually turned around franchises that experienced many lean years. His Tigers won two American League pennants, and his Red Wings of the National Hockey League won four Stanley Cup championships. He bought the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit in the late 1980s, refurbished it and created an entertainment hub for the city. He moved his corporate headquarters from suburban Farmington Hills into the building that contains the Fox. Mr. Ilitch broke into sports ownership in 1982, when he paid a reported $8 million to purchase the Red Wings from the Norris family. Once a powerhouse with names like Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Terry Sawchuk, the franchise was struggling. In August 1985, Mr. Ilitch, commenting on why his Red Wings were aggressive in pursuing free agents, said: “I hate to lose. I happen to be a fan with an owner’s pocketbook. ” His Wings won the Stanley Cup championship in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008, and he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003 and into the U. S. Hockey Hall of Fame a year later. Mr. Ilitch, who became known as Mr. I, bought the Tigers from the Domino’s pizza founder Tom Monaghan for $85 million in 1992. Starting in 1994, the Tigers had 12 consecutive losing seasons, but in 2000 they moved from the aging Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park. They won the 2006 American League pennant, then lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. They were in the World Series again in 2012, featuring the sluggers Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder and pitchers Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, but were swept by the San Francisco Giants. “I’m not afraid to go out and spend money,” Mr. Ilitch said. “It’s been very costly, but I’m not going to change my ways. ” Mike Ilitch was born on July 20, 1929, a son of Sotir Ilitch, a machinist, and Sultana Tasseff Ilitch, who had come to the United States from Macedonia in 1924. He was an athlete in baseball and track at Cooley High School, served four years in the Marines, then signed with the Tigers’ minor league system, but his career ended after a few seasons when he sustained a knee injury. He worked as a salesman until he and his wife opened the first Little Caesars on May 8, 1959. A food service distribution company soon followed to supply ingredients and other products for restaurants. Blue Line Foodservice grew into one of the largest food service distribution companies in the country. Mr. Ilitch’s charitable endeavors included the Little Caesars Love Kitchen, a restaurant on wheels to feed the hungry and help with food distribution following national disasters. The Ilitch organization has embarked on a $1. 2 billion District Detroit project, transforming dozens of largely vacant blocks in downtown Detroit into a neighborhood including office and residential spaces. All of Mr. Ilitch’s businesses have their headquarters in the Detroit metropolitan area. His son Christopher is president and chief executive officer of Ilitch Holdings. In addition to his wife and his son Christopher, Mr. Ilitch is survived by his sons Michael Jr. Atanas and Ron his daughters, Denise, Lisa and Carole 22 grandchildren and three . “Mike Ilitch was more than just a shrewd, successful businessman,” Detroit’s mayor, Mike Duggan, said in a statement. “He was a Detroiter through and through. Whether he was making pizza, building successful sports and entertainment franchises or supporting youth organizations in our city, Mr. I helped to bring thousands of jobs and opportunities to our city and attract millions of dollars of investment. ” | 1 |
North Carolina has a long and colorful bond with Venus flytraps, the carnivorous plants that grow in the wild only in a radius around Wilmington. In 1760, the North Carolina colonial governor, Arthur Dobbs, described the discovery of the plant in his diary: “The greatest wonder of the vegetable kingdom is a very curious unknown species. Upon touching the leaves, they instantly close like a spring trap. ” More than 200 years later, a rugby field and a run bear the name of the flytrap, and in 2005, the state declared it the official state carnivorous plant. The North Carolina chapter of the Nature Conservancy described the flytrap as the state’s “most famous natural legacy. ” But some people have taken that fondness for the flytrap too far, officials said, with poachers trafficking in thousands of plants plucked illegally from the wild, as well as from gardens and nurseries. As the podcast “Criminal” described it, the demand for the plants has led to “a Venus flytrap crime ring. ” Conservationists worry that the poaching, if left unchecked, could endanger the plant’s existence. “We’ve got something very precious in the nation here,” Sgt. Brandon W. Dean, of the law enforcement division of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, said in an interview. “If we don’t do something now, it’s going to be extinct. ” The Venus flytrap became protected by state legislation in 1956, and the state sells permits to those who want to collect flytraps from private land with the owner’s permission. But poachers have scrounged forest floors for decades, seeking to sell the plants on the black market for up to 25 cents each, Sergeant Dean said. It is easy, he added, to collect 1, 000 to 2, 000 of the plants in a single sweep. “A lot of the guys we catch — it’s sad to say — it’s a family tradition,” he said. “We caught their dad and their dad’s dad. ” An area of southeastern North Carolina and northeastern South Carolina is the only place in the world where the plants grow in the wild. The conservancy estimates that 35, 000 of them remain. With its bright red center and spiky edges, the plant has long captured the imagination. Charles Darwin described the flytrap as “one of the most wonderful plants in the world. ” Even its Latin name has a certain appeal. The name, Dionaea muscipula, is derived from words meaning “the goddess of love” and “mousetrap,” according to the conservancy. Venus flytraps get their nutrients from the insects they lure with nectar and trap with a pair of jawlike leaves. When an insect lands and bumps into trigger hairs on the leaves, the trap closes and digestive enzymes dissolve its prey. Poaching peaks when the plant is in bloom and most visible, from late May to said Debbie Crane, the communications director for the Nature Conservancy’s state chapter, which owns 25, 000 acres that are home to the plants. But the thefts are not limited to state and private preserves. A plant nursery, Farm, near Supply, N. C. about 25 miles southwest of Wilmington, was burglarized in September 2013. The thieves took more than 18, 000 flytraps estimated to be worth $65, 000, “Criminal” reported. The nursery owners did not respond to phone messages and emails seeking comment. What drives the demand for these carnivorous plants? No one can say with certainty, but experts point to a few possibilities. Part of the allure is psychological, Karl J. Niklas, a professor of plant biology at Cornell, said in an interview. Ingesting the plant’s juices has been marketed as a way to increase libido or help the body heal, he said. Ms. Crane noted the online advertising by Carnivora, a company that sells liquid drops and capsules of the plant extract. Carnivora’s website says its products promote antioxidants and support “resistance to harmful invaders. ” A company representative could not be reached for comment but told “Criminal” that the Venus flytrap market in North Carolina could not possibly meet its demand. The company said it bought cloned flytraps, which are readily grown in captivity. The fascination with the plants also fuels demand. “The fact that the damn plant moves makes it scary,” Professor Niklas said, adding that its status as something illegal to poach makes it “sexy. ” The conservancy warned that there was “a good chance” that flytraps sold at a flea market, on a roadside or over the internet had been stolen. In an effort to crack down on poachers, the state upgraded the theft of flytraps growing in the wild to a felony, from a misdemeanor, effective Dec. 1, 2014. Previously, the maximum fine was $50. Offenders can now face up to 29 months in prison. The taking of each plant is considered an individual offense. Four men made headlines in January 2015 when they were caught with 970 Venus flytraps and became the first people in the state to be charged with felony poaching. Three of the men pleaded guilty and were sentenced to supervised probation, two for 24 months and one for 12 months. The other man was convicted and sentenced to six to 17 months in prison, the local district attorney’s office said. As for whether the stiffer penalties have curbed thefts, officials said it was too soon to tell. When poachers are caught, it is often because officers have been tipped off by other poachers concerned about their turf or by recreational users, such as bird watchers or hikers, Sergeant Dean said. The dense woods and bogs where the plants naturally grow are difficult to patrol. Sergeant Dean estimated that one person might be caught for every 200 episodes of poaching. “I would like to think with it being a felony, it put a damper on it,” he said. “The teeth have definitely been sharpened. ” Still, he was not optimistic that the practice would die out. The burden is on enforcers to prove that plants were illegally harvested, and that is not easy because there is no way to distinguish a plant pilfered from the wild from one legally raised in a greenhouse, he said. One of the men who pleaded guilty to felony poaching, Malcolm Massey, said in an interview last week that he was an outdoorsman who was fascinated by the plant. “They’re a nice, beautiful plant,” he said. Mr. Massey said he had given them to relatives and friends. Pressed about whether he had ever sold them, he said he had been approached by potential buyers but would not be more specific. He was out of work and looking to “make a little bit of money” when he was charged, he said, adding that he could collect “a couple of hundred” of the plants in three or four hours crawling on the forest floor. As for those now considering poaching, Mr. Massey, who was sentenced to 24 months of supervised probation, had this advice: “All I would tell them is good luck. It’s going to be really hard. It’s a felony now, and you’re going to jail. ” | 1 |
Email
These people are sick and evil. They will stop at NOTHING to get their way. Laws mean nothing to them, because they mean nothing to their President and his regime…
A California man says a stranger hurled expletives and set his truck on fire Thursday after seeing a pro-Donald Trump sticker on the bumper.
Hao Lee had taken his 2-year-old son fishing on a pleasant November afternoon in Sacramento. He parked his white Dodge Ram truck with a pair of Trump stickers on the bumper along Garden Highway.
“About a couple hours into fishing I heard someone yelling out ‘F’ Trump,” Lee told KTXL.
Lee and his son were only about 50 yards from where his truck was parked, near the edge of the river. TRENDING ON 100% Fed Up | 0 |
Four years ago, after his journalism career imploded, Jonah Lehrer found himself waking up in the middle of the night in a panic. Unable to fall back to sleep, he would go to his computer and write. “At the time, it felt like a very sad discovery, that I still so wanted to write,” Mr. Lehrer said during a recent interview in an empty conference room at his publisher’s office in Midtown Manhattan. “After everything happened, I thought I was done as a writer. ” Many — including Mr. Lehrer — assumed that his career was over after it came to light that he had plagiarized material in his work for Wired, recycled his own writing in blog posts he wrote for The New Yorker and fabricated quotations from Bob Dylan in his book about creativity. He lost his position as a staff writer at The New Yorker. His publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, recalled two of his books, “Imagine” and “How We Decide. ” His banishment from the profession seemed permanent. Now, as he tries a comeback with “A Book About Love,” a new work of nonfiction that draws on social and psychological studies and examples from literature to explore the nature of love, Mr. Lehrer is facing fresh criticism, as well as support. Some are skeptical that he has changed. “He didn’t seem to get the ethos of journalism,” said Charles Seife, a professor of journalism at New York University who conducted an investigation into Mr. Lehrer’s work for Wired in 2012. “The deficits were so profound in the first round that I can’t imagine him starting afresh. ” But others — even some of his most ferocious former adversaries — say that Mr. Lehrer deserves a second chance. “I don’t believe in destroying a person’s life forever, and if Jonah wants to redeem himself, Godspeed to him,” said Michael Moynihan, a correspondent for Vice, who first discovered and wrote about Mr. Lehrer’s fabricated quotations from Mr. Dylan. “I wouldn’t deny the guy a chance to right a wrong like that. ” In an author’s note at the beginning of the book, Mr. Lehrer refers to his “mistakes and failures” and writes, “I am ashamed of what I’ve done. ” He describes the steps he took to ferret out errors and exaggerations in his new work. He hired an independent fact checker and sent sections of the book to his sources in advance of publication, allowing them to vet their quotations and his descriptions of their research. The book has 27 pages of footnotes. Those steps might not satisfy Mr. Lehrer’s critics. If early reviews are any indication, his new book, which comes out on Tuesday from Simon Schuster, will be highly polarizing. Some have praised the work and defended Mr. Lehrer’s decision to write it. “He’s had his public humiliation, and from the evidence of this book, a chastened Jonah Lehrer has a lot to offer the world,” the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in a forthcoming review for The Times Book Review. “The book is interesting on nearly every page. ” But others have argued that Mr. Lehrer, while more diligent about citing the work of others, still takes inexcusable intellectual shortcuts. In a recent review in The New York Times, Jennifer Senior slammed “A Book About Love” as “insolently unoriginal” and claimed that Mr. Lehrer had appropriated the arguments and insights of others, concluding that “it may be time, at long last, for him to find something else to do. ” Mr. Lehrer defended his approach. “It’s an act of synthesis, trying to bring together various studies, and translate it into a form that helps people understand this vast body of research,” he said. During an hourlong interview, Mr. Lehrer, 35, sat almost perfectly still and seemed at times uncomfortable talking about himself. When asked why there were no acknowledgments in the book, he said he chose to send private thank you letters to people who supported him, rather than name them publicly and expose them to scrutiny. He is not planning to go on a book tour, and he no longer gives lectures. “A Book About Love” grew out of the wreckage he had made of his life, Mr. Lehrer said. “I regret the kind of writer I’d become,” said Mr. Lehrer, a California native who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two young children. “I was invested in the superficial markers of success, and I wasn’t focused on making the work as good and true as possible. ” After he was exposed, Mr. Lehrer often woke up at 2 in the morning, consumed by regret and guilt, and would go to his laptop to write about what he had done, and the aftermath. “That writing became in the literal sense, writing to understand myself,” he said. Around that time, he read about the Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant’s research, which showed how crucial secure relationships are to health, financial success and happiness. He decided that he wanted to write a book about the feeling that sustained him when he torpedoed his career and his reputation. “Writing has always been the means by which I explore the ideas I want to know more about,” he said. “It became this personal investigation. ” But those who approach “A Book About Love” hoping for a memoir will be disappointed. Virtually none of what he wrote about himself and his experience ended up in the book. (Mr. Lehrer said he used his “raw personal experience” to frame the ideas in the book, but felt he wasn’t very good at writing memoir.) Instead, he focuses on studies of the bonds between parents and children and spouses, and explores the differences between infatuation and lifelong partnerships. Though the inspiration for the book was deeply personal, Mr. Lehrer doesn’t reflect much on his own life or relationships. He describes his struggle to become a better husband and parent, and writes about how he found solace in caring for his toddler daughter after his journalistic crimes were exposed, but doesn’t go into great detail. Mr. Lehrer said one motivation for writing the book was that he wanted to be able to show his children that he had learned from his mistakes, and changed. “I always wondered how I would tell them the story of what I lost and my failures, and how I hurt their mother,” he said. “I wanted to say, I did something terrible, I broke the most basic rules of my profession, but I learned a lot from it and I wrote one more book. ” Even so, Mr. Lehrer said it took a while to convince his wife, a lawyer, that writing the book was a good idea. Not surprisingly, he faced a new wave of criticism in 2013 when news broke that he had sold a manuscript to Simon Schuster. In an article for Slate, Daniel Engber combed through a leaked copy of Mr. Lehrer’s book proposal and pointed to evidence of improperly cited material. (Mr. Engber was unimpressed by Mr. Lehrer’s new work, and wrote, “Lehrer may have given up on outright fraud, but he’s still prone to spreading bunk. ”) Given Mr. Lehrer’s reduced profile, “A Book About Love” is unlikely to match his earlier blockbuster sales. Simon Schuster is publishing 23, 500 copies of the book, a modest number for an author whose previous three books collectively sold more than 350, 000 print copies, according to Nielsen. Jonathan Karp, the president and publisher of Simon Schuster, said that he felt confident that Mr. Lehrer had reformed and that he deserved a chance to publish his work again. “This is a talented writer, who I think has apologized profusely for what he did,” he said. “Is he just supposed to walk away from his calling?” Mr. Lehrer’s editor, Ben Loehnen, said he was reassured by the extra measures Mr. Lehrer took to his work, and said he had seen some of Mr. Lehrer’s correspondence with his fact checker. “I’ve felt all along that talent of his sort is too rare to condemn him to lifelong banishment,” Mr. Loehnen said. Mr. Lehrer has not recovered everyone’s trust. David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, said he had no intention of publishing Mr. Lehrer’s work again. Representatives for Wired and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt declined to comment on whether they would consider publishing new work by Mr. Lehrer. Still, some prominent journalists have stood by him, applauding his return. Robert Krulwich, the of Radiolab, on WNYC, who has known Mr. Lehrer for about 15 years, said he supported Mr. Lehrer’s decision to return to writing. “I said to him, you have things to say, and you have the talent to say them,” he said. “But if you want to do this for some more of your life, then you’re going to have to pay the price, and you can’t ever let this happen again, ever. ” | 1 |
In November 2014, a horrific gang rape allegedly took place at a New Jersey college.
The supposed victim: a 19-year-old woman who claims she was lured into a fraternity “date party” by members of Pi Kappa Alpha (PIKE).
She's continuing to fight for justice after what allegedly happened to her two years ago, by filing a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court last week against Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey. Ex-student sues NJ college over alleged 'brutal' gang rape at frat house, dorm https://t.co/84VQ1uKHZY — New Jersey 101.5 (@nj1015) October 25, 2016
According to northjersey.com , the victim was greeted at her dorm door by a fraternity member in a tuxedo, who was reportedly “assigned” to get girls to come to the party.
Once the victim was there, court documents reveal she became drunk to the point of unconsciousness and woke up after attending the party, felt she had been sexually assaulted, and went to Hackensack University Medical Center. Officials there found lacerations “consistent with non-consensual sex.”
The teen, who goes by “Jane Doe” in the lawsuit, claims she was gang raped by tuxedo-wearing Christopher A. Lopez and another student, Nakeem Gardner, who are now 26 and 22 years old.
The New York Daily News reports Lopez and Gardner even played the game “rock, paper, scissors” to decide who would have sex with the female student first.
And the abuse allegedly didn't end there. NJ.com reports:
After the initial sexual assault, the teen was involuntarily moved “without her shoes, underwear and jacket” across campus to Mackin Hall, where she was raped by others, the lawsuit claims.
The suit alleges some of the male students “were falling-down laughing hysterically while also videotaping the sexual assault” on a cell phone.
Three other students — Christopher Rainone, 20, Jordyn Massood, 20, and Justin Sommers, 20 — were also charged in connection to the alleged assault.
Lopez and Gardner were charged with second degree sexual assault for allegedly gang raping the victim. Rainone, Massod and Sommers were charged with failing to aid the victim and for videotaping her while she was naked.
All five former students have been indicted in connection with the alleged attacks, but pleaded not guilty in July 2016, and were offered a plea deal as a result. Image Credit: Bergen County Prosecutor's Office
The lawsuit holds Ramapo College and/or PIKE Fraternity and Chapter accountable for what allegedly happened.
Here are just a few of the suits ' claims:
“College and PIKE Fraternity representatives were aware of the events leading up to the assaults, but did nothing to intervene or stop them from unfolding.”
“This includes public safety and security employees and representatives, including outside Campus Security staff on patrol and present in security booths and checkpoints, well as the individual responsible for entry and exit at Mackin Hall.”
“The school failed to enforce their own alcohol policies and failed to deter underage drinking on campus.”
“Ramapo College was negligent, had deliberate indifference and failed to render assistance to a victim and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
The lawsuit goes on to argue that the victim has suffered permanent physical, psychological and emotional injuries as a result.
Incidentally, this same college made headlines in 2014, when a school-led session on “understanding sexual assault” included advice that females should be aware of how their facial expressions could be misinterpreted by members of the opposite sex.
Vice president at Ramapo, Cathy Davey, told northjersey.com the college hadn't yet been served with the lawsuit as of Tuesday, and that PIKE Fraternity was “no longer on campus.” | 0 |
Airplane manufacturer Boeing is set to start testing vehicles according to new reports. [The Independent reports that Boeing will soon be testing planes, possibly utilizing artificial intelligence to make decisions usually left up to human pilots. Boeing’s aim is to develop an aircraft that can operate entirely with minimal human interaction. Planes can already take off, cruise, and land without much interaction from human pilots, so the idea of a fully functioning artificial plane is not too far fetched. Mike Sinnett, Boeing’s vice president of product development, told Reuters, “When I look at the future I see a need for you know 41, 000 commercial jet airplanes over the course of the next 20 years. And that means we’re going to need something like six hundred and seventeen thousand more pilots. That’s a lot of pilots. ” He continued to say, “so one of the ways that may be solved is by having some type of autonomous behaviour and that could be anything from taking instead of five pilots on a long haul flight down to three or two, taking two pilots down to one in a freight situation, or in some cases going from one to none. ” “So one of the ways that may be solved is by having some type of autonomous behaviour and that could be anything from taking instead of five pilots on a long haul flight down to three or two, taking two pilots down to one in a freight situation, or in some cases going from one to none,” he explained. Starting this summer, Boeing will use advanced cockpit simulators used in the training of pilots to test the new technology before implementing it in an actual aircraft. Boeing isn’t the only airplane manufacturer looking at automated travel: Airbus is currently working on flying cars and will be testing flying taxis by the end of 2017 with the aim of rolling out further access to the taxis in 2021. Airbus, however, is looking to develop an system while Boeing seems to be focusing on long haul, large passenger flights. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 1 |
Pardis Stitt still remembers the grocery shopping trips of her childhood in Birmingham, Ala.: loading into the family car, a silver Oldsmobile station wagon with a maroon interior and an player, and wandering the store aisles as her mother tracked down the ingredients for dishes like kuku sabzi, the Persian frittata densely packed with an array of green herbs. “Back in the day, you couldn’t find dill and cilantro at the Piggly Wiggly,” said Ms. Stitt, 51. “There was one Asian market, or else we had to drive two hours to Atlanta. ” Most cooks would omit the cilantro from a recipe before making a trek in search of it. But for Ms. Stitt’s mother, who moved to the United States from Iran with her husband in 1963, preparing food without herbs would be unthinkable. Fresh herbs, both raw and cooked, lie at the foundation of Iranian cuisine. Leaving them out would be like making Italian food without tomatoes or Japanese food without seaweed. In other words, nearly impossible. This is especially true during Nowruz, the Persian New Year, a celebration that begins on the first day of spring. The holiday, which is secular, begins as families come together to count down to the precise moment of the equinox, even if it falls before dawn. (This year it will arrive on Monday at 6:29 a. m. Eastern time.) During Nowruz (pronounced ) everyone gathers around a haft sin, a table spread with seven items, including sprouts, which symbolize rebirth, and apples, which represent health and beauty. Family members may play music, pour fragrant drops of rose water into one another’s palms, or eat a bite of sweet baklava to usher in the holiday with all of their senses. Then comes the feast — lunch or dinner, depending on what time the equinox falls — followed by 11 days of meals and teatime sweets. On the final day, it’s traditional to retreat outdoors for a day of picnicking. The dishes of the Nowruz table are verdant and flavorful, like the kuku sabzi that Ms. Stitt loves. (Though she runs four restaurants in Birmingham with her husband, the chef Frank Stitt, she still calls her mother to request it.) Yet Iranian cuisine remains stubbornly unfamiliar in the United States, even as Americans have become more interested in Middle Eastern ingredients and foods like hummus, tahini and pomegranate molasses. There is a dearth of Persian restaurants outside the Los Angeles, New York and Washington areas, where a significant percentage of the nation’s Americans of Iranian descent live. (“Iranian” refers to nationality and “Persian” to ethnicity, and many use the terms interchangeably. Ms. Stitt suggested that this was in response to the 1979 crisis at the American embassy in Tehran. “That’s when we all switched from saying we were Iranian to saying we were Persian,” she said. “If you said Persian, people didn’t really know what that was. ”) But even Persian restaurants rarely offer the most distinctive Iranian cooking, which is labor intensive and often involves chopping great quantities of herbs. Instead, they tend to focus on kebabs and rice. Until recently, the best chance most Americans had to experience the food of Iran was to score an invitation to the home of an Iranian friend. There may not exist a better ambassador for cooking with herbs than Hanif Sadr. Nearly every dish the chef serves includes mint, dill, parsley, tarragon, cilantro and tareh, a type of chive. Mr. Sadr, 34, grew up spending Nowruz on his family’s farm in the Gilan province in northern Iran, where he’d harvest herbs and forage for wild fruits and nuts for the holiday dishes. When he moved from Tehran to California for graduate school in 2013, he found the similarities in climate and landscape disorienting. “The first few days after moving to Berkeley, I couldn’t tell whether I was in California or northern Iran,” he said. “In the hills, I found and foraged the same wild hazelnuts, Persian hogweed, citrus and green plums we have in Iran. ” After a temporary cooking job led him away from his studies and into the kitchen, Mr. Sadr founded Komaaj, a roving Iranian restaurant and catering company, in 2015. At dinners and “Caspian tea parties” around the Bay Area, he serves dishes like khiar dalar, cucumbers spread with a shockingly green paste of wild mint, pennyroyal, cilantro and salt. Or baghali ghatogh, a dill and fava bean stew scented with garlic and saffron, in which eggs are poached. Promptly after arriving in Berkeley, Mr. Sadr planted an herb garden. He’s now working with farmers and foragers in northern Iran to begin importing herbs, edible flowers and teas that he can’t find here. “It’s crazy!” Mr. Sadr said as he stared down a pile of cilantro, dill, parsley and tarragon on his cutting board, waiting to be chopped for use in bij, the mixture of chopped herbs, walnuts and pomegranate molasses that forms the base of many northern Iranian dishes. Besides the sheer quantity of the herbs — in Iran, they are measured by the kilogram rather than the bunch — the thing that distinguishes Persian cuisine is the multifaceted role those herbs play. Whether they are wilted, stewed or fried, fresh herbs transform as they cook, first mellowing and then sweetening in flavor. Americans generally encounter herbs in the form of a condiment, puréed into a sauce like pesto or sprinkled raw over a finished dish, and may not think of them as cornerstone ingredients. Mr. Sadr often meets diners who are incredulous that mint and cilantro can be cooked, with delicious results. “By the time you have finished dinner, you have eaten two whole bunches,” he tells them. “Herbs are not just a garnish for us. ” This year, Komaaj will host Persian New Year events in Berkeley and San Francisco. It’s traditional to eat fish, a symbol of life, so Mr. Sadr folds a little fish roe into bij, then stuffs the mixture into trout that he has drizzled with sour orange molasses. After a short turn in a hot oven, the fish emerges with crisp, brown skin. The sweet and sour herbs contrast with the delicate, flaky fish without overwhelming it. “This is a rich, ancient way of cooking, and people here are so excited about our ingredients, our herbs,” he said. “I really want to win people’s hearts with the food I’m cooking. ” For Mana Heshmati, an engineer in Detroit who runs a restaurant called Peace Meal Kitchen, the taste of Nowruz is sabzi polo, an herbed rice dish that represents prosperity and rebirth. “The color of the food, and the symbolic meaning behind it, is as exciting as it tastes,” she said. Ms. Heshmati, 27, and her family moved around the Midwest after coming to the United States in 1993, but the dish was a constant at the holiday table every year. The rice for sabzi polo is cooked in two stages. The rice is parboiled and then tossed with an abundance of herbs and leeks and layered into a preheated pan coated with butter and oil. As the mixture is spooned into the pan, the bottommost layer of rice sizzles, turning into the crust known as tahdig, while the rest of the rice gently steams until the grains are fluffy. Ms. Heshmati said her mother added an extra flourish: “She always puts a handful of whole garlic cloves in the rice, because we used to fight over who got those. ” Instead of salad, nearly all Persian meals are accompanied by sabzi khordan, a heaping platter of fresh herbs, radishes, walnuts and feta cheese served with flatbread. Guests delight in making perfectly balanced mouthfuls of pungent herbs, spicy radishes, salty cheese and crunchy nuts wrapped in pieces of warm bread. Sometimes, Mr. Sadr turns sabzi khordan into a salad for diners who are not accustomed to eating handfuls of undressed raw herbs. Ms. Heshmati started Peace Meal Kitchen about a year ago to share her Iranian cooking, like ghormeh sabzi, a fragrant herb, bean and beef stew scented with dried limes. “I love ghormeh sabzi,” she said. “But I took it once for lunch in elementary school and then never again because I got made fun of. I even had a boyfriend in college who made fun of it. ” She now regularly prepares ghormeh sabzi for her guests, some of whom drive from Canada or from suburbs over an hour away. At a recent event, she sold out of 80 servings in 90 minutes. “Iranian food is delicious,” she said. “It’s hard to hate on it. ” Recipes: Herbed Rice With Tahdig | Fish Stuffed With Herbs, Walnuts and Pomegranate | Herb and Radish Salad With Feta and Walnuts | More Nowruz Dishes | 1 |
A team of American chefs on Wednesday won the biennial Bocuse d’Or culinary competition — the equivalent of the Olympics for professional cooks — for the first time in the contest’s history. In the finals in Lyon, France, a group of 10 chefs and helpers from the United States won the gold medal. Norway took the silver medal, and Iceland won the bronze. In 2015 an American team was awarded the silver medal in the competition, which was founded by the French chef Paul Bocuse. Teams from 24 countries competed this year. “I promised Monsieur Paul 10 years ago that we’d make it to the top of the podium,” said the chef Thomas Keller, who is the president of Team U. S. A. “We made it in nine. ” The team’s head chef was Mathew Peters, 33, from Meadville, Pa. who was most recently the executive of Mr. Keller’s New York restaurant, Per Se. His commis, or helper, was Harrison Turone, 21, from Omaha, who also worked at Per Se. Both of the chefs took a year off to prepare for the contest, a fierce competition in which the American team is made up of younger chefs who can spare the time to train. Philip Tessier, a member of the team that won second place in 2015, was the Americans’ coach. This year the chefs were required to prepare a meat platter and a vegan dish in 5 hours 35 minutes. “We had to use two proteins, Bresse chicken and crayfish,” Mr. Peters said. “And this was the first year there was a vegan dish. ” The teams were required to interpret “Poulet de Bresse aux Écrevisses,” a Lyonnaise classic. The American version involved the chicken with morel mushroom sausage, braised wings, a wine glaze and sauce Américaine, a kind of lobster sauce. Alongside were a chicken liver quenelle with foie gras, corn custard, peas and toasted pistachios, as well as lobster tail with Meyer lemon mousse. The garnishes included preparations using carrots, Vidalia onions, black truffles, carrots, peas and potatoes. They brought some of the ingredients from the United States. For the vegan dish, the chefs prepared California asparagus with cremini mushrooms, potatoes, a custard made of green almonds, Meyer lemon confit, a Bordelaise sauce and a crumble using an almond and vegetable yeast preparation that mimicked Parmesan cheese. The team arrived in Lyon 10 days ago. After the winners were announced at 7:25 p. m. local time, Mr. Peters, who had been cooking since 8:40 a. m. said his energy was starting to come back. An estimated 300 American supporters were in the hall to cheer the team. Unlike some teams, the Americans were supported only by commercial sponsors and contributions, with no government funding. “I don’t think our government knows who we are,” Mr. Keller said. Mr. Keller said he could not estimate how much participation in the contest cost. But he said that experience was essential. “We learned along the way,” he said. “Our win was built on the shoulders of a thousand people. ” | 1 |
Judith Katherine Dunning had been waiting anxiously for California to adopt legislation that would make it legal for her to end her life. The cancer in her brain was progressing despite several rounds of treatment. At 68, she spent most of her day asleep and needed an aide to help with basic tasks. More centrally, Ms. Dunning — who, poignantly, had worked as an oral historian in Berkeley, Calif. — was losing her ability to speak. Even before the End of Life Option Act became law, in October 2015, she had recorded a video expressing her desire to hasten her death. The video, she hoped, would make her wishes clear, in case there were any doubts later on. “She felt she had completed all the important tasks of her life,” recalled her physician, Dr. Michael Rabow, director of the symptom management service at the University of California, San Francisco. “When she could no longer communicate, life was no longer worth living. ” In recent months, this option has become available to a growing number of Americans. Last June, legislation took effect in California, the most populous state. In November, Colorado voters approved a ballot measure by nearly a majority. The District of Columbia Council has passed a similar law, and the mayor quietly signed it last month. Aid in dying was already legal in Washington, Vermont, Montana and Oregon. So even if the District of Columbia’s law is blocked, as a prominent Republican representative has threatened to do, the country has arrived at a remarkable moment: Close to 20 percent of Americans live in jurisdictions where adults can legally end their lives if they are terminally ill and meet eligibility requirements. The laws, all based on the Death With Dignity Act Oregon adopted in 1997, allow physicians to write prescriptions for lethal drugs when patients qualify. The somewhat complicated procedure involves two oral requests and a written one, extensive discussions, and approval by two physicians. Patients must have the mental capacity to make medical decisions. While that process took shape in Oregon two decades ago, the cultural and political context surrounding it has changed considerably. The states recently considering the issue differ from earlier adopters, and as opposition from some longtime adversaries has softened, new obstacles have arisen. Historically, aid in dying has generated fierce resistance from the Catholic Church, from certain activists, and from others who cite religious or moral objections. Even the terminology — aid in dying? assisted suicide? death with dignity? — creates controversy. But the concept has long drawn broad support in public opinion polls. Polltakers for the General Social Survey, done by NORC at the University of Chicago have asked a representative national sample this question since 1977: “When a person has a disease that cannot be cured, do you think doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient’s life by some painless means if the patient and his family request it?” The proportion of Americans responding affirmatively, always a substantial majority, has bounced between 66 and 69 percent for 15 years. But support was not evenly distributed: Such laws initially were enacted in states with predominantly white populations like Oregon, and to date the vast majority of patients who have used them are white. “I hear people talk all the time about this being a rich white person’s issue,” said Donna Smith, legislative manager for the District of Columbia at the group Compassion and Choices, who is . “Now, we have proof on the ground that that is not true. ” Indeed, aid in dying has expanded to more diverse locales. whites represent a minority of Californians. Colorado is more than 21 percent Latino. In the District of Columbia, nearly half of whose residents are five of six black council members voted in favor of the legislation. State medical societies, once active foes of initiatives, also have begun shifting their positions, citing deep divisions among their members. The California Medical Association, the Colorado Medical Society and the Medical Society of the District of Columbia all took officially neutral stances as legislators and voters debated, depriving opponents of influential allies. So has the state medical society in Maryland, where legislators plan to reintroduce a bill (the third attempt) this month. The American Medical Association, an opponent since 1993, has asked its Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs to look at the issue and submit a report in June, though without recommending any policy. But even as the idea gains acceptance, passage of a bill or ballot measure does not always make aid in dying broadly available to those who want it. In addition to the safeguards the law requires, its practice can be balky — at least in the early stages. State provisions allow any individual or institution to decline to provide prescriptions. In California, Catholic health care systems have opted out, predictably, but so have a number of others, including Vitas, the nation’s largest hospice chain. Moreover, California hospitals and hospices can forbid their affiliated physicians to write the necessary prescriptions, even if they are acting privately. Some health systems with hundreds of doctors have done so. (Vermont, Colorado and the District of Columbia allow doctors to make individual decisions.) “The shortage of participating providers has led to a lot of patient and family frustration,” said Dr. Laura Petrillo, palliative care physician at the San Francisco V. A. Medical Center, in an email. “They had the expectation that it would be available and happen seamlessly once the law went into effect, and then find themselves needing to do a lot of legwork” to find doctors willing to prescribe lethal drugs and pharmacies to fill prescriptions, she said. Sometimes, when patients have waited until late in their illnesses, they die before they can become eligible for assisted death. Or they become too physically or mentally incapacitated to take the drugs themselves, as legally required, even if they do qualify. In areas where many providers opt out, very sick patients may have to travel long distances to use the law. And costs can also prove a barrier. Some private insurers pay for the necessary doctors’ visits and drugs. In California, most do, said Matt Whitaker, state director of Compassion and Choices, the leading advocacy group. But Congress has long prohibited the use of federal dollars for aid in dying, so Medicare and the Department of Veterans Affairs will not cover it. States like California and Oregon have agreed to cover the costs for Medicaid recipients others do not. Cost mattered less years ago, when a lethal dose of barbiturates ran a couple of hundred dollars. But in 2015, as California legislators introduced their bill, Valeant Pharmaceuticals acquired Seconal, the most commonly used drug. The company, known (and condemned) for a similar strategy with other medications, spiked the price, a move Mr. Whitaker called “ethically and morally bankrupt. ” Now, patients whose insurers will not cover aid in dying face paying $3, 000 to $4, 000 for the drug. Valeant has denied the suggestion that it was exploiting the new law. As a result, physicians are turning to alternative — and — combinations of opioids and sedatives for those who cannot afford the standard medication. Despite such obstacles and disappointments, an emboldened Compassion and Choices, with a staff that has tripled since 2008 and an annual budget that has nearly quadrupled to $16. 9 million — is eyeing its next targets. Over several years, its leaders think they can help legalize aid in dying in Maryland, Hawaii and New York. Aid in dying, it should be noted, may be a vehemently debated issue, with campaigns that can involve thousands of participants and millions of dollars — but it ultimately has affected a tiny proportion of people. The number of residents taking advantage of these laws in Oregon and Washington has climbed in the past two years. Still, after nearly 20 years in Oregon and eight in Washington, far fewer than 1 percent of annual deaths involve a lethal prescription. (Of those residents who do receive one, about a third do not use it.) It’s not the way most Americans choose to die, even when they have the legal option. Yet the end of life care most people receive needs substantial improvement. While partisans fight over aid in dying, skeptics like Dr. Rabow note, the complicated and expensive measures that could improve care for the great majority — overhauled medical education, better staffed and operated nursing homes, increased access to hospice and palliative care — go largely unaddressed. Still, Ms. Dunning was Dr. Rabow’s longtime patient. When California’s act took effect, she began the process of requesting lethal medication. Her speech had slurred further, but not yet enough to render her unintelligible. Dr. Rabow did not want to see her die, and he is no fan of the movement. But Ms. Dunning had been clear, consistent and determined. He wrote the prescription. “She was ready to have her life end, and no amount of support or medication or counseling would change the situation,” he said. In September, she invited him to her home, where she planned to swallow the fatal slurry of barbiturates. On the appointed day, Dr. Rabow arrived to find “a house full of people who didn’t want her to end her life, but were there to support her and respect her decision. ” Over the course of the day, people said their goodbyes, then withdrew to leave Ms. Dunning with her closest relatives, her hospice nurse and her doctor. Her son mixed her Seconal solution and she swallowed it, no simple task for someone with advanced cancer. She lost consciousness almost immediately and died several hours later. “I wished she could have had a natural life span,” Dr. Rabow said. “And I would have made a different choice. But I was honored to be there to watch this very dignified woman live her life the way she wanted to. ” | 1 |
This post was originally published on this site
On November, 8, 2016, every pissed off white guy and, as it turns out, plenty of pissed off white women, showed up to the polls and voted for the now President-elect of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
That’s right: The Donald – sexual predator, sociopath, disgraced businessman, reality TV star and all around huckster – is now the most powerful man in the world (insofar as any individual can wield power within extremely complex systems and institutions).
Nevertheless, President Trump now presides over the largest military empire and the richest nation in the history of the world.
***
I was wrong. Hell, almost everyone was wrong, except my Mom, whose street smarts outperformed Nate Silver’s algorithms. Looking back, I should’ve known better and trusted my instincts. After all, I live in Michigan City, Indiana, located in the heart of America’s Rust Belt – the region that gave the world President Trump.
I grew up with Trump supporters. Many of my neighbors are Trump supporters. Most of my father’s friends are Trump supporters. And half of my extended family voted for Trump. In many ways, I should be a Trump supporter: I’m White, male, a high school graduate (never finished college) and a Marine Corps veteran.
Thankfully, I found good books, good music and good drugs at 19 years old. Otherwise, who knows? I could’ve ended up at a Trump rally, punching protesters and acting like a jackbooted thug. Instead, I find myself firmly planted on the left, wondering how we can reach out to portions of Trump’s base.
***
In the age of social media, conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods often drown out rational debate and facts. FoxNews, AM Radio and the Alt-Right media have poisoned the well. In the process, they’ve bamboozled large segments of White America – both young and old.
Thanks to alternative news sources such as Breitbart and Alex Jones, tens of millions of Americans are being exposed to a quasi-Libertarian/Alt-Right ideology at a staggering pace. Breaking this web of propaganda will be an enormous task, but a necessary one. Here, existing alternative media outlets will be essential.
If we’re interested in exposing more working class and poor white Americans to leftwing ideas and radical politics, we’ll need to write and speak in a way that regular people can understand. In the real world, no one gives a fuck how smart you sound. In fact, I would argue that’s one of the reasons some of Trump’s supporters resent the MSNBC-Yuppie-Liberal-types: they come off as smug assholes.
***
Speaking of smug assholes, we can thank Rachel Maddow, the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN for Trump’s victory. The only thing more precious than their hubris and utter lack of journalistic integrity is their willingness to normalize a sexual predator and neofascist as president. If there’s any silver lining to this election, it’s that the liberal media has been exposed as the propaganda wing of the DNC.
Not only did they destroy Bernie’s chances (if he ever had any to begin with), they then tried to shove a neoliberal-hawk down our throats. But people didn’t buy it, especially black and brown people.
***
As we speak, tends of thousands of Americans are taking to the street to protest Trump and White Supremacy. While I wholeheartedly encourage and support those who are protesting, would Hillary have enjoyed such a reception from the left? Doubtful.
And where have the protests been for the last eight years of Obama’s drone wars and capitulation to Wall Street? Where was the outrage as Obama deported more immigrants in his first four years than Bush deported in his entire eight?
Yes, let’s protest. But let’s be more principled and sophisticated than we were during the Bush years. If 2020 or 2024 ends with another Obama, we’ve failed. In order for this not to happen, we’ll need to constantly reexamine what we’re doing, and why.
***
And this brings us to Veterans Day, one of the most hollow and absurd holidays in American society. Unless you have stock in Lockheed Martin or Goldman Sachs, there’s really no reason to thank me for my “service.” We destroyed Iraq and killed innocent people. We mutilated dead bodies and tortured prisoners. And we did it all for geopolitical and corporate interests.
Some studies suggest over 1,000,000 Iraqis have died as a result of America’s illegal and immoral war. The war in Iraq has also given the world ISIS. The war in Iraq destabilized an entire region of the planet (something conveniently forgotten by most Americans as they contemplate No Fly Zones in Syria). The war in Iraq has resulted in thousands of veterans suicides (22 a day). More marines from my platoon have killed themselves since returning home than died overseas.
