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What might the American economy look like if had not engaged in decades of brutal betrayal against American workers? [A new report from the Congressional Budget Office provides an answer to the question by examining a sector of the labor market whose wages have been largely shielded from the effects of trade deals, immigration, and regulation. These workers receive wages and benefits that are, on average, about 17 percent higher than workers with comparable skills and education in other parts of the economy. The compensation gap is striking. The workers in the protected sector are better compensated than unprotected peers at every level of educational attainment aside from those with professional degrees or doctorates. The compensation gap is largest, in fact, for those workers who would otherwise be among the most vulnerable in the economy: workers with no more than a high school degree. According to the CBO study, the total compensation for protected workers with a high school diploma or less earned 53 percent more than their unprotected peers. So who are these protected workers? They are members of the federal government’s civilian workforce. The federal government employs about 1. 5 percent of the U. S. workforce, around 2. 2 million workers. They are spread across more than 100 agencies and over 650 occupations. In fiscal year 2016, the federal government spent around $215 billion to compensate these workers. On average, they tend to be older, more educated, and more concentrated in professional occupations than workers. The CBO studied data from 2011 through 2015 to estimate the differences between the wages and benefits of federal employees and similar employees. It sorted the data by level of education, years of work experience, occupation, size of employer, geographic location, veteran status, and demographic characteristics such as ages, sex, race, and marital status. What it found was that federal workers tend to earn far more than their private sector counterparts. Between 2010 and 2015, federal workers with a high school degree or less had wages that were 34 percent higher than private sector peers and benefits that were 93 percent greater, for a total compensation gap of 53 percent. For workers with a bachelor’s degree, the wage gap was 21 percent, composed of a 5 percent wage gap and a 52 percent benefit gap. Aside from those with the highest levels of education, the compensation gap has grown in recent years. Between 2005 and 2010, for example, the total compensation gap for workers with a high school diploma or less was 36 percent. The gap for those with a bachelor’s degree was 15 percent. An adjustment to whom is counted as a federal employee caused some of this difference. But the larger part of it was caused by the fact that wages grew more quickly among less educated federal workers than those in the private sector. This is even more striking because lawmakers froze salary increases for federal workers between 2011 through 2013. Without this freeze, the gap would have grown even larger. Federal workers are shielded from a lot of the effects of globalization that have depressed private sector worker compensation. Their jobs are not easily or often subject to the practice of replacing employees in the U. S. with employees located in foreign countries. Similarly, outsourcing does not weigh on federal workers the way it does private sector workers. Competition from immigrants is far less of a factor because the U. S. government has stringent rules against hiring illegal immigrants and does not directly seek workers from abroad to fill jobs. While the federal government hires immigrant workers, it does so from the pool that is already legally residing in the United States. Trade hardly impacts federal worker compensation at all. Civilian federal employees working in the Defense Department, the largest group of federal workers, are not in wage competition with defense workers in foreign lands. That is true for almost all federal workers, in fact. From the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior to the U. S. Treasury and the Justice Department, the wage competition faced by employees is purely domestic. Unlike the private sector, where employment and wages are depressed because of regulation, the federal government benefits from increased regulation. Each new regulation requires employees to enforce and monitor compliance. And most regulations impose few barriers to projects that the federal government pursues. Look at it from the of the agencies. They are confined to hiring, for the most part, American citizens and legal residents. They compete with other government agencies and the private sector for workers. While the private sector can turn abroad for workers, the federal agencies cannot. The result is higher wages and better benefits for federal workers. Importantly, many of the sources of wage stagnation that impact the private sector also weigh on the federal sector. Communications technology, for example, has made many occupations once filled by workers in the federal government redundant. Robotics, improved computer processing, and the Great Recession — recall that wage wage freeze — have all hit federal workers. Yet the compensation grew. That leaves the effects of trade and immigration policy as the most likely culprits. The absence of a wage gap for those with a doctorate or professional degree is telling. In the private sector, these are workers who have faired relatively well in the age of globalization. Many have seen the demand for their work — and therefore their prosperity — rise as lawyers, bankers, and other professions ply their trade internationally. So it is no surprise that the federal workers with advanced degrees earn 18 percent less than private sector counterparts. This fact also undermines a competing narrative explaining the wage gap — that it is a result of a reckless federal government that spends and cannot resist pressure for higher wages. If that were so, all federal workers would be expected to earn more. The compensation gap could also explain why so many federal workers do not look favorably on President Donald Trump. They just have not experienced the economic impact of globalization the way many of Donald Trump’s private sector supporters have. The CBO report is a glimpse into a shadow world, an alternate reality of an American economy absent the trade and immigration policy decisions that have dragged down all but the best educated and highest earning segments of the American workforce. It shows us an America where a worker without a high school diploma is far better paid and the rewards to the elites are far less grand. It is the world without the carnage that globalization has sown in the American economy. It is, more hopefully, a roadmap to making America great again. | 1 |
On The News Line ©AFP
These are some of the headlines we are tracking for you in this episode of On the News Line:
The Syria conundrum
The crisis in Syria is getting more complicated. Many parties are participating in the war. The administration of US President Barack Obama has been talking about sending more sophisticated weapons to the so-called moderate rebels in Syria. But the White House is hesitant and the plan seems to have stalled. The Turks are after for their own agenda in Syria. It’s been almost two months since Turkey launched its offensive in northern Syria. According to Ankara, the mission is aimed at clearing its border area of ISIL militants and anti-Turkey Kurdish militants. And that has put Turkey on a collision course with the US, which has invested heavily on the Kurdish fighters.
EU threat of disintegration
Things seem to be falling apart in Europe which many believe is under strain from many factors ranging from the Brexit to the rise of the far-right across the European political spectrum to the refugee crisis, which is the worst to hit the continent. The prospect of the European Union seems so bleak that it has rung the alarm in Germany. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned: "The financial crisis, the refugee influx into Europe and the shock from the Brexit referendum in Great Britain have brought the European Union into violent turmoil.” Steinmeier warned that this might lead to the collapse of the EU.
Saudis aim to starve Yemenis
Reports have surfaced that Saudi Arabia is "deliberately targeting impoverished Yemen’s farms and agricultural industry." Increasing evidence suggests that the kingdom is not merely bombing civilians, but it is systematically targeting infrastructure survivors will need to avoid starvation when the war is over. That includes water infrastructures, and even farms. Loading ... | 0 |
Friday on ESPN’s “SportsNation,” and CNN contributor LZ Granderson reacted to the Tampa Bay Buccanneers signing free agent quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick to be Jameis Winston’s backup. Granderson argued that if Kaepernick remains a free agent when the season begins, then it would be “justified” to say the quarterback has been “blackballed” by NFL owners. “I know that [Kaepernick] is probably asking for a certain amount of money that teams haven’t been willing to pay,” Granderson stated. “I also know that Kap is probably looking to be a starter where Fitzpatrick is just looking to have a job. With that being said though, when you see Mark Sanchez secure a job, when you see Ryan Fitzpatrick … secure a job, you go, ‘All right, this is adding more and more fuel to this conversation about whether or not Colin Kaepernick is unfairly being blackballed’ because he has the courage to stand up for what he believes in. ” He continued, “I’m thinking the NFL, if they start this season with Colin Kaepernick out of it, I think every bit of criticism about him being blackballed has been justified because if Ryan Fitzpatrick has a job making $3 million, the way he played in New Jersey?” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
. Prescription Painkiller Deaths Dropped 25% in States That Legalized Marijuana In all states that have legalized medical marijuana, there has been a 25% reduction in deaths relate... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/prescription-painkiller-deaths-dropped.html In all states that have legalized medical marijuana, there has been a 25% reduction in deaths related to the overdose of legally prescribed painkillers. There is still heated controversy in the United States about whether or not marijuana should be legalized for recreational use, let alone medicinal purposes. After reviewing a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014, you’ll likely agree that it’s much safer for cannabis to be doled out than most prescription opioids.For the study , researchers analyzed all deaths caused by opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2010 in the U.S.Then, they determined the association between medical cannabis laws and opioid analgesic-related deaths using linear time-series regression models. The various models helped the researchers determine that in every state that legalized medical marijuana between the aforementioned years (a total of 13 states), there was a 25% reduction in deaths related to the overdose of legally prescribed painkillers.“ The difference is quite striking ,” said Colleen Barry, the study’s co-author and health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, to Newsweek .It is hypothesized by the researchers that in states where medical marijuana is legal, patients are opting to smoke cannabis to alleviate their pain rather than consume prescription opiates, as the latter tend to cause side effects. In addition, marijuana accounts for 0 deaths per year, whereas overdose of opiates are responsible for over 14,000 deaths annually ( source ).While the statistics speak volumes, not everyone is in agreement with the findings. Dr. Andrew Kolodny, chief medical officer at the national non-profit addiction treatment agency Phoenix House, says that the immediate reduction in overdose deaths is extremely unlikely to be a result of the herb being substituted. This, he says, is because physicians rarely prescribe marijuana for chronic pain. “You don’t have primary care doctors in these states [prescribing] marijuana instead of Vicodin,” he argues. The physician believes that the states that have legalized medical marijuana are more likely to actively treat and help prevent addiction. In his mind, this is a far more likely scenario for the decrease in overdose deaths.While more studies undoubtedly need to be carried out to pinpoint the cause of this phenomenon, this news is heartening at the very least. By Amanda Froelich , Guest writer, HumansAreFree.com | 0 |
One central fact about the global economy lurks just beneath the year’s remarkable headlines: Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than it has been in the lifetime of most people on earth. The United States is adding jobs at a healthy clip, as a new report showed Friday, and the unemployment rate is relatively low. But that is happening despite a trend of much lower growth, both in the United States and other advanced nations, than was evident for most of the War II era. This trend helps explain why incomes have risen so slowly since the turn of the century, especially for those who are not top earners. It is behind the cheap gasoline you put in the car and the ultralow interest rates you earn on your savings. It is crucial to understanding the rise of Donald J. Trump, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, and the rise of populist movements across Europe. This slow growth is not some new phenomenon, but rather the way it has been for 15 years and counting. In the United States, gross domestic product rose by an average of 2. 2 percent a year from 1947 through 2000 — but starting in 2001 has averaged only 0. 9 percent. The economies of Western Europe and Japan have done worse than that. Over long periods, that shift implies a radically slower improvement in living standards. In the year 2000, G. D. P. — which generally tracks with the average American’s income — was about $45, 000. But if growth in the second half of the 20th century had been as weak as it has been since then, that number would have been only about $20, 000. To make matters worse, fewer and fewer people are seeing the spoils of what growth there is. According to a new analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute, 81 percent of the United States population is in an income bracket with flat or declining income over the last decade. That number was 97 percent in Italy, 70 percent in Britain, and 63 percent in France. Like most things in economics, the slowdown boils down to supply and demand: the ability of the global economy to produce goods and services, and the desire of consumers and businesses to buy them. What’s worrisome is that weakness in global supply and demand seems to be pushing each other in a vicious circle. It increasingly looks as if something fundamental is broken in the global growth machine — and that the usual menu of policies, like interest rate cuts and modest fiscal stimulus, aren’t up to the task of fixing it (though some policies could help). The underlying reality of low growth will haunt whoever wins the White House in November, as well as leaders in Europe and Japan. An entire way of thinking about the future — that children will inevitably live in a much richer country than their parents — is thrown into question the longer this lasts. The first step to trying to reverse the slowdown is to understand why it’s happening. A good way to do that is to predictions from smart economists. In January 2005, as it does every year, the Congressional Budget Office released its forecast for the United States’ budget and economic outlook over the decade to come. If the C. B. O. ’s projections had come true, the United States would have had $3. 1 trillion more economic output in 2015 than it actually did — 17 percent more. Even if the steep contraction of hadn’t happened, the shortfall would have been $1. 7 trillion. As a matter of arithmetic, the slowdown in growth has two potential components: people working fewer hours, and less economic output being generated for each hour of labor. Both have contributed to the economy’s underperformance. In 2000, Robert J. Gordon, a Northwestern University economist, published a paper titled “Does the ‘New Economy’ Measure Up to the Great Inventions of the Past?” It argued that the internet would not have the same transformative impact on how much economic output would emerge from an hour of human labor as innovations like electricity, air transport and indoor plumbing did. It was a distinctly minority view in that apex of technological optimism. “People said: ‘Productivity growth is exploding, Gordon. You’re wrong we’re in a new age,’ ” Mr. Gordon said. But as productivity growth slowed several years later, “people started to take my point of view more and more seriously. ” He offers the example of the computer technology that airlines use. When introduced in the early 2000s, it really did mean greater productivity: Fewer airline clerks were needed for every passenger. But the gain was more a bump than a continuing trend. Douglas director of the C. B. O. at the time of the 2005 forecast and now president of the American Action Forum, said technology “just seems to be less special and more comparable to other forms of investments than it had seemed. ” The forecasters thought the average output for an hour of labor would rise 29 percent from 2005 to 2014. Instead it was 15 percent. But it’s not just that each hour of work is producing less than projected. Fewer people are working fewer hours than seemed likely not long ago. The unemployment rate is actually lower than the C. B. O. projected it to be a decade ago (it saw it as stable at 5. 2 percent it was 4. 