But vets get to go home, at least most of them. The Iraqis have to live with the legacy of Uncle Sam’s madness for the rest of their lives. Everyone had better think about what all of this means as President-Elect Donald J. Trump, a man who openly mocked a Purple Heart recipient and joked about using nuclear weapons, takes office. Related | 0 |
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has reportedly produced a fake animal abuse video to “raise awareness” of the issue online. [“The animal rights group has produced a disturbing new video that depicts a cat suffering at the hands of its owner. It’s difficult to watch. It’s also completely fake,” reports Mashable. “But it looks real it is a skilled CGI work clearly meant to deceive viewers. Now, PETA is trying to enlist complicit media organizations to knowingly publish the fake video in an effort to make the lie go viral. ” “Through this marketing effort, PETA is trying to convince the media to report and share a fake video as if it’s real, in hopes of deceiving the public to create manufactured outrage,” Mashable continued. “As animal lovers, this is offensive. As a media outlet with a responsibility to truthfulness, this is unethical. As people with basic moral values, WTF?” Mashable claims PETA’s involvement in the fake video is shown in a clip that was also emailed to them by a public relations firm allegedly working with the animal activists: What we’d like to do is have Mashable debut this video of a cat, created with imagery (CGI) being abused, which will have been planted on YouTube anonymously by the ad agency who created it for PETA. Your posting of the provocative piece would simply be to acknowledge that it’s in circulation — not to make any claims about its authenticity. … When the video has drawn the critical response and the number of views we’re anticipating (ideally, into the millions) we would then have you reveal to the world that the cat was NOT harmed, but was actually created with CGI by posting this video. It reveals the reasons for the creation of the first video and asks people to avoid circuses that use lions, tigers, or any other live animals. Mashable called the plan to create a viral video “wrong and irresponsible,” while one Twitter user called them “unethical” for the trick. “Anyone surprised?” asked Daily Mail U. S. political editor David Martosko on Twitter. Anyone surprised? https: . — David Martosko (@dmartosko) June 7, 2017, “PETA is pitching literal fake news because PETA is terrible,” added BuzzFeed reporter Tyler Kingkade. PETA is pitching literal fake news because PETA is terrible https: . — Tyler Kingkade (@tylerkingkade) June 7, 2017, PETA has previously faced criticism for deceptive tricks, including the time they hired musician Jona Weinhofen to hold a fake plastic sheep covered in blood in a deceptive attempt to turn people against sheep shearing. The image was refuted by sheep farmers, with one claiming, “In two decades of living on a sheep farm, I have seen nothing resembling the images put forward by Peta in its campaign against the wool industry. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
On Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016, Tshililo Michael Masutha, the Minister of Justice of South Africa, presented a bill to parliament for the withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC). South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia announced in October their intention to leave the ICC due to what they believe is unbalanced treatment of the Court’s members. This move is drawing much attention internationally and some are concerned an African exodus from the ICC could be taking place. Support for the ICC in Africa is reflected in a statement issued on Oct. 22 by 24 African and international organizations that have called South Africa’s decision, “a slap in the face for victims.”
South Africa’s decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court is being seen as more significant than the Burundian lawmakers’ decision to vote themselves out on Oct. 12. Burundi has experienced an increase in “violence and conflict” since President Pierre Nkurunziza’s announcement that he will be seeking a third term in office. Due to this violence, the ICC opened a Preliminary Investigation into the situation in Burundi, causing some resentment from its leadership. Gambia’s decision to leave is also no surprise to many after President Yahya Jammeh and his government was again criticized for “cracking down” on political opposition.
South Africa has not been the target of an ICC investigation which is why their decision is being received differently. Criticisms of the ICC include ineffective prosecution and uneven treatment of the Court’s members. Frustration was experienced by Africa’s ICC members recently when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, while being indicted for “multiple counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes,” was allowed to freely travel to ICC member-states where the ICC holds jurisdiction. ICC jurisdiction can be a complicated matter. The Rome Statute, the international legal treaty that established the ICC, dictates that it will be the obligation of the Court’s members’ policing agencies to “cooperate fully with the Court in its investigation and prosecution of crimes.”
This essentially means while the ICC holds the jurisdiction to prosecute those who have committed the worst crimes, domestic authorities need to aid in the facilitation of such procedures. This notion that local remedies must be exhausted prior to ICC intervention was exhibited by Nigeria during Bashir’s international trip. Upon arriving in Nigeria legal charges were brought against him in Nigeria’s domestic court system, perhaps prompting him to leave just 24 hours after arriving. The prosecution of Bashir is also complicated due to the African Unions policy, established in 2013, of not prosecuting sitting “heads of state.”
The other criticism, that the ICC treats its member’s unbalanced looks to be an accurate statement, but it may also carry a complicated explanation. The Rome Statute has been ratified by 124 nations. These nations did not all join at once and African countries have been more zealous than others in referring criminals to The Hague for prosecution. Over half of the investigations being conducted by the ICC at present were referred by African ICC members. In fact, nine out of ten of the current investigations are of African individuals and all 32 individuals who have been indicted under the jurisdiction of the ICC have been from Africa. So, while the numbers reflect a heavy focus on African criminals, these people have been referred to the Court by African nations.
South Africa’s decision to proceed with their withdrawal from the ICC could bring more attention to the above criticisms. Many argue, though, that there is still strong support for the ICC in Africa. On Thursday, coinciding with Masutha’s submission of the bill, the Acting Spokesperson for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jane Adams, communicated in a statement that Nigeria would not be leaving the ICC. Adams believes, “A strengthened, reinvigorated and fine-tuned ICC as a symbol of the International Criminal system has an important role to play to offer solace to victims of heinous despicable and dastardly crimes.”
By Joel Wickwire
Sources:
Foreign Affairs – ICC on Ice?
Human Rights Watch – Africa Speaks Out Against ICC Withdrawal
International Criminal Court (ICC) – Statement of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, on Opening a Preliminary Examination into the Situation in Burundi
International Criminal Court (ICC) – Situations Under Investigation
The Jurist – South Africa Justice Minister Submits Bill to Withdraw from ICC
Top Image Courtesy GovernmentZA’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
In-Line and Feature Image Courtesy of Christopher A. Dominic’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
court | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. We’re providing unlimited access to all New York Times digital platforms through Wednesday. Here’s the latest. 1. On the eve of Election Day, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump scrambled around the country, urging voters to see the decision as having almost apocalyptic significance. Mrs. Clinton was set to join Bruce Springsteen and the Obamas for a final rally in Philadelphia. Mr. Trump stayed on the attack, faulting the F. B. I. for clearing Mrs. Clinton a second time over her use of a private email server. Polls show a tight race nationally and in swing states, though early voting data indicates increased Hispanic turnout, which bodes well for Mrs. Clinton. ____ 2. So what time will the race be called? It’s a complicated question, and projections can be a roller coaster. Our latest election forecast suggests that Mrs. Clinton could reach the critical number of electoral votes by 9 p. m. or Mr. Trump by 10 p. m. TV networks have huge operations to crunch numbers, but like all mainstream news media, face intense public distrust. “The pain of getting it wrong in this environment would be very ” said the president of ABC News. Here are our most insightful stories about the race over the past year. ____ 3. Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as U. S. attorney general, died at her home in Florida of complications from Parkinson’s disease. She was 78. Her eight years in office put her in the middle of some of the most divisive episodes of Bill Clinton’s presidency: the raid on a cult in Waco, Tex. the seizing of little Elián González and the Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater scandals. ____ 4. The sprawling Indian city of Delhi is choking. The most dangerous particulate pollution has soared to more than 16 times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization. Sustained exposure is the equivalent of smoking more than 40 cigarettes a day. Schools are closed, but the acrid, air travels indoors, too. Changing weather is likely to disperse the dense smog over the next few days. ____ 5. Australia will not legalize marriage any time soon. A bill that would have allowed for a plebiscite on the issue was shot down in Parliament over the $140 million cost and concerns that it would become a platform for hate speech. Polls show around 70 percent of Australians want marriage equality. Above, a rally last year. ____ 6. China blocked two young activists, above, from taking their seats in Hong Kong’s legislature. The semiautonomous territory is bracing for protests against Beijing’s new power play. On the mainland, a new law gives the authorities far greater control over the internet as of next summer. ____ 7. A Chinese Paralympic champion was nowhere to be seen at the finish of the New York City Marathon. Turned out her wheelchair had blown a tire at Mile 13 — so three people, aided by a translation app, stepped in to help. “It really was a cool New York moment,” one said. ____ 8. The chopped cheese — a sandwich made of ground beef, onions and cheese — is making its way from New York City’s delis to upscale restaurants. It comes with a side of controversy about race, class, cultural appropriation and gentrification. ____ 9. Finally, we leave you with tips on how to be mindful as you go to vote Tuesday. Our meditation expert says to take a few slow, deep breaths when you reach the booth. Be aware of your body and stand still as you listen to the sounds around you. Let go of all the controversy, vitriol and scandals. And leave wearing your I VOTED sticker as a badge of courage. 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 Friday’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
0 комментариев 0 поделились Фото: AP
"Они сделали паузу в наступлении и проводят передислокацию, переукомплектование и зачистку позиций в тылу. Мы считаем, что это займет лишь пару дней, а после этого мы продолжим наступление в направлении Мосула. Это их план действий, и мы полагаем, что они будут его придерживаться", - заявил Дорриан.
Массированное наступление на Мосулведется с 17 октября иракскими военными и силами полиции, а также курдскими формированиями при поддержке авиации коалиции во главе с США.
Напомним, как сообщала Правда.Ру, президент Иракского Курдистана Масуд Барзани заявил, что при сохранении нынешних темпов наступления на Мосул на освобождение от боевиков ИГ (запрещена в РФ) может уйти три месяца.
"Мы смогли быстро отвоевать приступы к городу, неизвестно, насколько сильно ИГ будет обороняться в самом городе. Но мы видим, что у них есть сотни смертников, должно быть, там целые фабрики по производству взрывчатки. При штурме это создаст большую опасность. Если все и дальше пойдет хорошо, я рассчитываю, что город удастся освободить самое позднее через три месяца", - сказал Барзани в интервью таблоиду Bild .
Напомним, 17 октября премьер-министр Ирака Хайдер аль-Абади заявил о начале военной операции по освобождению Мосула от боевиков ИГ. США и их союзники с 2014 года проводят в Ираке и Сирии операцию против ИГ. Иракские военные и силы полиции, а также курдские формирования при поддержке авиации коалиции во главе с США начали массированное наступление на город.
Однако это наступление может обернуться катастрофой на Ближнем Востоке. Об этом заявил, к примеру, кандидат в президенты США Дональд Трамп. Или вот мнение отставного полковника США Дэниэла Дэвиса, которое он изложил в статье, опубликованной в The National Interest : Америке и силам коалиции стоит поторопиться с проведением операции в Мосуле, в противном случае террористы могут разорвать этот альянс Чем дольше продержится ИГ и чем больший урон нанесет коалиции, тем более вероятно, что религиозные и политические различия между освободительными силами будут проявляться все сильнее", - пишет Дэвис.
Прокомментировать ситуацию Pravda.Ru попросила военного эксперта Бориса Подопригору.
В последние несколько месяцев официального пребывания американского президента в Белом доме, им захотелось организовать такой политический спектакль на тему американской приверженности в борьбе с терроризмом. Я так это вижу.
Что из этого получится, мне сказать сложно. Самое плохое, что я ожидаю, это новое столкновение по линии сунниты-шииты. Вот в чем самая большая проблема.
Читайте последние новости Pravda. Ru на сегодня
Катастрофа в Мосуле: Запад имитирует борьбу с терроризмом Поделиться: | 0 |
The global trade winds are blowing in America’s direction again. [Chinese companies are investing in manufacturing plants and expanding operations in the U. S, the Wall Street Journal reports. “ investment from China is booming,” WSJ columnist Andrew Browne notes. Several factors are driving the trend. One is a closing wage gap, particularly for skilled workers. Another: industrial land in the U. S. can be cheaper than in the coastal cities of China from which manufacturers can easily ship their product. Lower U. S. energy costs are also playing a role, Browne writes. The biggest factor, according to Browne, is advanced manufacturing technology — which could curb some of the power of China’s investments in the U. S. Browne calls Trump’s promise to bring about a manufacturing jobs renaissance “pure fantasy. ” Don’t be so sure. Taken alone, the factors that Browne notices might not be enough to massively revive jobs making and building things in America. But they won’t be “taken alone. ” The Trump administrations budget, for example, calls for large cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency — specifically telling the agency to quit funding the implementation of a massive expansion of the administrative state that would have raised energy costs for American consumers and businesses. At the same time, taxes on imports could push the move from “Made in China” to “Made in the U. S. A. ” along even further, as the Wall Street Journal itself noted in an earlier article. “A hefty U. S. import tax on goods produced in China could accelerate a trend already underway: Chinese companies setting up factories and expanding in the U. S.,” WSJ’s Nina Trenmann wrote in February. Far from creating the conditions for a trade war, it appears that President Donald Trump’s tough talk on trade is bringing around an end to the quiet trade war waged against American workers for the last two decades. Peace — and jobs — in our time is a real possibility. | 1 |
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s president is facing impeachment. The country’s economy is in sharp decline. Bodies of water that will be used for Olympic competitions are polluted, and global public health officials are trying to tamp down the Zika virus epidemic. With less than 100 days before the Olympic Games come to South America for the first time, Rio de Janeiro faces more than the usual challenges that bedevil host cities, like delayed stadium construction and transportation concerns. (Rio has those, too.) The mood here, however, is hardly one of panic. Officials in charge of executing the Summer Games say they feel insulated from Brazil’s turmoil at this late stage. The Olympics, after all, tend to exist in their own bubble, elaborately coordinated to ensure that the operation goes off smoothly. “The machine is in place, and it’s relatively stable,” Ricardo Leyser, Brazil’s sports minister, said in an interview this week. “My biggest concern isn’t any individual issue. It’s the small demands that all come at once. ” Local organizers are beginning to lay colorful comforters — patterned with the silhouettes of cartoon cyclists, fencers and swimmers — on the twin beds in the athletes’ village. They are monitoring the growth of grass that will be transplanted to Maracanã, the storied soccer stadium that will also be used for the opening and closing ceremonies. They are pulling trash from Guanabara Bay, where the Games’ sailing events will be held mopping up standing water to minimize mosquito breeding and ramping up a security operation — all while publicly expressing little worry about the unrest encircling them. On Wednesday, with the handoff of the Olympic flame in Greece and the start of a journey that in little more than a week will bring it to Brazil, the official countdown to the Aug. 5 opening ceremony began. In Rio, the race to be ready is intensifying, with construction workers here still laboring on mass transit projects that were key promises seven years ago in the city’s bid to host the Games. Costing several billion dollars, those projects include a new subway line and express bus lanes that connect the Olympic Park in Barra da Tijuca to the rest of the city, which is expected to swell with more than half a million visitors. As the value of the Brazilian real has drastically declined over the last year, some have expressed doubt that the transit projects will materialize beyond the sleek, modernist weather shelters that have been built at various stations. At a news conference Wednesday, the city’s secretary of transportation said the new routes would be ready in time but did not specify when. To the vast majority of people watching the Games on television, however, such infrastructure may not matter. The permanent venues for competitions here are mostly complete — all but those for tennis and track cycling — and athletes from around the world have competed in dozens of test events in Rio in recent months. “It’s about the filling of the cake,” Mr. Leyser said. “It’s not about the stadiums it’s about the scoreboards. ” As of the latest counts, 62 percent of the 5. 7 million tickets on the market had been sold — roughly half of the total tickets for the Olympics — and 24 percent of tickets available for the Paralympics had been sold. But compared with past Olympics, the buyers of those tickets may be disproportionately international, said Andrew Parsons, the president of the Brazilian Paralympic Committee. For some Brazilians, the country’s political and economic crises have cast a shadow on the celebration. President Dilma Rousseff’s ouster looks increasingly likely amid a sweeping graft scandal, and those in line to succeed her have their own controversies hanging over them. Questions of corruption have extended to Olympics planning, particularly after a businessman who worked on many Olympic projects in Rio was convicted of corruption and money laundering related to separate contracts. Mr. Leyser said that the questions centered on irregularities at the Deodoro event site and that no public official had been accused of wrongdoing. “It’s more an administrative issue than a corruption scheme,” he said. “It’s basically a question of the numbers. ” Mr. Leyser called the devaluation of Brazil’s currency an opportunity because it increases the buying power of foreign money coming into Brazil for the Games. But not everyone sees the event as a boon to the country. Shirlei Alves, who lives in the Santa Marta favela of Rio, criticized the government for spending on the Olympics in the face of Brazil’s problems. “The world is just getting worse here,” Ms. Alves said, noting that she was without medication and electricity. “The government is making a mistake. I’d like if they’d take a better look at the poor people and not help people who are already rich. ” Eduardo Paes, the mayor of Rio, said Wednesday that the city had a “comfortable financial situation” and had spent on stadium construction 1 percent of what it spent on health education. “I know people are skeptical,” Mr. Paes said, citing the “huge deliverables” for the Olympics. “Of course the situation here has been difficult. But there is a commitment of the Brazilian state to deliver the Olympics. ” Perhaps the most vexing issue for local organizers — the one that may stir anxiety among athletes and spectators — is the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects and temporary paralysis. Zika is of greater concern outside Rio, in the far north part of Brazil, but the World Health Organization has declared the virus a global public health emergency and has advised pregnant women not to travel anywhere in Brazil. “The Olympics is a pretty effective way of taking whatever disease is local and making it global,” said Ashish K. Jha, director of the Global Health Institute at Harvard. Some scientists have suggested that by the time the Olympics start in August — wintertime in Brazil, when mosquitoes are less numerous — the virus might be more prevalent in the southern United States. “Zika’s been spreading effectively on its own, but there’s very good reason to think the Olympics will accelerate the spread,” Dr. Jha said. But the virus poses a unique problem because it is so far beyond the control of local organizing officials, and so many questions about it remain unanswered. Few athletes have publicly expressed concern, but it is unclear how many might withdraw as the Games draw closer. “At this point you just keep going,” David Wallechinsky, an Olympics historian, said. “You have to continue as if everything’s going to be fine. These are real concerns — Zika, the water quality. But even if Dilma is forced out of office, it’s not going to stop the Olympics. ” | 1 |
With its lens tool, Snapchat allows some 150 million daily users to alter reality and play with identity in ways that border on the absurd. You can turn yourself into a pineapple, a dog or a character befitting a Roy Lichtenstein painting. The lenses are blunt, tools that generate more than 30 million enhanced selfies a day. Any missteps quickly enter the public record. Snapchat lenses have drawn criticism in the past with accusations that the app was promoting blackface or encouraging whitened skin tones as an ideal of beauty. So when it pushed a lens to some users this week that gave them slanted eyes, distorted teeth and puffy cheeks, some critics called it a racist caricature of Asian people — “yellowface. ” And they wondered if these repeated controversies pointed to a larger problem that the company has with diversity. The news and the outrage went wide on Wednesday, with reports by The Verge and Motherboard, a day after Snapchat said it had dismantled the feature. The company offered an explanation: The lens was meant as homage to anime characters, not as a caricature of Asian people. But for observers who have experienced racism, the lens reminded them of hurtful stereotypes in action. Others roundly rejected the anime comparison. In an email, Grace Sparapani, a art student whose tweet about the photos was widely shared, said that the lens was “hurtful and uncomfortable to say the least. ” She added that “it’s hard to argue with the side by side comparison of the very gross Asian caricature and the filter’s effects. It shows that the filter isn’t just yellowface, but yellowface taken to its derogatory extreme. ” Snapchat is not the only company to cross these cultural tripwires. American culture seems involved in an endless struggle over diversity and inclusion, from corporate boardrooms to Hollywood and the devices we all carry in our hands. And Snapchat’s huge audience of younger people — who are more racially diverse than their older counterparts — might mean that they are even more likely to expect sensitivity. When one of Snapchat’s lenses creates an image that is insulting to a user, Katie Zhu, 25, said in an interview on Thursday, “it’s much harder for these types of things to go unnoticed like they did before. ” On Thursday, Ms. Zhu, a product manager and engineer who works for Medium, decided to delete her Snapchat account and encouraged others to do the same. In an essay for Medium and in a telephone interview, she said she believed that the controversies reflected a lack of diversity in hiring practices at Snapchat. Ms. Zhu criticized the company’s mostly white, leadership and ended her essay with a hashtag: #DeleteSnapchat. “It’s either that they had no diverse representation of people of color on their staff to the point where they’re able to make decisions like this,” Ms. Zhu, who is said, “or they do have some people of color who are working there, but they’re not in positions where they feel safe or comfortable to speak up. ” Other observers share her view, a complaint that Snapchat has left largely unanswered. The company does not release figures about diversity on its staff, noting its status as a private company. On Thursday, Snapchat declined to discuss the racial backgrounds of its staff, but according to a spokesman, the company recently hired a recruiter to focus on underrepresented populations and on driving inclusion efforts internally. For her part, Ms. Zhu said she would keep her Snapchat account closed, adding, “I wonder if they actually need more users like us to be able to say that this is not O. K. ” | 1 |
The addition of the incendiary writer Milo Yiannopoulos to Friday’s lineup for the HBO series “Real Time With Bill Maher” quickly proved controversial on Wednesday evening when another guest, the journalist Jeremy Scahill, said he would not appear on the show because of Mr. Yiannopoulos’s booking. Mr. Scahill, a and editor of the news site The Intercept, announced his decision on Twitter only hours after Mr. Yiannopoulos’s scheduled appearance was made public. Mr. Scahill said that allowing Mr. Yiannopoulos to appear on “Real Time” was “many bridges too far. ” “He has ample venues to spew his hateful diatribes,” Mr. Scahill said in a statement. “There is no value in ‘debating’ him. Appearing on ‘Real Time’ will provide Yiannopoulos with a large, important platform to openly advocate his racist, campaign. It will be exploited by Yiannopoulos in an attempt to legitimize his hateful agenda. ” But Mr. Maher defended his decision. “My comments on Islam have never veered into vitriol,” he said. “Liberals will continue to lose elections as long as they follow the example of people like Mr. Scahill whose views veer into fantasy and away from bedrock liberal principles like equality of women, respect for minorities, separation of religion and state, and free speech. If Mr. Yiannopoulos is indeed the monster Scahill claims — and he might be — nothing could serve the liberal cause better than having him exposed on Friday night. ” Mr. Yiannopoulos, an editor at Breitbart News, often engages in provocative displays to highlight what he considers the intolerance of the political left. At an appearance in December at the University of he mocked a transgender student while displaying her photograph during his talk. This month, a planned appearance by Mr. Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, was canceled when protests against the speech turned violent and led to rioting that caused around $100, 000 in damages. He had been invited to speak by the school’s College Republicans group. In a Facebook video posted after the speech’s cancellation, Mr. Yiannopoulos said that the “hard left” was to blame, having “become so utterly antithetical to free speech in the last few years. ” “They simply will not allow any speaker on campus, even somebody as silly and harmless and gay as me, to have their voice heard,” he added. Other schools have withdrawn invitations to him in recent weeks. In January, a man was shot during protests outside a speech Mr. Yiannopoulos was giving at the University of Washington in Seattle. Last summer, Mr. Yiannopoulos was barred from Twitter after helping rally other users to direct racist and sexist remarks at Leslie Jones, a star of “Ghostbusters” and “Saturday Night Live. ” Mr. Maher, a comedian who is liberal on many issues — he donated $1 million to a “super PAC” supporting President Barack Obama’s in 2012 — features guests from across the political spectrum on “Real Time. ” His show on Friday was set to include the comedian Larry Wilmore, the actress Leah Remini and former Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia. | 1 |
Videos France’s Far-Right National Front Seeks Funding From United Arab Emirates With French banks reluctant to lend to the National Front, the party says it could resort to foreign funding from as far away as the UAE. | October 29, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! An electoral board showing France’s far-right National Front president Marine Le Pen and reading: 100% National Front. 0% migrants is pictured during a demonstration in Forges-les-Bains, south of Paris, France, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2016.
France’s National Front is known to have diverse funding streams, but an investigation published this week unveiled a new potential funder: the United Arab Emirates.
It is certainly an odd source of funding for a party whose leader, Marine Le Pen, has been taken to court for anti-Muslim hate speech.
Le Pen’s Russian networks are already well known: in 2014, the National Front received a loan of €11mn ($12mn) from the First Czech Russian Bank.
This fact was admitted by the party’s treasurer, Wallerand de Saint-Just, who said: “The party makes requests to foreign banks, why not Russian banks?”
The latest controversy was sparked by a book by famed French investigative journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. In 2004, the journalistic duo were even held hostage at one point by Islamic militants in Iraq.
Titled Nos très chers émirs (Our dear emirs), their latest book exposes the murky relationship between a number of French politicians and the countries of the Arabian Gulf.
In the wake of the controversy caused by the book’s publication, the news website Mediapart has raised the question of possible funding of Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign by the UAE.
A source familiar with the far-right French party told Middle East Eye: “It is true that in 2014 Marine Le Pen met an Emirati emissary in her residence in Montrebout, in the Hauts-de-Seine region, who offered to help her.
“That being said, the FN [National Front] has always been clear on this point: it has two enemies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which it regards as sponsors of wahhabism, but in her eyes the Emiratis are an ally in the fight against radicalisation.”
Wahhabism is an ultra-orthodox strand of Sunni Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and it has become an increasingly popular theme to explain the chaos gripping the Middle East.
“France must break its relations with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which helped, assisted, and funded Islamic fundamentalists worldwide,” Le Pen said in September 2014 on France 24.
“We must rely on those Muslim countries which fight fundamentalism,” she added, naming the UAE and Egypt as examples of such countries and calling for “a wide coalition” against Islamic extremism.
In 2014, pro-Le Pen French MEP Jean-Luc Schaffhauser told Mediapart that he had negotiated a loan at a rate of 2.8 percent with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, but that it in the event it did not materialize.
The following year in May, Le Pen travelled to Cairo to meet with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Mosque – a trip allegedly funded by the UAE, according to Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.
The allegation was denied earlier this week by National Front MEP and Secretary General Nicolas Bay, who told France 2 television: “That is incorrect.”
“For now, about 50 percent of the campaign should be funded by Cotelec, the FN’s funding organisation that is chaired by Jean-Marie Le Pen,” the source close to the party told MEE.
These loans granted to the party by its members will be refunded once the state has itself reimbursed the campaign. This rule applies to all parties that win more than 5 percent of the vote in the first round of the elections.
“The needs for the first round are estimated at around €12mn, and €21mn for the second round. For the first round, they still lack €6-7 million, but they are aware of the fact that appealing to the Gulf countries harm them in terms of image,” the source added.
“So at first, the goal is to look for loans in European countries. If this is not enough, they will turn to the Russians, and thirdly, to the UAE. We can say that this is an option, but a third choice option.”
The National Front has indicated that around 40 banks have refused to lend it money. Yet polls assure that Le Pen will win more than the 5 percent of votes needed to be reimbursed by the state.
“If we have to borrow abroad, we will borrow abroad,” Wallerand de Saint-Just, the party’s treasurer, told France 3. “There are no exceptions to this, either in Russia, Argentina, or in the United States… and why not in the Middle East?” | 0 |
Brilliant! | 0 |
November 2, 2016 Evangelicals Across The Spectrum Are Clarifying Marriage As A Core Belief Marriage, as Jesus defines it in Matthew 19—where a man leaves his father and mother and joins with his wife in covenant marriage—is a core evangelical belief. It might not seem that way these days, when we hear of a few people making news by changing their views on sexuality and marriage, but we are in a season of one evangelical organization after another feeling the need to make clear their position on marriage. That’s the bigger story than the celebrity of the moment. Evangelical organizations across the spectrum are making clear where they stand on marriage. For some, particularly conservative Evangelicals, this view was already evident, but perhaps this is most difficult in the progressive wing of Evangelicals. Organizations like Fuller Seminary, InterVarsity, the Vineyard, and World Vision are all known for their progressive views on gender, race, and social justice. | 0 |
source Add To The Conversation Using Facebook Comments | 0 |
WASHINGTON — In one way at least, Donald J. Trump has already surpassed all of his recent predecessors. It took Barack Obama 18 months in the White House for his approval rating to slip to 44 percent in Gallup polling, and it took George W. Bush 4½ years to fall that far. Mr. Trump got there before even being sworn in. Indeed, Mr. Trump will take office on Friday with less popular support than any new president in modern times, according to an array of surveys, a sign that he has failed to rally Americans behind him, beyond the base that helped him win in November. Rather than a unifying moment, his transition to power has seen a continuation of the polarization of the election last year. Where other presidents used the weeks before their inauguration to put the animosities of the campaign behind them and to try to knit the country together again, Mr. Trump has approached the interregnum as if he were a television wrestling star. He has taken on a civil rights icon, a Hollywood actress, intelligence agencies, defense contractors, European leaders and President Obama. The healing theme common at this stage in the presidential cycle is absent. “He seems to want to engage with every windmill that he can find, rather than focus on the large aspect of assuming the most important position on earth,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said on CNN on Tuesday. “And obviously, apparently, according to the polls, many Americans are not happy with that approach when he has not even assumed the presidency. ” Two polls out on Tuesday — one by CNN and ORC and another by The Washington Post and ABC News — found that just 40 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Trump’s performance heading into the inauguration on Friday. NBC News and The Wall Street Journal put his approval rating at 44 percent, calling it the lowest rating ever for an incoming president. By comparison, shortly after their inaugurations, Mr. Obama was at 68 percent and Mr. Bush was at 57 percent in Gallup surveys. Both used the time after their initial victories to preach a message of inclusion and to extend a hand to their opposition, even if it did not ultimately last. Mr. Trump’s advisers said privately that his unexpected rise to power showed that such traditional barometers did not matter as much anymore. If polls were to be believed, he would not have been president, they said. Still, the anemic numbers clearly irritated Mr. Trump, who lashed out on Tuesday. “The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls,” he wrote on Twitter. “They are rigged just like before. ” Although polling in several Midwest battleground states failed to accurately reflect the actual results on Election Day, national polls generally came within a percentage point of the actual popular vote, which Hillary Clinton won with 48 percent to Mr. Trump’s 46 percent. For Mr. Trump, the worry about approval ratings would be less about what it might mean for the next election, still years away, but about how such numbers are interpreted by members of Congress, who historically have been more deferential to popular presidents than unpopular ones. “Every president starts off with a account with Congress that eventually draws down,” said Phil Schiliro, who was Mr. Obama’s White House legislative director in his first term. “As approval ratings drop, the account sinks very quickly. And that makes it much harder to bring Congress along on the president’s priorities. ” Steve Israel, a Democrat who represented New York in the House, said the biggest challenge for Mr. Trump might be with nervous members of his own party. “Right now, Trump’s numbers are kryptonite for 21 House Republicans in districts that he lost,” he said. “So not only does he begin with low poll numbers, he begins with a significant potential bloc of resistance in his own caucus. ” But Mr. Trump has shown that he intends to lead more through force of personality than through the breadth of his coalition. Brash and uninhibited, he seeks out enemies and allows few slights to go unanswered. He has repaired bridges with some critics, like Mitt Romney, but has made only sporadic efforts to reach out to parts of the public that have not supported him. His strongest supporters cheer his pugnacious style, and he argues that it has gotten results, like when House Republicans backed off plans to undercut the authority of the Office of Congressional Ethics, or major employers reversed plans to move jobs overseas after he wrote on Twitter about his disapproval. “With all of the jobs I am bringing back into the U. S. (even before taking office) with all of the new auto plants coming back into our country and with the massive cost reductions I have negotiated on military purchases and more, I believe the people are seeing ‘big stuff,’ ” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. For many years, presidents and their advisers quaked at polls that showed a drop in their ratings, fearful that it would hurt their ability to command the stage and to enact their agendas. The last two presidents governed for long stretches with less than majority support, which clearly limited their capacity to advance major legislation. But they both also demonstrated that they could still make at least some progress. Mr. Bush never had the support of more than 50 percent of Americans for nearly his entire second term and fell into the 20s before leaving office. Still, he ignored poll numbers and the opposition of Democrats to send reinforcements to Iraq to turn around a losing war. Mr. Obama never fell as far, but he went for many months below 50 percent and turned to his executive authority to enact policies on immigration and the environment. He rebounded in public standing in the last few months and will leave office at 56 percent in the poll, near his highest marks. Some Republicans now say Mr. Trump has rewritten the rule book. “Polling more and more is a false god,” said Ron Kaufman, the White House political director under President George Bush and a longtime Republican strategist. “We all play to it, but it’s a false god. I just think it’s no longer reliable as a judge. ” Mary Matalin, who was a top counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, who ignored his own low approval ratings while in office to focus on advancing his national security agenda, said Mr. Trump “has ushered in a new political paradigm” that has upended assumptions. “Trump has exposed the inadequacy and fallibility of domestic political strategy of governing by polls and contrived expectations,” she said. “In the new Trump world, it has already been proven prima facie absurd to presume personal approval numbers to be more than policy approval. ” | 1 |
*Especially from a white dude who makes some good points but buries them in a whole lotta condescension and sarcasm. Image by plaisanter~, via Flikr. Used under creative commons. Safety pin. I’m wearing one. My daughter wants to wear one to school. She understands the responsibility it entails. She knows that the safety pin means “I am a safe person.” She knows that if anyone at her school is being harassed, she will go stand next to that kid. She knows who in her grade might be a target. I hear the critique. I saw the article because two WOCs posted it. I know they resonated with it because of long experience with lip service and/or betrayal by white feminists. I hear that. Nevertheless, I cannot support slamming the safety pin idea, and here’s why: 1) If a big white Trump dude is bearing down on me screaming “GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY”, I am not going to check the progressive bona fides of a person near me wearing a safety pin. I will only be grateful to know there’s another person nearby who won’t assault me and is demonstrating a willingness to help defend me. 2) I’ve heard from plenty of POCs and Muslims as well as some LGBTQIAs that they feel surrounded by enemies. The safety pin helps them feel that they are not isolated and alone. 3) We can’t all go around all the time wearing a sandwich board that reads “Black and Latinx and Asian and First Nations and People with Disabilities and Muslim and Sikh Lives Matter.” A safety pin is cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to wear with any outfit. 4) For some white people, putting on a safety pin may be the first step toward allyship that they have ever taken. By putting it on, they make themselves a target for Trump supporters IRL and online to call them whiny liberal losers. Then liberals/progressives/leftists turn around and tell them they are embarrassing themselves by wearing a safety pin? Yeah, that’s how we lose. 5) When I put on a safety pin, I am recommitting every day to stand up to oppression, whether in the form of harassment or in the form of legislation enacted by a Trump administration. I hope the pin helps others to think, every single day, about how they can resist our nation’s slide into a morass of hatred and prejudice and assist others with less privilege to attain equal rights. In fact, I will say this as a woman of color, as a member of the LGBTQIA community: if you are wearing a safety pin, this is what I expect of you. 6) Some people have said that white supremacists have co-opted the safety pin, but I haven’t seen documentation of this so far. Given the level of Trumpist ridicule heaped on the safety pin movement, I’m guessing that many if not most Trump supporters will proudly NOT wear a safety pin. If you are also wearing a safety pin, for you I am posting a comic that explains how to support and protect someone targeted for Islamophobic harassment. This guide is broadly applicable to other -isms and -phobias. Wearing a safety pin is only one step. We are facing an unprecedented threat, and this will be a long struggle. It will require listening and following the leads of the communities who are most threatened. I hope everyone wearing a pin will continue to stand with those communities over the next four years and beyond. LINKS to resources for wearing a safety pin: | 0 |
When the actress Kate Hudson needed a sofa, she headed to Wyeth in SoHo for a vintage blue Dunbar by Edward Wormley. When the designer Tomas Maier needed a coffee table, he went there, too, and plunked down his credit card for a safety glass and coffee table from Joe D’Urso. And when the Hollywood agent Bryan Lourd was in search of a new lounge chair, he picked out a black leather Papa Bear by Hans Wegner, also from Wyeth. With its prices and enormous selection of Danish modernist pieces, the store is arguably the premiere emporium in the United States. Its owner, John Birch, is also one of the most elusive, and talked about, dealers on the furniture scene: a Larry Gagosian for the set, with strong taste that did not just mirror the market but helped set it. Mr. Birch — a trim, with eyes and salt and pepper spackled hair — hobnobs with the Olsen twins (who featured an assortment of his furniture at the most recent presentation of their line, the Row) introduced Helmut Lang to his assortment of Wegner furniture and has recently been giving Jimmy Fallon advice on his Gramercy Park home. Sleek bamboo dining tables designed by Mr. Birch have become status objects owned by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and the entertainment manager turned real estate mogul Sandy Gallin. Mr. Birch’s girlfriend, Tiffany Vassilakis, is an accomplished interior designer who has worked with Carey Lowell and Richard Gere. Next Tuesday, Mr. Birch is expanding his footprint with a Sotheby’s auction of rare midcentury finds that could fetch upward of $1. 8 million. Later this month, he’s opening a showroom on the ground floor of 533 Canal Street that’s a triumph of Wyethesque minimalism: exposed white brick walls, perfectly sanded cement floors, light fixtures from O. C. White and Isamu Noguchi, and a floating raw steel staircase — its 23 steps fabricated by hand and welded on site by Mr. Birch. Yet as movers came in and out on a recent afternoon, and a team from Sotheby’s prepared to photograph pieces for the catalog, Mr. Birch looked less like a furniture mogul than a boy whose toys were being taken away from him. He didn’t like having to move a prized George Nakashima coffee table (estimate: $20, 000 to $30, 000) out of the shot. And he didn’t like that a mosaic coffee table by Vladimir Kagan ($8, 000 to $12, 000) and Cippolino marble coffee table by Poul Kjaerholm ($7, 000 to $9, 000) had nothing on them. “I don’t understand the empty tables,” he said, peering around the room. “Nothing’s ever empty at Wyeth. ” A bulb in one of Noguchi ceiling lanterns had gone out and was becoming a source of real irritation. “I’m glad I have employees who realize the bulb has been blown out for two weeks,” he said sarcastically, climbing on top of a Hans Wegner desk so he could replace it himself. As can be surmised, Mr. Birch is a sort of guy. He’s not mean, although he says so little and charges so much for things that people often presume he must be. But he is painstaking, meticulous and so focused on achieving a kind of aesthetic perfection that he can drive himself (and everyone around him) crazy. And in recent months, it’s not just neurosis keeping him up at night. The wealthy Brazilians who used to stream through his doors are largely gone, as their economy implodes and their president, Dilma Rousseff, awaits an impeachment trial. Gone, too, are the Brunello hedge funders, who, as the art market shows evidence of a possible correction, are clearly less inclined to pay $50, 000 for a pair of Finn Juhl’s chieftain chairs. And then there’s 1stdibs. Once exclusive, the online site featuring modern and antique furniture, jewelry, fine art and other collectibles, has been ferociously signing up dealers who, as he puts it, “work out of storage lockers” in places like suburban Illinois with low rents, and don’t bother with the painstaking restoration for which Wyeth is known. The site is also increasingly aggressive about collecting commissions on the online sales, a practice Mr. Birch sees as . Many of his Manhattan colleagues are already downsizing or folding up shop. Todd Merrill packed up his mirrored Paul Evans pieces and left Bleecker Street this winter for a location in the slightly more affordable financial district. In the fall, Alan Moss, the Art Deco purveyor, will close his Lafayette Street store and go online only. “It’s a last stand,” Mr. Birch said, reflecting on the current state of the furniture market. “Retail is a terrible business. ” In fact, he sees his new showroom as a way of weaning himself away from 1stdibs. “I don’t want anything to do with them anymore,” he said. But how did it come to this, that one of the country’s leading purveyors of midcentury modern design should find himself in retrenchment, just as the market finds a wider audience thanks to sites like 1stdibs, not to mention knockoff manufacturers that hawk cheap imitations? John Birch (no relation to the Baptist minister who has a group named after him) was born in Brigham City, Utah, the oldest boy in a Mormon family of nine children. “With only one mother!” joked his younger brother Paul, who as Wyeth’s principal woodworker builds many of the original pieces and oversees restoration of vintage finds. In the early 1980s, after attending Brigham Young University for a semester (“maybe half,” he said) Mr. Birch arrived in New York City, fell into the fashion business, and spent a decade bouncing around the display departments of Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Giorgio Armani. “He had an incredible eye and very defined taste,” said Gabriella Forte, who was his boss at Armani before becoming president at Calvin Klein and then chief executive of David Yurman. “He positions things with real talent. It’s pure simplicity. Is it minimalism? I don’t know if that’s how I’d describe it. It was just perfection. ” By 1994, Mr. Birch had had enough. So he leased a space on Franklin Street in TriBeCa, named it for his then son, Wyeth, and filled it with his favorite things. (Wyeth graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design last year and now works for the family business. Mr. Birch and Wyeth’s mother, Daphne, separated over a decade ago, though they never divorced. “It’s cordial,” Mr. Birch said.) Back then, TriBeCa was still in its infancy. Nobu had just opened and the majority of big antiques dealers had fairly narrow specialties like Biedermeier and Art Deco, which befit an earlier, fussier era. The novelty of Wyeth, said Robin Standefer, half of the design team Roman and Williams, was how Mr. Birch mixed things up, placing postwar Danish chairs with gas light fixtures and coffee tables from the ’80s. “He would take objects that were somehow considered less valuable, that didn’t necessarily have pedigree, and reassemble them in unexpected ways,” Ms. Standefer said. “He certainly educated American consumers to a kind of Danish design. But what I found most interesting is what he paired those things with. That’s what was different. That’s what was unusual. ” Soon, word spread about the Mormon who talked little to his customers and charged a fortune for the coolest stuff in town. Ms. Standefer brought Ms. Paltrow, who bought pieces like $3, 000 lamps and the company’s $16, 000 bamboo dining table. When Ms. Paltrow started dating Ben Affleck, he also began shopping at the store. So did André Balazs, Richard Gere, Julianne Moore, Ben Stiller, Meg Ryan and David Bowie. Around that time, a woman with long blond hair began coming in regularly without ever saying hello or goodbye. “After five visits, she handed over her credit card,” Mr. Birch said. “It was Annie Leibovitz. ” Many of his famous customers did not even get discounts or a friendly smile. “He was not a pleasure to buy from,” Diane von Furstenberg said. “He really wasn’t. ” But instead of walking away, she (like many others) became a repeat customer, part of an elite circle that kept coming back even as they complained about the store’s outrageous prices and the way its owner barely seemed to grunt in their direction. As with most myths, the legend may not have been totally in sync with reality. Mr. Birch, it turns out, is actually shy, the sort of person who is more comfortable with beautiful things than beautiful people. And those that did try negotiating often got a bargain, particularly when he sensed a fellow design worshiper. Still, his untraditional approach to salesmanship had a reverse playback among a subset of people used to being doted upon: His lack of solicitousness made customers desperate to buy from him. “Part of his mystique was that he was elusive,” said Wendy Goodman, the design editor of New York Magazine. “When you went in and had an audience with him, it was a big thing. Because it was a question: ‘Were you worth it? ’” That’s more or less how Jessica Seinfeld, another person who came to Wyeth over the years, described the experience of shopping there. “Their taste is impeccable,” she said. “Every piece in their shop is ‘important’ in one way or another, so I respect their consistency, even their condescension. I find myself charmed by their lack of interest in human contact. ” Wyeth did go through rough patches, which often coincided with its expansion. It moved out of Franklin Street and into its current home on Spring Street around the September 2001 attacks. And it opened a space in Sagaponack, N. Y. in 2008, just after the financial crisis hit. Casual customers presumed that Mr. Birch cared only about selling things at the highest price, but as Wyeth’s trove grew and grew, a different theory emerged among those who knew him best. Mr. Birch, they said, could not bear to be separated from his favorite things, so he began pricing them as high as possible so they wouldn’t sell. “He’s putting together a continuum of a design aesthetic, and to do that, he needs to own these things, touch them and feel them,” said Richard Barrett, his friend and landlord at 533 Canal. “Some might say he’s a hoarder. ” Mr. Birch didn’t exactly deny the thesis. “It’s true that I was never focused on money,” he said. “I don’t even get sales reports. I don’t ask for them. ” His idiosyncratic approach to business also extended to the new Canal Street store. When Mr. Birch first agreed to rent that space around 2008, he thought it would become a third Wyeth outpost, focused largely on his new productions. Then, renovations took years, as Mr. Birch slaved over every detail, while the market for midcentury modern furniture became more transparent and democratic, thanks both to 1stdibs and to Restoration Hardware, which recently introduced a modern collection of tables called the Wythe collection. “It was hilarious,” Mr. Barrett said. “Even the typeface looked like Wyeth. ” (Restoration Hardware did not respond to a request for comment.) “When you educate people too well, which in a sense is what he did, they discover ways to sleuth the same objects,” said Ms. Standefer of Roman and Williams. That market led Mr. Birch to call Sotheby’s this winter, and people there were happy to help Mr. Birch divest of what they viewed to be one of the best modern design collections in the world. “It’s one of the few sales I’ve conducted in my career where I wanted to buy half the things in it,” said Jodi Pollack, the auction house’s head of 20th century design. Perhaps predictably, Mr. Birch worked all the way to the wire, fussing over every imaginable detail the last furniture shipments arrived at the Canal Street showroom mere minutes before a party there on May 17 celebrating its opening and the coming Sotheby’s sale. aficionados and fellow dealers began arriving around 7 p. m. streaming into a room of Kjaerholm tables, Finn Juhl chairs and new biomorphic, mirrors by Mr. Birch. Longtime customers remarked on the high auction prices (including two Wegner easy chairs expected to fetch $60, 000 to $80, 000 each) while tattooed staffers told stories about the poor Sotheby’s photographer tasked with getting Mr. Birch’s portrait (he wouldn’t sit still, kept rearranging the furniture and smoked the entire time). True to form, Mr. Birch was hard to find. Wearing a pair of RRL jeans, a charcoal Comme des Garçons sweater and a dark Jil Sander blazer, he huddled in the back with the Olsen twins. They made a fitting trio, this reclusive character and two women whose public personas have been built largely upon doing lots and saying little. But it was impossible to know what they were talking about because Olsen quickly shut a reporter down. “Sorry,” she said. “We’re not giving any interviews. ” Nearby was Mr. Birch’s son Wyeth. “In my family, we don’t often express our appreciation for each other,” Wyeth said. “I don’t know how to put it because right now, I’m exhausted. But this is the first time in my adult life we’ve celebrated Wyeth. It’s tough love with my dad. ” | 1 |
41 Russia and Japan haven’t been able to settle the issue of the Kuril Islands and sign a peace treaty since the end of World War II, resulting in a territorial dispute that’s been around for seven decades. But warm ties between the countries’ current leaders could lead to a breakthrough. Many are expecting progress to be made when Russian President Putin is in Japan for a state visit in December. Can the issue of the disputed islands be settled for good? And will Japan’s special relationship with America stand in the way of closer cooperation with Russia? Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is on SophieCo to discuss. Follow @SophieCo_RT | 0 |
Nestle seeks more groundwater to expand Michigan plant They're putting profits over people - and the environment - yet again By Julie Fidler - November 9, 2016
The state of Michigan has given a preliminary go-ahead for food and beverage maker Nestle to nearly triple the amount of groundwater it will pump from beneath the state, to be bottled and sold at its Ice Mountain plant, approximately 120 miles from Flint.
Nestle Waters North America asked the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to allow the company to increase pumping from 150 to 400 gallons-per-minute at 1 of its production wells north of Evart.
The company already increased the well’s pumping rate last year and earlier this year, but needs the DEQ’s approval to max out the withdrawal capacity under the Section 17 of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
The DEQ already issued a draft proposal for the request in January, and ended a public comment period on the subject on November 3. Carrie Monosmith, environmental health chief in the drinking water office, said the DEQ hadn’t received any comments.
Many Michigan residents feel Nestle has a lot of nerve asking for the increase, in light of Flint’s years-long nightmare over lead contamination in their drinking water. Many people in Flint still rely on bottled water for cooking, cleaning, and bathing as the government continues to drag its feet in replacing the corroded pipes.
Nestle representatives defended the company’s efforts to pump more groundwater, saying the “U.S. market for bottled water in general is driving the bid for more Michigan groundwater.”
That’s right, America. Nestle says it’s your fault.
If that’s not infuriating enough, Nestle gets to pump that water for free. Under state law, private property owners may withdraw from the aquifer under their property for free. The only cost is $200 in annual paperwork.
The interstate Great Lakes compact prohibits water diversions outside of the Great Lakes basin, but a loophole in the law allows water to be sold outside the region, so long as it is shipped in bottles smaller than 5.7 gallons.
Jeff Ostahowski, vice president of the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC), asks:
“The issue is the privatization of a critical resource. How much is too much?”
For years, MCWC has battled against Nestle to prevent it from expanding in the state.
According to Nestle and the DEQ, an environmental review shows the aquifer can withstand the proposed increase in pumping, and that it won’t hurt its flow, levels, or temperature of nearby surface waters. | 0 |
Thousands of people across the country marched, shut down highways, burned effigies and shouted angry slogans on Wednesday night to protest the election of Donald J. Trump as president. The demonstrations, fueled by social media, continued into the early hours of Thursday. The crowds swelled as the night went on but remained mostly peaceful. Protests were reported in cities as diverse as Dallas and Oakland and included marches in Boston Chicago Portland, Ore. Seattle and Washington and at college campuses in California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In Oakland alone, the Police Department said, the crowd grew from about 3, 000 people at 7 p. m. to 6, 000 an hour later. The situation grew tense late Wednesday, with SFGate. com reporting that a group of protesters had started small fires in the street and broken windows. Police officers in riot gear were called in, and at least one officer was injured, according to other local news reports. It was the second night of protests there, following unruly demonstrations that led to property damage and left at least one person injured shortly after Mr. Trump’s election was announced. The protests on Wednesday came just hours after Hillary Clinton, in her concession speech, asked supporters to give Mr. Trump a “chance to lead. ” One of the biggest demonstrations was in Los Angeles, where protesters burned a Trump effigy at City Hall and shut down a section of Highway 101. Law enforcement officials were called out to disperse the hundreds of people who swarmed across the multilane freeway. In New York, crowds converged at Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue at 56th Street in Midtown Manhattan, where the lives. They chanted “Not our president” and “New York hates Trump” and carried signs that said, among other things, “Dump Trump. ” Restaurant workers in their uniforms briefly left their posts to cheer on the demonstrators. The demonstrations forced streets to be closed, snarled traffic and drew a large police presence. They started in separate waves from Union Square and Columbus Circle and snaked their way through Midtown. Loaded dump trucks lined Fifth Avenue for two blocks outside Trump Tower as a form of protection. Emanuel Perez, 25, of the Bronx, who works at a restaurant in Manhattan and grew up in Guerrero, Mexico, was among the many Latinos in the crowd. “I came here because people came out to protest the racism that he’s promoting,” he said in Spanish, referring to Mr. Trump. “I’m not scared for myself personally. What I’m worried about is how many children are going to be separated from their families. It will not be just one. It will be thousands of families. ” Protesters with umbrellas beat a piñata of Mr. Trump, which quickly lost a leg, outside the building. The Police Department said on Wednesday night that 15 protesters had been arrested. Bianca Rivera, 25, of East Harlem, described Mr. Trump’s election as something that was “not supposed to happen. ” “We’re living in a country that’s supposed to be united, a melting pot,” she said. “It’s exposing all these underground racists and sexists. ” Elsewhere in the country, college students gathered in spontaneous marches and asked university leaders to schedule meetings to reflect on the results. After Mr. Trump’s victory speech, more than 2, 000 students at the University of California, Los Angeles, marched through the streets of the campus’s Westwood neighborhood. There were similar protests at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles University of California campuses in Berkeley, San Diego and Santa Barbara Temple University, in Philadelphia and the University of Massachusetts. High school students also walked out of classes in protest in several cities. As U. C. L. A. students made their way to classes on Wednesday, they talked about how to make sense of an outcome that had seemed impossible a day earlier. “I’m more than a little nervous about the future,” said Blanca Torres, a sophomore anthropology major. “We all want to have conversations with each other, to figure out how to move forward. There’s a whole new reality out there for us now. ” Chuy Fernandez, a economics student, said he was eager to air his unease with his peers. “I’m feeling sad with this huge sense of uncertainty,” Mr. Fernandez said. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he said it was difficult not to take the outcome personally. “We’re all just kind of waiting for a ticking time bomb, like looking around and thinking who will be deported,” he said. “That’s the exact opposite of what most of us thought would happen. ” On Facebook, a page titled “Not My President” called for protesters to gather on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, in the nation’s capital. “We refuse to recognize Donald Trump as the president of the United States, and refuse to take orders from a government that puts bigots into power,” the organizers wrote. “We have to make it clear to the public that we did not choose this man for office and that we won’t stand for his ideologies. ” | 1 |
“My Fair Lady,” which won the Tony for best new musical in 1957, will return to Broadway next year for the first time in a quarter century. Lincoln Center Theater said Monday that it would stage a revival of the musical, directed by Bartlett Sher, who has become the nonprofit organization’s director for revivals of midcentury classics. The show, as any theater lover knows, is about a flower saleswoman, Eliza Doolittle, who is taking speech lessons from a professor named Henry Higgins. Set in and around London in 1912, it is based on a play, “Pygmalion,” by George Bernard Shaw. The original production of “My Fair Lady,” featuring music by Frederick Loewe and a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, opened on Broadway in 1956, starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, and by the time it closed, in 1962, it was the musical in Broadway history, with 2, 717 performances. There were Broadway revivals in 1976, 1981, and 1993, and the New York Philharmonic staged a production in 2007. But the show is probably best known from the 1964 film adaptation, which starred Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison and won eight Academy Awards in 1965, including best picture. “It’s a show of great delight and great sophistication,” said André Bishop, the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, which will present the revival in association with the Nederlander organization. “And I love the idea that at this particular time, when people are not always precise in the way they speak or write, here’s this show that is about speaking. ” Mr. Sher, a resident director at Lincoln Center Theater, has directed two classic revivals there — “The King and I,” in 2015, and “South Pacific,” in 2008, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical revival. In 2015, he also directed a Broadway revival of another midcentury classic, “Fiddler on the Roof. ” “Bart has this very interesting ability to zero in on the themes of an old musical that seem to apply to today,” Mr. Bishop said. “He has his own spin, yet clearly honors the original intention, which is why people like him so much. ” The revival of “My Fair Lady” is scheduled to begin previews on March 22, 2018, and to open on April 19, 2018, at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The cast has not yet been chosen. | 1 |
Bob Creamer Admits To Daily Calls With The Clinton Campaign And More… Bob Creamer Admits To Daily Calls With The Clinton Campaign And More… October 26, 2016, 3:20 pm by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton Leave a Comment 0
NoisyRoom.net
Disgraced Robert Creamer is having even more of his dirty laundry aired by James O’Keefe and Project Veritas. Wonder how his commie wife, Congresswoman and fellow Marxist, Jan Schakowsky , feels about that. It would seem that Creamer was beyond cozy with the Clinton campaign. He has been on daily morning calls with the campaign with his input. He’s also, not surprisingly, worked directly with Obama to organize “issue campaigns.”
Robert Creamer has been a political organizer and strategist for almost four decades. He and his firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, work with many of the country’s most significant issue campaigns. He was one of the major architects and organizers of the successful campaign to defeat the privatization of Social Security. He worked to end the war in Iraq, pass universal healthcare, change America’s budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform. He’s been a very busy little Marxist.
His clients have included labor unions, public interest groups and advocacy organizations like MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change and USAction. He has also worked on hundreds of electoral campaigns at the local, state and national levels.
Now he is best known for getting caught up in a sting by Project Veritas. He also accepted a foreign donation for a Democratic Super PAC for $20,000. Then he returned it once he suspected he was being set up. A little too late, Bob. That donation was from Project Veritas themselves.
From Breitbart :
Disgraced Democratic operative Robert Creamer participated in daily calls with the Hillary Clinton campaign, and worked directly with President Barack Obama to organize “issue campaigns.”
Creamer makes the admissions in the latest undercover video release from James O’Keefe and Project Veritas, which captured Creamer describing his activities.
O’Keefe also reports that Creamer accepted a foreign donation for a Democratic super PAC.
In this fourth video in the series, “Rigging the Election,” Creamer tells a journalist with Project Veritas that he does indeed work for the Clinton campaign and is in fact in charge of “overseeing” activities at the Trump rallies: “I mean frankly I spend most of my time overseeing the Trump event rallies, I mean that’s what I do for the Clinton campaign.” He has actively choreographed “bird dogging” at Trump’s rallies to gin up violence. He’s also placed infiltrators in Donald Duck costumes at Trump events. So lame. This has been going on for more than a year.
Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, flat out lied last week and said he never worked with Creamer. But O’Keefe’s videos expose that whopper of a lie.
In this latest video, Creamer details some of his connections: “Every morning I am on a call at 10:30 that goes over the message being driven by the campaign headquarters … I am in this campaign mainly to deal with what earned media with television, radio, with earned media and social media, not with paid media, not with advertising.” Even more damning is a conference call mentioned where they discussed a woman potentially coming forward against Trump to accuse him of inappropriate behavior.
Creamer has known and worked with Obama since the 1980s, during his community organizing days. He goes on to add: “I do a lot of work with the White House on their issues, helping to run issue campaigns that they have been involved in. I mean, for immigration reform for the… the health care bill, for trying to make America more like Britain when it comes to gun violence issues.”
I assume there will be even more videos to come. Creamer has resigned from Americans United for Change over all this and his reputation is now trashed. This is what happens when you make your living scheming against others. Eventually you get caught up in it as well. Fresh out of sympathy for Creamer. 0 | 0 |
The offshoot group in East Africa released a propaganda video in the first days of Ramadan condemning the United States as the “Satan of our time. ”[The video urges Islamic extremists to “fulfill the obligation of jihad” and expel the “global coalition of disbelievers” that includes America and other Western countries from Muslim lands. U. S. President Donald Trump has ordered the American military to escalate airstrikes against the terrorist group. jihadists, in response, vowed to intensify deadly attacks as part of a “doubled response” to President Trump’s approval of expanded U. S. military efforts against it, recently revealed the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites. In the video titled, “They Are Not Welcome — They Shall Burn In Their Fire,” stresses its adherence to global jihadist principles, noting that “defending Muslim lands is from the most important of individual obligations,” reports the Long War Journal (LWJ). The video’s narrator argues that America is the “devil,” a sentiment that is consistent with a message disseminated by various leaders, including Ayman that the United States is “evil” and corrupt. ’s narrator says: And thus the blood of the Muslims is mercilessly spilled, their honor violated, children orphaned, and lands invaded. What we are witnessing today is a total war against Islam, spearheaded by none other than the Satan of our time: the United States of America. So let the Muslims know that the objective of this global crusade is nothing but to extinguish the shining light of Islam, plunder the wealth of the Muslim ummah [worldwide community of Muslims] and spread immorality and all sorts of moral vices within the Muslim population. As a “solution,” calls on its followers and sympathizers to “fulfill the obligation of jihad and repel the aggressive onslaught spearheaded by the enemies of Islam. ” The U. S. military has been backing the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) equipping and training local troops. “Our advise, assist, and accompany efforts, paired with our deliberate targeting of leadership, have had a significant impact in degrading ’s effectiveness in East Africa, but those two efforts are not enduring solutions to Somalia’s problems,” American Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the top U. S. commander in the region, told lawmakers in March. Somalia, Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia also contribute troops to AMISOM. Echoing the Afghan Taliban’s Ramadan message, which emphasizes that jihad during the holy month is “obligatory,” mentions that it is incumbent on Islamists to wage jihad against occupiers of Muslim lands. Explaining when jihad becomes mandatory, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman purportedly states in the video: The scholars, both past and present, are of the consensus that if a hand span of Muslim territory is occupied, then jihad becomes obligatory and a binding duty upon every Muslim, whether he is old or young, rich or poor, youthful or elderly and whether he is trained or not. The Muslim lands that have been occupied are not merely a hand span or even a thousand hand spans, but rather it is millions of hand spans. Entire countries have been forcefully taken from the lands of the Muslims and as such, jihad has become an individual obligation upon every Muslim. Specifically, jihadist believe their enemy has “occupied” Somalia and neighboring Kenya and “defensive” jihad is required to the liberate the East African countries. Furthermore, Sheikh Abu Ubaidah Ahmad Umar, the current emir of proclaims in the video, “Know that our jihad is a global one and not restricted to geographical boundaries. ” The affiliate identifies its enemy as a “global coalition of disbelievers” allegedly waging their own jihad against all adherents of Islam. Among the coalition, allegedly united in their disdain towards Islam, is the Bashar regime in Syria, Russia, Iran, the United States, and other Western nations. “Al Qaeda’s leaders first marketed the idea that Muslims are confronted by a worldwide, campaign,” notes LWJ. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) jihadist organizations “escalate incitement to jihad and martyrdom during this month. ” Islamic extremists encourage and especially value martyrdom and jihad during Ramadan. Some Muslims believe “those who gain martyrdom during the month of Ramadan are doubly rewarded in Paradise,” points out MEMRI. There is usually a spike in Islamic terrorist attacks during the month when most Muslims abstain from eating, drinking, smoking, having sex, and other physical needs each day, starting from before the break of dawn until sunset. | 1 |
Actor Richard Gere weighed in on President Donald Trump’s recent executive action on immigration Friday at the Berlin International Film Festival, where he blasted the president’s decision to temporarily prohibit immigration from some countries and accused him of being a leader who “stimulates fear. ”[The actor — in town for the premiere of his latest film, The Dinner — called for unity, even as he reportedly said he wouldn’t attend a hypothetical dinner with President Trump. “The number of hate crimes went up enormously as soon as Donald Trump started running for president, in the United States and in Europe,” Gere told an audience at the festival, according to Deadline. He continued: “Unfortunately, we have leaders that stimulate fear, and that fear causes us to do really terrible things. I think that’s part of what we’re talking about in the film. We have to be really careful how we talk to each other and characterize each other. The most horrible thing Trump has done is conflate the terms refugee and terrorist. It means the same thing in the U. S. now. A refugee used to be someone who you had empathy for, who you wanted to help and give refuge to. Now we’re afraid of them. We have to really understand what he and this conservative movement has done and not forget we’re all in this together. We can’t escape each other’s realities. We have to embrace each other and love each other. ” In The Dinner, Gere plays ambitious politician Stan Lohman, who — together with his wife (Rebecca Hall) brother (Steve Coogan) and his brother’s wife (Laura Linney) — must decide what to do when their children are caught up in a heinous, crime. At the panel for the film, Coogan also got in a jab at Trump when he was asked whether his character, Paul Lohman, suffers from mental illness: “Yes, he does have a mental illness. But compared with the president of the United States, it looks like a mild headache. ” The 67th annual Berlinale kicked off this week and runs until February 18. The Dinner will compete with 17 other films for the festival’s top Golden Bear prize. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
By the end of last week, Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook would conduct “a full investigation” into accusations that editors at the company prevented news stories from conservative outlets from appearing in a section of the social network’s service. But the statement, issued after a weeklong crush of attention about the accusation, leapfrogged a perhaps more obvious question — one that Facebook’s 1. 65 billion monthly users around the world may not have considered. Facebook has editors? It does, and it isn’t alone. Most major social media platforms have, in recent years, amassed editorial teams of their own, groups that select, tame and fill gaps in the material produced by users and media companies. The teams are often tiny compared with the rest of their sprawling organizations. But most of these employees — whether they are called curators, reporters, editors or something else — make editorial choices that reach huge audiences. How and why these decisions are made are generating new questions for the companies, and their users, to grapple with. “Mainstream news organizations have endured a skeptical public for decades,” said Kjerstin Thorson, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Now, she says, social media companies may face similar, and perhaps jarring, scrutiny. Facebook declined to say how many people have editorial roles, as did Instagram, which Facebook owns. But several other companies provided some details about their operations that suggest the scope and variety of their editorial ambitions. Snapchat said it has around 75 people who produce content, collecting and annotating videos and photos of live events and sometimes adding reporting themselves. Twitter employs just under a dozen people in the United States and around two dozen worldwide to collect and describe postings about notable topics. Vine, the video service owned by Twitter, employs five to 10 people to highlight videos and producers that might have been overlooked by the audience, or that the company simply wants more people to see. “Where curation picks up,” said Ankur Thakkar, the editorial lead of Vine, “is that you need human eyes and ears to pick up on a cultural trend that a machine might not see. ” In some cases, these teams coexist with media professionals working elsewhere on the platform. Peter Hamby, a former CNN political reporter, oversees a team of six journalists within Snapchat, while media companies — including CNN — produce content for the company’s Discover feature. The novelty of these arrangements can obscure their straightforward influence. Such companies, with hundreds of millions of users, attract enormous amounts of human attention. People whose Snapchat videos are featured in a curated live event say they have had millions of views. A performer featured by Vine can expect a surge of new followers a trend or meme given the same treatment can garner thousands of new responses from users. Facebook’s Trending Topics, the feature that drew all the attention last week, is relegated to a small box in desktop browsers and users’ search page on mobile devices. But the positioning provides confirmation, in the language of Facebook’s own guidelines, “that the topic is tied to a current news event in the real world. ” Broad guidelines for Twitter curators are published on the site and state that their posts, called Moments, “will not take a view on a controversial subject” and that curators will “select tweets that represent all sides of the argument” in Moments that reflect a public debate. Snapchat did not share editorial guidelines, but pointed to a team of experienced reporters as evidence of its standards. (A job listing for an “editorial lead” at Snapchat, who will be charged to “define the editorial voice of Snapchat’s Live Stories,” asks for “five years’ journalism or storytelling experience. ”) The report accusing suppression of news stories within Facebook’s Trending Topics was published by the website Gizmodo last Monday, prompting a denial by Facebook followed by the release of its set of internal editorial guidelines. Facebook said on Thursday that its editorial guidelines “do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. ” For the companies, adding additional curated or original editorial content has an obvious appeal, helping them extract more value from people already using the platform, as well as potentially attracting new ones. “Each of these companies has to give people that aren’t coming there a reason to come there — new users, or infrequent users,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities. But, Mr. Pachter said, the presence of editorial operations risks emphasizing just how significant the companies have become as gatekeepers for news and entertainment. “To edit it, and write it, and create it, and curate it, it’s a big responsibility,” he said. “I don’t think they realize what they’re getting into. ” Last week’s debate surrounding Trending Topics gave users and critics a chance to analyze the Facebook platform, which has established significant reach, in new ways. Social networks like Facebook have been widely seen as impartial systems that reflect users’ ideas, preferences and relationship back at them. But suddenly, the companies were viewed not just as tech companies, which the public is broadly endeared to, or as media companies, which are regarded with deep skepticism by much of the public, but also as something in between. Details about the Facebook team’s editorial practices, for example, immediately led to questions about the tools they used — the software that identified popular stories in the first place. And analysis of those tools led to questions about the central mechanics of Facebook — the software that uses more than a billion users’ personal connections and preferences to decide what to show them next. Many of these interrogations ended up in the same thorny thicket: Who designed the system this way, and why? That may help explain why other companies refrained from wading into public discussions around Facebook last week, hoping to avoid a similar storm. “There are a lot of similarities between this situation and how little we knew about how traditional news organizations worked in the middle of the 20th century,” Ms. Thorson said, “the last era before media trust plummeted. ” She added: “The question really is, how much sustained media attention to these processes will it require before these platforms must react in some way to preserve the trust they have? “I suspect quite a bit. ” | 1 |
Share This
The upcoming election has our nation on pins and needles, but none more so than the idiots on the left. Proving just that was a few morons who decided to run over a Donald Trump lawn sign that they saw on the side of the road – and that’s when they got slapped with the perfect dose of justice.
The incident was posted to the Twitter account of a black Trump supporter named Tallah who lives in Detroit, Michigan. Now, if ever there was a place that should be sick of Democrats, it should be Detroit, but apparently, there are still people living in the city who enjoy living life as a slave to the government. Tallah (right) (Photo Source: Twitter )
Proving just that, it seems that a few of Tallah’s Trump lawn signs triggered a liberal who just had to do something about it. Captured by pictures after the fact, the idiot decided the best way to voice his negative opinion on Trump was to destroy the woman’s property.
As can be seen, the idiot decided to swerve off the road and run over 4 signs that were sitting in Tallah’s front lawn. Unfortunately for him, he was about to get a nasty dose of instance justice – and it’s just delectable. Triggered lefty ran over Tallah’s Trump signs but got a nasty surprise (Photo Source: Twitter )
As it turns out, this clearly wasn’t the first run in that Tallah had with triggered liberals. She put out a little surprise for anyone who would try what this triggered lefty did. Also captured in the photos was the woman’s homemade booby trap – a board with nails sticking up just below the signs. Booby trap (Photo Source: Twitter )
At the end of the day, the trap did exactly what it was supposed to – popped the tires of an entitled piece of garbage that thought they could do whatever they wanted. Too bad for them, Tallah even managed to get a picture of the idiot responsible as he tried to put the spare tire on his car. Triggered liberals licking their wounds (Photo Source: Twitter )
However, it seems that the popped tire wasn’t even the best part of the picture. After zooming in on the morons’ faces, their expression shows that they received every bit of justice that they deserved. Even better yet, the signs weren’t even really destroyed. It looks like all Tallah would need to do is bend them back up to standing position. Close up on the entitled punks’ faces (Photo Source: Twitter )
It just goes to show, the entitled mentality is getting out of hand in this country. However, if liberals want to play dirty at every corner, we can whip out a few tricks of our own. With that being said, let’s just hope this triggered fool learned a lesson. After all, I’m sure his decision to destroy a $20 sign wasn’t worth the price to get a new tire. | 0 |
Charter school advocates in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) won a major victory Tuesday as two of their candidates won seats on the school board, giving them the majority. [Steve Zimmer, president of the LAUSD — the nation’s school district — lost in District 4 to teacher and attorney Nick Melvoin. Kelly Gonez also won a tight race in District 6 over Imelda Padilla, who was backed by the teachers’ unions. Gonez and Melvoin will join incumbents Monica Garcia and Ref Rodriguez, creating the majority of supporters on the board, reports the CBS local affiliate. The school board races involved millions of dollars in campaign spending, the Los Angeles Times reports, with the candidates expressing frustration at times over the amount of outside spending from charter school advocate groups and unions making an impact on the campaigns. According to the Times report: Outside groups funded by charter advocates painted Zimmer as a charter school foe. mailers characterized him as a militant, a protector of pedophiles and the mastermind of the school district’s debacle. Groups bankrolled by public employee unions tried to link Melvoin, 31, to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and President Trump, both of whom are extremely unpopular in Los Angeles. Neither of these portrayals were accurate. Zimmer has voted many times to approve new charter schools and Melvoin is a Democrat who has been critical of the Trump administration’s education policies. The unions reportedly spent some $2. 5 million on Zimmer’s campaign and more than $2. 34 million on that of Padilla. Charter school promoters spent upward of $5. 69 million on Melvoin’s campaign and $3. 3 million on that of Gonez. Charter school advocate Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings — a Democrat — donated $5 million to California Charter Schools Association Advocates, which managed much of the spending for the charter candidates. LAUSD has the highest number of charter schools and charter students of any other school district, though charters still only represent 16 percent of enrollment. | 1 |
Wednesday on MSNBC’s “MTP Daily,” host Chuck Todd reacted to the shooting at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, VA, saying that we were “all to blame. ” Todd said, “Folks, some want to blame the left or the right or us in the media. But here’s who it seems too many folks don’t want to blame themselves. We are all to blame. This toxic stew that passes for political discourse seems beyond repair in the current moment. Just look at social media. ” “For too long, our collective politics has demonized the other side for caustic behavior while rationalizing that same behavior when it comes from someone who shares their politics,” he continued. “Maybe we ought to borrow another phrase that we’re all asked to do, when you see something, say something. And for political leaders, when you see caustic behavior, no matter if that person agrees with you, why don’t you say something to them?” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Twitter shares crashed on Thursday following the release of the company’s 4th quarter earnings report. [CNBC reports that the social media company posted a earnings report showing earnings of 16 cents per share on a revenue of $717 million. This fell short of analysts’ expectations, who had anticipated a higher revenue of approximately $740. 1 million, according to an estimate from Thomson Reuters. Twitter had posted 12 cents per share on revenue of $479 million in 2016. Twitter adjusted its guidance for the first quarter from the range of $75 million to $95 million, falling fall short of Wall Street’s expected estimate of $191. 3 million. Twitter’s stock crashed a full 10 percent following the announcement of the earnings report. The company did report a 4% increase in active monthly users with 319 million users per month, up from 317 million users in 2016. Twitter’s advertising revenue decreased from the year previously, with the company reporting revenue of $638 million. Of that, US revenue was down 5% totaling $440 million, while international revenue totaled $277 million, an increase of 12% from 2016. The company also reported a loss of $143. 6 million in the 4th quarter, much worse than the reported $67. 2 million loss in the same quarter for 2016, according to NASDAQ. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussed the poor performance of the company, saying, “While revenue growth continues to lag audience growth, we are applying the same focused approach that drove audience growth to our revenue product portfolio, focusing on our strengths and the nature of our service. This will take time, but we’re moving fast to show results. ” Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto claimed that were happy with the company’s revenue growth: “Revenue growth will continue to lag audience growth due to the sales cycle, and could be further impacted by the escalating competition for digital advertising spending and our efforts to our revenue product feature portfolio. ” The company also stated that they had made great progress with Twitter features on the platform such as the “Home Timeline. ” “We also improved the relevance of notifications to increase engagement and bring people back to Twitter. These changes improved retention for both monthly active and daily active usage, as well as increased Tweet impressions and time spent on the service,” the company stated. It is believed by some that President Trump’s tweets may have a large effect on the platform in both positive and negative capacities. Analyst Richard Greenfield stated, “The incessant news flow from the Trump administration playing out on Twitter and the ensuing global reaction pushes Twitter users to be increasingly engaged with the platform. ” However, Richard Kramer of Arete Research told CNBC that the president’s tweeting may deter brands from advertising on Twitter due to fear of the current extreme polarization among Americans over politics. “I think whatever your political views, it’s clear that Trump is extremely divisive, and this isn’t really a positive for advertisers,” said Kramer. Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft and a Twitter shareholder, spoke to CNBC about Twitter’s performance and CEO Jack Dorsey. “Every time I talk to Jack, the message is, ‘We need more. More innovation. Move, move, move,’” said Ballmer, “Get the cost base right and move forward. ” “Running two companies is not the best idea,” said Ballmer referring to Jack Dorsey’s other company, Square. “And I’ll stand by the notion that Jack’s a very creative, innovative guy, as well evidenced by the fact that he started two amazing companies. … I give him credit for that, and I think now’s the time to focus down, at least from my perspective, on the stock I own. ” Breitbart Senior editor MILO predicted the death of Twitter following his suspension from the platform in 2016. Editor’s note: this story has been updated to include reported losses for the quarter per NASDAQ. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com. | 1 |
On the Friday edition of Breitbart News Daily, broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 6AM to 9AM Eastern, Breitbart London Raheem Kassam will continue our discussion of the new 115th Congress. [Tom Van Flein, chief of staff to Rep. Paul Gosar ( ) and former legal counsel to Gov. Sarah Palin, will discuss the House Republicans’ thwarted plan to overhaul the House Ethics Oversight panel rules. Legal analyst Philip Holloway, a former prosecutor and police officer and founder of the Holloway Law Group, will discuss the shocking Chicago hate crime incident broadcast live on Facebook. David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon will discuss his article about Fareed Zakaria’s fawning CNN documentary on “The Legacy of Barack Obama. ” Kassam will also continue our analysis of the election of Donald Trump, the progress of his transition team, and his policy vision. Live from London, Rome, and Jerusalem, Breitbart correspondents will provide updates on the latest international news. Breitbart News Daily is the first live, conservative radio enterprise to air seven days a week. SiriusXM Vice President for news and talk Dave Gorab called the show “the conservative news show of record. ” Follow Breitbart News on Twitter for live updates during the show. Listeners may call into the show at: . | 1 |
CNN Technicians Rush To Empty Wolf Blitzer’s Urine Tank Midway Through Election Coverage Close Vol 52 Issue 44 · News Media · Election 2016
NEW YORK—Noting that the storage canister had nearly reached capacity, CNN technicians reportedly rushed to empty Wolf Blitzer’s urine tank Tuesday night midway through the network’s election coverage. “All right, people, it’s go time—we need to release the pressure valves and drain this thing now, because the clock is ticking,” said head technician Raymond Harrington, prompting his crew of assistants to assume their designated positions around the 12-gallon stainless-steel vat before discharging the liquid contents into an off-camera waste container while Blitzer delivered a long stretch of uninterrupted state-level voting analysis. “Easy does it. Be careful of splashback. That stuff is hot. Okay, now make sure all urine lines are clear before closing the runoff spigot.” At press time, an unforeseen leak in the urine tank had forced CNN technicians to sequester Blitzer in an isolated containment unit and evacuate the set during a commercial break. Share This Story: WATCH VIDEO FROM THE ONION Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter
Give your spam filter something to do. Daily Headlines | 0 |
Russia, China Look To Autonomous Financial System 11/07/2016
TASS.COM
Russia and China need to create an autonomous financial system which would be minimally subject to political risks and external pressure, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with the Chinese Central Television (CCTV).
“As I see it, what should we be guided with in creating a modern financial system in the People’s Republic of China and in the Russian Federation?” he said. “We need to set up a modern, protected and simultaneously quite autonomous financial system, which would be subject to political risks to a lesser degree.” Nowadays, Russia and China are considering integration of Russia’s national payment system, the Mir bank cards, and China’s UnionPay system, he said.
“In our view, it would help to enhance the reliability of payments,” Medvedev said, adding that sometimes some countries were trying to exert “all sorts of political pressure.” European banks had been regularly fined by US financial authorities and financial companies, he added.
“They say ‘We will take ten billion euros from a French bank and seven billion euros from a German bank’. Our European partners agree with this,” Medvedev said.
“I am not speaking about the nature of these disputes but that we must protect our financial systems. China must protect its own system and Russia must protect its own system. Therefore, this cooperation is very useful as in this situation no-one will be capable of blocking the road of financial traffic,” he emphasized. Russia looks to predictability of China’s economic growth
Russia expects that China’s economic growth will be predictable and is set to cooperate with Chinese partners for the purpose, Russia’s Prime Minister said in an interview.
“We are interested in predictability of China’s economy growth and so we are ready to work with our Chinese partners,” Medvedev said, adding the Russian government was implementing a plan aimed to boost the economic growth.
“Actually, everyone needs it. Our country needs it as recently we have been plunged in a phase of such decline. Both European and US economies need it since they have not been gaining fast growth, to say nothing about Japan. Also, the Chinese economy needs it since it had been gathering speed in the past years but has slowed down later,” he said. “It is closely watched by everyone as China’s economy is the most significant factor of the world economic growth.”. Energy and high technology sectors
Russia and China may reach the goal of $200bln trade by 2020 but energy and high technology sectors along with traditional trade should move up a gear, Russian Prime Minister said.
“Indicators have been improving this year as a result of joint work of the two states, including our countries’ leaders, governments, ministries, agencies and businesses,” Medvedev said. Russia, China intend to develop small satellite for Wi-Fi network
“I am convinced that if we move ahead like this, by 2020 we will be able to reach the trade of $200 billion worth. However, attention should be turned to key aspects of cooperation,” he said explaining he implied the energy sector, with some projects like the Power of Siberia gas pipeline.
“In 2015 construction of an eastern stretch of the gas pipeline was launched,” he said. “Also, it includes oil supplies along the Skovorodino-Mohe (oil pipeline) extension and construction of large facilities, in particular the construction of Unit 3 at the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant.”
Besides, high-tech projects should be enhanced, he said.
“I mean wide-body jets, heavy helicopters and other projects in the high-tech sector,” Medvedev said. “It seems to me that if we diversify trade like this, our countries will be quite capable of reaching the level which we agreed on several years ago,” he said in conclusion. Share | 0 |
Why are CDC Employees “Crying in the Hallways” After Donald Trump’s Election? Will years of alleged fraud at the CDC get more attention in the Trump administration? 7 reasons CDC employees should be “crying in the hallways” PORTLAND, Oregon — Question : The day after Donald Trump’s unexpected win in the presidential election last week, how many government agencies had reports in the media of their employees “crying in the hallways”? Answer : Exactly one. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , which is based in Atlanta, GA. As a long-time critic of the CDC, I was pretty shocked to see this headline last week, courtesy of Atlanta’s NPR radio station, 90.1 WABE: Atlanta CDC Employees Express Anxiety Over Trump’s Win The story detailed the climate at CDC the day after the election:
“At the General Muir deli across the street from the CDC, a few employees talked to WABE, asking that their names not be used. One microbiologist said her colleagues were crying in the hallways.” “It’s really sad,” she said. “It’s depressing. I’m eating a bagel to try and be happy.”
See: http://news.wabe.org/post/atlanta-cdc-employees-express-anxiety-over-trumps-win
The average voter — even a Trump supporter — probably has no idea why CDC employees might be “crying in the hallways,” while the average autism parent (meaning those of us who have children with autism) like me understands it perfectly. Frankly, it’s pretty hard for me to write about the CDC without shaking with at least a little bit of rage. On the off chance this is your first time considering this topic, I’ll steady my hands and explain it to you: Source: learntherisk.org The CDC is in charge of recommending the vaccination schedule for U.S. children, which has grown from 5 total doses in the 1960s to more than 70 today. The CDC is ALSO in charge of monitoring vaccine safety for those more than 70 doses. In an ironic twist (at least for parents like me), the CDC is ALSO in charge of tracking the number of children with Autism in the U.S., a number that has grown from 1 in 10,000 in the 1980s to 1 in 68 today. For many autism parents, the CDC being in charge of both implementing the vaccine schedule and monitoring the safety of vaccines has always felt like an extreme conflict of interest. And, we were never alone in that feeling. 10 years ago, two members of Congress, Representatives Dave Weldon and Carolyn Maloney, tried to pass a bill to separate vaccine safety from the CDC:
From the press release for the bill: Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney
At a press conference Wednesday morning, U.S. Reps. Dave Weldon, M.D. (R-FL) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced a bill that would give responsibility for the nation’s vaccine safety to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, removing most vaccine safety research from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Currently, the CDC has responsibility for both vaccine safety and promotion, which is an inherent conflict of interest increasingly garnering public criticism. Congressman Dave Weldon, M.D. “There’s an enormous inherent conflict of interest within the CDC and if we fail to move vaccine safety to a separate independent office, safety issues will remain a low priority and public confidence in vaccines will continue to erode,” said Weldon, noting that across the federal government similar conflicts of interests have been remedied, but with regard to mandatory childhood vaccines the conflict continues to persist unchecked. “This bill will provide the independence necessary to ensure that vaccine safety research is robust, unbiased, and broadly accepted by the public at large.” “Vaccines do wonders for public health, but when the government requires them, it must also ensure that they’re safe,” said Maloney. “We need adequate, unbiased research on vaccines, and this legislation would deliver that. I applaud Dr. Weldon for his tremendous commitment to and leadership on this issue. He is truly dedicated to protecting our children and the public at large.” See: https://maloney.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/weldon-maloney-introduce-vaccine-safety-bill Alas, like every bill intended to reduce the power and influence of the CDC, the bill never passed. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a well-known environmental activist and progeny of one of the most famous political families in the world, has spoken with force about the conflict problems at CDC: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “The CDC is a captive agency. The vaccine agency has become a subsidiary of big pharma. Vaccines are a $30 billion industry, an increasing profit center. They have been able to compromise all checks and balances that once protected children.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. For parents uncertain as to where CDC’s loyalties lie, the departure of the previous head of CDC — Julie Gerberding — to a well-paying job as President of the vaccine division of Merck , the largest vaccine maker in the world, made many of us permanently cynical: “Dr. Julie Gerberding, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was named president of Merck & Co Inc’s vaccine division, the company said on Monday. Gerberding, who led the CDC from 2002 to 2009, stepped down when President Barack Obama took office.”