9 percent in July). But the unemployment rate counts only those actively seeking a job. There were five million fewer Americans in the labor force — neither working nor looking — in 2015 than projected. An analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisers last year estimated that about half of the decline in labor force participation since 2009 was caused by aging of the population (which was anticipated in the projection) and about 14 percent from the economic cycle. About a third of the decline was a mysterious “residual”: younger people leaving the work force, perhaps because they saw little opportunity or viewed the potential wages they could earn as inadequate. Weak productivity and fewer workers are hits to the “supply” side of the economy. But there is evidence that a shortage of demand is a major part of the problem, too. Think of the economy as a car if you try to accelerate far beyond the speed it’s capable of, a car won’t go any faster but the engine will overheat. Similarly, if the voluntary exit of people from the labor force and gains from technological advances were the entire story behind the growth slowdown, there should be evidence the economy is overheating, resulting in inflation. That’s not what’s happening. Rather, global central banks are keeping their feet on the economic accelerator, and that is not resulting in any overheating at all. The distinction is important if there is to be any hope of solving the problem. If the issue is a shortage of demand, then some more stimulus should help. If it is entirely on the supply side, then government stimulus is not much use, and policy makers should focus on trying to make companies more innovative and coax people back into the work force. But what if it’s both? Larry Summers, the Harvard economist and a former top official in the Obama and Clinton administrations, watched as growth stayed low and inflation invisible after the 2008 crisis, despite extraordinary stimulus from central banks. Even before the crisis, economic growth had been relatively tepid despite a housing bubble, war spending and low interest rates. In November 2013, he combined those observations into a speech at an I. M. F. conference arguing that the global economy had, just maybe, settled into a state of “secular stagnation” in which there was insufficient demand, and resulting slow growth, low inflation and low interest rates. While the theory is anything but settled, the case has become stronger in the last three years. But it may not be as simple as supply versus demand. Perhaps people have dropped out of the labor force because their skills and connections have atrophied. Perhaps the productivity slump is caused in part by businesses not making capital investments because they don’t think there will be demand for their products. Mr. Summers, in an interview, frames it as an inversion of “Say’s Law,” the notion that supply creates its own demand: that economywide, people doing the work to create goods and services results in their having the income to then buy those goods and services. In this case, rather, as he has often put it: “Lack of demand creates lack of supply. ” His proposed solution is that the government sharply expand investment in infrastructure, which might provide a jolt of higher demand, which in turn could help the picture on supply — helping workers who build roads and bridges become reattached to the work force, for example. As it happens, increasing infrastructure spending is among the few economic policies advocated by both Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump. Economic history is full of unpredictable fits and starts. When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, the internet, a defining feature of his presidency, was rarely mentioned, and Japan seemed to be emerging as the economic rival of the United States. In other words, there’s a lot we don’t know about the economic future. What we do know is that if something doesn’t change from the recent trend, the 21st century will be a gloomy one. | 1 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • The Turkish authorities are hunting for the gunman who opened fire at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day, killing at least 39 people from no fewer than 12 countries. The Islamic State claimed him as “a hero soldier of the caliphate” and appeared to refer to Turkey’s role in the Syrian war. In Iraq, the group claimed a suicide bombing in central Baghdad that killed dozens, even as it makes a brutal effort to hang on to its only remaining Iraqi stronghold, Mosul. _____ • South Korea’s full Constitutional Court begins formal hearings on the impeachment of President Park . Public outrage — initially aimed at influence by Choi the daughter of a religious sect leader — has turned to broader concerns about the power of the presidency and the influence of conglomerates like Samsung. The country is seeking the extradition of Ms. Choi’s daughter, who was arrested in Denmark after months of hiding. _____ • House Republicans surprised Washington by voting to hobble a congressional ethics office with no advance notice. The full House will consider the move today as the most powerful Congress in 20 years goes into session, promising to roll back many of President Obama’s signature policies. Faced with North Korea’s threat to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, Donald J. Trump took to Twitter to declare bluntly, “It won’t happen!” Over the weekend, Mr. Trump promised to reveal “things that other people don’t know,” possibly as soon as today, about assessments that Russia interfered in the U. S. election. _____ • “We need to fight black money, even though it is hurting little people like me. ” Many Indians agree with that sentiment, voiced by a Delhi taxi driver, saying they are more concerned about reining in corruption than the immediate hardships caused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ban on bills. India’s Supreme Court ruled that candidates for political office may not run on or appeals. The decision comes ahead of assembly elections that will test the strength of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. _____ • SpaceX traced the explosion of its Falcon 9 rocket in September to the unexpected interplay of supercold helium and oxygen with carbon fibers and aluminum. The company said it would resume launches as early as Sunday. • American tech giants like Google, Apple and Facebook are on a collision course with European regulators over issues including privacy and taxes. • saunas, or jjimjilbangs, are doing a brisk business in parts of the United States. • Ads from a slew of major U. S. companies prominently feature Muslims as part of an inclusive marketing strategy. • Thinking about asking for a raise, or changing jobs? Or just want to be happier at work? Here’s a roundup of advice on retuning your career. • Most major markets reopen after the New Year’s holiday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • China’s pledge to shut down its commercial ivory trade is galvanizing support among African trading partners and could boost its international standing. [The New York Times] • Suicide bombers struck the international airport in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing at least three security officers. [Al Jazeera] • A prison battle in Brazil between gangs fighting for control of the cocaine trade left about 60 inmates dead — some decapitated. [The New York Times] • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was questioned by police investigators, indicating that a graft inquiry has become a criminal investigation. [The New York Times] • Pakistan began a polio immunization campaign in the city of Quetta after a strain of the virus was found in sewage samples. [Reuters] • A Mongolian official’s apology for allowing the Dalai Lama to visit is the latest sign that Chinese pressure is outweighing the country’s deep ties to the Tibetan leader. [The New York Times] • Pan Pan, a panda who fathered nearly a quarter of the world’s captive pandas, died last week at a conservation center in China’s Sichuan Province. [The New York Times] • The first meteor shower of the year, the Quadrantids, should be visible from Asia in the early hours of Wednesday. [EarthSky] • A cache of notes left by Richard Nixon’s closest aide shows that Nixon, for domestic political reasons, sabotaged a 1968 peace initiative that could have brought the Vietnam War to an early end. • A museum in Yan’an, China, honors a group of American diplomats who in 1944 gave Washington a positive assessment of Mao Zedong, and had their careers destroyed for it. • J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of “The Lord of the Rings,” was born 125 years ago today. Fans around the world plan to toast “The Professor” at 9 p. m. local time. • Tyrus Wong, who endured racial bias to become one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century and whose influence was crucial to the animated film “Bambi,” died at 106. • Finally, our Asia correspondents don’t limit themselves to traditional news stories. Sometimes, they’re just taken with a subject, like Myanmar’s unemployed elephants or President Xi Jinping’s favorite jacket. Here are some of our favorites. Enjoy. “I Can’t Drive 55,” the rocker Sammy Hagar once famously wailed, but 43 years ago this week, he and every other American driver were faced with obeying the first federal speed limit. Setting speed limits had been the states’ responsibility. But in 1973, OPEC cut oil shipments to the United States for supporting Israel in a war with its Arab neighbors. The embargo hit the American economy hard. In 1974, President Richard M. Nixon signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, lowering the speed limit to reduce consumption. And American car buyers sought out more vehicles, turning to a country that had not yet been celebrated for automaking: Japan. The debate over road safety and speed limits continued for decades, and in 1995, President Bill Clinton repealed the federal limit, returning the power to the states. In parts of Texas, drivers can legally go 85 m. p. h. That’s the fastest in the country, though it’s slower than a few places in the world. Stretches of Germany’s autobahn have no maximum limit. It’s a far cry from one of the earliest speed restrictions. In 1901, Connecticut limited some drivers to 12 miles per hour. Chris Stanford contributed reporting. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
A man reads various quotes to people on the street that are either from Adolf Hitler or Hillary Clinton, and the participants are expected to guess which one it is.
First quote:
“We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
The participants guessed Hitler. Nope. It was Hillary.
Second quote:
“I believe the primary role of the state is to teach, train and raise children. Parents have a secondary role.”
The participants guess Hitler. Nope! Wrong again! That was Hillary’s quote.
How telling it is that people have trouble distinguishing between the two. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).
Contributed by Ryan Banister of The Daily Sheeple . | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — The entire Hollywood press corps turned up. So did dozens of Chinese executives from the Dalian Wanda Group, some of whom were introduced as “special dignitaries. ” Studio executives? Check. Leaders from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Grinning from the front row. But why were there also four women in gold evening gowns serving as ushers and M. C.’s? And why was the “Star Wars” score used as part of the Monday affair, which was held to promote Wanda’s $5 billion studio complex in Qingdao as a home away from home for Hollywood? The answer seemed to be: because Wanda wanted it that way. And, at least for eager Hollywood executives hoping to tap into the Chinese box office, that was answer enough. As the Motion Picture Association of America’s chief executive, Christopher J. Dodd, said in a video infomercial for the Qingdao complex that played as part of the event, “Any time an audience grows, everyone benefits. ” The 5 p. m. presentation, held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, began with remarks by Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the academy, an institution dedicated in part to celebrating artistic freedom. “We have so much in common,” Ms. Boone Isaacs said of the Chinese and American film industries. “Art. Creativity. Conscience. Conviction. Just telling your story. ” Hollywood, of course, has been frustrated that Chinese censors restrict the flow of American films into China only a few dozen foreign films are allowed to be exhibited annually. But Ms. Boone Isaacs kept it gauzy. “This art form, like an carousel, is at its best when it takes us around the world,” she said of cinema. Next up: Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, who has made bolstering the movie industry a priority of his administration. Specifically, he has criticized the practice of studios moving production to other states and countries to take advantage of tax incentives and rebates. That, of course, is exactly the kind of runaway production funding that Wanda announced at Monday’s event. Mr. Garcetti tried to have it both ways. After noting that efforts to bring back production have borne fruit, he said, “We also are not a place that closes in. ” He added, “We will be strong about promoting Los Angeles as a place to film, but we will also be proud to make those international links that are core to our businesses growing. ” With that, Mr. Garcetti introduced Wang Jianlin, Wanda’s chairman. For his part, Mr. Wang spent most of his speech (delivered in Mandarin, with translation provided to the audience via headphones) highlighting the spectacular growth of the Chinese box office. Within a decade, he noted, China will not only far surpass the United States as a movie marketplace, it will control more than 40 percent of global ticket sales. He got a round of applause when he said that American studios needed to “improve the quality” of their movies. “In the recent few years, perhaps because Hollywood movies are trying to minimize their risk, there are less original movies,” he said. After criticizing Hollywood’s on special effects, he added, “Now that Chinese audiences are smarter, they do not so easily become happy. ” It was almost a wrap. But first came more details about the 40 percent rebate Wanda will offer studios for filming at its “movie metropolis” in Qingdao. Invited to the stage were executives from studios that had already signed up, including Lionsgate, Legendary Entertainment, Arclight Films and Kylin Pictures. As one of the women in gold gowns said in closing, “It’s very exciting!” | 1 |
by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente .
Dallas readers: Yves writes to say her plane is getting in early, and so, there having been no untoward events, the Meetup will be held as scheduled!
TPP, TTIP, TISA
CETA: A week of pressure from four Belgian regions opposed to CETA, led by the courageous Walloons, produced a revised “joint interpretive instrument” and, importantly, a new list of conditions that must be met before Belgium can ratify the deal” [ Rabble.ca ]. “Unfortunately, the joint interpretive ‘instrument’ is mostly artful deception. To take just one example, the instrument’s affirmation of the right to regulate is meaningless. Of course, the parties have not entirely given up their right to regulate. But the fact is, even if the instrument had full legal force under international law, CETA would still threaten the ability of Canada or EU governments to regulate in the public interest, enhance public services, and hold multinational companies accountable for their actions. ‘The critical point missing,’ as we wrote previously, ‘is that while the parties retain the right to regulate, they must do so in conformity with their CETA obligations and commitments.'” So it will be interesting to see if Obama tries a similar deception on TPP. But wait!
Wallonia’s principled stand did, however, produce some important results. While most of the media attention in Canada appears to have focused on the joint instrument, the more interesting and potentially significant development may be the accord between Belgian governments that spells out the grounds for Belgium’s federal government to sign CETA.
For example, Belgium will now ask the European Court of Justice to give an opinion on the legality of CETA’s investment court system within the EU. Even more importantly, four of Belgium’s regional governments also state that they reject CETA (notably its investment chapter) as negotiated and that Belgium will refuse to ratify the treaty unless these concerns are addressed. In other words, while Belgium is now in a position to sign CETA, it will not be able to ratify the deal as it stands.
This means that CETA’s investment chapter, at a minimum, must be revised or the investment court system scrapped, before CETA can be ratified by Belgium. The accord also includes assurances that if any Belgian regional government refuses to ratify CETA, the federal government must give notice to the EU that Belgium cannot ratify, an act that could potentially trigger the end of CETA’s provisional application in all European member states.
The German constitutional court staked out a similar position in the event that Germany fails to ratify CETA. That decision, by the way, will not be made by the German government alone, but in conjunction with Germany’s second chamber, which is currently controlled by the anti-CETA Greens and Left parties.
So while CETA proponents have undoubtedly cleared a big albeit unanticipated hurdle in getting the deal signed, their machinations may have made CETA’s full ratification even less likely. CETA’s passage in Europe is far from assured, despite the apparent breakthrough in Belgium.
And then there is the voice of the Canadian establishment–
CETA: “CETA puts Canada’s trade debate to rest once and for all” [ Globe and Mail ]. “The rationale for launching CETA in Canada was in large part to establish a measure of diversification from the country’s trade relations within the North American free-trade agreement. Given the tone around trade in the U.S. presidential election, this decision now looks especially prescient.”
CETA: “What the Canada-EU Deal Means for the Future of Trade” [ Fortune ]. “All of the factors that drove Europe to conclude this agreement provide insights for current trade challenges in the U.S. President Obama is trying to get Congress to approve just after the presidential election the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement… Now is the time to resolve as many specific congressional objections to the deal as possible. It is impossible to renegotiate the TPP in the time available, so as with the last-minute negotiations between the EU and Belgium, both the administration and Congress will need to be pragmatic and come to an agreement quickly on outstanding issues.”
TISA: “The 21st round of negotiations for the Trade in Services Agreement kicks off this morning in Geneva, and stakes are high for significant progress to be made this round in order for the deal to wrap up by its early December deadline. Significant issues remain, including data flows — where the European Union is still working to come up with a consolidated position — and new services, on which the EU and others are continuing to push for the right to apply different regulations to domestic and foreign constituents rather than afford the same treatment to all TISA partners. The round is scheduled to last through Nov. 10” [ Politico ].
2016
Days until: 5. That’s not very many days!
Debates
“Presidential Candidates Dr. Jill Stein & Gov. Gary Johnson [Pt. 1]” [ Tavis Smiley ]. A forum-style “conversation” between the two.
“‘I had a team of people who were relentless, totally in the head of what Trump might do,’ [Hillary Clinton] says” [ People ] “‘A lot of this comes down to who gets into whose head. It’s like an athletic contest or maybe a high-stakes entertainment performance.”
War Drums
“In the five and a half years since the uprising in Syria began, it has become the most catastrophic war of our young century” [Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker ]. I would have thought that our invasion of Iraq in 2003 set the baseline for “catastrophic”? What the heck was Filkins thinking when he wrote that sentence? And The New Yorker used to be famous for its fact-checking. When did that get crapified, anyhow?