See: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-gerberding-idUSTRE5BK2K520091221 7 Reasons Back to the employees “crying in the hallways” and eating bagels to feel better. In my opinion, it’s going to get far worse before it gets better for the CDC, and here’s 7 reasons why: Reason #1: The CDC just got outed last month by its own scientists complaining that CDC’s “mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests.” From the Huffington Post on October 17, 2016: Concerns about the inner workings of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been mounting in recent months amid disclosures of cozy corporate alliances. Now a group of more than a dozen senior scientists have reportedly lodged an ethics complaint alleging the federal agency is being influenced by corporate and political interests in ways that short-change taxpayers… “It appears that our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests… and Congressional intent for our agency is being circumvented by some of our leaders. What concerns us most, is that it is becoming the norm and not the rare exception,” the letter states. “These questionable and unethical practices threaten to undermine our credibility and reputation as a trusted leader in public health.” See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-gillam/spider-bites-cdc-ethics-c_b_12525012.html The scientists — who chose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution (never a good reflection on an agency’s culture) — published a complete letter with their complaints that you can read here : “We are often directed to do things we know are not right.” — CDC Scientists Preserving Integrity, Diligence and Ethics in Research (CDC SPIDER) Reason #2: CDC has a whistleblower scientist— Dr. William Thompson — alleging that CDC scientists destroyed data that showed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism This is a serious allegation, especially because Dr. Thompson is the principal author of a number of the studies used to “prove” vaccines “don’t cause autism” released by CDC. From former CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson: A current Centers for Disease Control (CDC) senior scientist has made an unprecedented admission: he and his colleagues–he says– committed scientific misconduct to cover up a meaningful link between vaccines and autism in black boys. Just as startling, the CDC scientist, Dr. William Thompson, says the study co-authors “scheduled a meeting to destroy documents related to the study. The remaining four co-authors all met and brought a big garbage can into the meeting room, and reviewed and went through all the hardcopy documents that we had thought we should discard, and put them into a huge garbage can.” The…co-authors…brought a big garbage can into the meeting room… [and put the documents]…into a huge garbage can. – CDC Senior Scientist Dr. William Thompson
See: https://sharylattkisson.com/cdc-scientist-we-scheduled-meeting-to-destroy-vaccine-autism-study-documents/ “A huge garbage can”? Did he really say that? Yes, he really did, and one of our Congressmen — Representative Bill Posey of Florida — repeated Dr. Thompson’s words in Congressional testimony: Reason #3: CDC has another whistleblower alleging that CDC’s gathering of autism prevalence numbers has been fraudulent From the The Alliance for Human Research Protection website: On April 4, 2016, Dr. Judith Pinborough-Zimmerman, the former Principal Investigator for the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM) in Utah, filed a whistleblower lawsuit in the U.S. District Court. Dr. Zimmerman charged University of Utah researchers for CDC’s Network with “publishing data under people’s names who had not done the work and that the data contained uncorrected errors.” “Depositions from Zimmerman and her former colleagues suggest that the alleged data errors were serious and have the potential to produce major differences in reported Utah autism rates. In the 2008 ADDM Network Report, Utah autism rates were the highest in the country at 1 in 47. In the 2012 report released today, Utah rates plummeted nearly 20% to 1 in 58 as most other ADDM Network sites reported either rising or stable autism rates.” See: http://ahrp.org/lawsuit-by-principal-investigator-for-cdc-utah-autism-data-filed-whistleblower-lawsuit/ Health Choice, an advocacy organization, explains why Ms. Zimmerman’s allegations are so serious: “The CDC has been misrepresenting the alarming rise in autism rates since the late 1980s,” says Health Choice Executive Leadership Team Chairman Mark Blaxill. His Health Choice analysis, “The Autism Emergency Continues”, released today outlines a number of criticisms of the CDC’s surveillance program. “They have selected a partial and unrepresentative sample of states to track, changed the sample in a biased fashion over the years, and then take too long to report out the data. Today’s 2012 report is over a decade behind the problem, giving us autism rates for children born twelve years ago.” “If the sharp increases in autism rates began in the late 1980s,” asks Blaxill, “why would CDC design a tracking survey beginning with the 1992 birth year? Elsewhere, they’ve published data with very low rates from the late 1980s in New Jersey and Georgia but don’t connect the dots in the ADDM publications from today’s 1 in 68 rate back to these earlier numbers.” “Health Choice is very worried that the CDC’s ADDM Network reporting is not accurately representing the seriousness of the autism epidemic. For most affected individuals, autism is a lifelong disability, a condition that frequently wreaks havoc on families, school systems, and state resources.” Mr. Blaxill went on to say, “since 1990, autism rates have exploded: something new and terrible is happening to a generation of children. It’s time to for the CDC stop sugar coating the inconvenient facts and confess that we have a national emergency so we can finally get to the bottom of this tragic problem.” Reason #3A: One of the authors of the “Danish Studies” exonerating thimerosal’s (a mercury preservative) role in Autism is wanted by the CDC for embezzlement (Author’s note: the failure to mention Poul Thorsen was brought up to me by an attentive reader. It’s hard to keep track of so much malfeasance!) I’m just glad I can prove this one with other articles, it’s almost too much to believe: Researcher who dispelled vaccine-autism link: “Most-wanted fugitive” This is on the HHS website, right now! “A former Centers for Disease Control (CDC) researcher, best known for his frequently-cited studies dispelling a link between vaccines and autism, is still considered on the lam after allegedly using CDC grants of tax dollars to buy a house and cars for himself. “Most wanted fugitive” CDC researcher Poul Thorsen published studies dispelling a link between vaccines and autism Poul Thorsen, listed as a most-wanted fugitive by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, was discredited in April 2011 when he was indicted on 13 counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering. Some have argued that his alleged fraudulent behavior calls into question the validity of his studies. There is no indication the studies have been retracted to date.” See: https://sharylattkisson.com/researcher-who-dispelled-vaccine-autism-link-most-wanted-fugitive/ I can’t make this stuff up! Here’s another article about Poul Thorsen from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: Central Figure in CDC Vaccine Cover-Up Absconds With $2M
See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/central-figure-in-cdc-vac_b_494303.html Reason #4: Two Merck whistleblowers are alleging that the Mumps vaccine doesn’t work very well, and that Merck knew that and fudged the data Remember the former CDC head (Julie Gerberding) who went to go work at the Merck vaccine division? Yup, it really is that ugly… See: http://philadelphia.legalexaminer.com/fda-prescription-drugs/massive-fraud-in-merck-mmr-vaccine-testing/ “A U.S. judge rejected Merck’s attempt at a dismissal after determining there was plausible grounds for the claims. Therefore the medical giant is being forced to defend themselves and their vaccine in at least two federal cases. Merck could also be forced to defend itself in Congress. Representative Bill Posey (R-FL) — a known critic of the CDC whom is investigating the link between autism and vaccines — is reviewing hundreds of documents turned over by the CDC whistleblower.” According to the whistleblowers’ court documents, Merck’s misconduct was far-ranging: It “failed to disclose that its mumps vaccine was not as effective as Merck represented, (ii) used improper testing techniques, (iii) manipulated testing methodology, (iv) abandoned undesirable test results, (v) falsified test data, (vi) failed to adequately investigate and report the diminished efficacy of its mumps vaccine, (vii) falsely verified that each manufacturing lot of mumps vaccine would be as effective as identified in the labeling, (viii) falsely certified the accuracy of applications filed with the FDA, (ix) falsely certified compliance with the terms of the CDC purchase contract, (x) engaged in the fraud and concealment describe herein for the purpose of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for mumps vaccine, (xi) mislabeled, misbranded, and falsely certified its mumps vaccine, and (xii) engaged in the other acts described herein to conceal the diminished efficacy of the vaccine the government was purchasing.” “The fraudulent activities, say the whistleblowers, were designed to produce test results that would meet the FDA’s requirement that the mumps vaccine was 95 percent effective.” Reason #5: Just yesterday, a local Atlanta TV station explained to the world what the vaccine court is and that it’s not working Definitive book on the vaccine court. Never heard of the Vaccine Court? You’re not alone. This is the first news story I’ve ever seen mentioning and criticizing the court, and it’s from an Atlanta TV station! From WSB-TV: “A federal program designed to help victims suffering from life-altering reactions to vaccines is falling short on promises made when it started. It’s called the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a $3.6 billion fund created to take care of victims with catastrophic reactions to vaccines. But a Channel 2 Action News investigation found it also protects vaccine-makers from being subject to lawsuits. And they don’t pay for the program — you do.”
See: http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/investigates/3b-program-to-help-vaccine-victims-falls-short-on-promises/467245775 Reason #6: A published study shows that 83 cases from vaccine court (see above) compensated children with autism for vaccine injury So, let me get this straight: A senior scientist from the CDC who authored many of the studies “proving” vaccines don’t cause autism says they threw away data in a big garbage can that showed a connection between vaccines and autism… A group of lawyers then reviewed records from the vaccine court and found children with autism are being compensated by the court for vaccine injury causing their autism… …Are we sure vaccines can’t cause autism?
Read: Pace Environmental Law Review
“For over 20 years, the federal government has publicly denied a vaccine-autism link, while at the same time its Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has been awarding damages for vaccine injury to children with brain damage, seizures and autism. A new investigation, based on verifiable government data, breaks ground in the controversial vaccine-autism debate. The investigation found that a substantial number of children compensated for vaccine injury also have autism and that such cases have existed since 1989, the year after the VICP was formed.”
SafeMinds’ Executive Director, Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN comments, “This study dramatically shifts the debate on autism and vaccines. The question is no longer, Can vaccines cause autism? The answer is clear. Now, we have to ask, How many cases of autism have vaccines caused and how do we prevent new injuries from occurring?” The government has asserted that it “does not track” autism among the vaccine-injured. SafeMinds responds that not looking is the easiest way not to find something. SafeMinds is calling for immediate federal research into the mechanisms of injury in these children in an effort to protect other children from harm and Congressional action to reform the VICP. Reason #7: President-Elect Trump appears to know the truth about vaccines and autism, and he’s not afraid to say it! Yes, I saved the best for last. If you’re an autism parent, you already knew this one. But, Donald Trump has been speaking the truth about what happened to our kids for years. The first I heard of President-elect Trump’s understanding of this issue was back in December 2007: TRUMP SPEAKS: “I THINK IT’S THE VACCINATIONS”
See: http://www.ageofautism.com/2007/12/trump-speaks–1.html What if you were a large national autism charity and you held a fundraiser at a billionaire’s house and the billionaire told reporters he thought autism was caused by vaccines? What if your large national autism charity was wildly dismissive of vaccines as a cause for autism, had scientists on staff who had worked to produce faulty research exonerating vaccines alongside the CDC, and had no research dollars allocated to exploring the vaccine-autism relationship? Well, then you would be Autism Speaks holding a fundraiser at Donald Trump’s Palm Beach mansion. As THIS article from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports: “At a news conference Thursday in a gold-trimmed Mar-A-Lago ballroom, Trump’s wife, Melania, noted her 22-month-old son, Baron, and said: “I cannot imagine what the mothers [with autistic children] and mothers all around the world go through. … Let’s get rid of autism.” In an interview, Donald Trump said he thinks the rising prevalence of autism is related to vaccinations of babies and toddlers. One in 150 children is now diagnosed with autism, with the prevalence higher among boys. “When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor,” he [Trump] said. “And now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic. Everybody has their theory, and my theory is the shots. They’re getting these massive injections at one time. I think it’s the vaccinations .” As you may know, President-elect Trump’s statements have only gotten bolder since then. Or how about his words during this appearance on Fox News? Thank you for your honesty, President-elect Trump. Crying through the hallways at CDC? I think the crying has just begun.
About the Author
J.B. Handley is the father of a child with Autism. He and his wife co-founded Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy’s autism charity. He spent his career in the private equity industry and received his undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford University. He is also the author of “ The Only Vaccine Guide a New Parent Will Ever Need” and “ An Angry Father’s Guide to Vaccine-Autism Science ”
Republished by permission. Original article published here VaccineImpact.com. Leaving a lucrative career as a nephrologist (kidney doctor), Dr. Suzanne Humphries is now free to actually help cure people. In this autobiography she explains why good doctors are constrained within the current corrupt medical system from practicing real, ethical medicine. FREE Shipping Available! Order here . Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations – Should Their Views be Silenced? eBook – Available for immediate download.
One of the biggest myths being propagated in the compliant mainstream media today is that doctors are either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, and that the anti-vaccine doctors are all “quacks.”
However, nothing could be further from the truth in the vaccine debate. Doctors are not unified at all on their positions regarding “the science” of vaccines, nor are they unified in the position of removing informed consent to a medical procedure like vaccines.
The two most extreme positions are those doctors who are 100% against vaccines and do not administer them at all, and those doctors that believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective for ALL people, ALL the time, by force if necessary.
Very few doctors fall into either of these two extremist positions, and yet it is the extreme pro-vaccine position that is presented by the U.S. Government and mainstream media as being the dominant position of the medical field.
In between these two extreme views, however, is where the vast majority of doctors practicing today would probably categorize their position. Many doctors who consider themselves “pro-vaccine,” for example, do not believe that every single vaccine is appropriate for every single individual.
Many doctors recommend a “delayed” vaccine schedule for some patients, and not always the recommended one-size-fits-all CDC childhood schedule. Other doctors choose to recommend vaccines based on the actual science and merit of each vaccine, recommending some, while determining that others are not worth the risk for children, such as the suspect seasonal flu shot.
These doctors who do not hold extreme positions would be opposed to government-mandated vaccinations and the removal of all parental exemptions.
In this eBook, I am going to summarize the many doctors today who do not take the most extremist pro-vaccine position, which is probably not held by very many doctors at all, in spite of what the pharmaceutical industry, the federal government, and the mainstream media would like the public to believe. Read : Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations – Should Their Views be Silenced? on your mobile device! | 0 |
0 Add Comment
IRELAND was said to be unsure how to act after learning the man most unfit for public office, snagged a 10-minute conversation with Donald Trump late last night.
However, a leaked transcript of the conversation believed to have lasted 10 minutes has been made available to the public, reassuring many. WWN has reproduced it in full below:
Enda: “Hello, Donald, bog fan, sorry, I mean big fan, bit nervous chatting to you obviously”
Trump: (speaking to someone in the room with him) “It’s definitely ‘Edna’? That’s a chick’s name right? Invite her for Patty’s Day. On a scale of 1-to-10, what are we talking? How grabbable is her pussy?”
Enda: “Hi, huh-hello? Mr, eh, President Elect Trump sir..”
Trump: (speaking to someone in the room with him) “Yeah, they say that now, but once I’m in office, that gold statue of me is going on the White House lawn, believe me. We’ll need to enhance the crotch area first, bigly.”
Enda: “Hello, we’re very happy for you here in Ireland, absolutely everyone loves you and your hair and I never called you a racist, they were Clinton lies. She’s a big liar that Clinton one.”
Long pause of over 1 minute when nothing is said.
Trump: (chewing loudly) Who is this again?”
Enda: “It’s Enda Kenny, I’m the Taoise… I’m the Mr. Ireland boss man”
Trump: (chewing loudly) “We’re winning big here, you understand, so big, we won so big, it’s unbelievable and yet my assistant tells me you’re not even following me on Twitter. Wrong. Big mistake, believe me”
Enda: “Yes, yes, I’ll change that immediately, sir. Now myself and Barack, we talked a lot of the Undocumented Irish and their plight, as it were, and we were making great progress, they’re not an awful shower like the Muslims, you were dead right about them… we’ve only about 4 of them here”
Trump: “I have no idea what a Demented Iris is. And I’m bored.”
Silence for a number of seconds.
Enda: “Our two countries enjoy a great trade relationship, we hope that continues”
Trump: “I’m a business guy, the best business guy. You a business guy?”
Enda: “I gave primary school teaching a go about 40 years ago”
Trump: “This steak is great. Have you tried Trump steak? I’ll send you some, you’ll pay for it, but I’ll send it. If there’s maggots festering in it, that’s nothing to do with us. It’s the best steak.”
Enda: “Okay, now I’ll have to put my foot down on corporation tax and other practices, Mr President, sir…”
Trump: “Boring. I’m making America great again, and you’re taking up too much of my time. Anyway, if you’re in Clare, you should check my course and hotel, it’s beautiful, the most beautiful in the world. When I got there, this guy greeted me, and it was very Irish, probably the most Irish thing they’ve ever done for anyone”.
Enda: “That was Michael Noonan, he’s my best friend…”
Trump: “They had a red carpet out, beautiful women, the silliest music you could imagine, they let me do anything down there, they really did. All because of a few jobs. Except that damn wall…”
Enda: (shouting) “You can have the wall!”
Trump: “Who is this again?” | 0 |
WE’RE NOT NASTY! Why does Sally Kohn hate women so much? Posted at 4:56 pm on October 27, 2016 by Sam J. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
So tired of the notion that women have to be nasty to make a dent in this world, that women have to be hateful or mean to get things done.
Women who do not live life as a caricature are fully capable of getting “sh*t” done without having to be unkind, mean, disingenuous OR nasty.
And the fact that Sally Kohn and other Democrats don’t get this is just more evidence of how little they really think of women in general.
Take for example this tweet from Sally herself:
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) October 27, 2016
Oh look a mom with her daughter instilling in her the same awful idea, that women have to be nasty to get something done. Trending The McAuliffe -- FBI -- Clinton payoff story just got a whole lot worse
Stupid. Moms are fully capable of teaching their daughters how to get things done without being horrible. Of course that probably just confuses the Left but the stereotypical “ME WOMAN ME ROAR” is ridiculous in the real world and most moms know this.
Awww, but then the Left doesn’t really live in the real world now do they? @sallykohn @RebeccaSoffer And exactly what has Hillary gotten done?
— Calamity Jan (@janetbfitzgeral) October 27, 2016
Besides set women back years with this nonsense about being nasty?
She did leave four Americans to die in Benghazi and illegally keep a server in her home before deleting tens of thousands of emails, but we digress. | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Mike Pence, the Republican, and Tim Kaine, the Democrat, squared off in the one and only debate. It was hosted by Longwood University in Farmville, Va. a community still grappling with its role in civil rights history. Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Adam Nagourney, Ashley Parker and Alan Rappeport provided analysis, and we statements made by the candidates. We also had Walter F. Mondale, the country’s 42nd vice president, chatting with us via emails throughout the debate. ____ 2. Hurricane Matthew made landfall, slamming into Haiti with winds of up to 145 miles an hour. The country has been battered by natural disasters over the last decade. The storm is expected to retain its intensity until at least Wednesday night, delivering heavy rains and damaging winds to other Caribbean nations as it moves north. Much of the East Coast is bracing for dangerous conditions later this week and weekend. ____ 3. When Donald J. Trump claimed a loss so big in 1995 that it could have let him avoid up to 18 years of income taxes, 500, 000 other taxpayers used the same maneuver to claim losses, too. Mr. Trump claimed a $916 million loss. The average loss for everyone else was $97, 600. An executive who was hired by Mr. Trump in 1990 described the work environment then as “like getting on the Titanic just before the women and children were moved to the lifeboats. ” The Trump campaign has threatened legal action against The Times for publishing parts of his tax returns, but legal experts think that might not be such an easy case to win. Our reporter, who found the documents in her mailbox, said in a podcast, “I honestly thought it was a hoax, because who mails you Donald Trump’s tax returns?” ____ 4. The second Nobel Prize of the year, for physics, was awarded to three scientists who study matter that assumes strange shapes. David Thouless, F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz, all of whom work at universities in the U. S. were recognized for discoveries that are largely theoretical, but may have practical applications for electronics. The prize for chemistry will be announced on Wednesday, and the Peace Prize on Friday. Two more Nobel prizes will be announced next week. ____ 5. The Justice Department has gone after a tech company again. Earlier this year, it issued a subpoena to the maker of a widely used encryption app called Signal, seeking information about two phone numbers, then blocked the company from talking about it. But there wasn’t much information to give up. “The Signal service was designed to minimize the data we retain,” said Moxie Marlinspike, above, the founder of Open Whisper Systems, which makes the app. Tech companies have complained about government overreach in similar cases. ____ 6. Maria Sharapova, the Russian tennis star, will be allowed to return to the sport in April of next year. The world’s top sports court reduced her suspension for a doping violation, saying the original penalty was too harsh. In baseball, the postseason kicked off tonight with the Toronto Blue Jays hosting the Baltimore Orioles (the Blue Jays won). We asked six of our sportswriters to offer their predictions. Most of them are not picking the Chicago Cubs. ____ 7. At high schools across the U. S. football players are adopting the controversial protest of Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who took a knee during the national anthem and now sits during its playing. “When Kaepernick kneeled, he gave us an outlet. He gave us something to do,” said Vicqari Horton, a junior at Aurora Central High School in Colorado. Over the weekend, of his team’s players took a knee with him. ____ 8. On Monday, people in the U. S. will mark Columbus Day. In Canada, it will be Thanksgiving. If you didn’t know, well, neither do a lot of U. S. citizens. The centerpiece of the Canadian holiday dinner is turkey with stuffing and gravy, much as in the U. S. In fact, a lot of the food is pretty similar. But why do they have the holiday in the first place? “You were supposed to go to church and reflect on the blessings you and the country had received,” a historian explained. ____ 9. Fashion Week in Paris is wrapping up, although our critic is less than impressed. “It has been an unambitious finale to what had been shaping up as a strikingly political season,” Vanessa Friedman wrote. But she lauded the Alexander McQueen show for its reflection on unity, inspired by the Shetland Islands in Scotland. (The country is grappling with whether to leave Britain following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.) “Sarah Burton sent out a beautifully argued case for the allure of unity,” Ms. Friedman wrote of the designer. ____ 10. Finally, how do you say email in Yiddish? Well, for a long time, you just didn’t. But a new dictionary has published, updating the language. Blitspost is the Yiddish word for email. Butt dialing? Use “alpi tokhes” — which literally means “by way of the backside. ” The new dictionary will be formally celebrated with a panel discussion and music at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan next month. 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 |
WASHINGTON — Republican congressional aides have set their iPhones to flutter every time President Trump hurls a thunderbolt on Twitter. Senators nod politely at his false claims of mass voter fraud during private White House meetings. The congressional morning briefing literature now includes a rundown of overnight and social media missives from the commander in chief. “It doesn’t take that long to read ’em,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. After three weeks in the White House, Mr. Trump has made clear that he is going to continue promulgating conspiracy theories, flinging personal insults and saying things that are plainly untrue. And the House and Senate seem to have made a collective decision: They will accommodate — not confront — his conduct as long as he signs their conservative proposals on taxes, regulations and health care into law. “There’s a widely held view among our members that, yes, he’s going to say things on a daily basis that we’re not going to like,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate Republican, “but that the broad legislative agenda and goals that we have — if we can stay focused on those and try and get that stuff enacted — those would be big wins. ” Such accommodation is coming at a price, attracting incredulous or angry constituents to town hall meetings, leaving members when presented with the latest presidential provocation and testing the capacity of now perpetually clogged phone lines on Capitol Hill. Some of this would have happened under any Republican president — lawmakers were quick to note the ferocity of protests under President George W. Bush. But much of it is unique to Mr. Trump, whose rampaging presidency has spurred uncommon civic engagement even in districts. “What is your line in the sand?” a retired Utah teacher demanded last week of Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who slogged through a forum back home. But at least for now, that is a price Republicans seem willing to pay. In effect, congressional Republicans have sought to compartmentalize Mr. Trump’s presidency, adopting a approach. They reach for the more appealing offerings, such as the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, and avert their gaze from less appetizing or, to some, downright indefensible elements (America is not so different from Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia) which would have surely drawn relentless rebukes if uttered by President Barack Obama. Some lawmakers take comfort knowing that the president’s behavior last year didn’t hurt their campaigns, and they have used the electoral result as a justification unto itself, suggesting — as Mr. Trump has constantly — that his campaign success validates his approach. “He’s a unique personality, to be sure,” acknowledged Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the Republican whip. “But he’s gotten this far the way he is, and I think that probably leads him to think, well, it’s working for him so far, so why change?” And Republican lawmakers do not mind? “As long as we’re able to get things done,” Mr. Cornyn said. Individual Republican senators have criticized the president in mostly isolated cases, none more vocally than Senator John McCain of Arizona, who blasted the president’s comparison between Mr. Putin’s extrajudicial killings and American conduct, and recently expressed concerns about a military raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of an American commando and multiple civilians. Often, the president has taken note — in brushback pitches that serve as warnings, if not to Mr. McCain, then to lawmakers who might emulate him. “He’s been losing so long he doesn’t know how to win anymore,” Mr. Trump wrote of Mr. McCain on Twitter on Thursday morning, calling to mind Mr. Trump’s suggestion during the campaign that Mr. McCain was not a war hero because he had been captured in combat. Hours later, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, went to the Senate floor and lamented the attacks on Mr. McCain and other Republicans. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, then followed — and seemed far less bothered. “I personally wish he would choose his words a little more carefully,” Mr. Hatch said of the president. “On the other hand, I kind of find him refreshing, that he doesn’t take any guff from anybody. ” Privately, lawmakers and members of their staffs have pleaded with Mr. Trump’s inner circle for more discipline from the president and his White House. “We might talk to the vice president, but certainly not for public attribution,” Mr. Cornyn said of Vice President Mike Pence, who joins Senate Republicans once a week at their regular luncheons in the Capitol. By and large, though, Republicans in Congress are treating Mr. Trump as an individual to be worked around in his own administration. “I think we can get a lot done with the people around him,” Mr. McCain said, dismissing policy pronouncements from Mr. Trump that often differ from “the day before. ” Practically patting Mr. Trump on the head, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said, “If he pays attention to people like General Kelly when he’s doing a travel restriction and if he appoints people like Neil Gorsuch when he’s making appointments, he’ll be rewarded for that by all the praise, and maybe he’ll do more of it. ” (Former Gen. John F. Kelly is the Homeland Security secretary.) In hopes of repairing their relationship with Congress after the botched rollout of the travel ban, Mr. Trump’s aides have aggressively courted congressional Republicans. In addition to Mr. Pence with his weekly visits, Marc Short, Mr. Trump’s chief legislative liaison, has already become ubiquitous in the Capitol. And powerful senators are enjoying significant attention: Mr. McCain, the Armed Services Committee chairman, said he had already had three conversations with Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, and a breakfast with Jim Mattis, the defense secretary. Mr. Hatch, who is chairman of the Finance Committee, had a meeting with Mr. Trump in the White House. And Mr. Alexander, the chairman of the health and education panel, was invited to the White House last Thursday for lunch with Mr. Trump. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said there was “a high level of satisfaction” with the new White House, insisting that members cared little about “the daily tweets. ” The deflection is bicameral. When a reporter recently noted that the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, had often declined to weigh in on the “tweet of the day,” Mr. Ryan lit up. “You got my talking points down already!” he said, before gently fielding a question about Mr. Trump’s attacks on the federal judge who halted his travel ban. “Look, he’s not the first president to get frustrated with a ruling from a court,” Mr. Ryan said with a shrug. While the détente between an president and its leaders on Capitol Hill may seem wholly transactional, some Republicans say the fury on the left toward Mr. Trump along with the denunciations from many news outlets has helped forge his bond with the voters that he and congressional Republicans share, particularly in the House. When the president addressed congressional Republicans at their retreat in Philadelphia last month, Mr. Trump’s aside about news coverage — “nothing fair about the media,” he said with a sneer — earned perhaps the most enthusiastic applause. “While it may upset The New York Times, Hollywood, the cast of ‘Hamilton’ and the groups marching in the streets, it is not upsetting to the constituents that elected these members and senators,” Sam Geduldig, a Republican lobbyist, said of Mr. Trump’s behavior. “There is a feeling that if those groups are against you, you’re doing the right thing. ” More skeptical Republicans believe that lawmakers are deluding themselves if they treat Mr. Trump as a normal president — quirky but tolerable, like a colorful uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. “They’re mostly ignoring him, humoring him occasionally while the rest of the family gets along fine, enjoys the turkey and watches the game,” said William Kristol, the former editor of The Weekly Standard. “But he’s not just a bit player or a guest. He’s the president. ” And in the Capitol, he can never be ignored for long. Strolling to a meeting last week, Mr. Corker was asked about the latest Trump controversy: The president had just attacked the retailer Nordstrom for dropping his daughter Ivanka’s accessories and clothing line. The senator flashed a broad smile. “Did he really?” he asked. | 1 |
By Jameson Parker Election 2016 , Politics November 10, 2016 Obama Just Did Something To Spite Trump On The President-Elect’s Very First Visit To The White House
Nobody is more disgusted and disappointed in the election results than President Barack Obama, whose legacy of progress is poised to be undone overnight by a belligerent con man. And apparently the first meeting between current and future presidents was off to a rocky start – culminating with Obama abruptly breaking with tradition and not giving Trump the satisfaction of a publicity win on this sad day.
According to reporters at the White House , Obama cancelled a planned “photo op” with Trump shortly after meeting him, depriving the president-elect of the chance to appear alongside the current president and gain an air of legitimacy.
The Obamas canceled a photo-op of the current and future first couples outside the south entrance of the White House. In his first visit to the White House after the 2008 election, Mr. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama posed for the cameras alongside President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush. The decision not to participate in this tradition illustrates how bitter the campaign was, particularly for Mrs. Obama who delivered some of the most emotional arguments against electing Mr. Trump.
It may also suggest that Obama’s first meeting with Trump went about as badly as expected. The president had hoped to press Trump on the importance of governing the country with a semblance of dignity, as well as making the case that spending his first day in office signing a bunch of executive orders to erase Obama’s legacy out of spite would be a horrific start to his time in office. It appears that Trump was not in the a mood to listen.
Mr. Earnest said Mr. Obama would go through with Mr. Trump the policies he has implemented that he hopes his successor won’t undo. But Mr. Trump is expected to attempt to unravel much of Mr. Obama’s legacy, with plans to reverse his policies on health care, climate change, immigration and government regulations, and to dramatically shift his foreign-policy approach.
The fact that Obama would break this tradition – a symbolic gesture of the peaceful transition of power – implies he is keenly aware that the man about to take over is a walking, talking disaster. A pathological liar and narcissist who has surrounded himself with a team of goons that he can count on to tell him what he wants to here and claw their way up his coattails at every chance. No photo op is going to change this tragedy from unfolding.
Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images Share this Article! | 0 |
The other day, I bolted out of work eager to see a woman about a shark. And that woman hadn’t carried a movie in a while. So I ran, saying, “Kate Hudson, here I come!” Please don’t ask me to explain. I just like Kate Hudson. At her best, she’s got a hardened, way of carrying her share of witless romantic comedies (“Something Borrowed”) bayou horror (“The Skeleton Key”) and the worst movie I’ve ever seen (“Bride Wars”). She’s not an star that way. The movie stinks, regardless of what she’s doing in it. And, to her credit, she’s not there to make friends. Usually, she’s come to win. And for every sucker like me who thinks that she, Matthew McConaughey and the rest of that dumb, yachty caper “Fool’s Gold” actually hold up eight years later, there are 10 people who think that title pretty much sums up the Hudson experience. I feel bad for those people. But, as it turns out, I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the movie about Kate Hudson and the shark because, less than four minutes into “The Shallows,” I realized that Kate Hudson wasn’t in it. Really, it’s worse than that. It’s a Kate Hudson movie that actually stars Blake Lively. Who knows how this happened? Out of the corner of my eye, I probably caught an ad, saw that it starred a blonde and just had a “Fool’s Gold” attack. But you know that moment when you realize that you’ve made a horrible, nontrivial mistake — like leaving your wallet in a cab, or showing up a week too soon for a destination wedding? I was that guy at “The Shallows”: excited to see a movie that doesn’t exist and seated too far in the middle of the row to do anything about it. So I stayed. The first scene introduces Ms. Lively’s a shark rampaging in Mexican waters. The second scene introduces Ms. Lively — as a vacationing American surfer (Nancy Adams from Galveston!) getting a ride from a local stranger who either ignores her or changes the subject anytime she asks the name of the remote, obviously deadly spot they’re headed toward. (To be honest, I don’t think I could bring myself to say, “Jaws Beach,” either.) Anyway, he drops her off she slips on her strategically wet suit and heads into the water. Yada yada yada: The shark attacks, and she and her maimed thigh are stranded on a dead whale, then a buoy rusty enough to leave you itching for a tetanus shot. With the right star, this sort of “stuck out here all alone” thriller is a gift from movie studio heaven: Man, I hope Sandra Bullock figures out that Russian manual so she can get back to Earth. But with the wrong star, it’s like reading that manual. And Ms. Lively is a sort of star. I, at least, struggle to understand her career. Her performance as a junkie in “The Town” features the “Bride Wars” of Boston accents. Her performance in “The Age of Adaline” — as a woman “cursed” to stay 30 forever — was like watching a mermaid ride a bike. She tries. But her acting hasn’t yet caught up to her beauty. Alas, there may be no algorithmic solution for that. So I was less than psyched at the prospect of seeing her shiver on a buoy, stitch her own wounds, talk to animals or play a Nancy. And, as refreshing as it is watching her stand on a surfboard, it’s refreshment that provides some perspective. While some actors make sense on movie screens, there are others who might make better sense on a can of something — beer, beans, air. I can hear you, Hudson skeptics. And all I can say is that the heart wants what the heart wants. I’d actually buy whatever Ms. Hudson was on the can of. There might be no appreciable industrial difference between what a Kate Hudson can do versus your Blake Livelys. I don’t think they’re interchangeable, but sometimes the movies beg to differ, and the market corrects itself. Don’t fall in love with Mark Harmon, because here comes Kevin Costner. And sell your Brad Rowe stock, because he’s just going to be replaced by Brad Pitt. (In the late 1990s, that pretty much happened.) But there are continuums, too. Channing Tatum, for instance, is a more elastic, Brendan Fraser upgrade. Lots of parts that have gone to Ms. Lively feel as if Ms. Hudson could have played them. But something happened, and suddenly it was someone else’s turn to be “it. ” (It’s always someone else’s turn.) And part of what annoys me about the lack of Kate Hudson in my life and the surfeit of Ms. Lively is the same thing that makes me angry when a perfectly good piece of software gets a superfluous update, or a zealous waiter takes my plate at a restaurant: I wasn’t done with that. Lots of people are fine with seeing Ms. Lively in something called “The Shallows. ” (They appreciate the wink.) At the end of June, it was America’s movie, continuing the year of good fortune for her and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, another actor who struggled to find his lane as a star, settling for “disfigured hero” in the surprise winter blockbuster “Deadpool. ” And yet, I have to believe that some of those “Shallows” tickets were sold to people who’d never seen a movie like this and assumed the shark was going to win. I feel bad for those people, too. Laziness kept me in my seat. So did the possibility that the movie might make a “Psycho” switch and have Nancy’s useless friend — who looks like a brunet Blake and is only seen on Nancy’s phone — take over the second half. But Todd Haynes didn’t direct “The Shallows. ” Jaume did, and he knows his way around decent junk. He made a couple of those “stop taking my stuff” movies that Liam Neeson does: “Run All Night” and the magnificently bonkers “ . ” So Ms. Lively also gets to explore her inner Neeson — maybe even her inner Sigourney Weaver, Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” and, with that Rambo. Even if she can’t act, she also can’t lose. And that’s the thing about the “stuck out here all alone” genre: Anybody can do it. Ms. Lively’s list here includes swimming, shooting flares, eating little crabs and speaking aloud her thoughts. (“Where are you taking me?” she asks the shark.) Physical fitness wins the day, and Ms. Lively is very physically fit. But a movie like this, if it’s written even can be rigged for triumph. Unlike Ms. Hudson, Ms. Lively seems to need to be liked. She’s up against an enemy that refuses to settle for snacking on that whale carcass and has to keep coming after her. And you don’t begrudge the will to survive, even if it’s just to keep surfing. So when Ms. Lively makes thinking faces to devise a way back to the beach and delivers a “” it feels almost inhuman not to at least grip your armrest, at least a little. I still wish Kate Hudson were in this movie. What can I say? I wanted “Fool’s Gold. ” But I didn’t mind getting plain old pyrite, either. | 1 |
CHARLESTON, S. C. — Joseph C. Meek Jr. a friend of Dylann S. Roof’s who spent time with him in the weeks before nine people were killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church here, was sentenced Tuesday to 27 months in prison for hampering and misleading the federal authorities in the aftermath of Mr. Roof’s racist massacre. The punishment, handed down by Judge Richard M. Gergel of Federal District Court, was at the low end of the sentencing guidelines, which called for Mr. Meek to spend from 27 to 33 months in prison. The months that he spent in a county jail after his arrest will count toward his federal sentence. Before the sentence was announced, a tearful Mr. Meek said he was not sure whether he would survive prison, and he apologized to family members of Mr. Roof’s victims, some of whom had gathered for the hearing. “I’m really sorry a lot of innocent lives were taken,” said Mr. Meek, who had previously expressed remorse in handwritten letters in which he asked for forgiveness. But Judge Gergel, speaking at a hearing that lasted more than two hours, said Mr. Meek’s crimes warranted prison. “The danger he exposed to the community is extraordinary,” he said. Mr. Meek’s lawyer, Deborah B. Barbier, expressed concern that her client would be forced to spend his sentence in solitary confinement because of security risks. Judge Gergel said the federal Bureau of Prisons could be trusted to protect him. “It’s an odd, inverse logic that I should not incarcerate him because inmates think so lowly of him,” the judge said. Mr. Meek, 22, pleaded guilty last April to two federal counts related to the truthfulness of his responses to the F. B. I. in interviews shortly after the shooting on June 17, 2015 — misprision of a felony and making a false statement to a law enforcement officer. Misprision refers to the failure to report a known crime. The government did not prosecute Mr. Meek for failing to disclose knowledge of Mr. Roof’s plans to attack the church, although it asserted in court filings that his silence “did deprive law enforcement of the opportunity to intervene. ” During a night of drinking and drug use about a week before the shootings, Mr. Roof told Mr. Meek that he wanted to kill black people at a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston in order to start a race riot, according to F. B. I. summaries of interviews with him. Mr. Meek was concerned enough to hide Mr. Roof’s handgun after he fell asleep but later returned it and did not report the threat to law enforcement. “Certainly defendant’s failure to make an earlier report is tragic and deeply regrettable, but his failure to report was not a violation of federal criminal law,” Judge Gergel wrote last week in an order that denied prosecutors’ request to give Mr. Meek a longer term than recommended in sentencing guidelines. Ms. Barbier said in a presentencing filing that it was “hypocritical and disingenuous” for prosecutors to suggest that Mr. Meek was somehow to blame for the killings. “Joey’s failure to appreciate the seriousness of Roof’s statements is not unusual in today’s shock value culture,” she wrote. In court on Tuesday, a defense witness said Mr. Meek’s connection to the Charleston massacre would make him a “ target” in prison. “He’ll have to be kept separate from other inmates — not because of what he did, but because he has some relationship to a heinous crime,” said the witness, James Aiken, a former warden for the South Carolina prison system. The case against Mr. Meek matters both as a lesson about reporting suspicions and for the insight he provides into Mr. Roof, who represented himself at times at trial and blocked the admission of any evidence about his background or psychology. As a result, the trial in December and January, which ended in a death sentence for Mr. Roof, provided little information about what may have incited him to act so violently on his racist beliefs. Mr. Meek has said in various law enforcement interviews and court appearances that he first met Mr. Roof, who grew up near Columbia, S. C. in middle school. They largely lost touch when Mr. Roof moved away but reconnected via Facebook on May 22, 2015, less than a month before the massacre. Mr. Roof began hanging out at the trailer where Mr. Meek lived with his girlfriend and other family members. One night in early June, after consuming vodka, marijuana and cocaine, Mr. Roof told Mr. Meek of his support for segregation and his desire to “do something big and put South Carolina on the map,” Mr. Meek told the F. B. I. He said that he had been planning the attack for six months and that he hoped to carry it out on a Wednesday because fewer people would be at church. He told Mr. Meek he would then kill himself. Mr. Meek dismissed the seriousness and did not notify the authorities. Mr. Meek learned about the shootings soon after Mr. Roof opened fire and discussed his fears with a friend, Dalton Tyler, telling him not to contact the police. Mr. Tyler held off that night. But the next morning, as a photograph of Mr. Roof from a church security camera began circulating, Mr. Tyler became the first person to call a police tip line and identify the gunman, according to a search warrant. Mr. Roof was arrested later that morning in North Carolina with the murder weapon in the back seat. In his initial F. B. I. interview, Mr. Meek denied having known of Mr. Roof’s plans and said Mr. Roof had not spoken of a target for his attack, according to Assistant United States Attorney Julius N. Richardson. But in a second interview, Mr. Meek admitted that he had lied, according to an F. B. I. synopsis of the session. He also admitted that on the night of the shootings, after concluding that Mr. Roof was responsible for the attack, he told others not to contact law enforcement. In his conversations with investigators, Mr. Meek described Mr. Roof as a shy former altar boy who did not have many friends but was not a social misfit. His parents, who were divorced, lived in houses with swimming pools and gave him most anything he wanted, Mr. Meek said. He did not perceive Mr. Roof as depressed or as having an anger problem. When Mr. Meek was first charged and agreed to a plea deal, the expectation was that he would testify in Mr. Roof’s trial about the killer’s premeditation and planning. But the government’s case on that score was strong without Mr. Meek, and neither side called him as a witness. Mr. Richardson declined to comment on Tuesday, as did the relatives of Mr. Roof’s victims who attended the sentencing. Mr. Meek, who will remain free on bond until he reports to prison, has told the authorities that he thinks about the carnage every day and that he has trouble sleeping nearly two years after Mr. Roof’s killing spree. “I truly in my heart didn’t take him seriously and I wish I would have,” Mr. Meek, a dropout who worked in construction, said in a written statement. “I didn’t believe he could do something so awful and cruel. ” | 1 |
Bias bashers Russia Has a Dead Nuclear Submarine (Armed With Nuclear Weapons) Sitting at the Bottom of the Ocean
A fascinating vessel and a heroic captain both met tragic ends Originally appeared at The National Interest
In the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union constructed a super submarine unlike any other. Fast and capable of astounding depths for a combat submersible, the submarine Komsomolets was introduced in 1984, heralded as a new direction for the Soviet Navy.
Five years later, Komsomolets and its nuclear weapons were on the bottom of the ocean, two-thirds of its crew killed by what was considered yet another example of Soviet incompetence.
The history of the Komsomolets goes as far back as 1966. A team at the Rubin Design Bureau under N. A. Klimov and head designer Y. N. Kormilitsin was instructed to begin research into a Project 685, a deep-diving submarine. The research effort dragged on for eight years, likely due to a lack of a suitable metal that could withstand the immense pressures of the deep. In 1974, however, the double-hulled design was completed, with a titanium alloy chosen for the inner hull.
Project 685, also known as K-278, was to be a prototype boat to test future deep-diving Soviet submarines. The Sevmash shipyard began construction on April 22, 1978 and the ship was officially completed on May 30, 1983. The difficulty in machining titanium contributed to the unusually long construction period.
K-278 was 360 feet long and forty feet wide, with the inner hull approximately twenty-four feet wide. It had a submerged displacement of 6,500 tons, and the use of titanium instead of steel made it notably lighter. It had a unique double hull, with the inner hull made of titanium, that gave it its deep-diving capability. The inner hull was further divided into seven compartments, two of which were reinforced to create a safe zone for the crew, and an escape capsule was built into the sail to allow the crew to abandon ship while submerged at depths of up to 1,500 meters.
The submarine was powered by one 190-megawatt OK-650B-3 nuclear pressurized water reactor, driving two forty-five-thousand-shipboard-horsepower steam-turbine engines. This propelled it to a submerged speed of thirty knots, and a surface speed of fourteen knots.
The sub had the MGK-500 “Skat” (NATO code name: Shark Gill) low-frequency passive/active search and attack spherical bow array sonar system, the same sonar used in today’s Yasen-class attack submarines, which fed into the Omnibus-685 Combat Information Control System. Armament consisted of six 533-millimeter standard diameter torpedo tubes, including twenty-two Type 53 torpedoes and Shkval supercavitating antisubmarine torpedoes.
The submarine joined the Red Banner Northern Fleet in January 1984 and began a series of deep diving experiments. Under Captain First Rank Yuri Zelensky the submarine set a record depth of 3,346 feet—an astounding accomplishment considering its American equivalent, the USS Los Angeles class, had an absolute maximum depth of 1,475 feet. Crush depth was estimated at approximately 4,500 feet. The submarine had a special surfacing system, “Iridium,” which used gas generators to blow the ballast tanks.
The Soviet Navy considered K-278 invulnerable at depths greater than one thousand meters; at such depths it was difficult to detect and enemy torpedoes, particularly the American Mark 48, which had a maximum depth of eight hundred meters. Although the submarine was originally to be a test ship, it was eventually made into a fully operational combat-ready ship in 1988. It was given the name Komsomolets, meaning “member of the Young Communist League.”
On April 7, 1989, while operating a depth of 1266 feet, Komsomolets ran into trouble in the middle of the Norwegian Sea. According to Norman Polmar and Kenneth Moore , it was the submarine’s second crew , newly trained in operating the ship. Furthermore, its origins as a test ship meant it lacked a damage-control party.
A fire broke out in the seventh aft chamber, and the flames burned out an air supply valve, which fed pressurized air into the fire. Fire suppression measures failed. The reactor was scrammed and the ballast tanks were blown to surface the submarine. The fire continued to spread, and the crew fought the fire for six hours before the order to abandon ship was given. According to Polmar and Moore, the fire was so intense that crewmen on deck watched as the rubber anechoic coating tiles coating the outer hull slid off due to the extreme heat.
The ship’s commanding officer, Captain First Rank Evgeny Vanin, along with four others, went back into the ship to find crewmembers who had not heard the abandon ship order. Vanin and his rescue party were unable to venture farther—the submarine was tilting eighty degrees headfirst—and entered the rescue chamber. The chamber failed to dislodge at first, but eventually broke free of the mortally wounded sub. Once on the surface, the abrupt pressure change caused the top hatch to blow off, throwing two crewmembers out of the chamber. The chamber, as well as the captain and the rest of the rescue party, sank under the waves.
Only four men had been killed in the incident so far, but after the submarine sank many men succumbed to the thirty-six-degree (Fahrenheit) water temperatures. After an hour the fishing boats Alexi Khlobystov and Oma arrived and rescued thirty men, some of whom later succumbed to their injuries. Of the original sixty-nine men on board the submarine when disaster struck, forty-two died, including Captain First Rank Vanin.
Komsomolets sank in 5,250 feet of water, complete with its nuclear reactor and two nuclear-armed Shkval torpedoes. Between 1989 and 1998 seven expeditions were carried out to secure the reactor against radioactive release and seal the torpedo tubes. Russian sources allege that during these visits, evidence of “unauthorized visits to the sunken submarine by foreign agents” were discovered. | 0 |
55 Reasons Why California Is The Worst State In America December 12th, 2012
Why in the world would anyone want to live in the state of California at this point? The entire state is rapidly becoming a bright, shining example of everything that is wrong with America. It is so sad to watch our most populated state implode right in front of our eyes. Like millions of Americans, I was quite enamored with the state of California when I was younger. The warm weather, the beaches, the great natural beauty of the state and the mystique of Hollywood all really appealed to me. At one point I even thought that I wanted to move there. But today, hordes of Californians are racing to get out of the state because it has become a total nightmare. It is the worst state in the country in which to do business, taxes were just raised even higher, unemployment is more than 20 percent higher than the national average and the state government is drowning in debt. Meanwhile, poverty, gang activity and crime just seem to get worse with each passing year. On top of everything else, the insane politicians in Sacramento just keep on passing more laws that make the problems that the state is facing even worse. Unfortunately, what is happening in California may be a preview of what is coming to the entire nation. The old adage, “as California goes, so goes the nation”, has been proven to be true way too many times.
In dozens of different ways, the state of California is showing the rest of us what not to do. Will we learn from their mistakes, or will we follow them into oblivion? Please share the list below with as many people as you can. In addition to a large amount of new research, this list also pulled heavily from one of my previous articles and from outstanding research done by Richard Rider . The following are 55 reasons why California is the worst state in America…
1. One survey of business executives has ranked California as the worst state in America to do business for 8 years in a row .
2. In 2011, the state of California ranked 50th out of all 50 states in new business creation.
3. According to one recent study, California is the worst-governed state in the entire country.
4. Thanks to Proposition 30 , California now boasts the highest state income tax rate in the nation.
5. Even though California just raised taxes dramatically on the wealthy, state revenues are falling like a rock . State revenue for November 2012 was 10.8 percent below projections.
7. California has the 8th highest corporate income tax rate in the country.
8. California has the highest “minimum corporate tax” in the country. Each corporation must pay at least $800 to the state even if a corporation does not make a single dollar of profit.
9. California is tied with New York for the highest gasoline tax rate in the country.
10. California is the only state in America that taxes carbon emissions .
11. The state of California issues some of the most expensive traffic tickets in the nation. This is another form of taxation.
12. As of October, only Nevada and Rhode Island had higher unemployment rates than California.
13. The unemployment rate in California is more than 20 percent higher than the overall unemployment rate for the rest of the nation.
14. The state of California requires licenses for 177 different occupations (the most in the nation). The national average is only 92.
15. California teachers are the highest paid in the nation, but California students rank 48th in math and 49th in reading .
16. California accounts for 12 percent of the U.S. population, but a whopping 33 percent of Americans that receive TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) live there.
17. Only the state of Illinois has a lower bond rating than the state of California does.
18. Including unfunded pension liabilities, the state of California has more than twice as much debt as any other state does.
19. Average pay for California state workers has risen by more than 100 percent since 2005. That is good news for those state employees, but it is bad news for the taxpayers that have to pay their salaries.
20. More than 5,000 California state troopers made more than $100,000 last year.
21. One highway patrol officer ended up bringing home almost $484,000 in 2011.
22. One state psychiatrist in California was paid $822,000 in 2011.
23. Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent .
24. Sadly, an astounding 60 percent of all students attending California public schools now qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches.
25. The American Tort Reform Association has ranked the state of California as the worst “judicial hellhole” in America.
26. Businesses all over the state of California are being absolutely suffocated to death by ridiculous regulations.
27. According to the Milken Institute, operating costs for California businesses are 23 percent higher than the national average.
28. According to CNN , the state of California had the worst “small business failure rate” in America in 2010. It was 69 percent higher than the national average.
29. The number of people unemployed in the state of California is roughly equivalent to the populations of Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont combined .
30. Residential customers in California pay about 29 percent more for electricity than the national average.
31. So many poor people and illegal aliens have taken advantage of the “free” healthcare at emergency rooms that many of them have been forced to shut down in California. As a result, the state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.
32. Political correctness is totally out of control in California.
33. One California town is actually considering making it illegal to smoke in your own backyard .
34. The traffic around the big cities is horrific.
35. Los Angeles
40. The rampant gang activity in the state gets even worse with each passing year.
41. Crime continues to rise all over the state.
42. Just recently, the city attorney of San Bernardino, California told citizens to “ lock their doors and load their guns ” because there is not enough money to pay for adequate police protection any longer.
43. The murder rate in San Bernardino is up 50 percent this year.
44. In Oakland, burglaries are up 43 percent so far this year.
45. Today, Oakland is considered the 5th most violent city in the United States.
46. There have been more than 250 gold chain robberies in Stockton, California just since the month of April.
47. In Stockton, the police budget cuts got so bad that the police union put up a billboard at one point with the following message : “Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California. Stop laying off cops.”
48. Jerry Brown.
49. The absolutely insane California state legislature.
50. Wildfires.
51. Mudslides.
52. The state of California lies directly along the infamous “ Ring of Fire “. Approximately 90 percent of all the earthquakes in the entire world happen along the Ring of Fire and the “Big One” could hit the state at any moment.
53. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 100,000 more people moved out of the state of California in 2011 than moved into it.
54. During 2011, more than 58,000 people moved from California to the state of Texas .
55. Overall, the state of California has experienced a net loss of about four million residents to other states over the past 20 years. Sorry Protesters: Your Jobs Are Being Sent To China And They Aren’t Coming Back » Mark
We left California in 2001. That was the best move we ever made. California would be a beautiful place with about 5 million people. Give then all to texas. Mondobeyondo
California is a beautiful state. Nice place to visit. Wouldn’t want to live there though. Jagrick
It sure is. Northern California is about the most beautiful place in this country. I would never want to live in LA. I have been there several years ago and it had a creepy feeling so nowadays i assume it’s even worse. San Diego back in the 80’s was absolutely beautiful. Joseph Kool
You don’t get out much do you Jarrett Wilson
was going to say the same thing! California is UGLY, it’s bests and I mean absolute best is up north. rest is crap The Truth
Yeah Yosemite is such crap isn’t it? Only perhaps the most beautiful place in the lower 48 but yeah it’s crap. richard
DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU LIVE. I WOULD AVOID THE BIG CITIES BUT TO BE HONEST THE BIG CITIES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY HAVE TROUBLE. THE PROBLEM WITH CALIF IS THERE ARE 37,+ MILLION PEOPLE LIVING HERE.AND THERE ARE QUITE A FEW BIG CITIES!! WERE OVER RAN WITH ILLEGALS THAT CAN’T SPEAK ENGLISH AND THERE KIDS ARE BEHIND BECAUSE OF THAT, THIS IS THE REASON OUR TESTS SCORES ARE SO LOW. I HAVE LIVED ALL OVER THE COUNTRY AND CALIF HAS IT’S BAD POINTS BUT I WOULDN’T LIVE ANY PLACE ELSE. I CAN BE AT THE BEACH IN 45 MIN. I CAN GO TO THE SNOW IN 45 MIN AND LEAVE IT THERE AND GO TO THE DESERT IN 45 MINS. ELECT RATES ARE HIGHER BUT WE DON’T USE AS MUCH GAS I SPENT 15 DOLLARS THIS MONTH CAN ANYONE ELSE OUT OF STATE SAY THAT..MY ELECT WAS 48 DOLLARS AND I DON’T LIVE IN A SHACK,. I THINK THIS BLOG IS A LITTLE UNFAIR..I THINK GASOLINE IS HIGHER IN HAWAII THEN NEW YORK OR CALIF #41 CRIME IS GOING UP EVERYWHERE. #50-51-52 YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT MUDSLIDES IF YOU DON’T LIVE IN THE HILLS. FIRES, DIDN’T HALF OF COLORADO BURN DOWN THIS YEAR HOW ABOUT NEW MEXICO.VERY FEW FIRES HERE THIS YEAR. EARTH QUAKES YEP WE GET THEM. WE DON’T GET FLOODS VERY MUCH HERE AND NOT TO MANY TORNADO’S. YOU HAVE YOUR PROS AND CONS Handog
You can get your point across without using all caps. Easier to reed as well. quercus454
As a Calif native much of what you say is true. Population increases by a mostly low educated foreign population is probably one of the biggest contributors to the state’s decline. While many people rightfully assume that Ca is the illegal alien capital of the country, legal immigrants contribute a larger amount towards population growth. With current immigration rules not refining who we allow in, many legal immigrants are not much better educated then the illegal variety. Lack of education means lower incomes that pay little in the way of taxes and because an immigrant is legal they are eligible for social services.
The children of foreign born immigrants, both legal and illegal often require special ESL classes that cost the taxpayer extra. Some districts have ESL teachers for more then 4 or 5 languages. Population growth has rewarded California with over crowded class rooms and failing students.
Increased population has swamped government resources that were designed to handle a population half today’s size. Whether it be social services, infrastructure needs, health care or the judicial system, all have been adversely affected by increased numbers of people. More people needing more resources leads to two things: rising costs and shortages.
California is the canary in the coal mine. It is a perfect example of what happens when you continually add more and more people who contribute less then they take. Along with feel good government policies to garner votes and the high taxes to support those policies you have California, a failing state.
Who is to blame? The people of not only California, but the people of the entire country. While the voter’s in Ca certainly carry a majority of the blame, immigration is supposedly a federal concern. The Federal government is supposed to regulate immigration and secure the border. Current and past politicians have neglected and even obstructed meaningful enforcement of immigration laws.The repeated re-election of the same inept/corrupt people has put California in the hole and the rest of the country on the edge.
California is a warning. Continually electing people who have no regard for the citizens of this country, who place their own careers above what is best, the rest of the country will mirror Ca. arizonadiane
Excellent post. You are so right, and the blame really does go back to our increasingly inept and wasteful federal governement Randy Townsend
CA resident here who agrees with your take on the situation. The government, however, accurately reflects the public’s embrace of the leftist agenda. Higher taxes, enormous deficits, and greater spending are exactly what Obama is going to give the rest of the country. Take a good look, America: CA is YOUR future. liberranter
Now if only you could keep them confined to the state that they’ve made such a mess of. They made their proverbial bed hard, now LET THEM SLEEP IN IT! molon_labe
Lot of them moving to Texas, and immediately try to turn it to commiefornia. So, you move because commieforniaI a disaster, and now you wamt to do the same thing here? Roaches I tell you. Feed and move on is what they do. Durgys Ramirez
Totally AGREE with You on the Roaches part. Mike McCormack
I hope those that try to escape the blight leave behind their voting habits. Donald
We do vote against this crap but we are over run by voter fraud, illegals and libtard indoctrinated schools. Now they just voted for $15 an hour to flip burgers which = Junior Web Developer right out of college. I’m moving to Texas because I feel I have better support numbers and don’t feel like such an outkast. By moving to Texas I will help make sure Libtard philosophies don’t spread to the other states. PS I wasn’t born in california either! Plus I love Guns! JustanOguy
And take a look at how many people are bailing out of California. 600,000+ population decrease last year.
It’s obviously not working out too well…
Just to be clear: I’m not endorsing it. As an extreme conservative, I haven’t been represented in government for years. DW
Your numbers are all wrong. That many may have left, but they were replaced by the 1 mill illegals welcomed in by Obama and company. Your mama
Sounds good, lets burn one to celebrate LazyIke
This is a good commentary. What we have seen is thousands of former Midwesterners who moved here after WWII leave and being replaced will illegals from south of the border many of whom are illiterate in Spanish and drop out of high school at high rates and reproduce at high rates. Sugarsail1
good post, but another major contributor is the same thing that killed Detroit; unfunded union pension liabilities is a GIANT expense as well. Unions hijacked the government long ago and we are reaping what we sow. kayaker
Good grief….you don’t have a freaking clue what’s going on if this is what you actually think. No wonder the country’s in such deep trouble. Durgys Ramirez
Totally AGREE with your Post. cherylmeril
Don’t write in all caps, it’s hard on the eyes. You aren’t being read richard Ana Hernandez
in all honesty, lol. I skipped over your post to. read hers and went back to find out what she was referring to. i don’t care either way, but in my case it was true, I skipped over the post in all caps. sorry. it makes you seem angry so people don’t listen [or read] what you said. honestly…i still haven’t read it.lol richard
it is easy for me to type with the cap locks on. broke my pinkie in a motor cycle accident about 14 years ago and it really hurts to reach that shift key with that finger. sorry i have offended so many. i will just type with out it on. of course i won’t capitalize like a lot of you. hope that doesn’t offend anyone. CHiP
Wait, you only have one pinkie? Or, one of those crappy keyboards, with only one shift key. I don’t like those keyboards – you can’t even type a capital letter if you’ve got a broken pi… oh, wait. (Pssss, Richard, we won’t tell anybody, but “motor cycle” is one word.) Marian
I read your post in caps. I didn’t give a hoot how you wrote it. lol…it’s just letters. I was planning on moving there.. was interested to see what people had to say. I already live somewhere with the highest taxes and fuel consumption, but starting a business here is amazing. I figured I’d go there once my business can settle me down. I live in Quebec.
I don’t capitalize always.If I missed it then it stays lower case. richard
sounds good to me. Life is to short to worry about the small stuff. danny
Who the %@#! writes in all caps anymore! I refuse to even read it. JustanOguy
I love California…. to visit. I live in Nevada and visit California all the time but it’s really gone downhill over the past 20 years and I don’t see it getting any better. (Quite frankly, I’m visiting less and less nowadays because all of the taxes on everything is going through the roof.)
I guess the 600,000+ other people that bailed out of California last year don’t see it getting any better either. Rod
I was born in SoCal. Family left when I was about to enter elementary school. My two older sisters were already in the horrible schools system with rampant gang activity even back in the mid 60’s! I went back after graduating college to start a career. Left again in 1992 and have never looked back. I lived in the Bay Area (San Jose), LA area (Long Beach) and San Diego. I will NEVER live there again and do not even like to visit. Sugarsail1
I’m a Cali native and very disappointed with my home state as well. Other than my elderly mother and the nice weather I have no reason to be here and have been looking to move but I don’t know where. I’ve seriously considered Mexico…any recommendations? BGenie
Good for You to Never Look Back. California is All Corrupted anyways. Willowville
The illegals are there to fill the low-wage employment gap. Education has little to do with it. There are plenty of college-educated people earning low pay. Jordan
WERE OVER RAN WITH ILLEGALS THAT CAN’T SPEAK ENGLISH AND THERE KIDS ARE BEHIND BECAUSE OF THAT, THIS IS THE REASON OUR TESTS SCORES ARE SO LOW.
Really? With this grammar, punctuation, and spelling you are targeting those who are learning a second language as being problematic? Work out your past participles, your contractions, the difference between “their” and “there,” and your English syntax in general before you start blaming others for low test scores. Andrew Taylor
Broken caps lock key? Or do you simply believe bigger=better? Personally I find it annoying, grammatically incorrect, lazy and space consuming without a proper reason. I’d have to say I disagree with your logic on California. By agreeing with it I feel like you are agreeing with the problem with this country. Uncontrolled debt, corruption, lawful theft and crime is everywhere in California. How can you agree with that? CitizenX
Don’t want you here. thomas moloian
and i agree with you since my wife and i stuck here for now but will change within next 5 yrs. davidmpark
Any chance Disnelyland might relocate to a better place? Like Texas or South Utah? It’d make life easier. Mondobeyondo
Maybe Phoenix? We could use a decent amusement park around here. I’m tired of hunting lizards as a recreational activity. liberranter
What, no rattlesnakes up in your neighborhood to hunt (I didn’t find any this year on my property either)? mleblanc138
I’m happy as long as California doesn’t send their problems and policies up north to Utah. SLC/Provo is about a 10 hour drive away from SoCal, and yet the two are worlds apart. Unfortunately, Mexican drug cartels have set up grows on some remote land across Southern Utah. richard
I LOVE SOCAL I WOULDN’T LIVE ANY OTHER PLACE BUT I LIVE 50 MILES EAST OF L.A. IN A SMALL AG COMMUNITY. Mondobeyondo
Michael’s human, and being a human being, he has his hits and misses. Just like any of the rest of us. Believe me, I’ve had some misses as well. Not everyone is going to hit a home run 100 percent of the time.
San Francisco has this reputation for being the liberal capital of America. Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know. I’ve never been up there. SoCal, I know rather well. Yeah, it’s different there – from what I understand, Los Angeles is to San Francisco, as Phoenix is to Flagstaff. Same states, vastly different communities. And no, I don’t believe everyone in San Francisco is gay or liberal. [Common misperception of an entire community]. MeMadMax
Up in north california you have all the insane white people, down in the southern areas, you have, basically, mexico…
What could POSSIBLY go wrong? lololololololol! And yes, I do live there, in Van Nuys, a sub of Los Angeles chilller
A fence should be erected around CA to keep them all from leaving and bringing their poisonous ideas into Texas and other neighboring states. Those people moved there because they agreed with CA’s insane ideas. They’re only leaving because they have to but they still have those insane ideas stuck in their heads. Syrin
Amen. We need to wall liberals in their own states and keep people from leaving and destroying their neighbors. Up north they’re called Massholes. They leave MA, then keep voting democrat in their new haven only to have the same end result.
Liberals are truly too stupid to understand cause and effect, history, facts, figures or basic economic analysis. Bad_Mr_Frosty
We need to put a scarlet letter on liberals so no matter where they go we know who they are and what they stand for. liberranter
No tattooing is needed. Just spend sixty seconds in the company of one, and you’ll know by what they vomit out of their mouths what kind of creature you’re dealing with. Sheryl
You’ve hit the nail on the head, Syrin (hope that reference isn’t considered too offensive or PC-incorrect, or deemed as promoting toolshed violence, for all you uber Liberals out there) Zen
They have already ruined Nevada. My advise is keep them out! They are like a parasite. They have damn near killed their host and so they are leaving it and bringing their liberal disease with them. Next thing you know you’re a blue state. JustanOguy
Spot on… they have ruined Clark Country / Las Vegas but the backlash has started.
Libs are not welcomed in Nevada. The Dude
Be careful what you wish for.
As someone who lived in California I understand the sentiment. Living their transformed my political outlook. A poor man can live better in Montana, then a rich man can in California. name
you know texas doesnt border california, right? Mondobeyondo
True. It’s sad to see what’s happening on the Left Coast. Syrin
When these liberal douche bags come to US for a bail out for their fiscal INSANITY, all endorsed by GARY, that’s when secession talks take on a SERIOUS tone.
I for one think we should wall in the entire state. We would allow anyone or any business that did not vote for Obama or contribute to his campaign to leave. Otherwise, they have to STAY in their cesspool, and not go pollute their neighboring states, because as we all know, liberals are too stupid to understand cause and effect. We’d allow anyone to ENTER the state, but leaving would be very very difficult. 2Gary2
secession is treason. How many dies in the civil war and now you d-bad repubes want to take your toys and go home. Grow the F up. Bad_Mr_Frosty
Um, stealing all the wealth of the middle class and giving away all the nation’s jobs to Chinese and Mexicans is treason. If it takes secession or a revolution to end this nightmare, so be it. liberranter
Please, don’t dignify the moron’s verbal vomiting by arguing with him. It’s beneath us. Jobless_1
I don’t know about you, but I sure have a hard time finding a job in California. I don’t think that the state was a place to earn/find a living. I don’t know how to do gangsta stuff either so I suck. I guess I would have to join the military as the ticket out. I would settle in a colony/territory if necessary. SOS! One warning, beware of its ripping debt, it’s one of its plagues. Handog
58 watch the video. “Chief Economist says CA. Is going in the right direction. LOL
Thanks, I needed a good laugh since I just lost my job recently.
The reverse gold rush will turn TX. Into CA. It’s a temporary safe haven at best. By the way, if you think the cost of living is cheap here in TX. Your in for a rude awakening. Rent, food, gas is sky high. Toll roads taxing you to death…. liberranter
Having lived in various localities around the country over the last 30 years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the idea of disparate “costs of living” in Amerika is a myth. Honestly, I have not seen evidence of significant cost of living differences between, say, Arlington, Virginia and Albuquerque, New Mexico. The cost of living ANYWHERE in Amerika has become almost prohibitive – thanks in large measure to that moron Ben Bernanke and his Federal Reserve counterfeiting machine, aided and abetted by state and local political machines, Kalifornia’s being the absolute worst. Davethewave
I had to comment on your job loss. Sorry you got fried. What could the reason be that you were canned. It must be because of your winning positive personality that we have observed. Perhaps it was your world views. Maybe your ideas on those God given rights you love to spew on about.It must have be great to be with you at lunch. I am sure your former co-workers miss you. Handog
Liberals always use petty insults when they lose a debate. Pathetic. Davethewave
If that comment is all you got then I just handed em to you. you still have not replied to my other question. Where can I find out about your God Given Rights. Handog
Whatever Captain Kirk. Or should I say captain numnuts. LoL Davethewave
You got nothiin get a job! Handog
I give Michael an A + I don’t need statistics on everything. Perhaps you were truant the day your 8th grade class talked about the San Andreas fault. The one that runs right thru SF. It’s a real threat. Erin
Then get the hell out and give the rest of us our much needed space. Oklahoma sounds like a good place for you… Richard
“17. Only the state of Illinois has a lower bond rating than the state of California does.” Does what?? Again, don’t you mean, “Only the state of Illinois has a lower bond rating than that of California”? Richard
“18. Including unfunded pension liabilities, the state of California has more than twice as much debt as any other state does.” Does what?? Don’t you mean, “Including unfunded pension liabilities, the state of California has more than twice as much debt than that of any other state”? El Pollo de Oro
2Gary2: Thanks for that link. Thirty years ago, I would have laughed my head off if someone described the USA as a banana republic. Now, I call it The Banana Republic of America because in so many respects, that’s exactly what it has become. As I’ve often said, Canadians who want a visit a Third World banana republic needn’t travel far. All they have to do is keeping driving south until they cross the border. Gerald Celente is right: this is an UN-developing country. By the way, I noticed that Chile is the highest ranking South American country on that list. That makes sense because Chile and Uruguay are the least banana republic countries in South America (Argentina, sadly, shot itself in the foot, like the BRA). Hoppytoo
Surely you know that JFK believed that lower taxes result in greater revenue. otter1111
Gary, if you just read the article above, you can read about the state the liberals have been in charge of for many years. Many of the above facts are due to the liberal policies. California is in no way conservative, it’s pretty much completely run by liberals. Just like Detroit. This country really hasn’t been run by conservatives either. Obama had complete control in his first two years in office, with the house and senate having strong democrat majorities. Really Bush was not a fiscal conservative, and Obama is out of control as far as spending. What policies exactly are you talking about, anyway? And shouldn’t Obama have fixed them after 4 years? arizonadiane
I was born and raised in Pacific Beach part of San Diego. In the 50’s-70’s it was wonderful. Then more people began to move in. Who wouldn’t want to live in beautiful San Diego. Unfortunately, we see the results. Especially bad on all the oceanfront properties. Can’t even see the ocean.
I left there in the 70’s but still had parents there. They moved to the “country”– which is now Rancho Bernardo. Wall to wall houses.
I now have no reason to go back because everyone is gone, but the last few times was there, was 2010. HORRIBLE traffic, horrible influx of illegals and you name it. It is sad. And then, what idiots put Jerry Brown in for the 3’rd time? He was the one who started the mess in his first term.
Some people just don’t get it. cherylmeril
San Francisco’s a booming city. Its politicians are idiots but you shouldn’t have listed this city as a reason why California is the worst state. No credibility. cherylmeril
Elections may be manipulated with hackers. cherylmeril
I agree however San Francisco is very dangerous for pedestrian and bicylists injuries and deaths. It’s an epidemic level here, the #1 city for these kind of accidents . cherylmeril
The court system in California is full of a lot of corruption, particularly bad is San Diego. The courts are also entrapping victims they suspect have money through mentally ill people in a desperate attempt to bring money into the legal community. The courts play politics like never before and anything goes, the law and procedure is secondary much of the time. Court’s also rely on those who obviously commit perjury not giving it a second thought. It’s all about cash flow. arizonadiane
However, so far none of the cities are looking like Detroit, but few may start. The ones that have already gone bankrupt.
Don’t like California? Don’t live here.
A far easier solution than whining.
Don’t be so negative, Kurt. Remember, “your kind” needs someone to steal from. Ingrates that they are, many prosperous people will choose not to pay for your free lunch — and will reluctantly follow your advice. El Pollo de Oro
California is a mess, but then, so is The Banana Republic of America in general. And California’s woes are not only bad for California—they’re also bad for the rest of the country because California is the world’s 9th largest economy. When an economy of that size is in deep trouble, the pain will be felt thousands of miles away. It’ll be felt here in the Northeastern BRA 3000 miles away, and for that matter, it’ll be felt in Europe. This is a global economic nightmare with one major economy after another sinking into the Third World abyss. California’s in trouble, the rest of the BRA is in trouble, big chunks of Europe are in trouble. All this economy misery around the world will lead to violent unrest, major riots, violent crime galore, political extremism, and World War III (which might go nuclear).
“The presstitutes aren’t reporting this, but there are massive demonstrations going on in Spain, in Portugal and in Greece. Tens of millions of people in dozens of different cities are taking to the streets. It’s breaking down worldwide.”—Gerald Celente
Yes, it is breaking down worldwide. No doubt. And the worse the misery becomes, the bloodier the future will be. The money, as Celente says, is not flowing down to the man in the streets, and the blood will flow in the streets. It will flow like tidal waves. Say a prayer for Europe and a prayer for The Banana Republic of America because we need all the help we can get. liberranter
…California is the world’s 9th largest economy.
Amazing that that’s still true, given the lengths to which Kalifornians have gone in trying to destroy their own economy. Given the deteriorating present conditions, methinks that the “world’s 9th largest economy” standing won’t be true for very much longer. Shahhe
Californians* I hate to be the one to say that, but you can’t even spell. So your not really in the position to be saying what you think is going to happen to California’s standing as the 9th largest economy in the world. Alice Donati
So goes California, so goes the nation? We know that California is too big to fail, so a huge bailout is coming. Everyone will get bailed out at the expense of the States who live within their means…Dah….Responsiblity is for fools, right? Cose dell’altro mondo….
I left my home state of California in 1993. The place is beyond repair… give it to Mexico and seal the border… permanently. JustanOguy
Sell California to China to pay off the debt and make them work!! Durgys Ramirez
The problem is the mobility of the rich. While few will leave the U.S. for tax purposes, they often WILL leave a state.
And do. And are.
You may not like such facts, but don’t let such facts change your mind. liberranter
Since the economic tyranny in Amerika is spreading like cancer through all 50 states, I predict that those with money will soon be leaving the country once they run out of states to flee to. Richard Rider
You may be right — eventually. But most CA departees will first move to more friendly states. LATER as the country deteriorates, they may try to flee the good old U.S. of A.
But remember, the U.S. is the only developed country in the world that all but criminalizes anyone permanently leaving the country. All appreciated property is IMMEDIATELY taxed, even if not sold. We operate like a banana republic.
Moving to another state triggers no such penalties.
Yet. MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse
Your research was excellent Richard. Hopefully my little plug sent a lot of extra traffic to your outstanding article.
Michael Undecider
Now, for Californians who leave the state, embrace your destination. If you’re going to Texas, don’t turn it into California. If you’re going to Nevada, don’t turn it into California. However, I’m sure if you’re reading this article, you’re likely not part of the population that would do that. liberranter
If you’re going to Texas, don’t turn it into California.
As long as enough REAL TEXANS remain in Texas, that will NEVER be allowed to happen. Adam
I agree. Michael gets more stupid with each post. I believe he is running out of posts. You know, he needs one the US is about to end’ post a day. Talk about a negative idiots! Sure some of what he posts is true, but plenty of it is inflated overly negative crap. Mudslides? What a tool. I wonder what his post will be tomorrow? I can see the title now: ‘The US will collapse at any minute even though I have been wrong over and over, time and time again, seriously, I will be right this time, trust me. Maybe he will just post: ‘You will die someday, so why even live?’ He is running out of overly negative things to say to keep his sheep coming to his site. Again, Michael is a crazy Christian, out of touch, overly negative tool. liberranter
Thank you for helping prove that all of the negative stereotypes about the creatures that populate the most dysfunctional state in the union are 100 percent true. Deborah
I disagree Micheal Deborah
Michael, I am a teacher and I have SERIOUS problems with the factor of my failure. can u please do an article about how difficult our jobs as teachers have become during the downturn of society? I am a big fan. Thanks in advance… liberranter
You are wrong on about every level, here are a just a few of your factual errors.
1. What Survey? The Bureau of Disgruntled Bloggers?
2. Yet Silicon Valley is here. Chevron Oil is here. The movie and television is here.The agriculture industry is here. Yet people start companies every day. You know why? BECAUSE ALL THE PEOPLE ARE HERE!
4. We are not afraid of taxes. We know our schools suck so were are willing to pay a little more for them. We especially are smart enough to know that the rich need to pay their fair share.
7. I agree this is wrong. It should be number one.
10. You didn’t live in LA in the ‘60’s. You could cut the air with a knife. Taxing polluters is the reason we can breath.
11. Tickets are NOT a tax. They are a fine. They are optional. Don’t wanna pay them? Don’t do anything wrong.
14. Call me crazy, but I want my hair-cutter and my chiropractor and yes, even my tattoo artist to be licensed. I’m funny like that.
16. How many of the TANF recipients are illegal aliens?
20. I agree with this one too. $100k a year for anyone who puts his life on the line for us is too little. It should be a least doubled.
22. Talk radio’s been foaming at the mouth over this one. I don’t have enough time to go over how wrong you are. Our prisons are bursting, in no small part to the deplorable lack of mental health care for those at risk. Yet you would fault the pay for an MD who would care for these people? I know it ‘s Christmas, but have you checked to see if your heart is two sizes too small?
41. Crime is down overall in Los Angeles.
52. Yet Japan, Chile, Italy,Mexico, Washington DC and New Jersey have had bigger earthquakes than we have.And don’t get me started on Hurricanes and blizzards.
I’m too tired to go through the rest, but I suggest this. If you don’t like it, leave.
yes, people are leaving. what remains are illegals, criminals, and hollywood bizzaros 2Gary2
Former Republican: 6 Reasons the GOP Is Doomed
The formerly Grand Old Party needs to change to survive. But all we’re seeing are botox solutions.
Thank God the country could move forward with out the conservatives trying to pull us back to the 17th century.
LMAO, you are a racist democrat Bad_Mr_Frosty
The liberals and conservatives are both right. It’s the over-sized soviet government (conservatives) and the over-sized soviet corporations (liberal) that are killing the middle-class. The system will not allow people to vote for candidates that would address the problem (Ron Paul). Bad_Mr_Frosty
Democrats are far-leftists, Republicans are a center-left party. There hasn’t been conservatives in US politics for decades. Apparently, they’re all “racist”.
i still want to visit there. atlanta sucks Ralphieboy
Pretty much all you state is true. We moved our business from California to Texas in 2000 – best decision we ever made. No, we are not liberals who are foisting our ideas on Texas– just two conservatives who were smart enough to know that California would eventually kill our business.
We still maintain a home in Newport Beach – where 87% are registered as republicans. Spend almost six months a year there – especially to escape Texas summers. Beach is a one minute walk from our house, and the weather is as close to perfect as is possible. No, we don’t fight traffic, and yes, we pay no California state income tax. In fact, I bet that most of our neighbors pay no California income tax either. Many are folks who maintain “vacation” homes there – but were smart enough to put their primary homes our of state.
Of course, the morons in Sacramento – like liberal morons everywhere, never understand that when the rich are taxed, the rich always find ways to legally avoid it. Of course, California lost us as taxpayers when we fled the state in 2000. The state also lost our employees and that tax base as well – and they continue to lose by chasing small business away.
Guess I will never understand why Californians continue to vote these idiots in. Prior to moving to Newport Beach, we lived in a suburb just south of here. All of our neighbors were liberals save one or two. Once our neighbors discovered we were conservative/libertarian – they had absolutely nothing to do with us, and quite frankly, some got downright nasty. Then again, we are small business owners – and they are corporate or government workers who never have had to make payroll. liberranter
Guess I will never understand why Californians continue to vote these idiots in.
Because most Kalifornia “voters” are lazy, freeloading, economically ignorant sheepletards, like most of the rest of the nation. Obviously they’re just present in greater numbers in KA than in the rest of the country. Shahhe
California* Yet again, you insult a whole category of people’s intelligence, yet your spelling is that akin of a 2nd grader. pentachronic
Kalifornia is a mockery word to show communism and California as one and the same. Maybe you should stop being overly PC like the rest of Kalifornia. YOU are the problem. PC-ness allows politicians to make stupid laws and add stupid taxes on the premiss of doing the ‘right’ thing for everyone !! mh
if you’re going to live here half the year, pay income taxes. all of you are complaining about the “illegals” who drain the system by not contributing tax money, etc – yet here you are, making a significant income, splitting your life between two states, and only contributing to one. dilligaf
They’re taking advantage of the system, just like the illegals are. So what? Is there a separate set of rules? Austin
My family spends all our time here but for a couple year (since we still own out GA home) d not pay the CA income tax… Why? It’s ridiculously expensive. We do now unfortunately Frank Lucci
I am Los Angelean, born and raised. As a kid, I saw this great state get bombarded by folks like you. Yah- you wanted the beaches and the weather, and I guess you thought it was for the taking. However you came, you saw, and you destroyed whatever you could. So good-ridden to the millions who came, saw and destroyed. It would be a welcomed event for those of us natives to purge the rest of you non-natives, including the representatives you brought with you. Whoever wrote this must have had a really bad experience here. The good news is it is about time! Like I used to say as a kid while the planes flew overhead, “Go home and don’t come back!” Kathy
Frank, I’m guessing you are Italian American from your name. I too am Italian American, the great grand child of immigrants . So you may be a native of Los Angeles but your ancestors and mine weren’t born here my friend. They are from Italy. Don’t you feel that people coming here to Cali LEGALLY or any place in the US to work hard should be welcomed? They can contribute to the state’s economy just as hard working, driven immigrants who are now third or fourth generation helped make this country great. When immigrants first came to the US many people spat at them because they weren’t “natives”. They said “go home!” Now you want to do the same? drbuzzsaw
Can the rest of us, VOTE California OUT of the union??? liberranter
53. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 100,000 more people moved out of the state of California in 2011 than moved into it.
And, having rendered their own state uninhabitable, they’re looking for new places to destroy by polluting neighboring states with Nanny-State nonsense and high-handed arrogance. We’re flooded with Kalifornia refugees here in SE Arizona and I do my part to make them feel as unwelcome as possible. liberranter
Another Kalifornia Krazy in denial. Sorry, pal, but it doesn’t wash. Go bark your delusions up some other tree. pcmustgo
One reason- They let in too many Mexicans who are illegal, don’t earn much, if they work at all, don’t value education, are prone to gangs and theft and corruption, have too many children out of wedlock , born into poverty , at way too young an age,e tc.
MAIN REASON- SHIFTED FROM A MAJORITY WHITE PLACE TO A MAJORITY BROWN, LOW IQ KIND OF PLACE.
THIRD WORLD POPULATION CREATES THIRD WORLD CONDITIONS.
No offense to Mexicans, but it’s the truth. Mexicans and their behavior/genetics are why Mexico is Mexico. Terry Smith
CALIFORNIA IS THE BEST STATE IN THE UNION!!!! PEOPLE WHO HATE IT, CAN’T AFFORD IT!!! AND THATS OK, MOVE YOUR BROKE @SS TO THE TRAILER TRASH CRAPPY MIDWEST, OR THE SMELLY TRAILER TRASH RUSTBELT! IF YOUR NOT PULLING IN OVER A $100K ANNUALLY .LOL,LOL,LOL Lily
I hear ya. Brother. Right on. I love ca Mark
Marky its time to rotate the tires on your mama’s single wide! Mark
Your not, lmao Lynn
I live in San Diego, where almost year round I am able to take in a beautiful walk. Neighbors are friendly. There’s a sense of community, and we all watch out for each other. Crime in San Diego is way down from the ’80s and ’90s, I don’t live in a planned urban development, but in the heart of the city. I love the diversity, the languages, the people. Traffic is heavy, but at least it moves, and most drivers I find are polite. The state is still beautiful… Our city, state and national parks are gems. Sure, we have our problems, but Californians are feisty and independent. I’m sure Michael could write the same article on any of the other 49 states and list their problems. I for one love the uniqueness of CA. And you haven’t lived until you’ve tried a fish taco. Richard Rider
Bad as our CA taxes are, that’s just ONE factor. We are extremely anti-business, have sky-high utility costs (not even counting AB32 increases) and are now rated the “worst judicial hellhole” in the nation. Aside from the weather (which is great along the coastal zone), there is EVERY reason to leave this state — especially if one is engaged in commerce.