The Voters
“[W]hile Trump and many of his supporters may fetishize a past that is deeply retrograde, liberals and progressives have also demonstrated a troubling tendency to fetishize a future that they presume is on their side. There’s something peculiarly telling about this kind of progress fetishism, which has been conscripted as ideology-of-first-resort for Clintonite New Democrats” [ The Baffer ]. “When our historical terrain has effectively focused most of our political energies to differentiating ourselves from the not-woke-enough opponents of progress, we can lose all critical introspection. We can uncritically pass over the fact that, say, liberal multiculturalism can end up being really racist , tolerance of queer sexualities can end up repackaging biologically determinist languages of eugenics, and so on. Moreover, as the rise of the New Democrats has made crystal clear (from Bill and Hillary to Obama), we will dependably base our biggest political choices on our future-focused need to have our place on the right side of history confirmed. So what if that means more drone strikes, deportations, mass incarceration of minorities, destructive free trade agreements, corporate concessions, and financial deregulation? It’s messy ‘maintaining’ history, after all.”
“Early Voting a Poor Predictor of Final Results” [ RealClearPolitics ]. One of several reasons: “[W]e don’t know the effect to which campaign strategy is creating the appearance of a participation surge by merely cannibalizing Election Day voters by mobilizing voters who would have voted on Election Day anyway.”
Downballot
“The presidential race may be inducing whiplash, but the House battleground remains relatively stable in the final week. We rate only 40 House races in Lean or Toss Up, and Democrats would need to sweep 35 of them to win control, so Republicans remain overwhelming favorites to hold onto their majority. But there is still plenty of uncertainty about the size of that majority: Democrats could gain anywhere from 5 to 20 seats” [ Cook Political Report ]. ” Republican voters have begun coming home to Donald Trump amid the Comey news… Even if control is not at risk, the ultimate size of the GOP majority matters a great deal, especially to Speaker Paul Ryan. To the extent Republicans lose seats, almost all of the casualties will be swing-district moderates who are more loyal to Ryan than Trump. The narrower the majority, the less room for error Ryan will have in winning reelection to his position and navigating the 2017 legislative minefield.”
Well done, DSCC: For Senate this year, Dems nominated two weed opponents (NV, NH), corp lobbyists (PA, IN), & a trust fund kid former Republican (FL)
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) November 2, 2016
The Trail
“SEPTA strike halts transit service in Philadelphia” [ Progressive Railroading ]. Effect on voting?
“[T]he race between [Clinton and Trump] is now a precise dead heat in the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll, 46-46 percent. A majority, 55 percent, continues to expect Clinton to win, though that’s down 5 points from its peak last week” [ ABC ]. ” Among other results is a gradual collapse in support for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, from a peak of 9 percent support in September to just 3 percent now. Jill Stein of the Green Party has 2 percent and has held steady.” Amazingly, Trump now leads on honesty and trustworthiness. Of course, it’s madness to focus on individual polls; RCP’s 4-way average has Clinton up by 1.9, though falling.
“With the fallout over the FBI email probe continuing to take up oxygen, Trump has stayed uncharacteristically on message. Campaigning near Philadelphia on Tuesday, the GOP nominee and his running mate focused on the projected 25 percent average increase in premiums for some Affordable Care Act plans, as open enrollment began. Trump let Mike Pence do most of the talking, and the Indiana governor closed his remarks on repealing the law by asking Republicans to “come home'” [ RealClearPolitics ]. Hitherto, Trump has been the anti-Napoleon, always interrupting his enemy when they are making a mistake. Not so this week (though there are 5 days to go). Kellyanne Conway must have gotten Trump’s attention somehow. Or Ivanka.
“Donald Trump Voters, Just Hear Me Out” [The Moustache of Understanding, New York Times ]. Four paragraphs in, he turns to the topic of Trump: “Trump is not only a flawed politician, he’s an indecent human being.” Persuasive! I dunno. If a vote for Trump would finally force Friedman off the Times Op-Ed page, would it be worth it? Tough call.
Realignment
“Will this be the election that finally kills off the Democratic and Republican parties?” [ McClatchy ]. “Just days before Election Day, interviews with more than 40 independent voters in swing states underscores that the nomination of two deeply unpopular candidates for president is aggravating and reinforcing a growing trend in the country away from the Democratic and Republican parties, which more and more voters see as out of touch with their lives and out of date in a new century. The number of free agent voters registering as independent or unaffiliated is soaring, while Republican and Democratic numbers flatline. Independent registrations have jumped since 2008 by 22.3 percent in states that keep registration data by party. Democrats over that same time increased 2.7 percent and Republicans 3.6 percent…”
“6 Reasons Why A New Civil War Is Possible And Terrifying” [ Cracked ]. “‘Trust’ isn’t just an intangible concept when we’re talking about the potential for civil warfare. Sinisa Malesevic is a professor who studies the sociology of civil wars and a survivor of the Yugoslavian civil war. He’s someone Marvel really should’ve reached out to for script advice, and he noted the breakdown of trust was one of the first traumatizing steps to war, ‘… in a very short period of time, there is a complete sense of fear, you do not know who is who, who is supporting which side … that fear spreads.'” And: “Colonel Couvillon also thought any conflict was likely to start in a rural area, ‘…people talk about, is it gonna be class warfare, race warfare … is it gonna be north versus south? Personally, I think it’s gonna be urban versus rural.'” Another interesting piece from Cracked, of all places.
Democrat Email Hairball
“Opinion: Hillary Clinton is irreparably damaged, even if she wins” [ MarketWatch ]. “[W]e are in for a fiasco in politics that will make even this fiasco of a campaign pale by comparison. There is hardly any scenario that is too far-fetched. Even if the polls are right and Clinton’s lead translates into an electoral victory, she will be so damaged going into office that her chances of getting anything done will be virtually nil. In this sense alone, Trump’s claim that this scandal is “worse than Watergate” could prove to be true. As an incumbent, Richard Nixon at least had an administration in place when he won re-election in 1972, though it took nearly another two years before he was forced to resign under threat of impeachment.”
“U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Monday he believes Hillary Clinton’s actions with her private email server are impeachable offenses should she be elected president” [ Beloit Daily News ]. “Johnson cited 18 U.S. Code 793 (f) and 18 U.S. Code 2071, which have to do with the willful destruction or removal from proper custody of information relating to national defense. Johnson honed in on the latter of the two, which reads in part that anyone found to have concealed or removed records ‘shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.’‘I’m not a lawyer, but this is clearly written,’ Johnson said. ‘I would say yes, high crime or misdemeanor, I believe she is in violation of both laws.'” In principle, I agree. If a high official can privatize their communications, and then decide what to destroy and what to retain before turning them over to law enforcement, the term “public records” becomes literally meaningless. Nixon, deep within his withered and wormy soul, retained a shred of conscience: He didn’t simply destroy the tapes . Clinton would have destroyed the tapes without hesitation; in fact, that’s exactly what she did with “her”— that is, the public’s — mail.
“Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner told conservative radio host Charlie Sykes Tuesday that there would be a ‘constitutional crisis’ if Clinton was indicted, and when asked about impeachment, answered, ‘I think that is something that is speculative in nature. I’m speculating, what I can say is that I think Richard Nixon would have been indicted and he would have been impeached. He stopped the impeachment by resigning as a result of Watergate and he stopped the indictment by President Ford pardoning him” [ CNN ]. On pardons, see Jerri-Lynn’s post today .
Stats Watch
ADP Employment Report, October 2016: “ADP sees significant softening for Friday’s employment report, estimating October private payrolls will come in at 147,000” [ Econoday ]. “Though ADP’s revision does point to an upward revision to September’s data in Friday’s report, the October estimate is soft and could further lower expectations for a rate hike at today’s FOMC meeting.” And but: ” ADP is showing jobs growth equalling the rate of people entering the jobs market. The growth this month is as Econintersect forecasted based on economic potential” [ Econintersect ]. “ADP employment has not been a good predictor of BLS non-farm private job growth.
Gallup U.S. Job Creation Index, October 2016: “American workers’ reports of hiring activity at their place of employment remained relatively strong in October, with many more saying their employer was adding rather than subtracting jobs” [ Econoday ]. “For nearly all of Gallup’s JCI trend since August 2008, net hiring in the private sector has far outpaced government net hiring. But the latest poll shows the narrowest gap between net hiring in the two sectors since April 2009, with nongovernment hiring (plus 32) essentially tied with government hiring (plus 31).”
MBA Mortgage Applications, week of October 28, 2016: “Purchase applications for home mortgages fell a seasonally adjusted 0.4 percent in the October 28 week, following a sharp 7 percent decline in the prior week to the lowest level since January” [ Econoday ].
Shipping: “US west coast employers and [ILWU and PMA] union leaders are to continue talks about extending the current employment contract covering dockworkers.The two sides met on Tuesday to discuss an extension beyond mid-2019 as part of an effort to restore confidence in ports along the Pacific seaboard” [ Lloyd’s List ].
Shipping: “Are conditions finally improving for the air cargo industry?” [ Air Cargo News ]. “September market round-up shows that air cargo volume demand increased by 5% year on year in September — a level of increase not seen for two years. ‘With such an increase in total weight transported, a further worldwide yield improvement over previous months, and industry sources claiming that October will be even better, one could be forgiven for thinking that the industry shows signs of improving health,’ the analyst said.” There’s a calendar effect that only accounts for a fraction of the increase. “At the recent Air Cargo Forum there was much speculation as to what had caused the improvements.” A sporty game!
Shipping: “A majority of Splash readers fear container freight rates will only pick up later than 2020. With 10 days to go until voting closes in our quarterly online survey, called MarPoll, roughly one quarter of the more than 500 respondents to date feel container freight rates will pick up only after 2020” [ Splash 24/7 ]. “‘Shipping may have to accept the bubble has burst and what was will not be again. There is a new normal and companies need to plan as such,’ one respondent noted”
Shipping: “[The Boston Consulting Group Inc.] said shipping capacity will outstrip demand by between 8.2% and 13.8% in 2020, compared with a 7% gap today. If borne out, that forecast would indicate this year’s plunging freight rates and shrinking profits for marine carriers will only grow worse, particularly on major trade lanes across the Pacific and between Asia and Europe” [ Wall Street Journal , “More Pain Ahead for Ocean Shipping”]. “The shipping industry hasn’t adjusted to a slowdown in global trade, with shipyards churning out giant container vessels and carriers holding onto excess capacity even as rates fall. Historically, container shipping demand grew over 5% annually, often outpacing global economic growth. Between 2015 and 2020, BCG estimates container demand will rise between 2.2% and 3.8% annually.” And we’re still building out warehouses…
Shipping: “Cummins shipped just 16,400 engines in North America in the quarter, down 33% from a year ago. That’s in line with a downturn in orders for big rigs that’s triggered layoffs among truck makers and led Cummins to cut its spending on research and engineering more than 14% in the first nine months of the year” [ Wall Street Journal ].
Shipping: “Shipping finally emerging from 2009 downturn, Mitropoulos argues” [ Lloyd’s List ]. “Signs are finally materialising that the industry is emerging from its protracted downturn, according to a former secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization.Efthimios Mitropoulos was speaking on Tuesday morning at the Shipping and the Law Conference in Naples.” Great courage!
Honey for the Bears: “Most of the leading indicators are based on factors which are known to have significant backward revisions – and one cannot take any of their trends to the bank. I continue to pose the question: “[W]hat good is a leading indicator where the data is continued to change after it is issued?'” [ Econintersect ]. “The only indicators with minimal backward revision are ECRI, RecessionALERT, and the Chemical Activity Barometer. Unfortunately, the Chemical Activity Barometer is targeted to the industrial sector of the economy – and at best seems to be a coincident indicator, not a leading indicator. Both ECRI and RecessionALERT were forecasting economic improvement beginning at mid-2016 – and is now forecasting flat (but relatively better) growth beginning 5 months from now. Econintersect sees NO dynamic which will deliver better growth anyone will feel in the foreseeable future. All economic growth will only be seen when one uses a calculator.”
Infrastructure: “A pipeline explosion in Alabama is roiling U.S. fuel markets and putting a spotlight on tight domestic shipping capacity. The major Colonial pipeline fuel artery was severed for the second time in two months this week” [ Wall Street Journal ].
Fodder for the Bulls: “Update: The Endless Parade of Recession Calls” [ Calculated Risk ]. “Looking at the economic data, the odds of a recession in 2016 are very low (extremely unlikely in my view). [a recession in 2017 is very unlikely]. Someday I’ll make another recession call, but I’m not even on recession watch now.”
Fodder for the Bulls: “Eurozone factories had their most active month for almost three years in October, and raised their prices for the first time in more than a year, according to a survey of purchasing managers released Wednesday” [ Wall Street Journal , “Eurozone Factory Survey Shows Expansion”].
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 18 Fear (previous close: 22, Fear) [ CNN ]. One week ago: 43 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 2 at 11:26am. Heading for single digits?
Police State Watch
“Raided but never charged, cannabis distributor seeks return of seized assets” [ San Diego Tribune (RF)]. “‘It’s the dirty little secret of the American justice system,’ [James] Slatic said in an interview. ‘They can come in and take all your money and property just on the say-so of a police officer. Once they do that, you have to go to court and prove why your money is not guilty.'” (Obama made noises about ending asset forfeiture, but resumed it . Of course, asset forfeiture will be a lot easier when digital cash arrives!
Standing Rock and #NoDAPL
“I used to think there was no rational argument for civilian possession of military-style weapons. But in light of the disparate treatment of the armed Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers (who were acquitted of all charges Friday) and the protesters in North Dakota supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in its fight against construction of an oil pipeline, it’s apparent that such weapons are now an effective component of the protester’s toolkit” [Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times ]. Well, the difference isn’t that the Malheur occupiers were white, given that the (sadly but mostly) white Occupy movement was treated to a 17-city coordinated paramilitary crackdown orchestrated by Obama’s DHS; the difference is that they were right wing (and white). So the Sioux are both the “wrong” color, and their cause is percieved by the country at large as on the left (though I think the Sioux themselves would reject that framework).