California? It’s politics, fruit cakes, liberals, entitlement infested population, taxes, and rules! Doesn’t even rate a comment! Dominik
Yes all of this is true, but don’t forget about the successful companies here. California is the most unique state in the union. From the food to the fashion. Of course the most beautiful state (in my opinion) gets stuck with all the insane politicians and way to many regulations and…well everything stated above. California still does have the largest textile factory that makes clothes in America by American workers and nothing is shipped from other countries to American Apparel Inc. which is the last great American clothing company. kurt cobain
I like how someone else other than me is identifying the illegals by what they are; mexicans. Or is the term mexicans too politically incorrect? Sandra Bell
Many are central and south american too. W Dawes
Actually there is a lot of Illegal Chinese in California too Danny_Sunset
and a lot of illegal Israelis and other middle easterners. nimrod
Born and raised in Socal during the golden period (1960-1980’s) left in 1988, returned in 1994-2002, then left for good. Low crime, nice people, great place to live, go to school, safe to walk around back then….But since early-mid 1990’s this is all gone. My old high school turned into a prison camp, my old city into a little Tijuana, the traffic is bad 24-7, high costs for everything! Moved to the southeast: low crime, low cost of living, 10 minutes to work, low/no traffic, morals and values are taught and practiced. I went out for an interview in CA lately, even Norcal looks like Tijuana now. The freeways were littered with trash, the beach cities were unkept, people were not friendly, businesses were run down. I told them don’t bother making me an offer as I was not interested in living in the state. So not only is CA losing businesses, they are now becoming uncompetitive for the best employees. because of the squalor, it will get much worse, maybe NEVER get better. we need to flush the system clean, stop attracting freeloaders and get on with life without being dragged down. There is no reason that we need to provide any free lunches and bring in more legal or illegals until we find jobs for the 25Million people that are out of work. lou
California is overpopulated, period….. due mostly to foreigners, especially mexicans and koreans here illegally. They trashed their own countries and are now doing the same in California David Salter
You forgot one very important fact, and one that the rest of the world is looking at with bemusement; California had the chance recently, with Prop 37, to catch up with Europe (I live in UK) and enforce labelling of GMO foods. And they blew it! Why on earth would you not want to know what is in the food you eat? This shows complacent trust in a government that continues to screw you over at every opportunity. And a complete failing to notice the corruption between big business, government and the media. Brian Johann Schuler
California sucks the list is endless also the weather even along the coast its either really hot really cold super windy really dry or really wet the weather is terrible and boring its all extremes its too dry and it does not snow in la i cant wait to leave Jimi
If it wasn’t for the fiscally socialist welfarism I’d move to California in a heartbeat. Bogmire
Sure its pretty, but its full of self-righteous fools who have shown how poorly they run a government, I WANT OUT, As soon as I am out of college, Im out of Cali. Shahhe
No seriously, we want you gone. girlswagger
NOTICE HOW THIS IS THE ONLY SITE THAT STATES HOW HORRIBLE CALI IS. LMFAO openeye
There is more.then nust Mexicans, if that someone else wasnt blind, there are, chinese, russians, and many different race coming here, also from way down south past Mexico. Unless your a reneck “ahmercin”.then you should understand that there is alot more people who come.here illegaly. angel
Hey im not mexican but not all mexicans are undocumnted as u think…. Anon
I don’t care if they are or not. It’s terrible that they come in to help ruin (note the help) the country. We don’t need anymore migrant workers that dodge taxes while having the state spend thousands on them. I say this as an unfortunate hypocrite who has one clean the house every Friday. Steven P Chiolan
At least you’re honest. Tom
Don’t forget about all the Indians and Chinese that come to our universities and then stay in our country and take the top paying jobs. pentachronic
The educated people are not an issue. They pay large amounts of taxes as they are typically high-end workers who have good qualifications. The problem is that the State puts nothing back into Education. They reap what they sew. Bad Government is the key issue. The-Truth-Hurters
You sound like just another ignorant white Republican spewing hate without knowing any real facts. First of all, you’re an immigrant in this country too because you stole it from the Native Americans don’t forget that redneck joe.
Second, your country was built by immigrants in the first place like the Chinese who came here and built the railroads and ifrastructure, and the Indians are the only reason you even have a Silicon Valley at all.
Third, no one is stealing your jobs… You are losing them because these people are more qualified, smarter, and work harder than fat/racist/ignorant/poorly educated white hick Americans. You can’t blame an Indian or Chinese for taking your jobs when they study and work hard all day long while you’re out drinking beer and eating burgers, and riding around in your pickup truck saying “America f**k yeah!” while demanding higher salaries for doing less work and more vacation time.
What has happened is that the world today is a lot more interconnected with the advent of social media, the internet, gloablization, and many of the new technologies… This makes it easier for people from all over the world to migrate where they will have a better life just like you honky Americans did when you came from the UK to America. The only difference is that for years you have been saying America is the best everything and now you can’t just simply say that anymore; now you actually have to back it up and all you uneducated Republican Americans are finding out you’re actually not the best at anything and that most of the world is quite smarter and harder working than you are and you simply can’t deal with it so you blame the immigrants, eventhough you yourself are immigrants in the first place.
The truth is that many of the immigrants that come here have had much worse circumstances and a far harder life which has taught them a good work ethic. We as Americans have been spoiled by our luxuries and now when these people that have a better work ethic than us come here we find it hard to compete and all we do is bitch and moan.
If you want your jobs back then work harder and learn to compete with those that are better qualified and you will get them back.
Lastly, the people that are hiring the the immigrants who are better qualified and that work for less are the white people anyway, so it’s actually your own kind whos selling you out. glorp
wow the-truth-hurters appears to be a hate mongering ignorant liberal…. so sad you call someone ignorant and hateful but ignore your own hate you spew from your poisoned mind… Ben
Liberals like the truth hunters are destroying this country. Illegal immigrants are taken food off legal Americans plates . These corrupt politicians are destroying are legal system. No legal citizen that own an real property is safe stand up dont support this don’t buy into this! If u don’t feed it it can’t survive The-Truth-Hurters
Yeah, anyone who has actual knowledge and some coherent logic of whats really going on in the US; and who doesn’t just find some one to point their fingers at is a “liberal.” What a well put together argument you made, that’s exactly why you’re kind is become obsolete. You’re just another entitled white american conservative, who cant open their eyes and adapt to change… By the way I’m not a liberal either, so try again.
The greedy and immoral investment banks/corporations/corrupt politicians (conservative & liberal alike) are what has ruined this country, not immigration. If you have any education you’d understand the complexity behind whats going on behind the scenes. It’s wealthy white CEO’s and investment bankers who control Washington, the FDR, our policies and politicians; and they are the ones who are selling your own kind out.
The truth is you’re misinformed and uneducated on how your government really works, and you are being brainwashed by your false american patriotism; which is exactly what the powers that be are depending on to control and manipulate you. I have nothing against you personally, and you don’t have to agree with me and you’re entitled to your own opinion… But come on, how can an immigrant who has no establishment/resources in a new country affect or control anything… That’s ludicrous and things are not so black and white as you make them out to be.
Corporate white America and investment banks are the cause of all this. Wake up! The Vile Maxim by Adam Smith is what has ruined our country, not a handful of immigrants. Pedro A Lopez
I like the way you think. I am not illegal but I am from central, born an rase and the ignorance in this great country is sad. Charles Diemont
They come here for work, and then send all the money back south. The-Truth-Hurters
LOL! No they don’t. Do you have any empirical data to prove your ignorant claim? Any statistics to show? By the way, are you even aware that your avatar is an afghan fighter holding an ak47; which ironic since you’re against foreigners. No personal offense intended, but it seems that you’re not very bright or observant.
And so what if immigrants send money back home to help their families? I’m a US born American and I would too if I was in the same situation. Nothing comes before family, definitely not patriotism to a country that’s selling out its own citizens for corporate greed. If you were struggling in your home land and could have a better life in another country, don’t tell me that you wouldn’t migrate to where you could have a better life and do whats best your family… After all, that’s what America’s founders did in the first place when they founded this country.
THIS LAND WAS THE NATIVE AMERICANS LAND, AND EVERYONE ELSE IS AN IMMIGRANT HERE! Let’s see you prove that wrong… You have no right to say who can be here and who can’t because this is not your country to do so!
Furthermore, you’re so concerned about immigrants sending what little money they make back home, yet your “American” corporations and investment banks are evading taxes and siphoning billions of dollars offshore… Yet that’s fine! What an immigrant makes has no affect on the economy, however dirty companies like Apple and Google have enough money to end poverty and hunger worldwide (look it up -its a fact) and yet they don’t put anything back into our economy and that’s the real reason behind our crumbling economy.
Your lack of education is scary especially when considering a lot of “patriotic” Americans like you are so uneducated and full of hate; and then they go and vote being completely misinformed. Please open a book and read about how our economy works and what the Vile Maxim is. Understand what’s going on behind the scenes and how the privately owned FDR manipulates currency and inflation. Learn about how corporate and special interest lobbyists have demolished the ideals that this country was founded on, and you’ll start to see that immigrants are nothing but a scapegoat and that you are being brainwashed and led astray by your gov.
The population of this country is so dumb that a hateful fear monger like Trump may actually win the election! Why, because this is a nation of uneducated morons who have no clue about how their country really works. Southpark totally nailed it with their “Dey toook r jobs!” Pull your head out of the sand and LEARN THE TRUTH! I love my country, but I hate the people in charge and the rampant ignorance among the general population. molon_labe
Do you have any empirical data to prove your ignorant claim that I’m uneducated? And speaking of ignorant, it’s a red dawn avatar dumbass lol get back to your bull prepping kayaker
It’s the CORPORATIONS and the WEALTHY that do the tax dodging. Wake up!!!! The-Truth-Hurters
Yes I agree 100%. The greedy and immoral obscenely wealthy individuals/corporations/investment banks are the real problem. You are one of the few enlightened ones out there and that gives me hope that others will catch up and see also see the truth. Pedro A Lopez
Wow help ruin the country. You are so stupid but whatever makes you happy at night. molon_labe
Then they are American. Not Mexican. And you saying other wise is why we have the problems we do with immigration from Mexico. John
Republicans Californiarules
California is the greatest place to live and work. Economy was and is the largest in the U.S., and your opinions are not shared. Jealousy and unhappiness is comes through your ariticle. WE LOVE CALIFORNIA. Alexbella
In the words of my science teacher, “I rathef be in an 8.5 earthquake than a stage 1 tornado”. Californias the best, 20 minutes from everything! I can snowboard and go to the beach in one day! Each weekend I have 10 amusment parks to choose from, the beach, venice, concerts, snowboarding, ect! Maybe it costs more to live here but I moved away for a year, and never again will I live anywhere other than California. frog
get a life or get off of the computer frog
stop picking on other states where all a nation and that’s coming from a 13 year old ya’ll just got served nockout99
I AGREE WITH FROG Oklahoma
Yes..it’s a canary…like China, India and Africa “perfect example[s] of what happens when you continually add more and more people”…to the planet. vic
All people talk about is the weather. I have lived in Mexifornia for 42 years and the people who run this state have killed it. What’s sad is that the UNIONS have taken control and these sheeple keep believing their lies so they keep voting for bull crap. Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein, Moon-Beam Brown, Newsom, Waters, these are some of the biggest morons to ever hold office. They even shut down our farm lands to save a freaken fish. Stupid people and I can’t wait to leave…. B
Meh, the author doesn’t live here. More than half of that rant is opinion, another 45% doesn’t make sense/is not substantiated. Plenty of work, the state govt isn’t broke (in fact we now have a surplus), people here are still alive, lots of big business STILL here (intel, apple, google, Levi’s, Tesla, Hollywood, Napa Valley, thd entire central Cali agricultural business, and so on…). We STILL have TWO world class cities, so much natural beauty that songs, movies, poetry, have been created about it, people travel from the other side of the earth to see it, and residents get to see it daily. You can travel thru 5 climates in less than 3 hours. Nothing’s free bitch. If u like nice things ya gotta pay for ’em. California is one of the largest states, is THE most populous, and by far the best looking – that’s gotta be maintained… If ur a cheap-ass, move to fugly-ass Texass or some other Midwestern/southern donkey-#%€er state where taxes are cheap but half the state is on welfare and in poverty and “edumacation” is not a priority according to the state representatives…
So, Californians aren’t leaving in “droves” (so stupid). We are still here in CA enjoying life and laughing at the fools who are jealous and therefore feel the need to knock this awesome and crazy, delicious and beautiful, one-of-a-kind place. Erin
RIGHT ON BABY! YOU TELL ‘EM! Austin
I moved to California 3 years ago this month, my sophomore year of highschool. I love it here and am not leaving for any reason other than travel when I can afford to. I have now graduated highschool and I’m attending college in a quaint costal city. The first 15 years of my life was spent in a suburb of Atlanta and it is much better here IMO. I live on the border of Encinitas and south carlsbad (la costa) and use the beach as a daily getaway. While the tourism gets annoying its wonderful meeting so many people everyday. There are very few cops away from the freeway I drive at least 30 minutes a day and usually see one cop but there is very very little crime in this area of San Diego county. I know big cities can be fun if you’re visiting but they are the majority of reasons you have listed to not live here. I definitely felt more of a sense of community where I’m from in Georgia but once you make friends out here and fall in love with the ocean and bays/activities you can do around them you realize it’s a different kinda love. & where I live there are very few Mexicans. Just find the right area if you wanna live here (preferably on the coast not in a major city) and you may love it like me. I’m 18 and hope to live past 50 stayin in this beautiful state. Most importantly if you want to get away from people there are canyons even in the coastal cities with trails all over the place and there’s few to none people and they’re usually gorgeous. Checkout Encinitas if you want to get away from big city lifestyle. Later everyone! Fr33th1nk3r
The biggest thing I cannot stand since moving here from Pennsylvania 10 years ago– is the overwhelming conformity and materialism here. Everybody in California seems to listen to the same terrible mainstream music, the same crappy trendy movies and TV reality shows, and they all spend more time talking about their iPads and mobile devices than worrying about education or the nation as a whole.–
Everything here, from the pizza to the beaches, is overhyped and made out to be the best thing to happen since sugarless gum– but in reality, you will get the cheapened, watered down, overmarketed and overpriced California version.– Everything is overregulated. You can’t even enjoy a beer on the beach without getting a citation. You can’t even change a doorknob in your house without some local government code enforcement type trying to tack on fees and fines for your troubles.– The graduation rate for public schools in California is abyssmal. Rai
Hey, could you do me a favor and link reliable sources and stuff that actually backs up your claims more often? Because when I see breitbart and articles that don’t really prove your point upon closer inspection I tend to think you’re a liar. The carbon tax article you linked had “could” in the title, meaning it doesn’t prove it’s even happening in the first place.
Then again, when I look at this blog title you’re probably just as reliable as breitbart. Anonymous
I am a fifth generation northern Californian and all I have to say is that some of these issues can happen ANYWHERE. For example, you can’t prevent earthquakes, mudslides, or wildfires and its not like we WANT them to happen, we just can’t control them. I’m not trying to rag on anyone, so please keep the negative comments out of this. I do agree that at this point in time our government and school systems are screwed up and that illegal immigrants are also screwing up our state’s balance, but everyone just focuses on CA with immigrants… What about Arizona, New MEXICO, and Texas? While I’m at it, the traffic is only bad in SOUTHERN CA (I know this because I’ve lived in the Bay Area my ENTIRE LIFE, never moved never wanted to) and this whole thing is blown out of proportion. By the way, I know about that city that banned smoking and it was for the good of the people, smoking causes lung cancer and cigs have such harmful things in them that they should be banned ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. I also know that Oakland is one of the worst cities in CA and that its also one of the most dangerous cities, too, but that doesn’t mean that ALL of CA is dangerous. Also, even though it doesn’t state it here, keep your stereotypes to yourself! Californians aren’t blonde moron surfers with nose jobs and Botox, we are actual people, not the fake characters on tv shows. pysco
I forwarded the article to Boxer, Brown and Feinstein, and told them have a nice day. I urge everyone to do the same. Vaggieburger
I L❤VE CALIFORNIA! I have lived in the sf Bay Area ALL my life, BORN & RAISED! (3rd generation San Franciscan 😉 I dont agree w/what our Government is doing, nor do I feel good about it BUT I love Ca w/all my heart! WEST SIII-EEED! Lol
Lol jelous much? Now name the great things about cali Ahmed
illegals? The whole country is illegal, so stop being a republican about it. “This country was founded by a group of slave owners who wanted to be. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free! So they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people, in order to move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people.” Carlin, G. commonsense
thank you for posting a/b a subject almost over 200 years old, as if it pertains anyway what so ever to the present decline of California… Anon
Immigrants built this country but that does not mean they can tear it down. Get off your historically correct high horse and see what they are doing NOW. molon_labe
Funny how they always bring up we’re a nation of immigrants. Yes, of course we are. But look at the difference the two brought to the table. Built some of the largest cities in the world. These immigrants from south of our border, well, one just go to a once thriving city to see the effect they have. Utter filth and destruction. Educated_Person_101
Because Geroge Carlin is the final word on perfect political harmony. You are influenced by the wrong people. Comedians’ opinions on politics are worthless. molon_labe
Everyone in this room is now dumber from having read that. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
You must have learned that in a California school. During white privilege class. MA
I am a native to California, and I still live here. I do not plan to leave or move any where else any time soon mainly because I love this state. There is so much to do. I would hate living in, for example, Georgia. Not only is there nothing to do there, but there are racist people, and well I would not want to deal with that considering that I’m not white. It is more excepting here. Mainly in Southern California, because there is everyone. I would hate to be surrounded just be one race. Plus, weather is unbeatable compared to other states. It does get hot, and cold, but not nearly as much compared to other states.
I love California (Mostly Southern) and I am not leaving. Blue Blooded Californian
Wow so biased its funny. No state is perfect, that being said this person failed to talk about some other things. California accounts for 15% of the U.S gdp, this state alone makes more then Canada, or Russia. If California was a country it would be the eight largest economy in the world. Texas as everyone seem to be talking about, let me say some things about that. Highest un-insured rate, and one of the highest poverty rate, No state minim wage which means that they follow the fed min wage, which is $7.25 (San Francisco min wage $10.75) oh and lets not forget how much federal aid Texas has and still keep getting. Where as for California, who does have problem (I admit that) is giving more back to the govt then its taking in. Based on several economist California is on track for a surplus in 2014. California has movies, tech, agriculture, its own cuisine I can go on and on. Texas and every other conservative states takes more then its gives out. Which really makes one to rethink, the premise about takers and givers does it!!
So stop your bitching because everyone who has every come to California would love to move here, they just can’t afforded it. If you don’t like it, leave. CitizenX
I’m still waiting for the rest of the people that don’t like California to move out of the state.
Please. anonymous
Not sure how everyone in the comments can’t see what how blatantly ignorant and completely absurd this article is… for example “32. Political correctness is totally out of control in California”. Great use of evidence there, not biased at all! I can acknowledge that the economy in California is suffering, but at least educate yourself on what’s really going on before you mindlessly bash all the “liberal douchebags”. Bob Dole
not just liberals, we have plenty of douchbag republicans, in fact most of our states problems were caused by republicans and their corporate interests, not liberals. Anon
And yet our state has been run by liberals for the last couple of decades, AT LEAST. Now, we have a Democrat super majority in the state… Re-read the list and see what they have done to drive businesses out of the state. Most of that was because of the liberals. The cities with the most liberal policies (in California) are the most expensive and crime-ridden places to live in. Also, some of the most successful businesses in California tend to be Democrat-leaning. www dot goodguide dot com slash contributions. sinjonsmith
If its so bad, then why to real estate values continue to go through the roof? Real Estate is like any other market or commodity. People pay high prices for highly desired goods. People pay high prices for California real estate because its a desirable place to live and although it has a LOT of problems, I can name 10 other states with worse problems including all the rust belt states (iowa, wisconsin, mich, indiana, ohio, illinois) where there is an exodus of people to get away from failing infrastructure, corruption and rising taxes to pay for it all..not to mention bad weather..and extremely poor southern states that have NO economy..mississippi, alabama, south carolina and Florida where the education system is worse than california…as well as some states with huge budget problems out east like Jersey…I’ll take california any day over any of these other states..California’s economy alone is the 12th largest in the WORLD and the US would take a huge hit if it didn’t exist..I don’t live in CA, but imo if you want to start a page on how much a state sux, start elsewhere…oh another thing about everyone crying about illegals…like cali is the ONLY place where that happens…its the ONLY place where people come over the border…Its a National issue idiots..and we have plenty in Chicago…I own real estate and without them, id have to pay some other white fat dude 5 times as much to work half as hard and do 1/10 as quality of work who’s probably in a union…oh which this page ironically hates because probably because unions are left leaning… James
Every time the state legislature de-funds or disapproves a highway/bridge/public university repair project on the annual budget, people pass a $1B bond ballot measure during the next election to get the state into more debt and re-fund that particular effort. Voters in CA fail to realize that a new university center or highway overpass is nice, but somebody has to pay for it by raising state debt (often paid for with new taxes). I used to live there, and every election had millions of new bonds to be raised for somebody’s pet project on the ballot. My rule when voting was 99% of the time “No” if it required a new municipal bond to be raised, especially if it was an attempt to circumvent the regular budget process in Sacramento. James
CA is also one of the few states where a $100K income may not be enough to buy real estate. A down-payment on a CA home can pay the loan in full for an average home in many other states. People in high cost living areas (LA, SF, SD, etc…) take out huge mortgages and cram 10 people in a small home to pay their mortgage every month. It’s no coincidence that many of the homes shown being flipped on HGTV are located in CA. Unless you’re rich, bought a home 25 years ago, or inherited property from a relative, or resort to shady funding methods (i.e. share mortgage payment with 6 people, take out multiple loans, etc…) it’s tough to buy real estate in CA. Fornian’
Ok first of all California is the best state of all. Second you are unworthy. bynx110
1. It’s California not KALIFORNIA. 2. Do you know how ignorant and prejudice you sound? It’s disgusting really. Yes our state has major problems but we are ALL U.S citizens. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Did it ever cross your small mind that maybe people from California treated you poorly because of the way you decided to treat them? Treat people with respect, we all come from different places and different walks of life. Do you agree with the Holocaust, slave trade, Native American treatment, and all the other major in tolerances in history? Think before you write….because you are clearly defining how NOT to be a decent human being. EmeraldStar
I’ve lived in Southern Cali all my life. After graduating college and going on to graduate school I decided it was time to leave. I moved to MI six months ago! Yes Detroit is bad, but it’s like that one city is pulling the entire states reputation down. No matter how bad Detroit is, the rest of the state is SO much better than anywhere I’ve been in southern Cali. Yes, I miss the diversity of people but here are some reasons a person my age would leave. The U’s in Cali can take up to six months to let you know if you’ve even been accepted. WMU let me know in less than two weeks. The cost of tuition and books are ridiculous when compared to the type of education you will be receiving (a BAD one). About 75% of students care about taking their education seriously and the rest are there for the financial aid. In SoCal it can take you months if not years (depending on what you do) to find a job, I found a job in less than a week in MI. The weather in amazing in CA and I miss the different cultures and their awesome food, but the pace is too fast, too many people are stressed out and are either jaded or jerks (not all, but there is a overhanging stress level you can’t really escape) When your worried about being laid off or making ends meat no wonder… Also, the crime! Theft is a huge issue in SoCal. Be it car, private property, or downright armed robbery. Gangs are a major problem in the L.A. area especially. Taxes are ridiculous and because larger companies know jobs are slim pickings they use it as an excuse to treat you like garbage. What are you going to do? Quit? Too bad you have kids to feed. Welcome to Cali, the suck it up things aren’t getting any better soon state. Don’t get me wrong, if it wasn’t for the people and the politics Cali is my home and I love it in a weird “that’s MY ugly baby” kind of way lol. Beautiful beaches, amazing deserts and mountains. I miss it sometimes. Then I read about a family that was murdered two miles from the high school I went to and NOPE! Glad I left. Best place to visit, but once you get past the fascination with this glamorous Hollywood lifestyle you’ll realize that it’s all a lie. Hollywood and L.A. are full of hobo’s and the whole city smells like urine and garbage. Except that small complex in little tokyo, then it smells like amazing asian food lol! Get the Golden state idea out of your head, that golds been tarnished for years : Shahhe
Oh good god. I’m fairly certain your what’s causing the poor education rating in whatever part of California your living in. Please leave this wonderful state and the education rating will probably rise in literacy at least by tenfold. stassia
Please stay there and everyone will be happy. Shahhe
It is spelled with a C. And one wonders why Arizona scores lower than the rest on literacy. Shahhe
You keep saying that yet you’ve yet to leave. I don’t think you realize that your wanted gone, please, feel free to go to Oklahoma or Utah, or even Texas or Florida. It matters not! All that matters is that you are to leave, as you claim you wish to, and as you are deeply wanted to by those in California before people like you came here hoping for free everything, then shocked when it turned out that the presence of so many like you tarnished it. So hopefully, with you gone, and staying gone this time, California will become fully back to the days of yore. So please, leave and don’t come back once that happens. Not ever. Sorry. Davis Rivas
The best thing about California is all the Freebies you can get, welfare, food-stamp, medicaid, free lunches, housing, etc.. Even prisoners in California live better than middle classes in other countries. The tax payers in CA are SO generous. Thanks guys. john
BOTTOM LINE–Those that can’t afford the California luxuries move to lesser states than bash California, cause THEY could not make it or be happy. I would NEVER leave California. Enjoy the snow, rain and cold. I WILL NOT! Have fun with all that. We have the best weed, the best weather and the hottest women. BOTTOM LINE–There is always a story behind the story when someone bashes California. Some crazy people move from California to Oregon and convince themselves that 290 days of rain a year is better, GIVE ME A BREAK! lol @ the true Californians like me that laugh at you all. Have fun in your other state and remember when you are complaining about the cold or snow or grey sky, I’m smiling with my shirt off smoking weed laughing at you fools. Melissa
I was born in San Diego 45 years ago and have never left. Oh, I wish you would get the word out so more people would leave California, and less people would come here. Then I could have less crowds, more parking, more room at the beach. Me and the millions of Mexicans will stay here in San Diego, we get along fine. Everyone who doesn’t like it, please go awa . It’s great because whenever I visit anywhere else I always notice: the weather really sucks and everything is so cheap! No sales tax? No state income tax? I am always blown away by states like this. That makes my dollar go a lot farther when I travel so fine by me. Orisha
The drought is caused by The Hight Priest of the world in Solidarity against Gov. Brown and all the states unions in Solidarity against AwoGbade. He is a shaman from Sacramento California who created a crime prevention youth program that Ex. Gov. Choose as his personal legacy program. Multiple murder attempts were made on this innocent High Priest and his father was murdered on Jan.5th 2013. The high pressure system blocking rain in Pacific Ocean are the Ancestors spirits in Solidarity against the injustice of Gov. Brown and police/corrections union and the denial of civil rights to AwoGbade over last 8 year period. This is only the start to what the Myans forecast. Since 12-12-12. The date Union members in Californias Department Of Justice tracked Awogbade and hitmen inserted Aids blood into him. No Justice No Water! It’s only starting in California. Without a thorough FBI investigation into Yeshua Awogbade court case in Sacramento…the forces of nature will wipe Americas Slate Clean. Miaeka
Thanks, as an European this post convinced me that California is definitely less retarded than rest of America. I’m looking forward to supporting their economy by visiting them some day.
I love the stable and civilized societies we Europeans have managed to create through high taxation. I hope California will reach the same level of civilization some day. Bob Dole
You can keep it, we prefer liberty and freedom, and yes we will invade you no questions asked if you threaten that. Shango!!!
YESHUA AWOGBADE is my son. Ive had full custody 4 years because Shoshana Robertson in a active alcoholic and meth addict. According to Shoshana she was molested by her first cousin Mayor Kevin Johnson since age 12. After her July 2nd suicide attempt she told the Mayor, my son is his and if she dont get custody back and 2 million dollars she woukd expose him. The Police Union got behind there Mayor and multiple attempts have been made on my life. After the first attempt on my life I called upon the forces of nature for protection and punishment to those responsible. Last year was the worst drought on record because of police union actions and violation of my civil rights for 8 years. WITHOUT A REAL FBI INVESTIGATION THE NATIONS WEATHER WILL BE THE WORST. Jack
The state stinks for real…its a commie-liberal pisshole. Callie
Honestly CALIFORNIA lifestyle is the best in the country. No where else will ever compare. As someone who has traveled and lived in other places, I can honestly testify that there’s no better place to spend this precious life in. It’s a beautiful place with beautiful souls. Not California
The best thing I ever did was to move my family and company out of California.
I tried for years to sell my company, few were interested but none would buy it as long as it remained in California, and to be honest, selling it in California would has set us back two careers.
Found out by moving to Nevada we saved all the tax money California would have robbed from us. After a year in Nevada company was sold. we no longer live in Nevada but I will say we did leave Nevada a better place, and Nevada made us better people, Nevada gave use back the humanity California stole at every chance it could take.
California has the worst schools, the worst people the worst cops, the worst opportunity, brought on by the worst government, the worst everything you could image, it just plain sucks.
I went to court one time my attorney had everything laid out and the judge said I don’t recognize that law, the attorney said here is a brief, judge said I don’t recognize that law.
attorney said here is the law book already marked all you need to do is read it, judge said,,, you got it. he didn’t recognize the law.
To the judge my attorney said, you have already decided haven’t you, the judge smiled, to make it short we won on appeal, the money held by the state was returned I moved it into Nevada, my company and my family, the guy that bought my company divested all the California holdings, big loss to the people of the state.
I have a buddy that is doing the same thing, pulling his company out of California and going to headquarters it in Nevada then divest all California holdings at a loss of another 900 jobs to the state.
When you look up the word looser, California is on the top of the list.
I should say I was born and raised in California, what I used to think was the best place on earth, Santa Clara, Then as we did better Dad moved us to Los Altos Hills.
I went for a visit to Northern California to see some friends, I bought a truck that ran on propane with a big tank, I didn’t have to spend a dime on anything in that state.
I hate that state so much I will never spend a dime there. JULIA Dunkee III
The Disney Hall Complex on that picture is usually under sold for concerts. The bar is lame, the restaurant prentious and overpriced, and it has all the chic of an airplane hanger. It has good acoustics and some great people come through but it is like mostly closed up during week. Poor Mex student work the usher roles and the mostly older elite types aren’t interesting and dress like 1800’s. It has these Sheriff deputies guarding I guess the 1% and they always look at me with why am I here faces. Sad place. Homeless vets live underneath bridge it sits on. That says it all. JULIA Dunkee III
Hollywood is supported by the economic engine of Nail Salons, Tattoo Parlors, Weed Shops, and Hooker Wear type stores. At night it has some Blade Runner type nightclubs that are from the low level to Hollywood crowds, but unlike other cities the PAPS can do whatever so it’s always crazy that way. Tourists keep coming though it is grimy, dirty and no stars except on premieres which are hugely policed and controlled. All Hollywood Blvd. has hidden cams that are watched from a special station. The LA is considered a “gateway” city and employs the TrapWire Surveillance system. Plus it is usung drones now to like Arizona. JULIA Dunkee III
It is not well understood by most but the Hollywood smarter money has left LA or is trying to. It is more than taxes. Many people come in for the Media Industry but there is a sizable exodus judging by home listings in any real estate listing service. The LA TImes is total BS propaganda that even locals call out all the time. It is strange because a lot of the moneyed are exiting fast. ANd it gives me creeps cause these people already can avoid most things. I think some event is scheduled here. I think others are aware of that too. Stephanie S
I moved to the Midwest a year ago from L.A. and just went back for a visit. Yes, it’s nice and pretty and the weather is great. Cool place to visit, I don’t want to live there again. Crime, “diversity”, materialism, frantic pace, traffic…no thanks. A short visit is pleasant but living there was becoming a nightmare. Calilove
I’ve lived in CA most of my life and I have to say I have never seen a Mexican beggar asking for money or food or anything. Selling oranges, flowers, etc by the freeway? Absolutely! I just had to point out observation after reading all of these racist comments. If you’re not a CA resident, you are reading some random stats that do not necessarily reflect the economic status of my neighborhood. Also, CA is a “horrible” state because of wildfires and earthquakes?! Get real! I haven’t witnessed any awful blizzards, huge hail storms or tornados destroying huge trailer parks in CA. Oh wait! Not many trailers here, our homes are constructed to withstand earthquakes & are built on a foundation! Christian
so much hate against the mexicans, have you ever been in a migration office? there’s many asian people middle eastern, also European people, so take your comment back and insert it inside your butt hole. molon_labe
I don’t see Asian, Arab or European migrants leaving ghettos of once great cities in their wake. Monsatan
Never been across the pond, I take it? BGenie
You missed the Russian and Ukrainian immigrants here in N.CA. They are productive, going to college, taking ESL classes, working and opening stores.
The Mexicans come here, expect us to learn their language, live off welfare, spray-paint graffiti, rob stores/banks, and deal drugs. I worked in an ER; a mexican family on welfare brought in a 10y/o girl who was ‘feeling sick’. Turns out she was pregnant… by her uncle, and they were happy because they were purposely breeding her for more welfare money. Mexicans are parasites, we need to close the border. Mike McCormack
ewww gross. Uncle daddy. Sandra Bell
Did you report this situation to child abuse authorities? The girl should have been legally and permanently removed from the home and the rest of the family deported as criminals with no chance of future citizenship. DW
I hope to hell you sterilized her Christian
nope, cali is very nice, your life sucks haha Michael Hansson
Why do Californians keep voting on these politician that is turning their beautiful state into a hellhole? Funruffian
The physical geography of California is vast and beautiful. The terrain and natural landscapes are magnificent. Unfortunately, it has too many crappy people and crappy leaders. rogersan
You forgot the epic drought going on right now… allfab
A reason why it is one of the best: the writer of this article doesn’t live here. taylor
This articles retarded. Its repeats the sames stuff over and over again. We have higher wages anyhow to hiving higher taxes makes sense, derrr. sdreal
Wow, I might as well just leave the CA after reading this. Haha. – I love living in Southern CA and I have a well paying job selling software to high tech industries. I can travel anywhere in the west, but I mostly choose to stay in CA because that is where most of the money is… and who wants to go anywhere else unless absolutely necessary? Certainly, Texas is always lowest on my list of places to visit. Outside of Austin, it’s a cultural vacuum and in the summer it’s hotter than an oven. Plus, outside of oil, the industries aren’t nearly as robust and dynamic as those in CA. – Don’t you think it’s interesting that some of the biggest and most innovative companies on the planet, like Apple and Google, are based in California? Guest
As all those people leave, the nutty liberals remain behind and their power grows. The growing number of poor will go along with whatever they say so long as the benefits keep coming and increasing. Eventually the state is going to bust and then they’ll howl for DC to bail them out, and DC probably will. Anon
Arizona especially is awful. You want to talk about a piece of trash, it’s Phoenix burning rubber smell and angry, flaring inferno environment in July. izzycafe
We have a democratic super majority and they are driving our great state into the likes of Detroit city.. only it will be the whole state. The thinking is tax and put fees and regulations on everything.. they need, more and more and more, they think it will produce more revenue to help with the unsustainable retirement and pensions of government worker. The thing is, that never ever works.. and like a horrible cancer it kills all things that are good. molon_labe
Been there. Beautiful state, nice people up north, but the cities, I wouldn’t go near there if you paid me 7 figures. I was so disgusted I will literally cheer if an earthquake breaks it off into the ocean. I’ll stick to the lone star state and the south where the people have manners. Chin Sims
No, New Jersey is the worst. Way f__king worse. christopher umsted
dont even need to read this to say that california life sucks only reason y i did cuz of a hw assignment even though me and my fellow classmates are living it Smeagel4T
Odd how housing prices just keep rising, and rising, and rising… which is a very clear free market indication of demand. Lee
I can create a list about every state in the union and tell you why it’s the worst state….it’s not hard to do. To me it just looks like this website is about fear. It promotes the idea that the world economy it’s going to collaps and so you need to buy Good and Silver. Sugarsail1
Born and raised in California…it sucks for all the reasons mentioned above. Too many socialist politically correct fascist enviro-whack jobs from the bay area running the show and the anti-business regulation has killed the middle class and the job market. The only people that do well here is people on some kind of government subsidized business, like healthcare, welfare, or green boondoggles or Limousine Liberals in Hollywood with more money than brains. Sooner or later they will run out of other people’s money and they will have to build a wall to keep Californians from escaping to Mexico. The only reason to live here is the weather and the weed and even the weather sucks in the North (the weed doesn’t). molon_labe
Californians. Since your voted for it, please keep yourself confined within it’s borders. It’s only right to make you deal with the issues you brought upon yourselves. Moving to a different place and dragging that down too isn’t fair to people whovote with common sense. inverse137
There are some good points in this article and a lot of stupid personal opinions. You are better off sticking with facts than conjecture. Conjecture makes you look stupid and weak.
34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 48 and 51 are just whining without facts. NUMBERS. You cannot dispute hard numbers. I would have listed it like: the average commute time in california is XX and the national average is YY.
What is listed in those instances is just filling space. New York boy
Everyone dissing California sounds like a bunch of bitches! And would lay out your incredible boring lives. kayaker
What a biased piece of propaganda. CA is way ahead of the rest of the nation in addressing climate change, re-localizing of food growing, promoting solar, etc., etc., etc. It has lots of problems, but at least is doing things a lot smarter than the vast majority of the U.S. which is going backwards. Tyler
Are these statistics even real? Some seem a little bias. However I am California Native, Los Angeles to be exact and will all of the problems that we do have going on, I love my state! When I travel people are amused and want to be surrounded by beaches and celebs. Many others states hate and I can’t relate. Vacationing to other states is wonderful however, I will NEVER ever move out of California. Guest
Have you Californians ever thought about independence? you are an economic global power house on your own! (the state has the 8th largest economy on the planet even larger than India and nearly as large as Russia!!!) cgoofies
It is very competitive, with people I don’t believe should be holding these jobs I went to school for. Then they can’t leave because they are like sardines usually commuting and not spending quality time working. Beautiful I agree, needs to be demolished and rebuilt, possibly. jackass
you can say that about any politician, not all dems are bad, not all reps are bad. DW
All Dems are bad in California, because there is no competition for them and they know they will be re-elected no matter what as long as they hold out that welfare check and keep on letting in illegals. Working class families are in the minority now, so the welfare and public assistance crowd are in charge of who gets elected. In other words, the inmates have taken charge of the mental institute. TangoWhiteTrash
#54 though. Why is it so hard to understand, we don’t want you! I’m sure you’re all wonderful people, but bringing the same ideologies which caused the problems you’re now running from with you will only ruin us too. Please, solve your problems, we’ve got our own things to worry about. Thor
According to Californians, Cupernicus was wrong. All of the planets ,moons, stars, etc. do not revolve around the sun…. The sun, moon, planetss and all of the heavens revolve around california!! I dont live there and wouldnt want to visit since california attempts to control how every other state operates, why bother TheTruthburns
I lived in California when it Was The Golden State – I now refer to it as the Golden Toilet Bowl. Sadly if enough states act like California then those of us who can’t take it will have to move to another Country. Man – what the hell ever happened to the Good Ole USA? Gregory Chandler
California’s government leaders tend to have the attitude, this is California so we do as you please. This attitude is the same among liberals and conservatives. Many people who live in California conduct a substantial amount of business elsewhere. Therefore, you get the beauty of California without all of the silliness. Craig Hempfling
Can’t wait for a good 9.9 quake to get rid of Gov. Brown and the rest of you idiots a-0
I have been traveling to Nor cal for years for work. I consider all of california north mexico at this point. I conceal a firearm against state laws due to the out of control crime situation. I am also starting to pull all of my buisness out of state, if only i could do it sooner. Jules
Forgot one huge thing on this list. California has the worst worker’s compensation in the country. It’s pro employer and con injuried worker. 90% of all major claims are denied even though multiple doctors including state issued QMEs (Qualified Medical Evaluator) agree that care is needed. In addition after a claim is denied an anonymous IMR (independent medical review) can deny the claim without reasoning nor can ever be identified. Also worker’s compensation payouts are the worst in the country even though we pay the most into it and have one of the highest cost of living. TexanForever
After working there for 40 years I retired back to west-central rural Texas and haven’t regretted it one moment. I miss the beaches, ocean, “Catalina Eddy,” and the sound of seals barking at night as I go to sleep. But the crazyness brought on by the gang-bangers, the crazy Southbay Curve on the 405, the feel-good looney libs, the overly complex rules, the taxes, and Governor Moonbeam (not once but twice), makes it just not worth it.
Deer now come up into my yard at night to graze on the bermuda grass lawn. People drive down the streets at an unhurried laid-back 20 mph and wave at each other, whether sitting on porches or in pick-ups. … even though they might not know each other. Kids say “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am,” and adults do too, regardless of age differences. It’s a more civil way of life. There are loaded pistols, rifles, and shotguns in every house but there is virtually no crime, and no one ever gets shot. I can go to town and leave all my doors open and unlocked.
Can’t say I don’t miss California, but it’s the old California I miss, not the insane place it has become, thanks entirely to the Marxist liberals. Fembot220
i don’t like California that much. Nor cal is a hard place to live and off the charts when it comes to cost of living. I’m moving to the Midwest where people are conservative and you can rent a house for what you would pay for a crappy closet sized apartment out here. Wayne baumback
Sounds like a little jealousy. Facebook, Apple, twitter, google, tesla, Intel, eBay, craigslist, oracle, and can go on forever are doing so poorly, high taxes and govt regulations. Even mitt Romney campaigned against high taxes and govt regulation, then lost the election and moved to calif. | 0 |
in: Government , Government Corruption , Obama Exposed , Sleuth Journal , Special Interests , Whistle Blowers Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS. We have proven that through emails and documents leaked from WikiLeaks, but liberal media outlets still refuse to cover it. After all, they are still more focused on what Trump said eleven years ago than what Hillary has actually done. Because of brave patriots like Julian Assange, we have been given more evidence that Hillary Clinton is more connected to ISIS than we originally believed. An email was leaked between Clinton and John Podesta indicating that: “Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region” to accuse Qatar and Saudi Arabia of “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [or ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Citing the need to “use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets,” said Hillary to Podesta while arguing the current developments in the Middle East were “important to the U.S. for reasons that often differ from country to country.” Odd that Clinton argues Saudi Arabia and Qatar are helping fund ISIS when Hillary’s largest donations come from those two countries. She Is Funded By Nations That Fund ISIS. Coincidence? In another correspondence from 2012, the Director of Foreign Policy at the Clinton Foundation, Amitabh Desai , set up a meeting with Bill Clinton for five minutes in exchange for a $1,000,000 “birthday check.” The email adds that the small but rich nation occupying the Qatar Peninsula would “welcome [the Clinton Foundation’s] suggestions for investments in Haiti — particularly on education and health.” Desai added that while Qatar had already “allocated most of their $20 million … [they were] happy to consider projects we suggest.” We now see two more examples of the Clinton’s acting corrupt and being intertwined with nations that fund ISIS. For those that do not see where the dots connect, let’s simplify how this all worked for Hillary. Hillary, as Secretary of State, would sell terrorist nations large weapons deals only after they gave her a very generous donation to her “foundation.” These weapons, provided by Hillary and her State Department, then filtered down from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, and so on to create, supply, and bolster terrorist groups. That is exactly how ISIS was created. But instead of blowing them up with an air assault, Hillary and Obama decided to leave ISIS alone. Why? Because ISIS being in the Middle East allows the Obama/Clinton machine to make millions in personal profits from these nations in a repetitive cycle of selling weapons. They are choosing personal gain over eliminating a terrorist group. Let that sink in. Why else have they not arrested Hillary for all of these crimes? The FBI would arrest you in a heartbeat if you went to Facebook right now to praise Allah and ISIS. It also speaks volumes as to why they are trying so hard to silence Julian Assange. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The two most influential social liberals in President Trump’s inner circle — daughter Ivanka and Jared Kushner — helped kill a proposed executive order that would have scrapped L. G. B. T. protections, according to people familiar with the issue. A third, Gary D. Cohn, the chairman of the president’s National Economic Council, a Democrat who was brought to the West Wing by Mr. Kushner and reflects the socially liberal and economically conservative views of many Wall Street power brokers, privately told aides to the president that he was disturbed it was even being considered. The executive order has exposed what is likely to be a persistent schism in Mr. Trump’s paradoxical presidency: He is a cosmopolitan New Yorker who has long operated in an environment where sexual orientation is often an afterthought, but is nonetheless beholden to the social conservatives who backed him overwhelmingly in 2016, despite reports of his crudeness and sexual misdeeds. Mr. Kushner, a lifelong Democrat, and Ms. Trump, an independent, travel in liberal social circles and have long supported L. G. B. T. rights. Neither had seen the order before details were leaked. They expressed their dissatisfaction to Mr. Trump’s other advisers, and then weighed in directly with the president, who opposes marriage but has spoken out against discrimination. On Monday night, reports had swirled that Mr. Trump would sign some version of the rollback as a concession to social conservatives ahead of the president’s announcement of a United States Supreme Court nominee. As a result, White House officials pushed out a statement asserting that Mr. Trump “is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the L. G. B. T. Q. community,” adding that the president “continues to be respectful and supportive of L. G. B. T. Q. rights, just as he was throughout the election. ” The draft order, circulated by religious conservatives allied with Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, was one of about 250 edicts that have been sent to federal agencies for vetting. Mr. Trump never seriously considered signing the order, and did not need much convincing, people close to him said. Still, conservatives inside the Trump camp pressured the president to consider a version of a “religious freedom” measure, similar to one supported by Mr. Pence in 2015 while he was the governor of Indiana, according to two senior administration officials. Mr. Pence, however, did not personally push for the White House order, according to one of his allies. Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump’s opposition to the draft was first reported by Politico. It came on the heels of an announcement by the Nordstrom department store chain that it will scale back on featuring Ms. Trump’s clothing line from its stores, a public blow to a brand she has spent years cultivating. A day after the White House quashed the religious freedom order, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Mr. Trump offered religious conservatives an olive branch by proposing to eliminate a law that bars churches with Internal Revenue Service charity designations from making political endorsements. Some conservative leaders warned Mr. Trump that his decision to retain former President Barack Obama’s order on L. G. B. T. rights could have political implications. “Our base would want to know who is responsible for what we believe is an issue of religious liberty — that would be of concern to us,” said Bob Vander Plaats, the chief executive of The Family Leader, a socially conservative organization. “We have been consistent,” Mr. Vander Plaats added. “We’ve cheered President Trump a lot. But on this one, our base is wondering why Obama’s executive order would be allowed to stand?” Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, backed the draft order and said he believed Mr. Trump’s opposition was only temporary. He pointed out that evangelicals were supportive of Mr. Trump during the campaign, and that there would need to be reconciliation between his support for religious liberty and his decision to uphold the L. G. B. T. order. “He gets it,” Mr. Perkins said of the president. “They will have to fix it and they will. I’m confident they will. Am I concerned? No. Not at this point. ” The topic of the order was a sensitive one in a West Wing that prides itself on decisiveness and bombast. “There are a lot of ideas that are being floated out,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Thursday. “Part of it is, the president does all the time, he asks for input, he asks for ideas. And on a variety of subjects there are staffing procedures that go on where people have a thought or an idea and it goes through the process. ” | 1 |
DHAKA, Bangladesh — More than 3, 000 people, some of them known Islamist militants, have been arrested in a series of police raids intended to quell a wave of deadly machete attacks against bloggers, minorities and others, the police said Saturday. The roundup began last week after militants killed the wife of a police superintendent who had been investigating the machete attacks. Over the course of the week, the police said, they killed five militants in shootouts. They were members of the Jama’atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, one of two groups that the authorities believe are behind most of the attacks, the police said. Many citizens criticized the government for not taking action sooner against the militants, who have created a climate of terror since they began murdering secularist bloggers and others more than three years ago. Since 2013, bloggers, freethinkers, religious minorities, foreigners, gay activists, followers of more liberal strains of Islam and others have been killed in attacks carried out mostly by groups of young men wielding machetes. The government had previously arrested dozens of people involved in at least 40 such attacks, but until this past week had not carried out a nationwide crackdown. People close to the government said leaders were hesitant to clamp down for fear of alienating radical fundamentalists, who form a large voting bloc. “I welcome this special drive. It should have been taken much earlier,” said Shahriar Kabir, the general secretary of the South Asian People’s Union Against Fundamentalism and Communalism. The police believe Mr. Kabir was one of the militants’ top targets, and he leaves his house here only with police protection. But the leading opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, accused the government of using the crackdown as an excuse to round up opponents. “In the name of an antimilitant drive, the government is arresting opposition activists, including B. N. P. and other antigovernment people,” said Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, the party’s senior joint secretary general. A. K. M. Kamrul Ahsan, a Bangladeshi police spokesman, said that the crackdown began Friday at 6 a. m. and that within 24 hours more than 3, 000 suspects had been arrested nationwide. Five members of the Islamist group Jama’atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh were killed in shootouts with the police during the week, including one militant wanted in connection with the killing of a doctor last year and another who was suspected of shooting up a Shiite mosque during evening prayers last year, the police said. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, speaking at a meeting of her Awami League party committee on Saturday, vowed that the killers would be hunted down. Ms. Hasina also suggested that opposition parties had been involved in the killings of the bloggers and others. In addition to local groups, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for some of the killings on social media, and several attacks have been claimed by a faction of Al Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent. | 1 |
President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the United States will not comply with the Paris Climate Change Agreement agreed to by former President Barack Obama in 2015 without the consent of Congress. [Not everyone agrees with the decision, including Democrats, Vladimir Putin and the communist Chinese government. “The Russian Government has said it supports the Paris Agreement on climate change ahead of Donald Trump’s expected announcement that he will withdraw the US from the landmark accord,” the UK Independent reported on Thursday. The Kremlin said the deal, which seeks to limit global warming to as close to a 1. 5 degrees Celsius increase as possible, would be less effective without the participation of major countries, Reuters reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters that “President (Vladimir) Putin signed this convention in Paris. Russia attaches great significance to it. “At the same time, it goes without saying that the effectiveness of this convention is likely to be reduced without its key participants,” Peskov said. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said there was an “international responsibility” for countries to take action over climate change during a trip to Europe for talks with European Union officials. The communist leader also claimed there is a “global consensus” on the need to fight climate change. “In an unprecedented step, the European Union and China are to release a joint statement in a sign of the increasing closeness between Brussels and Beijing — and the widening divide between Brussels and Washington under Mr Trump,” the Independent reported. Meanwhile, Democrats have launched a war of words since the moment Trump made the announcement, including former President Barack Obama. “Even in the absence of American leadership even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got,” Obama said in a statement. In a statement, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse ( ) said the decision “could go down as one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our nation’s history. ” Rep. Bill Foster ( ) told the Mic website it will be devastating for the country and the environment. “If you’re a scientist and you stand up and say something you know is not true, it is a move,” Foster said. “I lost count of the number of objectively false statements the president made … the will have a field day. ” “President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement is a catastrophic mistake that puts the interests of his friends in the fossil fuel industry ahead of the safety and security of American people and the future of our planet,” Sen Al Franken ( ) said. | 1 |
0 |
|
If you’re following the news, you know FBI Director James Comey announced that the FBI found a bunch of emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
As Dilbert Creator Scott Adams notes, there appears to be two main observations:
1. Comey seemed pro-Clinton when he dropped the initial email case.
2. Comey seems anti-Clinton this week because he announced a new round of investigations right before the election.
So, how can both behaviors be explained?
First some background from Adams on ‘The Persuasion Filter’ :
As my regular readers know, the Persuasion Filter is related to the idea that the human brain never evolved to accurately comprehend reality . In order for us to be here today, our predecessors only needed to survive and procreate. They had no need to understand reality at any basic level. And we have no such need either. That’s why you might believe you are reincarnated from a monk and I might believe my prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse but we can both get through the day just fine. Many different interpretations of reality are good enough for survival. I like to describe reality as each person living their own movie, which works well unless our script’s conflict. When that happens, one of us goes into cognitive dissonance and rewrites our past to make the movies consistent.
That’s how I see the world.
Last year in this blog I suggested that the most productive and predictive way to view reality is through what I call the Persuasion Filter. That’s what I have been using to make spooky-good predictions about the election so far. And that’s what I’ll use today to give you an alternate movie about James Comey. Compare it to the movie you are running in your head and see which one better predicts the future.
The base assumption of the Persuasion Filter is that people are irrational 90% of the time and only rarely – when no emotions are involved – truly rational. This is the reverse of the common filter for reality, in which people are assumed to be rational 90% of the time and a bit crazy 10% of the time. That’s some background for context.
Read more here…
So, back to Comey, Adams asks – which movie does the best job of explaining our observations and also predicting the future?
Some say Comey is a political pawn in a rigged system. By that movie script we can explain why he dropped the initial email case. But we can’t explain why he’s acting against Clinton’s interests now. What changed?
Well, some say Comey had to reopen the case against Clinton after discovering the Weiner laptop emails. If he failed to act, there might be a revolt at the FBI and maybe a whistleblower would come forward . But that leaves unexplained why Comey detailed to Congress how Clinton appeared to be guilty of crimes at the same time he said the FBI was dropping the case. If Comey had been protecting Clinton on the first round, he would have softened his description of her misdeeds, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t seem to hold back anything.
And none of those hypotheses explain why the people who know Comey have high regard for his integrity. Comey also has the security of a 10-year appointment as Director, so he has a low chance of getting fired or politically influenced. That’s exactly why the job has a 10-year term. Given what we know of Comey before any of the Clinton emails, any movie that casts Comey as an ass-covering weasel is probably making a casting mistake.
So allow me to offer an interpretation of events that casts Comey as more of a patriot and hero than an ass-covering weasel. Compare my interpretation with whatever movie you have in your head and see which one works best for explaining and predicting.
My movie says Comey had good evidence against Clinton during the initial investigation but made a judgement call to leave the decision to the American public . For reasons of conscience, and acting as a patriot, Comey explained in clear language to the public exactly what evidence the FBI found against Clinton. The evidence looked damning because it was. Under this interpretation, Comey took a bullet to his reputation for the sake of the Republic. He didn’t want the FBI to steal this important decision away from the people, but at the same time he couldn’t let the people decide blind. So he divulged the evidence and stepped away, like the action hero who doesn’t look back at the explosion.
In the second act of this movie, Comey learns that the Weiner laptop had emails that were so damning it would be a crime against the public to allow them to vote without first seeing a big red flag. And a flag was the best he could do because it was too early in the investigation to leak out bits and pieces of the evidence. That would violate Clinton’s rights.
But Comey couldn’t easily raise a red flag to warn the public because it was against FBI policy to announce a criminal investigation about a candidate so close to election day. So Comey had a choice of either taking another bullet for the Republic or screwing the very country that he has spent his career protecting.
In this movie, Comey did the hero thing. He alerted the public to the fact that the FBI found DISQUALIFYING information on the Weiner laptop. And he took a second bullet to his reputation.
How do I know the new emails are that bad?
I start by assuming Comey is the same man now as the one who was carefully vetted before being hired to protect the integrity of one of our most important institutions. And even Comey’s critics concede he’s smart.
So…
The way you know the new emails are disqualifying for Clinton is because otherwise our hero would have privately informed Congress and honored the tradition of not influencing elections. Comey is smart enough to know his options. And unless he suddenly turned rotten at his current age, he’s got the character to jump in front of a second bullet for the Republic.
According to this movie, no matter who gets elected, we’ll eventually learn of something disqualifying in the Weiner emails.
And we can’t say we weren’t warned. Comey took two bullets to do it.
So compare this movie to your own movie and see which one does the best job of explaining the observed facts. And when we find out what is in the Weiner laptop emails, compare that news to my prediction that the information is disqualifying.
The Persuasion Filter says there is no preferred reality. We all see our own movies. In my movie, Comey’s has a consistent personality from start to finish. He starts out his career as a smart, competent patriot and he later proves it by taking two bullets for the Republic. If your movie script has Comey suddenly changing his basic character for this election season, don’t expect an Oscar.
Read more here…
Of course if you’re a Democrat, this is all irrelevant and Comey is “A Putin puppet” (Howard Dean), “a federal law-breaker who should never have been appointed” (Harry Reid), and “a partisan, prejudiced individual” (Eric Holder)…
NEW: Former Attorney General Holder, dozens of other former DOJ officials pen letter criticizing FBI director Comey. https://t.co/aXmWvAiFMg pic.twitter.com/FskFeDpoyE
— ABC News (@ABC) October 31, 2016
You decide which makes more sense – Scott Adams’ “movie” or the real partisan hacks above? Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).
Contributed by Zero Hedge of www.zerohedge.com . | 0 |
As liberals react in horror over Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to ask for the resignation of 46 U. S. Attorneys, an inconvenient fact has also surfaced. Jeff Sessions himself was fired by a newly elected president in 1993 when Bill Clinton won his first term in office. [The Department of Justice announced on Friday that U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked for the resignation of 46 U. S. Attorneys who were appointed during President Barack Obama’s regime. The Attorney General’s actions are not uncommon. Many past presidents and their AGs have asked for the resignations of U. S. attorneys they were tasked with overseeing. In 2006 George W. Bush was attacked by liberals for firing seven U. S. attorneys. He was hardly the first. Both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan fired a list of attorneys when they came to office. President Obama also cleaned house but at a slower pace, replacing many of the 94 U. S. attorneys one at a time instead of starting with a mass firing. Despite the long list of past presidents who also fired U. S. attorneys, as they are legally allowed to do, CNN criticized the firing, reporting an unnamed source saying, “This could not have been handled any worse. ” Upon the announcement, liberals took to Twitter to complain about the Attorney General’s actions. One liberal even tried to blame Sean Hannity for the AG’s actions. Firing of 46 US Attorneys by Sessions occurred day after Sean Hannity called for ”purge” of Obama appointees https: . pic. twitter. — Ari Berman (@AriBerman) March 10, 2017, But along with all the complaints, others noted that Sessions himself faced the exact same situation when President Bill Clinton entered the White House. After being appointed the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama by President Ronald Reagan and serving through President George H. W. Bush, Sessions was also fired by an incoming president in 1993. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
Another Warning Durable Goods Orders By Lee Adler. Posted On Friday, November 25th, 2016 The Durable Goods Orders report is another data series sending a stark warning to investors. That warning not apparent in the headline numbers or mainstream media reports. This post will show you the real data and the danger it portrays. That will enable you to preserve your capital in the massive stock market adjustment that’s just over the horizon. We can’t see it yet, but it’s there. You need to login to view this content.
David Stockman’s Contra Corner isn’t your typical financial tipsheet. Instead it’s an ongoing dialogue about what’s really happening in the markets… the economy… and governments… so you can understand the world around you and make better decisions for yourself.
David believes the world -- certainly the United States -- is at a great inflection point in human history. The massive credit inflation of the last three decades has reached its apogee and is now going to splatter spectacularly.
This will have lasting ramifications on how governments tax and regulate you… the type of work you and your family members will have available and what you get paid… the value of your nest egg… and all other areas comprising your quality of life. Login
David Stockman's Contra Corner is the only place where mainstream delusions and cant about the Warfare State, the Bailout State, Bubble Finance and Beltway Banditry are ripped, refuted and rebuked. Subscribe now to receive David Stockman’s latest posts by email each day as well as his model portfolio, Lee Adler’s Daily Data Dive and David’s personally curated insights and analysis from leading contrarian thinkers. | 0 |
“People Power” Versus Manipulation of the Masses “People Power” Versus Manipulation of the Masses November 7, 2016, 9:37 am by Cliff Kincaid Leave a Comment 0
By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media
On November 8, the election will come down to Donald J. Trump’s “people power,” a largely spontaneous uprising of the “silent majority,” against Hillary Clinton’s scientific manipulation of the electorate, using personal data to identify and provoke people to go to the polls. In this effort, Mrs. Clinton has the support of the giant company Google and the president of its parent company, Eric Schmidt. Experts say the effort resembles how the Communist Chinese dictatorship monitors people and modifies their behavior through media manipulation and censorship of the Web.
As Trump suggests, the election process seems “rigged,” and the evidence has come in the form of another John Podesta email.
One of the internal Clinton campaign emails disclosed by WikiLeaks shows that Schmidt, chairman of the Google parent company, offered a detailed campaign plan for the Clinton campaign. The April 15, 2014, message, addressed to Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, said, “I have put together my thoughts on the campaign ideas and I have scheduled some meetings in the next few weeks for veterans of the campaign to tell me how to make these ideas better.” The details included “Size, Structure and Timing” and a campaign budget of $1.5 billion, with more than “5000 paid employees and million(s) of volunteers.” The Schmidt email was sent along to several key Clinton people, including campaign chairman John Podesta.
The plan examines how information is received and reviewed by voters, and what provokes them. Indeed, in a section titled “The Voter,” Schmidt says, “Key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them. In 2016 smart phones will be used to identify, meet, and update profiles on the voter.” Schmidt goes on to say, “For each voter, a score is computed ranking probability of the right vote. Analytics can model demographics, social factors and many other attributes of the needed voters.”
Patrick Wood, editor of Technocracy News, comments that Schmidt’s scoring idea “is just like China’s social scoring of citizens to see who is for them and who is against them.”
On one level, this means that search engine results are manipulated. In his evaluation of the Schmidt email, Michael Cantrell comments , “For some time now, people have wondered if Google, the world’s largest search engine, might be a tad bit slanted when it comes to politics, favoring left-wing candidates over conservatives in how search results are displayed. Well, it seems those suspicions may not be so far-fetched after all.”
Earlier this year, in a column carried by Accuracy in Media, Seton Motley documented how Google was designing its search engine to maneuver people away from the issue of Hillary Clinton’s health problems.
It’s a fact of life that in this era of access to many different sources of information, some people go to the Google search engine and rely on the first item that pops up. That’s how I got banned (temporarily) from the campus of the State University of New York at New Paltz. A feminist professor used Google to search my name and passed around derogatory information from the first source on the search engine page—the Southern Poverty Law Center. She then passed around the information, creating a stink that caused the campus administration to cancel the debate I was scheduled to participate in.
A new book, Islamic Jihad, Cultural Marxism and the Transformation of the West , examines the role of Google as a new media “gatekeeper” that determines how people see the reality of the world. The author, William Mayer of PipeLineNews.org , examines how Google produces search engine results on the subject of Islamic terrorism that play down criminal activities of leading Jihadists. Mayer says the results can be confusing unless the search terms are assembled with scrupulous precision, “a difficult task when one isn’t exactly sure in advance the extent of the associations being pursued.”
In his excellent book, Mayer documents in detail the “leftist/Obama/Media merger” that played a significant role in Obama’s 2012 victory and figures prominently in Hillary Clinton’s plan for victory on Tuesday.
Mayer comments, “…if we think of the Internet as the largest depository of information ever to be created, it assumes in many sense the role of the book of common wisdom. When the universal storehouse of information obfuscates and hides knowledge it becomes censorious, preventing or at least stifling access to non-ideologically approved ideas and information.”
When Barack Obama campaigns against Trump by citing the KKK, you can rest assured this has been determined by analysts in the Hillary campaign to be at least somewhat effective in scaring blacks. Getting blacks to vote against Trump is a part of what they hope will be their winning strategy. Similarly, when Hillary Clinton campaigns with a profane rapper named Jay Z, the calculation has been made by some brain in the campaign structure that using such a spectacle will inspire other blacks to turn out for the former secretary of state on Election Day. Hillary hopes that the rapper’s popularity will somehow rub off on her.
These two campaign events are more evidence of how truly “scientific” the progressive movement has become. People are perceived by the Clinton campaign as subjects to be manipulated.
Even with the use of these scientific techniques, victory is not assured for the “progressive” forces. That is why reports of vote fraud are mounting as Obama sounds the alarm about the KKK. For Trump to win, the “silent majority” will have to be a real majority with millions of votes to spare, surpassing the artificially created “progressive” bloc bolstered by fraudulent votes and created by an emerging technocratic dictatorship of access to information.
The “media monopoly” that the left used to rail against is now controlled by them. Cliff Kincaid
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View Cliff Kincaid . 0 | 0 |
On Monday’s Breitbart News Daily, Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, discussed the weekend’s law marches with SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam. [“It’s great to see Americans are waking up,” Geller said. “Sharia is the most brutal and extreme system of governance ideology on the face of the Earth. It is misogynistic. It is . It is . It is . It is speech. ” She said “amputations, stonings, and sex slavery” could be found in Muslim countries living under sharia law. “It is, as Sam Harris said, the motherlode of bad ideas,” she said. “And, of course, it’s been slow in educating the American people because you have this enormous machine, this machine that controls much of the information battlespace — if it’s media or culture, movies, entertainment, and even in the coverage of these marches, it was enormously and wildly slanted, which, of course, we’re used to. ” “But the American people are waking up. Clearly, they’re waking up in Europe as well, although, of course, I was disappointed, unquestionably, in the U. K. elections because I just think Labor and Corbyn are so to the left of bad,” said Geller. “Again, it’s a fight,” she stressed. “War is in the information battlespace. It’s sort of David vs. Goliath, but we know how that wound up. There’s hope. ” Kassam pointed out that the U. K. government was quick to block people like Geller, Robert Spencer, and Michael Savage from entering the country because their speech was classified as unacceptably divisive, while 23, 000 jihadis were greeted with, “Sure. Whatever. Don’t worry about it. ” “Oh, I completely agree. The fact is, you’re not going to have me advocate for May. She did ban me and said Muslims might get violent if I was to appear,” Geller said, referring to actions British Prime Minister Theresa May took as home secretary. “Well, you know, how did that work out for you, PM May?” “But Corbyn is, you know, it’s an abomination,” she added, as Kassam interjected to highlight Corbyn’s past support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRA. “It’s really shocking that these were your two choices. France was an enormous disappointment as well. ” She zinged Muslim activist Linda Sarsour, whom she described as “the icon of the left” for “running down the marches and praising sharia the whole day, the whole of the weekend. ” “This is who the left holds up as their leader? This is who feminists hold up as leader of the Women’s March?” she asked. Geller and Kassam ribbed Sarsour for affecting speech patterns that make it sound as if she is an authentic voice of the Arab world or Palestinian territories, when, in fact, she was born in Brooklyn. “That’s her schtick,” said Geller. “But she is the product of an arranged marriage. She never speaks against it. She advocates for this sharia. She supports it. Many of the things she said about really brave women — you know, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is truly a singular, brave woman. For her to run her down that way, this to me shows that the left is off the rails. ” “Of course, there are going to be women like Linda Sarsour. There are going to be women that hold down their children to be cut in female genital mutilation. But for her to be held up and asked to keynote the CUNY commencement address and speak at Dartmouth while my colleagues and I are blacklisted!” she exclaimed. “This is really the blacklist, not McCarthyism, because everybody worked. They still worked. They changed their names a little bit, they tweaked it, but they still worked. This is the real blacklist, and the objective is so that the message does not get out. And it’s worked, which is why we see people waking up across the world, not just America. Very encouraging,” Geller said. Kassam wondered if the left was in danger of “disappearing up its own backside” by holding up people like Linda Sarsour and Jeremy Corbyn as leaders. “They want war,” Geller said. “There’s no question about it. Listen, we held a massive protest against Linda Sarsour, and then you have their puppets, so to speak, in politics like Mayor de Blasio for example, who, generally, when there’s a it’s always — listen, I’ve been doing this 15 years — it’s always across the street or it’s catercorner. He put them not three feet away from us, and they were violent, abuse, — a small group, but very, very dangerous. Afterwards, they attempt to incite to violence, to fisticuffs. We saw this even yesterday after the rallies, you had the left — and it’s always portrayed in the media as if the violence is on our end. It never is. ” Kassam noted the same media narrative is employed when Palestinians are portrayed as having been shot by Israeli soldiers for no particular reason or in the case of demonstrations against the Manchester atrocity, assaulted by but reported by the BBC as “Violence Breaks Out at Rally. ” “The BBC cut out the references to Allah in that attack on the nursery school employee, where she was attacked by this Muslim mob that was screaming, ‘Allah,’” Geller pointed out. “The BBC is the enemy. If anybody thinks this is merely a left vs. right — this is some kind of a passive war — Rip Van Winkle, you better wake up. ” “This is real war, and I believe the left is evil,” she said. “They use ridicule, the Saul Alinsky tactics, the whole arsenal of weapons. You saw them destroy the Tea Party. You saw them destroy the EDL, okay? This is what they do, through ridicule, through smear, through defamation. But I think people are shrugging and saying, ‘Listen, I’m not having it. My children are not safe. My community is not safe. My kids can’t walk to school. ’” “It’s literally a matter of life or death. It’s not politics. It’s life or death,” Geller stressed. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — mayors and housing experts are nervous about the idea of a billionaire real estate developer in the White House. Now Donald J. Trump has picked Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon with no housing experience, as his nominee for secretary of Housing and Urban Development — and high anxiety has set in. As The Times’s bureau chief, I have spent a lot of time in Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, which are all run by Democrats. In those cities, and many others across the country, housing concerns are deeply intertwined with other issues, including racial tensions with the police. To explore how a housing agenda might play out, I reached out to two Philadelphia mayors — Jim Kenney, the incumbent, and Michael Nutter, his predecessor — and two housing experts, one in Philadelphia and one here in Washington. Here are some of their thoughts: Broadly speaking, HUD devotes itself to ensuring that families of and modest means have access to safe homes and neighborhoods. It runs the Federal Housing Administration, which helps people get home loans. It distributes money through the Community Development Block Grant program, a flexible source of funding used by cities for redevelopment and for rebuilding communities after natural disasters like floods and hurricanes. HUD runs the Section 8 housing choice voucher program, which cities rely on to help house the poor. And it enforces the Fair Housing Act, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which makes housing discrimination illegal. Even in a time of economic expansion, dealing with poverty will be the biggest challenge the next HUD secretary faces, conservative and liberal housing experts agree. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization, cited housing assistance programs as among those “ripe for reform’’ under Mr. Trump. Since 2000, the number of neighborhoods in America has doubled, rising faster in the suburbs, like Ferguson, Mo. than in cities, said Amy Liu, the director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There’s a lot of anxiety now, because this election was about the heartland versus the coastal elites we’re going to need a HUD secretary who governs both,” Ms. Liu said. “When I think about what HUD is going to have to deal with next, it’s going to be the future of neighborhoods, and how to deal with that not only in Baltimore but also Ferguson. ” Mr. Carson grew up poor in Detroit and became a celebrated neurosurgeon by the time he was in his 30s — a path that he attributes to his philosophy. His admirers praise his success story. But his critics say a career in medicine is not the right training for someone running a vast federal housing bureaucracy. “He has a powerful personal story that could connect him to a lot of families that rely on HUD assistance,” Ms. Liu said. “He just needs to use that personal story to listen and empathize — and really learn about the latest innovations in the field. ’’ Most HUD secretaries have had government experience. George Romney, who served under Richard M. Nixon, was a governor. Jack Kemp, who served under George Bush, was a congressman. Henry Cisneros, who served under Bill Clinton, was a mayor so was Julian Castro, the current secretary. Ira Goldstein, who worked at HUD under the first President Bush and Mr. Clinton, admired Mr. Kemp. “He had a way of relating to people at every economic level he could walk into housing developments and be perceived as an ally,” said Mr. Goldstein, who now supervises research at Reinvestment Fund, a nonprofit devoted to redevelopment in Philadelphia and Baltimore. But Mr. Kemp, a conservative, also had the “business discipline,” Mr. Goldstein said, to run HUD programs “with a businesslike tenor. ” Mr. Nutter, who now teaches urban affairs at Columbia University and is a commentator for CNN, says he does not know if Mr. Carson has what it takes. “As brilliant as folks have said that Dr. Carson is from a neurosurgery standpoint, creating fair housing, promoting economic development and having people living in prospering communities is a little different than operating on somebody’s brain,” Mr. Nutter said. “I do not know how that translates into being HUD secretary. ’’ Mr. Trump got rich building luxury properties most mayors are concerned with housing the poor. In the 1970s, before Mr. Trump got into the luxury business, the federal government sued his family’s company, accusing it of routinely refusing to rent to — the very discrimination that HUD, through the Fair Housing Act, seeks to prevent. (Mr. Trump’s firm settled without admitting wrongdoing.) Under President Obama, HUD expanded its civil rights reach with the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, which says that cities must not only respond to bias, but also take steps to prevent it. Philadelphia “was proud to become the first city” to adopt the rule, said Mayor Kenney, whose administration has just submitted an extensive plan to put the rule into effect. Some conservatives see that rule as federal intrusion into local sovereignty — the mayor of Castle Rock, Colo. population 55, 000, has refused to accept HUD funding to avoid having to comply — and Mr. Trump is likely to roll it back. Mr. Kenney, in a carefully worded statement, make clear that he would push back against any changes. “We will continue with our efforts to overcome patterns of segregation, promote fair housing choice and foster inclusive communities,” the statement said. Mr. Goldstein, who was the director of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity when he was at HUD, worries about something else: If Congress complied, Mr. Trump could use federal budget policy to deprive the agency of funds to enforce laws. “You’ve got to say that, given the tenor of the rhetoric, that would be a part of HUD that would not be favored in the new administration,” Mr. Goldstein said. Words matter in politics and policy, and both Mr. Trump and Mr. Carson have made comments that make mayors and housing experts uneasy. Mr. Carson once told a television interviewer that he had risen above his circumstances by realizing that “poverty is really more of a choice than anything else,” by which he apparently meant that people escape poverty through hard work. That comment, spotlighted in a video on the Salon website, has dogged the neurosurgeon. So has an opinion piece he wrote in which he described fair housing policy as “social engineering. ” This plays into Mr. Trump’s sweeping declarations about black people living in “inner cities” rife with crime. “I give Trump credit for talking explicitly about the importance of the inner city,” Ms. Liu said, “but we need to make sure that the policies really do address what is needed there. What we don’t need is just tactics. ” Mr. Nutter, who is is far more pointed he calls Mr. Trump’s characterizations of cities “a general insult. ” Philadelphia built hundreds of affordable housing units using flexible Community Development Block Grant funds while Mr. Nutter was mayor. Most of the money, he said, was spent in communities. “I’m proud that I had seven years with President Barack Obama, who actually knew about community development because he was a community organizer,” Mr. Nutter said. “To the Philadelphia city government: Good luck dealing with the Trump administration. ” | 1 |
I went on my first Easter egg hunt a couple of years ago, hand in hand with my then son, Max. I’ve got 44 years on him, but it was a first for both of us. In Jerusalem, where I grew up, the world of the Easter bunny, hot cross buns, roast lamb and simnel cake just did not exist for me. If someone had described an Easter egg hunt to me — “kids rush around collecting chocolate eggs that have been hidden by a rabbit” — I would have thought it strange. The concept of Easter was something distant, miles away from our own tradition of Pesach, or Passover. Without a doubt, though, our Seder in Israel would have seemed equally strange to the children tucking into their Easter lunch in Britain, where I live now. Why is a story — the Haggadah — told, and what does it mean? Why is the dining plate compartmentalized? What does one even do with lettuce leaves and radishes dipped in salty water? Most important, where’s the chocolate? The traditions of Easter and Passover seemed worlds apart to me until that moment with Max. We had been invited by friends to have lunch on Easter Sunday. At the end of the meal came the unqualified highlight: the big hunt for the little coveted eggs. My moment of connection came as I was delving around in the compost heap at the end of the garden. As I uncovered a gold egg with Max, my own childhood memories of finding the afikoman — hidden earlier in the evening, inevitably, behind the sofa — came flooding back. Back then we were hunting for half a matzo, but the thrill was the same and there it was. At both Easter and Passover, the meal is more than just food. It is the bridge between generations and the signifier of a story. At Easter, the simnel cake is decorated with 11 balls of marzipan to represent all the apostles minus Judas. The lamb represents Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, and Christ’s sacrifice of his own life. At Passover, flat matzo, rather than regular leavened bread, recalls how the Jews were forced to leave Egypt in such a hurry that there was no time to wait for their bread to rise. Bitter herbs stand for suffering. My own favorite as a child was my Italian grandmother’s haroseth. Hers was made of dates with a little bit of orange, dusted with cinnamon and dotted all over with long pine nuts, which made it look like a hedgehog. Tucking into a slice of simnel cake at that Easter lunch — as rich and dense with dried fruit and nuts as my grandmother’s hedgehog haroseth — was a powerful madeleine moment. Whichever traditions we might be putting into practice over Easter weekend, or the eight days of Passover, they’ll be serving two purposes. On the one hand, they are symbolic, providing a platform for all of us to connect with a shared story. On the other hand, these same traditions allow us to connect personally with the history we are making within our own family and circle of friends, last year and the year before that and the year before that, when the kids were very young. We haven’t yet done a proper Seder meal for our children in London. though the celebration is, I know our boys would be in deep slumber well before any haroseth is spread over a piece of matzo. When we do, though, we will be seating the Easter bunny alongside the hedgehog. Such is my story and the story of my family: In order to live on, traditions need to be braided together to become something new. I offer two recipes to those baking, then, that are very different from each other. The casatiello is an Easter bread steeped in Neapolitan tradition. My grandmother may have been Italian, but she certainly wouldn’t have been baking with flour for her Seder meal, nor serving pork products (at any time of the year). Casatiello is made the day after the big Easter feast in Italy, when there is leftover meat and cheese. Heading out for an Easter Monday picnic is also something of a ritual in Naples, so again, this bread makes sense: All of the fillings, baked as they are into the dough, are safely tucked in and won’t fall out. Intended more for the Passover table, then, is the walnut cake. The necessity for unleavened cakes is the mother of great invention in so many of my favorite cakes, ground nuts replace the typical flour. The tendency of these nuts to dry out then calls for a drenching with a floral or citrus sugar syrup or, as here, a nutty liqueur like amaretto. The resulting cake is moist enough for the icing to be omitted (or replaced with a substitute) for those wanting to serve the cake after the Seder meal. One of the great joys of baking is that the result always gets shared. That sharing is the essence of any celebration: coming together to honor traditions and, quite possibly, give rise to new ones. Recipes: Neapolitan Easter Bread (Casatiello) | Walnut Cake Follow NYT Food on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. | 1 |
in: Multimedia , US News (image credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty) ( The Real Agenda News ) More details have emerged about the never ending levels of corruption among the DNC, the Obama White House and the Hillary Clinton campaign, as a result of James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas’ investigation. Corrupt practices go from promoting seemingly harmless campaigns to have people dressed as ducks at Trump rallies to collusion between the Clinton campaign, the DNC and the non-profit organization Americans United for Change. In the third video put out by Project Veritas, Hillary’s cohorts confess how they managed to coordinate with her campaign and the DNC to set up what can be described at the very least as provocative moves to get the Trump campaign in trouble and to have the corrupt mainstream media cover the events while blaming Trump for violent outbursts outside his rallies. As we learned from the previous two videos, it was the Clinton campaign itself the one using agent provocateurs to cause violence outside Trump rallies as these agents disguised themselves as Bernie Sanders’ followers. In his second video, James O’Keefe showed how the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign, hire operatives to successfully carry out commit voter fraud on a massive scale. Scott Foval, who has since been fired, admits that the Democrats have been rigging elections for fifty years. In his first video, Rigging the Election – Video I: Clinton Campaign and DNC Incite Violence at Trump Rallies, O’Keefe showed how second and third parties associated with the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, were responsible for violence and attacks on Trump supporters all over the country. As we said before, the veil of corruption that surrounds the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party continues to fall and people can easily see what is behind their fake progressive and fake liberal masks. Submit your review | 0 |
Voters just approved a ban on genetically modified crops and organisms in Sonoma County.
The ban passed by a margin of nearly 12%. The future and sustainability of Sonoma County agriculture was also at hand during the contest race between organic farmer Linda Hopkins and former state Senator Noreen Evans for the District Five Board of Supervisors seat.
With the financial support of many people in the farming and wine industry, won with 54.1% of the vote, a margin of about 2,500 votes.
Hopkins will be the first woman to represent the Fifth District on the Board of Supervisors. The board will be majority-female for the first time in history.
Hopkins will gain the seat and replace Efren Carrillo.
Sonoma County is the sixth California county to ban GMOs, joining Santa Cruz, Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, and Marin.
This is a big win for anti-GMO advocates because Sonoma County connects Marin County to Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity. This means that the ban creates a 13,734-square foot zone where genetically engineered plants cannot be grown. This is the largest such area in the United States.
This is a major victory for a movement that has seen mixed results in local and nation-wide efforts to ban GMO crops in other states. Several counties in Hawaii have passed GMO bans that have been overturned by federal judges. There have been many examples of this happening throughout the United States. In 20114, a ban in Josephine County, Oregon was found invalid because it conflicted with state law. Yet a ban in Jackson County, Oregon remains in force because Jackson was exempted from the aforementioned state law.
According to Hudson, farmers who are now growing GMOs will be able to continue growing for the current season as a grace period until the ban begins. If a farm already purchased seed for the following year, he or she will be allowed to plant that year as well.
Yet Tuesday night did not bring victory for all measures. In Healdsburg, Measure T, a ballot measure to eliminate water fluoridation, secured only 41% of the vote.
This was the second time in two years that the people of Healdsburg were rejected a fluoride ban.
While the water in Healdsburg is fluoridated, the rest of Sonoma County’s water is not.
As people become increasingly aware about the health risks of eating GMO food, more and more counties are fighting to ban GMO cultivation on their farmland. GMO plants are known to cross-pollinate with non-GMO plants, putting farmers at risk of losing crop and money. This ban is a step in the right direction for the protection of farmers and consumers alike.
| 0 |
Progressive Nomad: Bernie Sanders Pens CRUCIAL Letter To The President (IMAGES) By Stephanie Kuklish on October 29, 2016 Subscribe
On the heels of Thursday’s brutal attack on Native Americans peacefully protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline by local and state police officers, Senator Bernie Sanders has written an open letter to President Obama asking for him to stand up against this atrocity.
In a message posted on Sander’s official U.S. Senate website, he asked for President Obama to halt construction of the pipeline until cultural and environmental reviews were done by trusted sources. Sanders wrote : “It is deeply distressing to me that the federal government is putting the profits of the oil industry ahead of the treaty and sovereign rights of Native American communities. Mr. President, you took a bold and principled stand against the Keystone pipeline – I ask you to take a similar stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline. To my mind, the [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] should have never approved this project on an expedited process in the first place.”
Sanders continued the letter by urging the President to send non-partial monitors to the camp in order to ensure that the water protector’s civil rights were being protected. He then reminded President Obama just how dangerous this pipeline, and others like it, can be for the environment. Sanders stated : “According to one report, burning the oil transported through the pipeline would produce carbon emissions equivalent to 21 million cars or 30 coal plants. If we have any hope of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change, we should not be building new oil pipelines that lock us into burning fossil fuels for generations to come.”
It has been incredibly difficult to get media coverage on this event, and even when there is; everyone seems to turn a blind eye to what is going on in North Dakota. Police are once again lying about the protestors and taking very violent and forceful tactics against them, even though they are not armed and are showing little to no signs of violent actions.