“Want to Help the Standing Rock Sioux? Here’s Where to Donate” [ Money (!!)]. “A GoFundMe set up by protester Ho Waste Wakiya Wicasa has raised more than $1 million, which will be used for the camp’s operating expenses. “The money goes as quickly as it comes, but without it having been as much as it is, we certainly wouldn’t have been able to be as productive as we have been in the fight,” Wicasa told Fox News. The funds raised have been used for groceries, yurts, toilets, a medical area, a generator, and bail for those arrested.”
“After 37 Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers left for the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota Saturday, a majority of Cincinnati City Council issued a letter to Gov. John Kasich requesting the troopers be brought home” [ USA Today ]. “The signers said the trooper should come home so they can focus on Ohio issues, naming the heroin epidemic and increased traffic fatalities.” Tough choice. After all, the troopers could use the practice.
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“Net worth of white households in D.C. region is 81 times that of black households” [ WaPo ]. “The Urban Institute report, called “The Color of Wealth in the Nation’s Capital,” said the Great Recession and housing crisis of 2007 to 2009 exacerbated long-persistent disparities, with black and Hispanic households losing about half of their wealth.”
Class Warfare
“Data can help hotel executives manage workforce” [ Hotel News Notes ]. “Performance evaluations are another area where big data can play an important role. Instead of the usual, subjective assessments by supervisors, employees can be judged through company-tracked data, which may measure:” Punctuality; results of client/manager surveys; tracking of output keyed directly to the percentage of time and input of all contributing workers; and non-health related biometric data or other feedback associated with wearable technology, such as how employees traverse during the workday.
This creates a more objective review process – reducing bias and the threat of lawsuits – and takes pressure off supervisors.
That little point on wearables seems a little Orwellian. They won’t be able to force me to wear my wearable at all times , right?
“The east sides of New York, London and Paris are noticeably and famously poorer than their western sides. And it turns out there’s a reason for that” [ MarketWatch ]. “Researchers have found that it’s due to the impact of air pollutants at the time of the Industrial Revolution, as prevailing winds in the U.S. and Europe typically blow from west to east. And it’s an impact that has lasted into today” ( original study ).
“Twenty-First Century Victorians” [ Jacobin ]. “Today’s upper middle class maintains the fiction of a meritocratic society, just as the Victorians did. This story allows them to shore up their economic position behind the backs of workers, who are taught that their health problems and dismal career prospects represent individual faults, not systemic dysfunction. Of course, exercising, eating organic food, and pushing children to use their spare time usefully are not inherently bad things. However, they become markers of bourgeois values when they are marshaled to assert one class’s moral superiority over another and to justify social inequality. It was just as obnoxious in the nineteenth century as it is today.”
UPDATE “Behind 2016’s Turmoil, a Crisis of White Identity” [Amanda Taub, New York Times ] “Whiteness, in this context, is more than just skin color. You could define it as membership in the ‘ethno-national majority,’ but that’s a mouthful. What it really means is the privilege of not being defined as ‘other.’ Whiteness means being part of the group whose appearance, traditions, religion and even food are the default norm. It’s being a person who, by unspoken rules, was long entitled as part of ‘us’ instead of ‘them.'” Peak identity politics? I wonder how many of the academic entrepreneurs pushing this stuff live in leafy suburbs, or nice little college towns…
“Socially influenced preferences” [ Stumbling and Mumbling ]. Wait, what? Actors aren’t atomized, “rational” individuals?
News of the Wired
“How Ancient Humans Reached Remote South Pacific Islands” [ New York Times ]. “‘Our paper supports the idea that what people needed was boating technology or navigation technology that would allow them to move efficiently against the wind,’ Dr. Montenegro said.”
* * *
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OK, OK. There are plants in this. The grass, those fronds in the background…
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Breakdown of the Clinton Money Machine November 12, 2016
As troubling as Donald Trump’s election may be, it carries greater hope for some positive good than the alternative of Hillary Clinton, who represented a corrupt, money-churning machine, writes John Chuckman.
By John Chuckman
Brushing away the extreme claims and rhetoric of much election analysis, there are some observations, which deserve attention and which unfortunately mostly provide hard lessons (and not a lot of encouragement for people who hold to principles of democracy, enlightenment and progressivity).
The election demonstrated perhaps better than ever, and better than has been generally recognized, that America is, indeed, a plutocracy. It took a genuine American oligarch, a self-proclaimed billionaire, a man with a lifetime’s economic empire-building, to defeat a family which could provide the very definition of being politically well-connected, a family which had laboriously constructed and carefully maintained a kind of deep well ever-flowing with money for their ambitions. President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1997. (White House photo)
It was the ever-flowing well of money, drilled by Bill Clinton with help from some extremely shady friends, such as Jeffrey Epstein, that made the Clintons keystone establishment figures in the Democratic Party. It was not personal charm or exceptional political generalship – although Bill, in his heyday, displayed some of both of those – that earned the Clintons their place, it was the money, the “mother’s milk of politics.” In what is euphemistically called “fund raising,” many hundreds of millions of dollars were provided for the party over the last couple of decades by Bill Clinton’s efforts.
Hillary Clinton fully appreciated the fact that money buys power and influence. She lacked Bill’s superficial charm, but she certainly more than shared his ambition. On the charm front, when she was ready to move into running for office, she adopted, perhaps under Bill’s tutelage, a kind of forced set of expressions with arched eyebrows, bugged-out eyes, and a smile as big as her lips would allow. These expressions were accompanied by little gestures such as briefly pointing to various onlookers or waving helter-skelter whenever she campaigned.
Her gestures reminded me of something you might see atop a float in a Christmas Parade or of the late Harpo Marx at his most exuberant. These were not natural for her. They were never in evidence years ago when she spent years as a kind of bizarre executive housewife, both in a governor’s mansion and later in the White House, bizarre because she indulged her husband’s non-stop predatory sexual behavior in exchange for the immense power it conferred on her behind the scenes over her far more outgoing and successful politician-husband.
Money Talks
Anyway, Hillary knew that gestures and simulated charm do not get you far in American politics. She determined to build a political war chest long ago, and there are many indications over the years of her working towards this end of making this or that change in expressed view, as when running for the Senate, when sources of big money suggested another view would be more acceptable. She was anything but constant in the views that she embraced because when she ran for the Senate she spent record amounts of money, embarrassingly large amounts. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on March 30, 2012. [State Department photo] In her years of speaking engagements, she aimed at special interests that could supply potentially far more money than just exorbitant speaking fees. Later, in the influential, appointed post of Secretary of State – coming, as it does, into personal contact with every head of government or moneyed, big-time international schemer – she unquestionably played an aggressive “pay for play” with them all. It appears that covering up that embarrassing and illegal fact is what the private servers and unauthorized smart phones were all about.
A second big fact of the election is that both major American political parties are rather sick and fading. The Republican Party has been broken for a very long time. It hobbled along for some decades with the help of various gimmicks, hoping to expand its constituency with rubbish like “family values,” public prayer in schools and catering to the Christian Right – along with anti-flag burning Constitutional amendments — and now it is truly out of gas.
The Republican Party had been given a breather, some new life, by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He had an extremely mixed record as President, but he was popular, held in some affection, and did have a clear vision, but his effect on the party was not lasting. Trump could be seen as another Reagan, but I think the comparison is superficial. Trump literally hijacked the party. He was not deliriously crowned by its establishment.
The Republican Party itself was formed not long before Abraham Lincoln’s candidacy out of the remains of worn out and collapsed predecessors, including the Whigs and Free-Soil Democrats. Parties do not last forever, and here was Trump creating something of a minor political revolution inside a tired and fairly directionless old party, a phenomenon which I do not think was sufficiently noticed.
In the Republican primaries, he was opposed by tired, boring men like Jeb Bush, seeking to secure an almost inherited presidency, and a dark, intensely unlikable, phony Christian fundamentalist like Ted Cruz, and it proved to be no contest. Trump’s capture of the GOP nomination was a remarkable political achievement, but I think it was only possible given the sorry state of the party.
The press was too busy attacking Trump from the start to take notice or do any intelligent analysis, and he was attacked precisely for the potential damage to the Establishment that he represented. His most promising quality was his potential for creating a new coalition of interests and one excluding the continuation of the Neocon Wars that Hillary Clinton embraced and promised to expand.
A Democratic Party in Trouble
But the Democratic Party is in serious trouble, too. It has a great deal of internal rot, as the WikiLeaks material from the Democratic National Committee clearly shows us. Arrogance, lack of direction, ignorance of the people whom the party has always claimed to serve, bad decision-making, and the absolute prostrate worship of money are the major symptoms. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a Democratic presidential debate sponsored by CNN.
It would have been impossible for the party to have so made up its mind and committed its resources to Hillary Clinton without serious rot. She has always had strong negatives in polling, always been (rightly) suspected concerning her honesty.
The WikiLeaks material tells us about many internal conflicts, including harsh high-level judgments of Hillary’s decision-making, resentment over the backstabbing character of daughter Chelsea who is said to resemble Hillary in her behavior and attitudes, and the belief of some that Hillary just should not have run.
And, frankly, Hillary Clinton had become for many a rather tiresome, used-up figure from whom absolutely nothing spectacular in politics or policy could possibly be expected. But they not only blindly supported her, they broke all their own party rules by internally and secretly working to defeat a legitimate and viable contender, Bernie Sanders.
Sanders might well have been able to win the election for the Democrats, but their establishment was blind to the possibility and rejected his candidacy out-of-hand. After all, there were Bill and Hillary beckoning toward their running well of money.
In hindsight, it might be just as well that Sanders was cheated out of the nomination. He proved a weak individual in the end, giving in to just the forces that he had claimed to oppose and leaving his enthusiastic followers completely let down. There he was, out on the hustings, supporting everything he ever opposed as personified in Hillary Clinton. Men of that nature do not stand up well to Generals and Admirals and the heads of massive corporations, a quality which I do think we have some right to expect Trump to display.
Public Distrust
Another important fact about the election is that it was less the triumph of Trump than the avoidance of Hillary that caused the defeat. The numbers are unmistakable. Yes, Trump did well for a political newcomer and a very controversial figure, but Hillary simply did badly, not approaching the support Obama achieved in key states, again something reflecting the documented fact that she is not a well-liked figure and the Party blundered badly in running her. President-elect Donald Trump
But again, money talks, and the Clintons, particularly Bill, are the biggest fundraisers they have had in our lifetime. No one was ready to say no to the source of all that money.
Now, to many Americans, the election result must seem a bit like having experienced something of a revolution, although a revolution conducted through ballots, any other kind being literally impossible by design in this massive military-security state.
In a way, it does represent something of a revolutionary event, owing to the fact that Trump the Oligarch is in his political views a bit of a revolutionary or at least a dissenter from the prevailing establishment views. And, as in any revolution, even a small one, there are going to be some unpleasant outcomes.
The historical truth of politics is that you never know from just what surprising source change may come. Lyndon Johnson, life-long crooked politician and the main author of the horrifying and pointless Vietnam War, did more for the rights of black Americans than any other modern president. Franklin Roosevelt, son of wealthy establishment figures, provided remarkable leadership in the Great Depression, restoring hopes and dreams for millions.
Change, important, change, never comes from establishments or institutions like political parties. It always comes from unusual people who seem to step out of their accustomed roles in life with some good or inspired ideas and have the drive and toughness to make them a reality.
I have some limited but important hopes for Trump. I am not blind or delirious expecting miracles from this unusual person, and after the experience of Barack Obama, who seemed such a promising young figure but fairly quickly proved a crushing, bloody disappointment, I can never build up substantial hopes for any politician. And what was the choice anyway? Hillary Clinton was a bought-and-paid one-way ticket to hell.
Trump offers two areas of some hope, and these both represent real change. The first is in reducing America’s close to out-of-control military aggressiveness abroad. This aggressiveness, reflecting momentum from what can only be called the Cheney-Rumsfeld Presidency, continued and grew under the weak and ineffectual leadership of Obama and was boosted and encouraged by Hillary as Secretary of State.
Hillary did a lot of killing during her tenure inside the federal government, advocating and promoting military interventions as First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State. She along with Obama is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of men, women and children, many of them literally torn apart by bombs.
Welfare of Americans
The other area of some hope is for the welfare of ordinary Americans who have been completely ignored by national leaders for decades. George W. Bush’s lame reaction to Hurricane Katrina (before he was internationally shamed into some action) has become the normal pattern for America’s national government when it comes to ordinary Americans. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a press conference.
Inside the Democratic Party, the truth is that the legacy of FDR has withered to nothing and no longer plays any role, and of course never did in the Republican Party. By welfare, I do not mean the kind of state assistance to the poor that Bill Clinton himself worked to end. Nothing can impress someone not familiar with America’s dark corners more than a visit to places like Detroit or Gary or Chicago’s South Side, parts of New Orleans, or Newark or dozens of other places where Americans live in conditions in every way comparable to Third World hellholes.
No, I mean the people’s general well-being. Trump’s approach will be through jobs and creating incentives for jobs. I don’t know whether he can succeed, but, just as he asked people in some of his speeches, “What do you have to lose?” Just having someone in power who pays any attention to the “deplorables” is a small gain.
People should never think of the Clintons as liberal or progressive, and that was just as much true for Bill as it is for Hillary. His record as President – apart from his embarrassing behavior in the Oval Office with a young female intern and his recruitment of Secret Service guards as procurers for women he found attractive on his morning runs – was actually pretty appalling.
In his own words, he “ended welfare as we know it.” He signed legislation that would send large numbers of young black men to prison. He also signed legislation that contributed to the country’s later financial collapse under George W. Bush. He often would appoint someone decent and then quickly back off, leaving them dangling, when it looked like approval for the appointment would not be coming.
His FBI conducted the assault on Waco, killing about 80 people needlessly. A pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was destroyed by cruise missiles for no good reason. There were a number of scandals that were never fully explained to the public.
It was his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who answered, unblinkingly, a television interviewer’s question about a half million Iraqi children who died owing to America’s embargo, “We think the price is worth it.” He committed the war crime of bombing Belgrade, including the intentional destruction of the Serb TV building. When news of the horrors of the Rwanda genocide were first detected by his government, the order secretly went out to shut up about it. No effort was made to intervene in that case.
No, any real change in America could never come from people like the Clintons, either one of them.
John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — Foreign governments concerned about climate change may soon be spending more time dealing with Sacramento than Washington. Donald J. Trump has packed his cabinet with nominees who dispute the science of global warming. He has signaled he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. He has belittled the notion of global warming and attacked policies intended to combat it. But California — a state that has for 50 years been a leader in environmental advocacy — is about to step unto the breach. In a show of defiance, Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and legislative leaders said they would work directly with other nations and states to defend and strengthen what were already far and away the most aggressive policies to fight climate change in the nation. That includes a legislatively mandated target of reducing carbon emissions in California to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. “California can make a significant contribution to advancing the cause of dealing with climate change, irrespective of what goes on in Washington,” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “I wouldn’t underestimate California’s resolve if everything moves in this extreme climate denial direction. Yes, we will take action. ” The prospect of California’s elevated role on climate change is the latest sign of how this state, where Hillary Clinton defeated Mr. Trump by more than four million votes, is preparing to resist the policies of the incoming White House. State and city officials have already vowed to fight any attempt by Washington to crack down on undocumented immigrants Los Angeles officials last week set aside $10 million to help fund the legal costs of residents facing deportation. The environmental effort poses decided risks for this state. For one thing, Mr. Trump and Republicans have the power to undercut California’s climate policies. The Trump administration could reduce funds for the state’s vast research community — including two national laboratories — which has contributed a great deal to climate science and energy innovation, or effectively nullify state regulations on clean air emissions and automobile fuel standards. “They could basically stop enforcement of the Clean Air Act and CO2 emissions,” said Hal Harvey, president of Energy Innovation, a policy research group in San Francisco. “That would affect California because it would constrain markets. It would make them fight political and legal battles rather than scientific and technological ones. ” And some business leaders warned that California’s embrace of environmental regulations — from emission reductions to new regulations imposing mandatory energy efficiency standards on computers and monitors — could put it at a disadvantage, all the more so as conservatives elsewhere move to roll back environmental regulations. “If the other states pursue policies, and we continue to go it on our own with our climate change policies, then we would be at a competitive disadvantage for either relocating companies or growing companies here, particularly manufacturing factories,” said Rob Lapsley, the president of the California Business Roundtable. When California enacted its climate reduction standards last year, it drew fierce criticism from state business leaders. The bills “impose very severe caps on the emission of greenhouse gases in California, without requiring the regulatory agencies to give any consideration to the impacts on our economy, disruptions in everyone’s daily lives or the fact that California’s population will grow almost 50 percent between 1990 and 2030,” the California Chamber of Commerce said. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment Democrats relish the prospect of challenging Mr. Trump on climate change, noting that other states have followed California in trying to curb emissions. And California has the weight to get into the ring: It is one of the 10 largest economies in the world, with a gross domestic product of approximately $2. 5 trillion. “California more than ever is strongly committed to moving forward on our climate leadership,” said Kevin de Leon, the leader of the State Senate. “We will not deviate from our leadership because of one election. ” The state has been at the forefront of climate and energy policy for more than half a century, beginning with setting appliance and vehicle emissions standards in the 1960s. Those policies will continue, analysts said, in no small part because they are overwhelmingly popular here: 69 percent of Californians said they supported the law requiring the state to roll back emissions in a July survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California. “This is not something that’s going to be fueled by dislike of Donald Trump,” said Adrienne Alvord, the western states director for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This will be fueled by people liking these policies and wanting to see them continue. Our leadership and the people of California support the science. ” Ms. Alvord said that in the new political climate, the industry may feel emboldened to take on some of the state’s energy and climate initiatives. “But they would be fighting a very uphill battle,” she said. “Politically, it’s going to be very difficult to really slow this train down. ” California’s economy is powered by a industry and prominent research institutions that make it well placed to continue to lead on energy and climate. The state has already taken on an international role. Mr. Brown has spearheaded the Under 2 MOU initiative, backed by a coalition of state, local and regional governments in 33 countries — more than 160 jurisdictions with a total population of more than 1 billion — that have agreed to deep emissions cuts to try to keep global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3. 6 degrees Fahrenheit. California’s program, which imposes a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and allows companies to buy and sell emissions credits, is linked with one in Quebec. The program has suffered recently from weak sales, and it is facing a legal challenge from the state Chamber of Commerce. Its future is likely to be the subject of debate by the Legislature. State officials have also had discussions with other countries, including Mexico and China, about joining forces on policies. Domestically, California has long been a leader on vehicle emissions. The federal Environmental Protection Agency allowed it to have tougher standards under the 1970 Clean Air Act, and more than a dozen states have adopted its standards. The Trump administration could deny the state a new waiver, as the George W. Bush administration did, which would lead to a court fight. The initiatives here have become an intricate part of the economy and a source of growth and jobs. Federal cutbacks would no doubt hurt the state to some extent, but analysts say the very policies that may soon come under attack by the new administration have been a significant factor in California’s economic reversal. “If the and his administration work to undermine our climate leadership, they will hurt our economy,” Mr. de Leon said. “They will kill jobs. And ultimately, they will hurt the economy of the United States. We are 13 percent of the overall G. D. P. ” Still, California officials and environmentalists said climate measures in place here will undoubtedly be undercut if the Trump administration rolls back environmental policies put in place by President Obama. “Our system works better — our system and other ways of addressing climate change — if we have more company,” said Anthony Rendon, the speaker of the Assembly. “The more company we have, the better. ” Dan Jacobson, the state director of Environment California, said the state can “keep doing what we are doing, leading the way. ” “But will that be enough, soon enough? Not without the partnership of other cities, states, and nations. So that’s why it’s so dangerous for Trump to pull out of the accord,” he wrote in an email, referring to the Paris climate agreement. Mr. Brown will be a critical player in this fight. He has presented himself as an environmental advocate since he first served as governor in the 1970s. As he enters what will probably be his last two years in public life, he has seized on the prospect of leading an environmental movement. “We’ve got the lawyers and we’ve got the scientists and are ready to fight,” Mr. Brown declared in a speech in San Francisco earlier this month to the American Geophysical Union. “We’re ready to win. ” Mr. Brown, in the interview, called Mr. Trump’s election a setback for the climate movement, but predicted that it would be fleeting. “In a paradoxical way, it could speed up the efforts of leaders in the world to take climate change seriously,” he said. “The shock of official congressional and presidential denial will reverberate through the world. ” | 1 |
The New York Times is inviting readers to take advantage of its reporting, analysis and commentary from the through the aftermath of the 2016 election. Readers will have unlimited access to NYTimes. com for 72 hours from 12:01 a. m. ET on Monday, November 7 until 11:59 p. m. ET on Wednesday, November 9. “This is an important moment for our country,” said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. publisher of The New York Times. “Independent journalism is crucial to democracy and I believe there is no better time to show readers the type of original journalism The New York Times creates every day. ” Below are highlights of what readers can expect from The Times’s coverage of this historic election: FOLLOW The Times’s live coverage on election night for reporting on hundreds of races across the country and analysis by the political team. The Upshot plans to provide live forecasts of the Presidential and Senate elections, as it did during the 2016 primaries and the 2014 Senate midterms. These forecasts offer readers a constantly updated estimate of the final vote, based on the turnout patterns, exit polling, and demographics of places where votes have already been counted. The New York Times mobile news apps are free to download. Users can sign up for breaking news notifications, which allows users to stay on top of major news events. Readers can also sign up for free newsletters and get more of The New York Times delivered to their inbox. JOIN a livestream of election coverage on The Times’s Facebook page continuously throughout the night starting at 4:30 p. m. ET. Coverage will include live video reports from correspondents at polling stations across the country as well as college campuses, election viewing parties and more. International correspondents in a handful of countries will capture worldwide reaction to the results of the American election. LISTEN to a special show hosted by The podcast on Election Day in which Times politics reporters will answer questions from listeners. The day after the election, Times reporters will come together to discuss the results and recap this remarkable year in politics. | 1 |
It may not qualify as a eureka moment, but Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, recalls the June day in 2009 that got him thinking. He was speaking with G. E. scientists about new jet engines they were building, laden with sensors to generate a trove of data from every flight — but to what end? That data could someday be as valuable as the machinery itself, if not more so. But G. E. couldn’t make use of it. “We had to be more capable in software,” Mr. Immelt said he decided. Maybe G. E. — a maker of power turbines, jet engines, locomotives and equipment — needed to think of its competitors as Amazon and IBM. Back then, G. E. was returning to its roots and navigating the global financial crisis, shedding much of its bloated finance arm, GE Capital. That winnowing went on for years as billions of dollars in assets were sold, passing a milestone this summer when GE Capital was removed from the government’s short list of financial institutions deemed “too big to fail. ” But in 2011, G. E. also quietly opened a software center in San Ramon, Calif. 24 miles east of San Francisco, across the bay. Today one of San Ramon’s most important projects is to build a computer operating system, but on an industrial scale — a Microsoft Windows or Google Android for factories and industrial equipment. The project is central to G. E.’s drive to become what Mr. Immelt says will be a “top 10 software company” by 2020. Silicon Valley veterans are skeptical. “G. E. is trying to do this the way a big company does, by throwing thousands of people and billions of dollars at it,” said Thomas M. Siebel, a technology entrepreneur who is now chief executive of C3 IoT, a that has done work for G. E. “But they’re not software people. ” The San Ramon complex, home to GE Digital, now employs 1, 400 people. The buildings are designed to suit the working ways of software developers: floors, bench seating, whiteboards, couches for impromptu meetings, balconies overlooking the grounds and kitchen areas with snacks. Many industries see digital threats, of course. Yet the scope of the challenge is magnified at G. E. a company and the nation’s largest manufacturer, with more than 300, 000 employees worldwide. Employees companywide have been making pilgrimages to San Ramon for technology briefings, but also to soak in the culture. Their marching orders are to try to adapt the digital wizardry and habits of Silicon Valley to G. E.’s world of industrial manufacturing. G. E.’s success or failure over the next decade, Mr. Immelt says, depends on this transformation. He calls it “probably the most important thing I’ve worked on in my career. ” Apparently, there is no Plan B. “It’s this or bust,” he said. The march of digital technology — mainly inexpensive sensors, powerful computing and clever software — into the industrial world has been underway for years under the guise of “the internet of things” or “the industrial internet. ” It is the next battlefield as companies fight to develop the dominant software layer that connects the machines. It promises to be a huge market for new products, improved service and efficiency gains in industries like energy, transportation and health care. By 2020, the industrial internet market will reach $225 billion, G. E. executives predicted in a recent meeting with analysts. So far, a major application has been predictive maintenance. Software analyzes the data generated by a machine to identify early warning signals that it needs repair, before it breaks down. The data volumes are exploding as machines new and old spawn sensors. By 2020, G. E. estimates that the data flowing off its machines in use will jump a hundredfold. That should enable far more detailed analysis, giving G. E. a chance to sell its customers not machines but “business outcomes,” like fuel savings. Mr. Immelt sees this as a move up the industrial food chain. Yet all of this exposes G. E. to new competition beyond its traditional rivals like Rockwell Automation, Siemens and United Technologies. Tech giants, including Amazon, Cisco, Google, IBM and Microsoft also have their eye on the industrial internet market, as do a bevy of . There is precedent for trouble in other industries, of course. Google and Facebook transformed media and advertising, Amazon redefined retailing, and Uber applied an entirely new business model to taxis, which hadn’t changed much in generations. “The real danger is that the data and analysis becomes worth more than the installed equipment itself,” said Karim R. Lakhani, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “G. E. has no choice but to try to do that itself. ” Recently, G. E. has lured software engineers and data scientists from Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Early on, though, it struggled simply to hire. Last year it began running television ads, featuring young hires, aimed at closing the company’s image gap of industrial giant but digital midget. (Applications at GE Digital jumped eightfold, the company says.) Until this year, Darren Haas hadn’t thought about G. E. certainly not working there. To him, G. E. meant little more than than kitchen appliances and light bulbs. “I had no idea,” Mr. Haas said. But he was intrigued after he met with Harel Kodesh, an expert in mobile and cloud computing who led teams at Microsoft and VMware, a maker of software. Less than two years ago, Mr. Kodesh joined G. E. and he is now chief technology officer of GE Digital. That someone of Mr. Kodesh’s caliber was a G. E. convert got Mr. Haas’s attention. Then, Mr. Haas started grasping the role that G. E. equipment plays across the economy — in transportation, in hospitals — “a whole world,” he said. “I found that really, really compelling. ” The other thing Mr. Haas, 41, found appealing was the big computing challenge that lies ahead for the company. In May, he joined G. E. from Apple, where he was a member of the founding team at Siri, the digital assistant Apple acquired in 2010. When he left Apple, Mr. Haas was head of cloud engineering, managing the computing engine behind Siri, iTunes and iCloud. At GE Digital, Mr. Haas has a similar title, head of platform cloud engineering, but in a different setting. He describes his job as applying modern software technology — machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud computing — to the industrial arena. “I’ve got my work cut out for me,” he said. Mr. Haas is working on the centerpiece of G. E.’s software strategy, a product called Predix. Its evolution mirrors G. E.’s software ambitions. Predix began as little more than a brand of software used by G. E. to service the gear it sells. One showcase use was in jet engines to do predictive maintenance, saving downtime. Around 2013, William Ruh, a former Cisco Systems executive brought in to put together the San Ramon software center, started expanding Predix to other G. E. industrial businesses. But that soon felt too small. The issue was “outside disrupters,” Mr. Ruh said, citing the online lodging Airbnb as an example of rivals that can appear seemingly out of nowhere and that “bring greater productivity — but don’t own the assets they sell. ” G. E. Mr. Ruh notes, is the ultimate company. The other threat was rising interest among tech companies to take their internet connectivity expertise and try to apply it to industrial businesses. To get ahead of all this, G. E. reimagined Predix as a operating system for industrial applications. Mr. Kodesh leads that effort. He ticks off the looming competitors: Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and others. “Those companies are going to encroach on the