At some point this has got to end and either the President can make a stand or he may be addressing the nation apologizing for wasteful human deaths at the hands of our own police force. | 0 |
Tuesday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh reacted to the resignation of Mike Flynn as National Security Adviser. According to Limbaugh, questions need to be asked going back to the previous administration and how the leak about Flynn’s interaction with Russia’s ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. Limbaugh criticized the media and noted Democrats are often allowed to skate on similar indiscretions without consequences. Transcript as follows (courtesy of RushLimbaugh. com): Everybody just calm down, just calm down. All of this was predicted to you, every bit of this was predicted to you. I mean the media behavior. To show you just how lame the media is and how little they’ve got, they’re already asking what did Trump know and when did he know it, and that’s not the question. The question is, what did Barack Obama know and when did he know it and what has he engineered here? This all happened with Flynn back in December. Trump had not even been inaugurated yet. And it’s still mysterious to me what really happened. Even if, even if Flynn, as the incoming national security director, had called the Russian ambassador to talk, so what? That’s not hard to imagine. That’s not a big deal. It really isn’t a big deal. Now, if he lied to Mike Pence and said, “No, no, no, I didn’t talk to the guy. I didn’t talk to the guy about sanctions. I didn’t talk about maybe lifting the sanctions. No, no, no, I didn’t. ” And if he did do that, if he lied to Pence, then, okay, there’s a reason for Flynn to be in trouble and maybe to resign, get out of the way. But for the media to say what did Trump know and when did he know it? Get a grip here, folks. I realize that a lot of people do not pay a whole lot of attention to this, which is good, but for those of you who are, I can imagine the impact on you, and you’re asking, “Well, when’s he gonna stop? I mean, how much more of this can anybody take? How much more of this kind of assault and attacking nature can any administration handle. And then the other question, how long can the Republicans in Congress handle it. How long are they gonna stay bucked up and about it, and time will tell on that. I’m gonna tell you, Trump’s not stopping. There will be more ICE raids this afternoon to make people forget about this. The media’s gonna try as hard as they can not to let go of this, because now they’ve got their scalp. They think they have blood in the water, they’ve got a scalp and they think they can get another and then another and then another and then another until finally they get Trump. They have become the resistance to Trump and they have decided that that’s going to be their modus operandi for the next four years. They’re not gonna do news. They have now mobilized and made it official, they’re even talking about it, some of them are, on cable networks that — I mean, they disguise the words they use, but the impact is clear that they are going to do everything they can to get Trump out of Washington and out of the White House and out of office. So what we have here, we have a political assassination that’s taken place here, a political assassination, Mike Flynn, who, do you know he worked for Obama four different times? You didn’t know that? Let me find the details. In September 2011, Mike Flynn was promoted to lieutenant general assigned to the office of the Director of National Intelligence by Barack Obama. On April 17th, 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Michael Flynn to be the 18th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The defense department has its own intel operation and he ran it, as opposed to the Central Intelligence Agency. It’s called the DIA, and it’s big, and it’s relevant, and it’s important, and it does great work, and Flynn ran it after having been promoted to lead it by Obama in 2012. He took command of the DIA in July of 2012. He is a member of the Democrat Party, according to Wikipedia. Michael Flynn is a member of the Democrat Party. Aside from all of this, he has a reputation as a great man. He’s also a hawk. And that’s something the left just can’t abide. Hawks like Michael Flynn, they may as well be Dr. Strangelove. They want to run around, they want to start nuclear war, they want to destroy the planet, they’re deranged, they’re unhinged, they love blood and guts, and they love the sound of gunfire and napalm in the morning, and they just love it, and this is totally unacceptable. So we have a resignation over a phone call, a freaking phone call. The Democrats don’t resign when they’re caught with their hand in the till or in bed with an intern or whatever else transgression the Democrats engage in. There are no resignations and there are no demands for resignations. And if you want to compare the Trump administration to the Obama administration, you just need to ask yourself one question: Why did you vote for Trump? Eight years of the Obama administration, it may not have appeared to be chaotic and it may not have appeared to be amateur hour and it may not have appeared to be out of control, but it was in terms of its agenda. The Obama administration was trying to dismantle the United States of America. That’s why everybody voted for Trump! And the people that supported Obama and were trying to dismantle the United States of America are still out trying to do it and now doing so via taking aim at Trump and his administration. Flynn I guess didn’t want to be a distraction, especially given how worked up the are. ‘Cause the are seeing a Russian under every bed. The are seeing a Russian at every computer keyboard. You know, they walk in their own offices, see a keyboard, they see a computer, and they think the Russians are there. Now, the media is saying that Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador back in December could have left him open to blackmail. Are we serious about this? Flynn was open to blackmail? Who was it that the wanted to see as president in? That would be Hillary Rodham Clinton, who could have been blackmailed six ways from Sunday by the Russians and who the heck else we know. We don’t know who has those 34, 000 emails that she deleted. We don’t know who has Tom Brady’s jersey. (laughing) We’re trying to find both. We don’t know what top national security secrets were revealed in those 34, 000 emails. This is a woman whose home brew server was hacked by world powers, the ChiComs, the Russians. This is a woman who, with her famous Russian reset, embarrassed the United States of America. Blackmail? Here’s Hillary Clinton who had collected campaign contributions supposed in advance that were nothing more than advance payments for policy considerations. She was selling access to the Oval Office via the Clinton administration. You want to talk about blackmail? You are vworried about blackmail and Michael Flynn and Donald Trump when you were going to have Hillary Clinton in the White House if you had your way? But if you watched yesterday’s press conference, if you read about the fallout from it this morning, the now smell blood, and they’re mad they weren’t able to ask Trump the Flynn question yesterday ’cause Trump is calling on conservative media now in these press conferences, and it’s really ripping the a new one. They just can’t abide it. But, folks, I really … I don’t want to sound like I’m delivering admonitions or warnings. Just a reassuring sense here that all of this was predicted. It was going to happen, just like the protests that magically and immediately sprang up after Trump announced his executive order. This is who the left is. This is what you voted against. This is what you wanted no more of, this behavior. Not by Trump, not by Flynn. What you voted against — the reason you voted for Trump — is exactly what you’re seeing day to day now from the left and from the Democrat Party and from the media. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
Yemeni army forces and allied fighters from Popular Committees have reportedly launched a locally designed and manufactured ballistic missile towards an area deep inside Saudi Arabia in response to the Riyadh regime’s atrocious aerial bombardments against the crisis-hit Arab country. 3 Shares
3 0 0 0
Yemeni soldiers and their allies fired a Borkan-1 (Volcano-1) missile towards King Abdulaziz International Airport, located 19 kilometers north of the western Saudi port city of Jeddah, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.
A military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, later told the official Saba news agency that the 12.5-meter-long missile had targeted its target accurately and left massive destruction at the airport.
Saudi media outlets, however, reported that the kingdom’s missile systems intercepted and destroyed the solid propellant and Scud-type missile before it could cause any damage.
They said the projectile was launched at 9 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) on Thursday from Yemen’s mountainous northwestern area of Sa’ada.
The Saudi military also claimed that the Yemeni missile was fired toward the holy city of Mecca, but the Houthi Ansarullah movement has rejected the claim.
MORE... Yemen Burns as the World Yawns and a Nightmare is Born Decapitation in Sana’a… Wanton murder – Saudi Arabia’s genocidal campaign in Yemen reaches new height Yemen's long-range ballistic missile hits deep inside Saudi Arabia's airbase Fars news agency Quote: d an informed Houthi source as saying that the missile was aimed at King Abdulaziz International Airport close to Jeddah, which hosts the kingdom’s royal navy forces as well as a group of American troops.
Also on Thursday, the media bureau of the operations command in Yemen said army soldiers had targeted a gathering of militiamen loyal to resigned president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in the Aqaba district of the northern province of Jawf, leaving scores of the Saudi-backed armed men dead.
An armored vehicle and battle tank belonging to the mercenaries were also destroyed in the attack.
Separately, a number of Saudi soldiers were killed and injured when Yemeni forces and Popular Committees fighters struck al-Kars base in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border region of Jizan.
Saudi Arabia has been engaged in the deadly campaign against Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to bring back the former Yemeni government to power and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The United Nations puts the death toll from the military aggression at about 10,000. | 0 |
The principal of a Christian school in Hagerstown, Maryland says that after “countless hours in prayer and discussion,” his board’s decision to bar a pregnant teen from walking at her graduation ceremony is holding her “accountable for her immorality” and is “the best way to love her. ”[The case of Maddi Runkles, an 18 senior at Heritage Academy, has taken the nation by storm over the past week. Runkles was interviewed Wednesday on CBS This Morning, and her story has been featured at media outlets such as the New York Times, the New York Post, and Cosmopolitan. The school’s principal, David Hobbs, released a statement regarding the situation of the teen, who has a 4. 0 gradepoit average and was president of the Student Council when she discovered she was pregnant in January. “Maddi is being disciplined, not because she’s pregnant, but because she was immoral,” Hobbs said in a statement posted on the school’s website, explaining that students at the school sign a pledge that states they will protect their bodies “by abstaining from sexual immorality and from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. ” “Heritage is also pleased that she has chosen to not abort her son,” he continued. “However, her immorality is the original choice she made that began this situation. ” In an interview with Breitbart News, Runkles said that while other students at Heritage Academy have broken some of the other rules of the pledge, “They’ve never suffered a punishment as severe as mine. ” Hobbs, she said, initially decided he would tell the entire school that she had broken the rule about sex. She was also stripped of her leadership positions and informed she would not be permitted to complete her senior year at school, but would finish her classes at home. Runkles said she decided, however, that she wanted to publicly confess to the school herself about her pregnancy. She made her confession with her father at her side. “I decided I wanted to confess what I did and ask for forgiveness from my school,” she continued, “but the other kids who had broken other rules — even when they were caught — they still lied about what they had done. It just seems unfair. I tried to make it right, but was still shot down. ” Subsequently, Runkles’ parents and about 25 classmates and other parents appealed to Hobbs, asking that she be permitted to remain in school and graduate with her classmates. Ultimately — after several days of suspension — she was told she could return to school to complete her classes, but would still be prohibited from graduating with her class. “A wise man told me that discipline is not the absence of love, but the application of love,” Hobbs says in his statement. “We love Maddi Runkles. The best way to love her right now is to hold her accountable for her immorality that began this situation. ” Runkles’s situation was brought to light by organization Students for Life of America (SFLA) which asserts the teen is being unfairly punished, since she already admitted her mistake, confessed it before the school, and accepted relinquishing her leadership roles. SFLA says Christians who claim to be should offer support to a teen who admits her error and accepts the consequences of going through with her pregnancy instead of having an abortion. “Disciplining Maddi is not the issue,” states SFLA president Kristan Hawkins. “Her discipline was decided, communicated, and executed. For the most part, this was done so with care for the family’s privacy and with fair response to the pledge broken (i. e. ‘abstaining from sexual immorality and from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs’). ” Hawkins continues: However, my primary and continued complaint is that the disciplinary actions of the administration has extended far beyond accountability for the broken pledge regarding premarital sex. That accountability was served justly and humbly in Maddi’s confession, her suspension, and her removal from leadership positions. What was initially a punitive and learning moment has transformed into a public lesson (before this even was announced to the media). By banning Maddi from walking at graduation, the administration and board collectively decided on a disciplinary measure of an obviously public nature. From what we’ve learned thus far, no other student in the school’s history has been banned from walking at graduation for failing to abstain “from sexual immorality and from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. ” Maddi is the only student, past or present, banned from walking at graduation. In a class of only 15 students, her absence will be obvious and can only be explained in that her immorality is visible (unlike the errs of past and present students). In his statement, Hobbs does not address how the board handles the violations of other students, but states, “Each Heritage family deserves confidentiality. ” He indicates that the Runkles family chose “to make her behavior a public matter,” and that he would have preferred to handle Maddi’s “disciplinary situation” privately. Neither Heritage Academy nor Hobbs returned Breitbart News’s request for an interview or comment. Runkles’s story has launched a debate about how Christian churches handle the situation of unplanned pregnancies among single women. A study posted in November of 2015 at found that more than 40 percent of women who had an abortion regularly attended church. Vice president of LifeWay Research Scott McConnell said the results suggest a church culture that is lacking grace. Among those women who have had an abortion: (65 percent) say church members judge single women who are pregnant. A majority (54 percent) thinks churches oversimplify decisions about pregnancy options. Fewer than half (41 percent) believe churches are prepared to help with decisions about unwanted pregnancies. “Women are perceiving judgment from the church, and that’s probably partly because there are clear teachings in the Bible including about how and why we make judgments,” McConnell said. “However, if they don’t start experiencing something different than what they’ve seen in the past, these numbers aren’t going to change. ” The Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) — a national organization — states Runkles’s decision to have her baby “deserves compassion and support. ” “The decision to choose life is not always easy, and certainly not always popular with a culture that promotes convenience over personal responsibility,” the group says. “Maddi made a courageous choice to love and protect her unborn son and she deserves compassion and support, especially from fellow Christians. ” “We urge Heritage Academy to reconsider their decision not to allow Maddi, a 4. 0 student, to walk with her peers at graduation,” SBA List continues. “This extended punishment — doled out months after Maddi told her school she was pregnant and asked for compassion — sends a terrible message about the Christian community’s response to teen pregnancy and unexpected pregnancy. ” | 1 |
HONG KONG — President Obama on Friday moved to block a Chinese deal to buy a company on national security grounds, an unusual step that could set the stage for greater tensions between his successor, Donald J. Trump, and a Chinese government determined to bolster its technological capabilities. The intervention in a Chinese company’s bid to buy a German semiconductor company, Aixtron, comes after Chinese companies have spent billions to acquire technology in Europe and the United States. American officials have increasingly moved to stop such deals, but Chinese companies have shown growing adeptness in getting around those restrictions to strike up relationships that could someday lead to greater access to technology. A statement from the Treasury Department said the administration blocked the purchase of the American portion of Aixtron’s business because it posed a national security risk relating to “the military applications of the overall technical body of knowledge and experience of Aixtron. ” It wasn’t clear whether other parts of the deal could be salvaged. Officials at the German chip company and its Chinese buyer, the Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund, did not immediately comment. By rejecting the deal, the Obama administration showed how far it would go to keep China from using its wallet to acquire sensitive technology from the West. It blocked previous Chinese technology purchases only indirectly, using an advisory panel of government and intelligence officials who can discourage — but not directly kill — foreign deals. That same panel earlier expressed skepticism over the Aixtron deal. Last year the United States accounted for more than of Aixtron’s sales. And nearly of its more than 700 employees are based in the United States. That indirect strategy kept Mr. Obama from looking like a opponent, especially when the company in question was not American, and softened any potential response from Beijing. But Aixtron and its Chinese suitor tested that strategy by plowing ahead despite the panel’s concerns, forcing Mr. Obama to act. Mr. Obama’s cancellation sets a stronger tone as Mr. Trump prepares to take the White House. As president, Mr. Trump will have considerable power to appoint the members of that advisory panel, called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. He is likely to hear from members of Congress who have been pushing to toughen up and to broaden the panel’s reviews to encompass more types of deals. Mr. Trump has been critical of China’s trade practices. “It could feed into the narrative about how the Trump administration is going to get better deals for things, and this is the kind of deal he wouldn’t allow because it would affect U. S. jobs and U. S. manufacturing capabilities in one of the areas where we’re still the most competitive,” said Adam Segal, a technology security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. Still, simply rejecting deals is not so simple, Mr. Segal and others say. Wall Street sometimes pushes for such deals to go through, arguing that American companies can use Chinese money to invest or save jobs. Steven Mnuchin, a Wall Street veteran, is Mr. Trump’s pick to be Treasury secretary, heading a department with considerable say over the advisory panel. The panel is crucial to the outcome of future deals. Created in 1975 by President Gerald Ford, it includes representatives from 16 executive departments and intelligence agencies including Commerce, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security. It judges whether a foreign investment in companies with operations or business in the United States poses unacceptable security risks. Because its deliberations are confidential, little about it has been made public. Just the prospect of such an investigation can be enough to kill a deal. Under Mr. Obama, its scrutiny scotched Chinese deals for a European maker and an American manufacturer of microchips. But China has already been testing ways to get around the panel. Such methods do not necessarily give Chinese buyers access to crucial technology, but experts say they could open a route to access down the road. In some cases, it has struck other types of deals with Western companies, like licensing agreements, outside of the panel’s jurisdiction. When the panel opposed a Chinese bid for the American semiconductor firm GCS Holdings this summer, the American company instead signed a joint venture to make chips with its buyer. GCS makes an advanced chip with military uses. A spokesman for GCS said the joint venture makes products like cellphone chips that have long been commercially available, and that it follows U. S. government guidelines for all technology exports, whether sensitive or not. In another case, the Chinese buyer appeared to be testing how far it could push the panel. In September 2015, Tsinghua Unigroup, the main corporate vehicle for China’s microchip ambitions, offered $3. 8 billion for a board seat and a 15 percent stake in Western Digital, a maker of drives. Lawyers who specialize in Committee on Foreign Investment law say the deal structure was unusual: The size of the stake walked the line of where the panel has investigated in the past, and the agreement had a clause that allowed either side to call it off if the panel became involved. To many lawyers who studied the deal, it looked as if the Chinese buyer was trying to find out what it could get away with. Tsinghua did walk away, citing the panel, and began to look for smaller deals. In April, it successfully took a 6 percent stake in Lattice Semiconductor, despite the fact that in 2012 the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicted two Chinese men who it said illegally tried to procure chips from the company that could be used on spacecraft. In filings, Tsinghua said the stake had been taken for “investment purposes,” while Lattice has said military applications were only a tiny part of its business. Tsinghua has since sold some of its stake, and Lattice is now the target of a new acquisition offer by a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley but backed by Chinese government money. Lattice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Because information relating to its decisions is kept secret, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States remains one of the least understood parts of the United States government. The companies involved in the deal sometimes do not find out why a proposed acquisition was rejected. Foreign companies applying for approval have to submit information about corporate ownership, including passports and records of the military experience of shareholders. Emails go out across American military research and development laboratories to check whether companies might unwittingly be important to American security. For instance, some seemingly harmless technology may be a component of an American defense project. Companies can discuss with the committee what they will do if the proposed deal causes a public backlash, as has happened before. The committee can recommend changes or broker agreements that could include the sale of a sensitive part of the company. The panel has considerable investigative and intelligence resources at its disposal, but the new influx of Chinese money has led some to argue it does not provide enough protection. Critics say it can examine each deal only in isolation and not consider a more widespread campaign of purchases. Stewart Baker, a former representative to the committee under the Department of Homeland Security, also cites resources as an issue. “My sense is they do have the resources now,” he said, “but if Chinese deal flow continues to increase, it is going to be a challenge. ” | 1 |
A man wielding an meat cleaver near Pennsylvania Station and resisting police officers’ efforts to catch him on Thursday slashed an detective in the head before being shot by the police, the authorities said, in an episode that sent commuters and tourists fleeing during the evening rush. It started when the police confronted a man who was trying to remove a “boot” device attached to a tire on his car, officials said, and escalated into a chaotic chase through Midtown Manhattan that ended with officers shooting at him 18 times. The man, Akram Joudeh, 32, was critically injured and taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, the police said. The detective, identified by the police as Brian O’Donnell, was in serious condition. Two other officers were taken to the center with injuries that were not . The episode began around 5 p. m. at West 32nd Street and Broadway when several officers responded to a report that Mr. Joudeh was trying to remove the device, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said at a news conference on Thursday night. The police said they believed Mr. Joudeh, whose last known residence was in Queens, was living out of his car. The chief of department, James O’Neill, said Mr. Joudeh pulled a cleaver from his waist band, threatened the officers and then fled. At one point, the chief said, the man mounted the front grille of a marked police car that had responded to the call. As officers pursued him, a uniformed sergeant “deployed a Taser, striking the suspect without apparent effect,” Chief O’Neill said. As Mr. Joudeh ran along West 32nd Street, the detective, who was headed to Penn Station after a day in court, saw the pursuit and tried to stop him. He was struck in the head with the cleaver, “causing an approximate gash from his temple about down to his jaw,” the chief said. Officers then fired at the man, striking him several times, the chief said. Officials said Mr. Joudeh had several past arrests, but they would not elaborate on his criminal history. In 2010, Mr. Joudeh pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of petit larceny and was sentenced to 90 days, according to public records. In 2009, he was charged with grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, but those felonies were dismissed, records show. He pleaded guilty to unauthorized use of a vehicle and was fined, but served no time. Asked about the possibility that the attack might have been tied to terrorism, Chief O’Neill said, “As part of our investigation, nothing’s off the table. ” The chase left commuters and tourists scurrying for cover as officers flooded the area during the start of the evening rush near a transit hub. Mr. Bratton addressed concerns that so many shots were fired in such a busy area. “Sufficient shots were fired to deter the attack on my officers,” he said. Richard DeWald, a nurse, said he narrowly avoided Mr. Joudeh during the pursuit. “He just seemed wild and crazy,” Mr. DeWald, 56, said. “First there was yelling, and then all I heard was the gunshots. ” Witnesses said they saw Mr. Joudeh on the corner of 32nd Street and Avenue of the Americas, clutching a large meat cleaver to his chest. They said he was silent and his face was expressionless. “He didn’t say a word, that’s the thing,” said Jonathan Schneier, who works at a software company and watched the episode unfold from across the street. Mr. Schneier said the officers, shouting “Drop the weapon,” pointed their guns at the man, who appeared “flustered. ” “He just looked like a crazy guy with a huge weapon,” he said. “He just literally looked like a deer in headlights. ” Mr. Schneier said the man began “sprinting as fast as he could” and was pursued by police. About 10 seconds after that, Mr. Schneier said, he heard gunshots. “I called my girlfriend right away and told her what happened,” he added. “It’s New York. Stuff happens. ” Robert Mennella of Bridgewater, N. J. said he had left the subway station at 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue and was headed to Penn Station. He said he saw a number of unmarked and marked police cars racing along 32nd Street when he heard gunshots. “Everybody turned around,” he said. “Some people stood there with their phones to take pictures, and I just took off. ” He said he ran to Penn Station and saw officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and from New Jersey Transit running upstairs. “I just told them ‘shots fired,’ and they started running faster,” he said. Lina Gana, a laser technician at Cosmed Laser and Spa on Avenue of the Americas, said she heard gunshots that “sounded like a machine gun. ” Another technician, Nailya Howe, who has worked in the area for three years and at the spa for more than a year, said she was surprised by what happened. “I’ve never heard gunshots here before,” she said. “This is a very quiet area. ” Ms. Gana agreed. “Ten minutes before the shooting, I was walking down the street getting food for everyone,” she said. “And then this happened. ” | 1 |
In this News Shot, Joe Joseph explains how the UK and Spain have experienced economic recoveries since they have kicked the globalists out of leadership. Spain hasn’t had a government in over 300 days!
This runs contrary to what all the “experts” and fearmongers warned prior to the people of these nations taking the power back!
Watch on YouTube
Sources
UK Economy Grows 0.5% in Three Months After Brexit Vote
Why Is Spain’s Economy Expanding So Robustly Without a Government? Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).
Contributed by Lily Dane of The Daily Sheeple .
Lily Dane is a staff writer for The Daily Sheeple. Her goal is to help people to “Wake the Flock Up!” | 0 |
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian government troops pushed deeper into the section of Aleppo on Sunday, now controlling about half of what had been for years the rebels’ enclave in the divided northern city. Also on Sunday, airstrikes apparently carried out by the government or its ally Russia hit the towns of Maarat and Kafr Nabl in Idlib Province. The strikes killed at least 20 people in each location, according to residents and White Helmets rescue workers. Footage from Maarat showed destroyed buildings and market stalls, and the crushed body of a toddler. Airstrikes and shelling also continued in Aleppo, where there was no sign of a in a bloody battle that could prove a fulcrum in the war. If the government manages to seize all of Aleppo, it will control Syria’s five largest cities. Government troops, along with allied, militias from Iraq and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, appeared close on Sunday to seizing the only remaining bulge of rebel territory north of the medieval citadel at the heart of the city, leaving rebels with a shrinking enclave in the southeast. Residents contacted by phone and text message said conditions were dire. People fleeing from the recently retaken areas were looking for places to sleep, while some smashed wooden furniture from destroyed houses for cooking and heating. They also sent text messages with their last farewells, saying they expected to die. All of this unfolded under continuous government bombing and artillery shelling, which was worsening as ground troops edged closer. The advances did not halt the shelling of the western districts. Fares Shehabi, a Parliament member from Aleppo, said that nine people were killed on Saturday and that the military hospital and a hotel had been hit. Dozens of shells fell on Sunday, killing several people, other residents said. More than 31, 000 people have fled from the eastern districts, aid agencies say. Some are fleeing to territory some deeper into the besieged districts and others to areas controlled by Kurdish militias from which they can make their way along a risky route to areas in Idlib and northern Aleppo Province. On Sunday, Russian troops helped deliver aid to thousands of people crammed into what had been shops in a covered market in Jibreen, a town south of the city. Some people told reporters from The Associated Press and the BBC on the scene with government minders that they were happy to have food. Some said they had fled airstrikes, and others complained about treatment by the rebels. Of those remaining in the area, some said they were afraid to leave because they expected to be arrested or mistreated on the other side. Now, though, they were worried that the army might be coming to them. “It is very dangerous,” Yasser Hmeish, a resident, said via text message, showing a photo of himself making tea over a fire from scraps of wood from his destroyed house. “We are afraid for our families. ” A proposal by Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy, for a aid delivery and local autonomy for eastern Aleppo in exchange for the departure of several hundred fighters has gone nowhere. Russia is now offering to talk to the United States about the departure of all rebels — several thousand fighters, some of them backed by Washington and its allies. Tensions were rising between the group, the Levant Conquest Front, formerly known as the Nusra Front, and the other groups, according to fighters in the enclave. Some accused the Levant Conquest Front of raiding food and weapons storehouses that belonged to other groups, including Faylaq one of those receiving American aid. One fighter from a rival group said the looted goods had been left unguarded in the chaos. The airstrikes in Idlib Province killed 23 people in Maarat including seven members of one family, one of them a child. In Kafr Nabl, 26 people were killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group with an extensive network on the ground. Jihad, a telecommunications engineer in Kafranbel, said that the strike had hit a busy area, and that he knew 13 of the victims. “There is a well where people get water, and there is a bakery,” he said, asking to be identified by only his first name for safety. “There were only a few minutes between me and the strikes. ” | 1 |
Follow on Facebook Subscribe by Email Print This Post
The legalization of marijuana, in some form, was a ballot initiative in nine states, on Nov. 8, 2016. Five of the nine states voted for recreational use and the other four were focused on medicinal purposes.
California, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts passed the recreational use of cannabis. These states join the ranks with Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and D.C. Arizona still offers legal medical marijuana but recreational use was voted down by 51.9 percent.
Florida, North Dakota, Montana, and Arkansas voted to join the 24 other states that have legalized the use of the plant. New Recreational Marijuana States and Laws: Massachusetts: Recreational use, sale, possession, and cultivation of cannabis have been legalized. The law faced opposition from both sides of the isle. Republican Governor Charlie Baker and Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh joined Attorney General Maura Healey, in March, for a Boston Globe op-ed. The state had decriminalized the use of weed for recreational use. It was also legalized for medicinal use, in 2012. Healey, Baker, and Walsh met to discuss this matter and agreed that the plant should not be easily accessible or sold commercially. The voters in Massachusetts were divided. The recreational use of marijuana was supported by 54 percent. The new law will go into effect December 15. Cannabis sales will follow the same requirements as alcohol. California: Proposition 64 was viewed as the most important among the legalization issues on the ballot. Fifty-six percent of the voters agreed with the initiative, for people 21 and over. This not only completes recreational use of the plant on the West Coast, it benefits the state with the sixth-largest world economy. Cannabis legalization passed despite opposition from Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Jerry Brown. In 2014, Brown said:
How many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation?
The win of Proposition 64, does not simply allow for the commercial sale of marijuana, it rolled back the period of incarceration for thousands of people convicted on marijuana-related charges. The proposition went into effect at 12:01 a.m., on November 9. Residents can grow as many as six plants in their homes. However, it will not be available is stores until Jan. 1, 2018. Driving under the influence of and smoking marijuana in public will remain illegal. Those who break this law will be charged a $100 fine. Nevada: Recreational use, cultivation, possession, and commercial sales of the plant passed with 54 percent. The law pertains to adults, 21 and over. Most of the state is conservative, and until residents helped elect Obama, in 2008 and 2012, it was considered a Red state. However, the legalization of cannabis was opposed by Democratic Senator Harry Reid and Republican Governor Brian Sandoval. Regardless, on Jan. 1, 2018, medical marijuana dispensaries will be able to apply for a license that will allow them to sell the plant products to anyone, 21 or older. Only the dispensaries will be eligible to sell cannabis. Maine: It is legal for adults, 21 and over, to use cannabis for recreational use. People can cultivate, possess, and purchase marijuana. The legislation barely passed with 50.3 percent. The state will add a 10 percent sales tax on recreational cannabis. The new law will allow for retail stores and social clubs, as long as they are licensed and permitted in the municipalities where they grow.
Many states, including D.C., have opted to decriminalize recreational use of marijuana to save money. During an interview, in March, President Obama told Vice News that incarcerating people for marijuana-related charges is expensive. It was his hope, that if enough states decriminalized possession and use, Congress would reschedule the drug.
Legalization creates a new economy around the sales of marijuana and cannabis-infused lotions, oils, edibles, and related paraphernalia. Tax revenues have significantly increased in the states that have legalized recreational use of the plant.
Tax revenue from marijuana sales in Colorado was $70 million in the last fiscal year. This was twice the amount collected from alcohol sales over the same period. In 2013, cannabis sales were at $1.5 billion. The revenue grew to $2.7 billion, in 2015. Cannabis investment and research firm ArcView Group believes that if all 50 states and D.C. were to completely legalize the plant, it is possible the U.S. will gain $35 billion in revenue, by 2020. What Will Trump Do?
Despite the economic boost the legalization of marijuana can bring to the U.S., there is a doubt that President-elect Donald Trump will be supportive. Leslie Bocskor, the president and founder of Electrum Partners, called the future leader of the U.S., “a boogie man of unparalleled size and fearsomeness to the legal cannabis industry.” His election could prevent the recall of the Controlled Substances Act, that Obama and many Americans wanted.
The marijuana wins gained in the 2016 election means that now, 60 million Americans will not be arrested, lose student loans, or their children for using the plant at the state level. It is still against federal law to use or possess cannabis.
Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance Ethan Nadelmann said that he cannot predict what Trump will do concerning marijuana or the Controlled Substances Act. In 1990, Trump was for the legalization of all drugs, regardless, he leaned heavily on the Republican drug-war rhetoric in political debates.
Nevertheless, Trump told the International Association of Chiefs of Police that marijuana was an issue for individual states to handle. He agreed that Congress should re-write certain laws to be compatible with the state laws. Lobbyists believe that any impact on the use of cannabis will depend on who Trump chooses for members of his Cabinet.
At one time, it was possible that Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor, would hold the position of U.S. Attorney General. He delayed the limited legalization of medical marijuana, as the governor of New Jersey. Throughout his own run as a Republican candidate for president, Christie spoke of enforcing federal law against cannabis. However, his involvement in the Bridgegate scandal could force Trump to look, instead, at the former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani for U.S. Attorney General.
Giuliani was also a federal prosecutor. When he was mayor, more people were arrested (per capita), in New York City, for marijuana-related charges, than any other American city. This makes him another unwanted choice for those who use the plant, in any form, for any reason. Hope for Cannabis in America
There is no need for weed-lovers to lose heart, reminds Professor Marsha Cohen, from UC Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco. She stated that the Department of Justice cannot change things overnight; it would take time, organization, and money for Trump to crackdown on marijuana use nationwide. However, it may not matter who becomes the next attorney general.
Congress, led by Paul Ryan, has consistently denied funding for the Justice Department to impede on states that legalize cannabis. Despite the desires of the new attorney general, it is likely Congress will continue to prevent federal meddling at the state-level.
Cohen pointed out that Florida voted in favor of the new medical marijuana law and Trump with the same ballot. Therefore, it is uncertain what he will do, as president, concerning the use of the plant. Cohen stated that cannabis is a political issue and will remain such; it is possible that weed has become too popular to undo.
By Jeanette Smith
Sources:
Business insider: 4 states just voted to make marijuana completely legal — here’s what we know News.MIC: Where Is Marijuana Legal in the United States? List of Recreational and Medicinal States High Times: LEGALIZATION FINALLY WINS IN MAINE; WHAT WILL HE DO?!?
Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Cannabis Culture’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
8 More States Legalize Marijuana: Will Donald Trump Let It Stand? added by smith.j on November 15, 2016 | 0 |
Election’s Rape And Sexual Assault Accusations Need to Be Taken Seriously Posted on Oct 27, 2016
By Sonali Kolhatkar Protesters organized by the National Organization for Women gather near the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City on Oct. 12, as sexual assault allegations about GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump emerged on the heels of The Washington Post’s bombshell report about Trump’s 2005 “Access Hollywood” hot-mic comments regarding his treatment of women. (Frank Franklin II / AP Photo)
Less than a day after the third and final 2016 presidential debate, GOP nominee Donald Trump faced new accusations from a woman who recounted a story of her sexual assault at his hands. Karena Virginia told members of the press how Trump groped her in public at the U.S. Open in 1998 while asking, “Don’t you know who I am?”
Two days later, two more women, Kristin Anderson and Summer Zervos, made similar allegations . Earlier this year, a woman named Katie Johnson said Trump raped her in 1994 when she was 13 years old; she filed a lawsuit against him that was later thrown out on a technicality. Trump’s ex-wife, Ivana Trump, has also accused him of raping her. To date a dozen women have publicly alleged that Trump in some way assaulted them.
Jane Piper, an activist who faced her rapist in court in 2014 , told me in an interview that she believes the women who have accused Trump. “I take their word as their word, and I believe them,” she said. “We have this documented evidence of [Trump’s] attitude and behavior toward women,” added Piper, referring to his numerous public statements revealing a callous and disrespectful attitude toward women. To Piper, the idea that Trump might be a serial perpetrator of sexual assault is consistent with his language and the attitude he has publicly displayed.
Advertisement Square, Site wide
Think about Bill Cosby. While he has not been convicted on charges of sexual assault, in the court of public opinion, he is already considered guilty. He has admitted to drugging women in order to have sex with them, and the sheer volume of accusers against him leaves one wondering: “How could they possibly all be lying?” As Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Trump during the final presidential debate, “Why would so many different women from so many different circumstances, from so many different years, why would they all ... make up these stories?”
Indeed, in cases such as those involving Cosby and Trump, there is little to be gained by publicly proclaiming oneself the victim of rape and assault. All a woman gains is to be forever known as someone who accused a famous man of a vile crime. According to Piper, “It is not comfortable to be known in this way. It makes no sense, and it is ridiculous and offensive and insulting” to imply that a woman might make it all up for fame.
Like Cosby, Trump has bragged about assaulting women. In a now infamous recording obtained by The Washington Post , Trump revealed to TV host Billy Bush that he simply has his way with women: “Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” And, as in Cosby’s case, women are emerging from the woodwork as the election looms to reveal sordid stories about Trump’s alleged assaults on them.
One major difference here is that Cosby is an actor (who will indeed face the accusations against him in court), while Trump is running for the highest office in the nation. While all men, including Cosby, need to be held to high standards on sexual assault, those who run for president deserve the utmost scrutiny.
Piper dismissed the response by Trump’s supporters that the timing of the accusations now emerging is suspect. “Of course, this timing is perfect,” she told me, “because [Trump’s accusers] just listened to him in that video describe what he did and [be] proud of it, and the next day, in the debate, lie and say that he never ever actually did that.” Piper said that if she had been one of the women who had alleged assault by Trump, she “would be doing everything in my power to make sure that the public knew what kind of person this man was so that they would know what kind of leader they were choosing to elect.” Essentially, anyone running for president of the United States should expect his or her past and present to be scrutinized under the most stringent of microscopes.
“Womanizing,” or having affairs, as presidential candidate Gary Hart was accused of in 1987, is very different from being accused of sexual assault or rape. Hart was brought down by a media frenzy that began with a single, provocative photograph. Trump is heading straight into an election dogged by repeated accusations of crimes—not affairs—and all he has offered are simplistic denials and deflections. | 0 |
News, information and analysis from the black left. Black Agenda Report for Week of Oct 31, 2016 Submitted by Nellie Bailey a... on Mon, 10/31/2016 - 20:45 Venezuela The Missing Black Movement Ingredient: Self-Determination
The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will hold a National Black Political Convention on Self-Determination, November 5 and 6, in Washington, DC. “If you go through history, the fundamental thing that we’ve confronted is the loss of our self-determination as a people,” said Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela . The Coalition has put forward a 19-point position on the need to put self-determination at the center of Black struggles. The 19 points “give us the beginning of some kind of a plan,” said Yeshitela. “It says, specifically, here is our view on self-determination and the subject of reparations, Black women, the question of police invasion and brutality in our community,” and many other issues. The “Moment of Truth” for the Empire
“We are entering a new moment in American history,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro , the Duboisian scholar and Black Radical Organizing Committee activist. “It is a moment of truth for the ruling class, for the ruling elite. What do they do when they are trumped at home -- forgive the pun -- and trumped internationally?” he asked. “Do they back off of empire, do they readjust, do they become peaceful, or do they up the stakes and attempt to resolve all problems with war abroad and oppression at home?” Dr. Monteiro is one of the planners of a Revolutionary Science for Radical Times conference, in Philadelphia, December 9 and 10. Hard Times in Venezuela
Despite what the corporate media are telling you, Venezuelans are not starving and the Socialist Party government will not be toppled any time soon. However, the rightwing opposition “is smelling blood” due to an economic crisis that “has made it very difficult for people to get access to imported goods, and many goods are very expensive,” said political science professor George Caccariello-Maher , of Drexel University, author of We Created Chavez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution . Corruption, smuggling and money speculation are serious problems, said Caccariello-Maher. However, the strength of the Left lies in the nation’s grassroots organizations and communes. “It would be very difficult for an opposition government to come in and attempt to throw them off their land” or return property to the private sector, he said. Happy Birthday, Rev. Pinkney!
Benton Harbor, Michigan, human rights leader Rev. Edward Pinkney, currently serving a 2 ½ to 10 year sentence on election tampering charges, turned 68 years old this month. Marcina Cole , a courtroom observer at Pinkney’s trial, teamed up with David Sole , of the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice, to throw a birthday party for Pinkney, in absentia, in Detroit. “He’s definitely in support of other inmates, doing ministry work, and looking forward to being out very soon,” said Cole. She reported that Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka visited the political prisoner on October 19. “This was historical,” said Cole. “They know how powerful Rev. Pinkney is” -- and that he has allies on the outside. Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour. | 0 |
Sam Sifton emails readers of Cooking seven days a week to talk about food and suggest recipes. That email also appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. Good morning. A terrible week comes to an end with an awful anniversary, of last year’s massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S. C. in which a gunman killed nine black parishioners during a prayer service. Hatred dogs us still, here and across the globe, offering violence, delivering grief. Hope, for many these days, is thin on the ground. Cooking can help. I think it can. Just follow a recipe. The process is mindful and therapeutic at once, a form that allows you to get outside your racing thoughts and self in order to provide for others. And providing for others is good it counteracts those who would take away from others instead. Maybe, anyway? It’s worth a shot. It’s what we can do. Spend tomorrow baking pies, or assembling a paella, or roasting chickens, or smoking beef ribs, and see what happens. You could make soft serve ice cream for the kids or the people in your life who act like kids. (You don’t need an ice cream maker.) You could make lobster mac and cheese, just because. Or soft pretzels. Or banana chocolate muffins. Or loaded nachos. How about a strawberry fool? You could make something you’ve made forever, a familiar kata, performed a thousand times. Or you could make something new and difficult, and surrender yourself to the magic of transformation: oats into granola basil into pesto pig’s feet and Madeira into the fantastical jellied pork stock the chef Fergus Henderson calls trotter gear. Perhaps it’s a weekend to make asparagus soup. Or a buttery breakfast casserole. You could make crab Newburg. Or some spotted dog. There are thousands of other recipes to choose from on Cooking. Browse them for inspiration, then save the ones you like to your recipe box. Cook them, and revel in the peace that activity can bring. When you’re done, you can rate your work and, if you like, you can leave a note on the recipe to help yourself in the future, or to help others as they cook. As always, we’ll be standing by to help if you run into trouble with the technology or the recipes. We’re at cookingcare@nytimes. com. Outside of the Times bubble, you can find me on Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, where I use and monitor the hashtag #NYTCooking. Now, here’s a podcast to round us out, from Gastropod: “Who Invented the Cherry Tomato?” Have a great weekend. | 1 |
Ryan McMaken https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/de-industrialization-natural-phenomenon-developed-economies/
The decline in industrial production is in many ways the product of government interventionism. Jörg Guido Hülsmann explains . 4:38 pm on October 31, 2016 | 0 |
Pinterest
Despite being acquitted by a federal jury Tuesday, Bundy brothers Ammon and Randy still remain in jail.
The brothers, as well as a number of other co-defendants, were acquitted in the case involving the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
The band of ranchers and farmers had commandeered the refuge at the start of the year to protest what they felt was the illegal seizure of land by the federal government.
After the standoff eventually ended in late January, federal prosecutors charged them with “conspiring to impede federal workers from their jobs,” as reported by Fox News , but as Tuesday’s news demonstrates, the charges did not stick.
Sadly for the Bundy brothers, however, the story is far from over.
It turned out that the Bundys still face charges in Nevada stemming from a previous standoff, this one at their father’s ranch in 2014. Ergo, U.S. District Judge Anna Brown could not release them; instead she approved the U.S. Marshals’ request to take them into custody.
When the marshals attempted that, however, a scuffle broke out between them and Ammon Bundy’s lead attorney, Marcus Mumford:
After the verdicts were read, an attorney for group leader Ammon Bundy demanded his client be immediately released and repeatedly yelled at the judge. U.S. marshals tackled attorney Marcus Mumford to the ground, used a stun gun on him several times and arrested him.
Mumford later explained to reporters what exactly had transpired:
Also speaking with reporters, another one of Ammon’s attorneys reportedly shared his belief that an acquittal would be achieved in the Nevada case as well.
“When the jury here hears the whole story, I expect the same result,” attorney Daniel Hill reportedly told the Associated Press, adding that he intended to ask for “client’s release from federal custody pending trial in Nevada.”
According to The Oregonian , the Bundy brothers’ trial is set to begin Feb. 6, 2017. Their notorious father, Cliven Bundy, is slated to go on trial that day as well. | 0 |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.