territory,” Mr. Kodesh said. “Are we going to capitulate, or build something like Predix?” The basic idea is that G. E. and outside software developers will write programs to run on Predix. This software might, for instance, monitor the health and the operation of equipment like rigs and turbines, improving performance, reducing wear and adapting to changing environmental conditions. It amounts to software delivering the equivalent of personalized medicine for machines. Like any other computer operating system, Predix aims to take the complexity out of writing programs, so more people can create them. And while the instincts of the industrial world are proprietary, G. E. is following an model with Predix, providing a basic design, but one open to outside contributors — more like Android from Google than Windows from Microsoft. Predix, Mr. Kodesh said, will be improved using the software equivalent of Lego blocks. “Some will be G. E.’s, and some will be made by developers,” he said. G. E. is betting that its deep knowledge of industry will give it an edge in this software arms race. The stakes for this kind of programming can be high. For a regular consumer using the internet, a misfiring algorithm in the software — “a false positive” — might mean a person sees an irrelevant online ad, or a bad Amazon book suggestion or Netflix movie recommendation, Mr. Kodesh said. Useless, perhaps, but not necessarily costly. But a false positive that prompts an airline to take a jet engine off the wing, Mr. Kodesh said, is a $100, 000 mistake. “We really do need to have different technology, different algorithms and a different cloud, than in the consumer internet,” he said. G. E. has set an ambitious target for Predix. It hopes to attract $100 million in orders this year, on its way to $4 billion in revenue by 2020. By then, the company forecasts that its total digital business — more than 90 percent of it software — may reach as much as $15 billion, up from $6 billion now. For Predix to reach its potential, though, G. E. needs outside programmers to write software for it. The company, with its deep pockets, can start the parade, but will others follow? This will be a major test. And G. E.’s campaign to build an industrial operating system and create a flourishing ecosystem of software for it is just getting underway in earnest. In late July, G. E. hosted a Predix conference in Las Vegas, which attracted 1, 200 software developers. Such developer gatherings are part of the playbook of every major software company but unusual for an industrial corporation. G. E. has some advantages. Its installed base is huge. For example, the company says more than a third of the world’s electricity is generated on G. E. equipment. It can make progress simply by winning over the aircraft makers, oil companies, hospitals and utilities that now depend on G. E. machinery. G. E. is starting to attract a developer following. Tata Consultancy Services, for one, says it now has 500 programmers designing and developing Predix applications for customers in the aviation and health care industries. G. E. also promotes partnerships with Infosys, Wipro and Capgemini to help business write Predix software. When he joined in 2011, Mr. Ruh had no illusions that making software a strength at a company would be easy. At the time, he told Mr. Immelt that would be “a journey,” he said. “We’re in the middle of that journey. ” Part of that is an effort to change an engineering culture that stretches back generations. “If G. E. is truly going to be a company, we can’t be separate here,” Mr. Ruh said of his software division. Digital “tools and habits” need to be embedded “in how people do their jobs,” he said. In its factory in Greenville, S. C. G. E. produces both giant power generators and evidence that this metamorphosis might work. The building is crowded with immense cranes and milling, grinding and welding machines, overseen by manufacturing engineers and technicians. The finishing touches are being put on one of G. E.’s new gas turbines. It looks like the business end of a rocket ship lying on its side, a gleaming steel dynamo at rest. It weighs 950, 000 pounds. It fires up at nearly 2, 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and it can generate enough electricity to supply more than 500, 000 households. The gas turbine was brought to market in half the typical five years. That kind of accelerated product development is a performance that G. E. hopes to replicate across its industrial businesses. And it is a story of changes in design and manufacturing practices made possible by digital technology. John Lammas, the vice president for power generation engineering, started his working career 40 years ago, on the shop floor of a jet engine factory in Birmingham, England. He has been with G. E. for 31 years, moving up the ranks of the company’s jet engine and power turbine divisions. “I’m an old mechanical guy,” he said. But a couple of years ago, he issued an edict: no more paper drawings. In the past, a model of a new part would be made and then converted to detailed blueprints running to 70 pages or more. These would then be physically sent to G. E. manufacturing engineers and outside suppliers to begin setting up the tooling, casting and cutting for the part. This routine took up to eight weeks. Now, engineers use computer models, skip the prototype step and instantly send the models electronically. This goes a step beyond design, which is commonplace. In Greenville, the designers are for the first time linked directly with manufacturers and suppliers in real time, in what G. E. calls a “digital thread. ” This means they can collaborate in ways that have changed the work process while making it more likely that problems or defects are spotted sooner. Traditionally, one set of engineers designed a part, and only then passed it on to manufacturing. If a problem arose on the supplier side, the design was kicked back and the process started over. “Jobs are combining in this digital world,” Mr. Lammas said. Greenville’s own equipment has been a Predix guinea pig. The machinery and factory were retrofitted with sensors and the software. Matt Krause, the plant manager, said that last winter, when a snowstorm shut the factory for a day, the sensor network detected that the plant had consumed 1, 000 pounds of argon, an inert gas used in coatings for parts. The leak was fixed, saving $350, 000 a year. “We can see things we never did before,” Mr. Krause said. Over all, 60 of 200 steps in design and production have been automated or eliminated, reducing work time by 530, 000 hours over three years, G. E. estimates. Not all the ideas that G. E. is trying to breed translate comfortably to heavy industry. Lean proponents urge companies to come up with “minimum viable products,” particularly test versions of software programs. But no one wants a minimum viable jet engine or power generator. Yet in Greenville, engineers in the design stages are encouraged to move faster in smaller steps, conduct more experiments, and be willing to fail and try again. It amounts to a sea change in the engineering culture of heavy industry. “As an engineer, not getting it right the first time, I find painful,” said Bill Byrne, an engineering manager. “It’s uncomfortable. But it’s been incredibly liberating. ” The old ways, said Mr. Lammas, the engineering chief, had merit. Each step and rule was logical on its own. But the emphasis on flawless execution and perfection fostered a fear of failure. “Overcoming that culture was probably the biggest challenge,” he said. | 1 |
By Catherine J Frompovich When I was in private practice as a consulting natural nutritionist, often I had moms ask my opinion about their young boys playing football. That was long before “sports... | 0 |
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Hillary Clinton thought her email scandal was in the rearview mirror, but it just blew up in her face days before the election. Unfortunately for her, everything just got worse as a bombshell just exploded – and seeing how the topic is about prison, it looks like things are about to get juicy.
There’s no doubt that Hillary is as crooked as they come. Although the left would have you believe otherwise, with the presidential hopeful all but admitting her criminal acts, not too many people believe them.
However, things just got a lot worse for Hillary, but his time, it’s not only her presidential campaign that’s in jeopardy. According to The Economic Collapse , Hillary Clinton is looking at a whopping 20 years behind bars if she’s convicted of “obstruction of justice” – a term that could very well be a life sentence for a woman of her age. A sight we may get to see soon, and one that Hillary Clinton rightfully deserves
As of this point, no one is mentioning the phrase “obstruction of justice,” but that doesn’t mean the idea isn’t floating out there. In fact, when you look at the actual definition of the term in regards to the Federal statute, you start to get a better idea of just how guilty Hillary is:
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
We already know that Hillary is guilty of trying to cover this up. Not only did she delete and “bleachbit” her server in a desperate attempt to block the FBI from finding out her dirty little secret, but then she said she didn’t have the emails they were looking for.
Of course, when others stumbled across the mythical 33,000 emails, things started to take a turn – and it all just got worse. According to The Wall Street Journal , the FBI now has another 650,000 emails to sort through with about 10,000 pertinent to Hillary’s case. Things aren’t looking so good for Hillary Clinton
Why did FBI Director James Comey find the need to come forward with this information so close to the election? Well, as it turns out, the answer is rather simple – redemption.
According to a Daily Mail article written by Ed Klein, the author of a bestseller about the Clintons entitled Guilty As Sin , it seems as though Comey was suffering for letting off Hillary so easy. As explained by Klein:
“Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,” said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist. He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.”
Further speculation pertaining to Comey’s reasoning seems to indicate that the urgency here stems from the information actually found. Knowing just how much the release would impact the election, one can only assume that Comey was only comfortable in doing so as someone had already found something really big.
The fact of the matter is, people had lost faith in justice after Comey’s dismissal of Hillary’s charges. After proving that power meant exclusion from the law, it seems as though the FBI Director is trying to right that wrong today. Furthermore, as there seems to be something of substantive nature, Hillary can expect to be facing 20 years behind bars – a sentence a great many people would feel is justified. | 0 |
Having booked their flights and secured their hotels, travelers often consider rental cars among the last of their tasks, making the unprepared more vulnerable to the of industry fees. “Our number one advice for renters is to do their homework,” said David Solomito, vice president of marketing for North America at Kayak. “For most people, rental cars are the least considered part of trip. ” As technology has changed travel — consider toll roads, which often do not have manned tollbooths any longer — so it has the rules of the road when it comes to renting cars. “It’s not dramatic in terms of what companies are charging in fees, it’s just that there’s more of them,” said Rick Garlick, who leads the global travel and hospitality practice at J. D. Power, which conducts consumer surveys, including an annual survey on car rental satisfaction (for the third year running, Enterprise has ranked highest). “Ancillary fees, as with airlines, are how the companies retain profitability,” he said. There are a number of ways to save money on rental cars, including renting from a location that’s not at an airport, which Kayak says will save you an average of 11 percent. But there are several charges that tend to nip renters’ wallets after they return their cars that can be avoided or reduced with a little forethought. Assuming you haven’t purchased any refueling options when you signed the contract, rental car agencies require renters to return the car with the same amount of gas as when they departed, which usually means full. But the mileage range between topping off the tank and reaching the return facility is a gray area. “At Hertz, we do not have a mileage restriction. We simply ask that customers refuel to the same level they started with,” wrote Lauren Luster, communications manager with Hertz, in an email. This lack of definition is open to exploitation both from drivers who refuel miles away and from agencies. I recently returned a car to Avis in Miami after refueling a block from the airport return terminal, only to find a “fuel service” charge of $16. 07 on my bill. An Avis employee redacted it when I objected. A spokeswoman for Avis said the company has about 40, 000 “connected” cars, which measure fuel levels when exiting and the rental facility. “We carefully monitor the system and work closely with car manufacturers, so the likelihood that the technology in the vehicle malfunctioned is slim,” wrote Alice Pereira, an Avis spokeswoman, in an email. Industry experts advise making a mental note of the closest gas station when you drive away from the rental facility. “Cars aren’t getting smarter, we need to be,” said Lauren Fix, an author and automotive writer also known as the Car Coach. “If you have a receipt to prove you refilled, they will usually refund the fee. Any pushback, I ask for a manager. ” Drivers are responsible for paying their own tolls, but a shift to electronic tolling has made it harder for renters to avoid the fees charged by agencies as manned booths have disappeared from many routes. Most agencies provide electronic transponders that allow convenient access to toll roads. But once they are triggered by a tollgate, the devices initiate a daily rental fee, often regardless of whether it is used each day. These fees are in addition to the actual tolls, so that while you may only incur a few dollars in tolls driving from Miami to Key West, you will pay somewhere between $2. 95 a day for the device at Payless Car Rental to $4. 95 a day with Hertz. These fees are usually capped. Avis charges a maximum of $19. 75 per rental month Hertz charges $24. 75 maximum per rental agreement and Payless charges $14. 75 maximum for each rental period. Enterprise, National and Alamo car rentals offer the use of automatic tolling for $3. 95 per day it is used, with a maximum charge of $19. 75 for the rental term. Car rental companies stress that drivers can pay cash (when the option exists) avoid toll roads or bring their own electronic transponders from home. Not all electronic passes are linked, however. The can be used in most Northeastern and states and a few in the Midwest, extending from Maine down to North Carolina and west to Illinois. An may be used in various vehicles as long as they are in the same class as your car, so forget using it if you rent a . Some toll roads in California will allow drivers to register a credit card to the rental car license plate and have the tolls charged automatically. Many consumers assume that an early rental return will spare them the fee remaining for the balance of the contract. That doesn’t take into account the lost revenue that the rental car company incurs. “It messes with their inventory and planning,” said Mr. Solomito of Kayak. “Returning a car early is considered breaking the contract. ” How early is early depends on the company, but generally anything less than 24 hours before the return date requires payment of the full amount. If earlier, Dollar Rent A Car, for example, will only charge for the days used and add a $25 charge, according to the company website, “to compensate us in part for our inability to rent your vehicle during the remaining time we have reserved for your use. ” Late returns generally trigger fees. And like airline rebooking, any changes may result in a different rate than the one originally agreed to. Hertz encourages customers to call its Rental Extensions department. They may be subject to a $10 fee, through renters can avoid the fee if they change a return date when they pick up the car. If they don’t call, however, they can be subject to a fee of $12 a day, up to a maximum of $60, in addition to daily rental charges. Parking or traffic tickets are the driver’s responsibility. But if ever there were a financial incentive to driving carefully, it’s in a rental car, where ticket fees may come with a service charge from the rental company. These penalties are usually detailed in the terms and conditions of the rental contract. Avis’s contract says offenses will be charged back to the renter’s credit card, and the company may impose a $30 administration fee to cover the cost of notifying the renter of the infraction by sending copies of the notices. Payless charges a $50 fee per violation. “What the big print giveth, the little print taketh away,” Ms. Fix said. “You have to be aware. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Was the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff as the president of Brazil on Wednesday a coup? Technically, the answer is no. Although there is no single definition of what constitutes a coup, it is at its core an illegal seizure of power. The Brazilian Senate’s vote to remove Ms. Rousseff was the culmination of a legal process set forth in the Brazilian Constitution, and it simply does not meet that standard. But Ms. Rousseff and her supporters have argued for months that the effort to oust her was in fact a coup engineered by a small group of elites. They are not bothered by strict legal definitions. Rather, “coup” has become shorthand for accusing Ms. Rousseff’s political opponents of exploiting the law to subvert democracy. There is truth to that. But it is rooted in problems that afflict Brazil’s entire political system, not just its right or its left. Any opposition party anywhere stands to gain from the downfall of the governing party’s leader. In Brazil, that was heightened by the fact that members of the opposition had been caught up in a major corruption scandal. Romero Jucá, an influential opposition legislator who had been implicated in the scandal, was recorded in March saying of the investigation, “We have to change the government to be able to stop this bleeding. ” Ms. Rousseff was impeached on what analysts near universally described as minor charges: concealing a budget deficit by borrowing from a bank — illegal, but not a criminal offense. Amy Erica Smith, an assistant political science professor at Iowa State University who studies Brazil, said these charges “don’t rise to the level of the kind of accusations that would merit impeachment,” adding: “It’s not a legitimate use of the impeachment proceedings. ” This is why Ms. Rousseff and her allies argued that the politicians pushing impeachment were not trying to protect the integrity of Brazilian democracy, but, rather, to manipulate it to serve their own ends. Calling the impeachment a coup became a way to question the motives of opposition leaders and to argue that impeaching Ms. Rousseff would be contrary to democracy. Normally, following the law — which the impeachers were indeed doing — by design serves democracy. But, in Brazil, there is currently just enough corruption and just enough rule of law for political elites to play the two against each other. Corruption, Professor Smith explained, is so endemic in Brazilian politics that it most likely implicates the entire governing class. The country also has a powerful judiciary that is actively working to investigate and prosecute corruption — an unstable combination. This gives political elites both a means and an incentive to expose their rivals, knowing it will probably ruin them. After all, if everyone is corrupt, everyone is vulnerable. But while that serves individual politicians, it weakens the wider political system by introducing instability. And because Brazil’s economy is doing so poorly, the public is, understandably, angry at the government and eager to see corruption punished. So while Ms. Rousseff’s supporters might see this impeachment as a cynical ploy, her opponents see a symbolic blow against a corrupt system — even if that corruption extends across party lines. There is also an important class dimension playing out. Ms. Rousseff led the Workers Party, which positions itself as a champion of the poor. The opposition Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, which pushed for Ms. Rousseff’s ouster and took power after she was suspended from office in May, is seen as a champion of business interests. In the eyes of Workers Party devotees, the impeachment proceedings had an element of class warfare, with the elite seizing power to protect their interests — which, to the other side, looks and feels like a coup even if it does not meet the formal definition. That perception was captured by a photograph, which went viral on social media, of a couple in a wealthy neighborhood walking to a protest against President Rousseff in March while their maid pushed their children in a stroller alongside them. “When people talk about ‘coup mongers,’ ” said Professor Smith, “they’re often implicitly thinking about, you know, a rich white woman who is upset that her maid now is entitled to labor protections that limit what this rich white woman can ask her maid to do. ” But this view, promoted by Ms. Rousseff’s staunchest supports, is something of a caricature. An April poll by the firm Datafolha found that 61 percent of Brazilians supported holding impeachment proceedings against Ms. Rousseff, and that her approval rating was a scant 13 percent. . So it is not the case, as some have argued, that Ms. Rousseff’s impeachment was a coup in the sense that a handful of elites subverted the popular will. Nor have they, in these proceedings, gone outside the law. Rather, Ms. Rousseff’s political opponents have done something subtler: They exploited the popular will and the letter of the law to serve their own interests, rather than the interests of democracy. Of course, in all countries, politicians act out of . And impeachment proceedings are always political — something that any American who lived through President Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings can tell you. But the particular nature of Brazil’s system at this moment makes its politics particularly unstable, and gives individual politicians greater power to leverage democracy toward ends that are not so democratic. | 1 |
Donald J. Trump on Tuesday tempered some of his most extreme campaign promises, dropping his vow to jail Hillary Clinton, expressing doubt about the value of torturing terrorism suspects and pledging to have an open mind about climate change. But in a hourlong interview with reporters and editors at The New York Times — which was scheduled, canceled and then reinstated after a dispute over the ground rules — Mr. Trump was unapologetic about flouting some of the traditional ethical and political conventions that have long shaped the American presidency. He said he had no legal obligation to establish boundaries between his business empire and his White House, conceding that the Trump brand “is certainly a hotter brand than it was before. ” Still, he said he would try to figure out a way to insulate himself from his businesses, which would be run by his children. He defended Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, against charges of racism, calling him a “decent guy. ” And he mocked Republicans who had failed to support him in his unorthodox presidential campaign. In the midday meeting in the boardroom of The Times’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Mr. Trump seemed confident even as he said he was awed by his new job. “It is a very overwhelming job, but I’m not overwhelmed by it,” he said. He displayed a jumble of impulses, many of them conflicting. He was magnanimous toward Mrs. Clinton, but boastful about his victory. He was about some of his positions, uncompromising about others. The interview demonstrated the volatility in Mr. Trump’s positions. He said he had no interest in pressing for Mrs. Clinton’s prosecution over her use of a private email server or for financial acts committed by the Clinton Foundation. “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” he said. On the issue of torture, Mr. Trump suggested he had changed his mind about the value of waterboarding after talking with James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, who headed the United States Central Command. “He said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful,’” Mr. Trump said. He added that Mr. Mattis found more value in building trust and rewarding cooperation with terrorism suspects: “‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I’ll do better. ’” “I was very impressed by that answer,” Mr. Trump said. Torture, he said, is “not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking. ” Mr. Trump repeated that Mr. Mattis was being “seriously, seriously considered” to be secretary of defense. “I think it’s time, maybe, for a general,” he said. On climate change, Mr. Trump refused to repeat his promise to abandon the international climate accord reached last year in Paris, saying, “I’m looking at it very closely. ” Despite the recent appointment to his transition team of a fierce critic of the Paris accords, Mr. Trump said that “I have an open mind to it” and that clean air and “crystal clear water” were vitally important. He held out assurances that he did not intend to embrace extremist positions in some areas. He vigorously denounced a white nationalist conference last weekend in Washington, where attendees gave the Nazi salute and criticized Jews. Asked about his antagonism with the news media and his vow to toughen libel laws, Mr. Trump offered no specifics but told the group, “I think you’ll be happy. ” Despite his frequent attacks against what he has dubbed the “failing New York Times,” Mr. Trump seemed to go out of his way to praise the institution, which he called “a great, great American jewel, world jewel. ” He did, however, say he believed The Times had been too tough on him during the campaign. Pressed to respond to criticism in other areas, he was defiant. He declared that “the law’s totally on my side” when it comes to questions about conflict of interest and ethics laws. “The president can’t have a conflict of interest,” he said. He said it would be extremely difficult to sell off his businesses because they are real estate holdings. He said that he would “like to do something” and create some kind of arrangement to separate his businesses from his work in government. He noted that he had turned over the management of his businesses to his children, which ethics lawyers say is not sufficient to prevent conflicts of interest. He insisted that he could still invite business partners into the White House for photographs. He said that critics were pressuring him to go beyond what he was willing to do, including distancing himself from his children while they run his businesses. “If it were up to some people,” he said, “I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again. ” Mr. Trump did not dispute reports that he had used a meeting last week with Nigel Farage, the U. K. Independence Party leader, to raise his opposition to offshore wind farms. Mr. Trump has long complained that wind farms would mar the view from his golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. “I might have brought it up,” Mr. Trump said, then argued he had done so because of policy concerns about wind farms rather than any personal interest. Mr. Trump rejected the idea that he was bound by federal antinepotism laws from installing his Jared Kushner, in a White House job. But he said he would want to avoid the appearance of a conflict and might instead seek to make Mr. Kushner a special envoy charged with brokering peace in the Middle East. “The president of the United States is allowed to have whatever conflicts he or she wants, but I don’t want to do that,” Mr. Trump said. But he said that Mr. Kushner, who is an observant Jew, “could be very helpful” in reconciling the longstanding dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. “I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians,” Mr. Trump said, adding that Mr. Kushner “would be very good at it” and that “he knows the region. ” “A lot of people tell me, really great people tell me, that it’s impossible — you can’t do it,” Mr. Trump added. “I disagree. I think you can make peace. ” “I have reason to believe I can do it,” he added. Mr. Trump spoke only in general terms about foreign policy. He said the United States should not “be a nation builder,” repeated his line from the campaign that fighting the war in Iraq was “one of the great mistakes in the history of our country,” and said he has some “very definitive” and “strong ideas” about how to deal with the violent civil war raging in Syria. He declined to say what those ideas are despite several requests to do so. “We have to end that craziness that’s going on in Syria,” he said. The said that he had talked with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia since winning the election, but he did not elaborate. He said it would be “nice” if he and Mr. Putin could get along, but he rejected the idea that any warming of relations would be called a “reset,” noting the criticism that Mrs. Clinton received after her attempts at bettering relations between the countries failed. “I wouldn’t use that term after what happened,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Trump made a forceful defense of Mr. Bannon, whom he named as his chief strategist and who has drawn charges of racism and . This summer, Mr. Bannon called Breitbart News, the website he led, “the platform for the ” a white nationalist movement. Mr. Trump said Mr. Bannon had been dismayed at the reaction to his hiring. “I’ve known Steve Bannon a long time. If I thought he was a racist or ” he said, “I wouldn’t even think about hiring him. ” Mr. Trump added: “I think he’s having a hard time with it because it’s not him. I think he’s been treated very unfairly. ” He also defended Breitbart, which has carried racist and content, saying it was no different from The Times, only “much more conservative. ” Mr. Trump said he hoped to develop a “great relationship” with President Obama, with whom he said he had an unexpected rapport. “I really liked him a lot, and I am a little bit surprised that I am telling you that I really liked him a lot,” he said. And Mr. Trump gloated about defying the polls and the expectations of his own party to win the presidency, and boasted of how he had taken his revenge on Republicans who kept him at a distance and then lost their own races. He said that one of them, Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, would “love to have a job in the administration. ” “I said, ‘No, thank you,’” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Ayotte, who lost her Senate seat to Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. “She refused to vote for me. ” He also criticized Representative Joe Heck of Nevada, who vacillated over supporting Mr. Trump after an recording surfaced in which Mr. Trump bragged in lewd terms about grabbing women without their consent. “He went down like a lead balloon,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Heck. “I said, ‘Off the record, I hope you lose. ’” He said Republican leaders felt indebted to him for his surprise victory. “Right now,” Mr. Trump said, “they’re in love with me. ” | 1 |
Stephanie Danler’s first novel, “Sweetbitter,” about a young woman in New York City’s restaurant world, is going to make a lot of people hungry. It did me, at any rate. My copy, I notice, has some grease stains in it, a few red pepper flakes, a stubby bit of mint. “Sweetbitter” will be consumed with special avidity by young food people — sommeliers, cheesemakers, sous chefs, managers, pastry wizards — who dream of making it in the big city, or at least of making it by standards. It’s an unpretentious, novel — bought by Knopf in an deal — that reads like a letter home from a friend. In this case, that friend is named Tess, like Thomas Hardy’s heroine and Melanie Griffith’s striving secretary in “Working Girl. ” This Tess is 22 when she escapes her unnamed hometown and its “twin pillars of football and church” and drives into Manhattan. “Let’s say I was born in late June of 2006 when I came over the George Washington Bridge at 7 a. m.,” she says, “with the sun circulating and dawning, the sky full of sharp corners of light, before the exhaust rose, before the heat gridlocked in, windows unrolled, radio turned up to some impossibly hopeful pop song, open, open, open. ” Thanks to her poise and friendly good looks, Tess finds a job as an apprentice server at a restaurant that’s clearly modeled after Union Square Cafe, one of Manhattan’s best. (The author has worked at Union Square Cafe and at another cheerful restaurant, Buvette.) She finds a scuzzy apartment in a cheap section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tess falls deeply into her work and feels the city begin to unfold for her. Ms. Danler is a sensitive observer of the almost wartime camaraderie among workers at a restaurant that’s humming at full capacity, of the exhaustion, of the postshift drinking in dive bars until dawn, of the sex and other stimulants — the biggest one simply being young and alive and open to the animal and intellectual possibilities that New York offers. Once upon a time, this sort of aspirational, young person’s novel was written about writers and artists. Food workers are climbing the status ladder. Now these novels are about chefs or even, in this case, servers. This book has an onrushing “Bright Lights, Big City” vibe and falls into an emerging genre you might call Bright Lights, Small Plates. A restaurant, like a platoon in a war novel, allows a writer to deploy a large cast with relative ease. In “Sweetbitter” we meet a handsome if young bartender (“He drank like he was the only person who understood beer”) an enigmatic female head server who is Tess’s mentor and tormentor a harried chef a manager who does more than ogle his favorite female employees. None feel like stereotypes. A subtle sense of melancholy hangs over these men and women. They’re happy to be where they are in fact, they feel chosen. But they’re nearly all here because of other dreams that were thwarted. They’re failed poets or academics. Tess had hoped to be a photographer. “Sweetbitter” is the story of Tess’s sentimental education. We don’t learn much about her past. But in Manhattan we watch her — she is vulnerable but rarely weak — pour herself full with books and art and music, and blossom like a daisy. Mostly she fills herself with lovely things to eat and drink. Tess isn’t a hipster (“I cared too much about the wrong things”). And Ms. Danler isn’t another Anthony Bourdain manqué, delivering a caustic exposé. She takes the reader by the hand as Tess learns dozens of lessons, from distinguishing among varieties of oysters, types of winter lettuce and appellations of Burgundy to opening wine properly to appreciating a pig’s head terrine. Tess knows she will, at some point, want more than this. But for now this punishing life feels like ravishment. When a college acquaintance comes into the restaurant one night and condescends to her, only politeness prevents her from speaking aloud: “I chose this life because it’s a constant assault of color and taste and light and it’s raw and ugly and fast and it’s mine. And you’ll never understand. Until you live it, you don’t know. ” This novel, which reads a bit like a food world version of Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Prep,” gets off to a bad start. You notice that its four sections are named after the seasons, as if they were George Winston albums. At the beginning there are gimmicky interpolated sections about things like the nature of sweet versus sour. You fear you may be headed into a genre fiction tunnel of love. Those fears are quickly dispelled. Ms. Danler is a gifted commenter (chilly autumn air in Manhattan “tasted of steel knives and filtered water”) on many things, class especially. An awareness of privilege runs through this novel like a tendon. “If you’re good at this job,” she asks, “what exactly are you good at?” “Sweetbitter” grows darker than you might expect, in terms of where Tess’s desires lead her. It’s a book about hunger of every variety, even the sort that can disturb you and make you sometimes ask yourself, as does Tess, “Was I a monster or was this what it felt like to be a person?” | 1 |
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Mark Few wrote the introduction for a book by his college roommate about the power of perseverance. On Saturday night, the Gonzaga men’s basketball team, which Few has built from a midmajor curiosity into a championship contender, provided him with material for a postscript. Gonzaga, making its 19th consecutive N. C. A. A. tournament appearance but its first trip to the Final Four, advanced to the national championship game with a victory over South Carolina at University of Phoenix Stadium. In the final on Monday night, the Bulldogs will face a fellow No. 1 seed, North Carolina, which beat Oregon by later on Saturday. Nigel a junior guard, contributed 23 points, 6 assists and 5 rebounds, and his freshman roommate, Zach Collins, added 14 points and 13 rebounds for Gonzaga, a program that thrust itself into the national consciousness by reaching the round of 8 in 1999 — but until this season had never gotten any further. This season, the Bulldogs ( ) spent four weeks at No. 1 in the national polls before being dealt their only loss, to Brigham Young, in their final game of the regular season. On Saturday night, they could barely contain their excitement at the opportunity they had given themselves to be unequivocally known as college basketball’s best. Few, who is known for his demeanor, was so overcome with emotion that he executed a handstand in the locker room. “I felt like I stuck it,” he said with a laugh, adding: “Sometimes I worry that my guys get like, it’s a job. And we’ve been on them to show emotion. So that’s my fairly weak effort of showing emotion. ” South Carolina ( ) a seventh seed that had defied all expectation to get so far, was also making its first trip to the Final Four. The Gamecocks were led by Chris Silva, who had 13 points and 13 rebounds. Sindarius Thornwell, a senior guard who had not scored fewer than 24 points in a tournament game this year, was held to a relatively quiet 15. “We played our hearts out the way we did all year,” the senior Justin McKie said, “and Gonzaga played a great game. ” It was just a matter of patience. In his book, “Water the Bamboo,” Few’s college roommate, Greg Bell, used the plant as a metaphor for success. Even with regular watering, giant timber bamboo does not appear to make any gains for the first three years of its life. But then, suddenly, it will sprout 90 feet in just two months. It took the Bulldogs considerably longer to reach their newfound height, but that only made Saturday’s result all the sweeter. Few’s South Carolina counterpart, Frank Martin, overcame a hardscrabble childhood to build a successful career in coaching, and his tailored suits cannot hide his rough edges. His intensity, embodied by his icy sideline stare, has rubbed off on his players. After the Gonzaga players gathered in a circle, and as they were breaking apart, a few South Carolina players sauntered through the huddle, bumping a few of the Bulldogs as they passed. Then, before the opening tip, Gonzaga center Przemek Karnowski approached Thornwell, one senior to another, and extended his hand. Thornwell, the Gamecocks’ leading scorer, brushed past him, leaving Karnowski to stare quizzically at Thornwell’s back and shrug. “Maybe that’s how he is,” Karnowski said after the game. “I don’t really know him personally. ” Karnowski was happy to be on the floor at all. He missed most of last season with a injury that required surgery. At 7 feet 1 inch and 300 pounds, Karnowski had four inches and more than 70 pounds on Silva, the sophomore forward from Gabon who was given the gargantuan task of guarding him under the basket. Fourteen minutes into the game, Silva rose to block Karnowski’s shot and made contact with Karnowski, who fell to the floor like a Douglas fir. No foul was called, and while he writhed in pain, the Gamecocks pushed the ball up the court, with P. J. Dozier feeding McKie for a that tied the score at . Karnowski was helped to the sideline with a sore right elbow and a poked right eye, leaving Gonzaga, which had by then gotten 6 points and 4 rebounds from him, with a hole in the middle. Collins, a freshman forward, filled it immediately. He contributed three rebounds, including two on the defensive end, to go with 2 points and a blocked shot in a frenetic stretch over the next 2 minutes 30 seconds to help Gonzaga to a halftime lead. By then, Karnowski was already in the locker room. He could not open his right eye. But those missed games from last season were enough for him. He was back in the lineup at the start of the second half. “The doctor said I’m good to go, so I was just real happy about it,” he said. Twice in the tournament, South Carolina had stormed back from halftime deficits, and it would be no different against Gonzaga. The first two times, Thornwell was the spark. This time it was Silva who led the charge as the Gamecocks tied the game at and then took the lead on two free throws by Rakym Felder. “That just showed the heart of a lion,” Few said, adding, “It took everything we had to hold on and come back. ” Cultivated though it has been, Gonzaga’s offense did have to deal with a dry spell. The Bulldogs stalled when Karnowski’s teammates tried too often to force the ball inside to him, leading to turnovers that the Gamecocks turned into points at the other end. But it was a storm the Bulldogs could weather. Karnowski had 7 points in the second half to finish with 13. His understudy, Collins, had a sensational second half, with 6 points, 7 rebounds and 5 blocked shots. “We did a really good job, I thought, of just sticking together,” Karnowski said. “That’s what we did the entire season. We don’t have 37 wins for nothing. ” As Few and a handful of his players made their way up the steps to the dais, the moderator announced, “Gonzaga has arrived. ” It just took longer than perhaps Few would have expected. “To be playing the last game of the year is crazy cool,” he said. | 1 |
Thank You FBI: The Clinton Email Investigation Has Shifted The Poll Numbers Significantly In Trump’s Favor 31st, 2016
Donald Trump has all the momentum now. Will it be enough to propel him to victory on election day? Trump’s poll numbers were improving even before we learned that the FBI had and the new survey results that came out over the weekend and on Monday make it clear that Clinton’s “certain victory” is not so certain after all. Unless something changes, Americans are going to go to the polls on November 8th with an FBI criminal investigation hanging over the Clinton campaign like an ominous cloud, and that is very good news for Trump.
The Clinton campaign was hoping that this renewed investigation would not “move the needle”, but unfortunately for them that appears not to be the case. Hillary’s unfavorable rating just hit an all-time high , a whopping 45 percent of all Americans believe that this scandal is “worse than Watergate”, and a Rasmussen survey has found that 40 percent of all undecided voters that are leaning toward voting for Hillary Clinton are still open to changing their minds
And even before this story broke on Friday, Clinton was having a difficult time getting her voters to the polls. According to the New York Times , early voting among young adults and African-American voters is significantly down compared to 2012, and those are demographic groups that Clinton desperately needs to turn out in large numbers.
But of course the key to winning the election is getting to 270 electoral votes, and poll numbers appear to be shifting in the key swing states that Trump and Clinton both desperately need. For a moment, I would like to examine what the numbers currently look like in some of the most important states…
Florida
Without Florida, Donald Trump has absolutely no chance of winning. This is something that even the Trump campaign has admitted. That is why it was so alarming that most of the polls in October had Hillary Clinton leading in the state.
Fortunately for Trump, a new survey that was conducted on Sunday shows him leading in Florida by four points .
Georgia
Georgia wasn’t supposed to be a problem. Georgia has traditionally been a deep red state, but polling throughout this election season had shown a very tight race. This had Republicans deeply concerned and the Clinton camp very happy.
But now the momentum has seemingly shifted and the latest poll has Trump up by seven points .
North Carolina
Mitt Romney won North Carolina in 2012, and Donald Trump very much needs to win it if he hopes to be triumphant on November 8th. Hillary Clinton was shown to be leading in the eight most recent polls before the email story broke, but in the first major survey conducted afterwards she is now down by two points .
Ohio
No Republican has ever won the presidency without Ohio, and Trump knows how important it is to his chances. The three most recent polls conducted before the FBI renewed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails all showed a tie, but now the very first survey conducted afterwards shows Trump up by five points .
Colorado
Hillary Clinton has consistently been in the lead in Colorado throughout this campaign, and most experts didn’t give Trump much of a chance in the state, but the latest survey shows that Clinton’s lead has been whittled down to just one point .
Arizona
A survey that was conducted in mid-October showed Clinton having a five point lead in John McCain’s home state, but now the latest major poll has Trump up by two points .
Nevada
One of the most important swing states out west is Nevada, and most surveys showed Hillary Clinton with a strong lead throughout the month of October. Unfortunately for her, a poll that was conducted on Sunday shows Donald Trump with a four point lead .
Clearly Trump has the momentum at this point, and it will be very interesting to see how the numbers change over the next few days.
And as we learn more about what is in these newly discovered emails, will her fellow Democrats stick with her? Already, some are publicly wavering. The following example comes from WND …
Longtime Clinton confidante and former Democratic pollster Doug Schoen told Fox News the newly renewed FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server is forcing him to “reassess” his support for the Democratic nominee for president.
Schoen, a Fox News contributor, made the comments to host Harris Faulkner during a live television appearance Sunday night on “Fox Report Weekend.”
Public opinion is shifting quickly, but the bad news for Trump is that more than 23 million Americans have already voted. So millions upon millions of Americans cast their votes before they even learned of this new FBI investigation. If the race is very close, that could end up making the difference.
And of course the race could dramatically change once again if the FBI comes to some sort of resolution about these new emails prior to November 8th. On Monday, CNN reported that a resolution before election day did not appear to be likely…
FBI officials are unlikely to finish their review of new emails potentially related to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server before the November 8 election.
The initial work of cataloging top Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s emails found on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop could be done in the next few days, US told CNN.
But the investigators are expected to spend more time doing other work, including likely working with other federal agencies to determine what — if any — classified materials are in the emails. This makes it unlikely there will be a resolution prior to the election.
However, late on Monday evening the Drudge Report reported that the L.A. Times has learned that investigators may have a “preliminary assessment” completed “in coming days”…
LA TIMES TUESDAY: FBI Investigators had planned to conduct new email review over several weeks. It now hopes to complete ‘preliminary assessment’ in coming days, but agency officials have not decided how, or whether, they will disclose results publicly… Developing…
Whether good or bad, I do believe that the American people deserve to hear something conclusive about these emails before November 8th.
If nothing is found to implicate Clinton, the American people should be told that.
And if evidence of very serious crimes is discovered, there is no way in the world that should be held back until after the election.
Even if it throws the election into complete and utter chaos , the American people deserve to know the truth.
But will we get it?
Stay tuned, because I think that this is going to be a crazy week. | 0 |
Francis Wilkinson, Bloomberg, November 1, 2016
The class compositions of the Republican and Democratic parties keep evolving. {snip}
A Pew Research Center report last month detailed the shift.
Since 1992, the share of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters with at least a college degree has increased sharply, from 21 percent to 37 percent. Among Republicans, 31 percent have at least a college degree, up only slightly from 28 percent in 1992. As a consequence, a greater proportion of Democrats than Republicans now have a college degree or more education.
In the New York Times last week, political sage Thomas Edsall called this process the “Great Democratic Inversion.”
What these figures suggest is that the 2016 election will represent a complete inversion of the New Deal order among white voters. From the 1930s into the 1980s and early 1990s, majorities of downscale whites voted Democratic and upscale whites voted Republican. Now, looking at combined male and female vote totals, the opposite is true.
A key word in Edsall’s analysis is “white.” Stories about the disaffected working-class supporters of Donald Trump apply almost exclusively to white voters. Other working-class voters–blacks and Hispanics –are poised to provide lopsided support to Hillary Clinton.
{snip}
There is no expansive, working-class rage in the U.S. There is white conservative rage (along with a more modest left-wing version). While it may burn brightest in deindustrialized America, conservative rage extends across class and educational demarcations, from blue collars to billionaires .
This complicates the story of the parties switching class allegiances. For Democrats, it leaves them managing an increasingly unwieldy coalition extending from white cosmopolitan millionaires who send their kids to private schools to low-paid Hispanic service workers and black factory and office workers facing economic dislocation. {snip}
Keeping that coalition pointed in the same general direction might be impossible without the dedicated efforts of the Republican Party. The GOP has proved incapable of breaking out of its racial straitjacket. So it has opted instead to tighten the straps around its torso.
{snip}
Republicans’ constant struggle with racism in their ranks, and their recurring failure to resist the temptation to exploit it, eases pressure on the Democrats’ sprawling coalition. The parties won’t fully exchange their class identities for the simple reason that working-class blacks and Hispanics can’t trust the GOP to represent them.
If it doesn’t diversify and become more accommodating to nonwhites, the GOP will only grow crazier and scarier , and its effort to wield power with the support of a shrinking white base will become even more extreme. {snip}
{snip} | 0 |
After the announcement of his nomination to the US Supreme Court on Tuesday, Judge Neil Gorsuch praised former Justice Antonin Scalia as a “lion of the law. ” And stated, “it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws. It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands. ” Gorsuch said, “I pledge that if I am confirmed, I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country. ” Gorsuch then talked about his experience on the bench, saying that he’s been inspired by the judges he worked with who he has watched “fearlessly tending to the rule of law, enforcing the promises of our Constitution, and living out daily their judicial oaths to administer justice equally to rich and poor alike, following the law as they find it and without respect to their personal political beliefs. I think of them tonight. Of course, the Supreme Court’s work is vital not just to a region of the country, but to the whole, vital to the protection of people’s liberties under law, and to the continuity of our Constitution, the greatest charter of human liberty the world has ever known. ” He further said former Justices Antonin Scalia and Robert Jackson were “towering judges” and Scalia was “a lion of the law. ” He also praised Justice Byron White, who he worked for, as “one of the smartest and most courageous men I’ve ever known. ” Gorsuch also praised Justice Kennedy, who he clerked for, as a man who taught him “so much. ” Gorsuch further stated, “[W]hen we judges don our robes, it doesn’t make us any smarter, but it does serve as a reminder of what’s expected of us: impartiality and independence, collegiality, and courage. As this process now moves to the Senate, I look forward [to] speaking with members from both sides of the aisle, to answering their questions, and to hearing their concerns. I consider the United States Senate the greatest deliberative body in the world, and I respect the important role the constitution affords it in the confirmation of our judges. I respect, too, the fact that in our legal order, it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws. It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
Share This Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi again warned Turkey to avoid provoking conflict, after Turkey strengthened its forces in Silopi at the Iraqi border. In Mosul , counter-terrorism forces captured a state-owned television station building. Troops also reached the Judaidat al-Mufti neighborhood. At least 296 security personnel have been killed in the last week in Mosul. About 40,000 people have fled the city. Militants attempted to move 25,000 human shields out of Hammam al-Alil but were thwarted by strikes. Shalalat , Sharezad , and Twila were reported freed . At least 202 people were killed and 52 were wounded in recent violence: In Mosul , at least one soldier was killed and another was wounded . Militants killed 40 men believed to have been soldiers from Shura and Hammam al-Alil , and then they tossed the bodies into the Tigris River. | 0 |
330 American soldiers are causing the Russians to prepare for nuclear war???
BULLCRAP!
this is about getting the American public to start yammering about the potential for nuclear war so the president can reduce our number of nukes again
I really loathe President Obama but I absolutely hate ball-less Americans | 0 |
. Biggest Winners and Losers of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election The biggest collective losers of the campaign were the mainstream media. Some of course were worse t... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/biggest-winners-and-losers-of-2016-us.html The biggest collective losers of the campaign were the mainstream media. Some of course were worse than others, but all of the old fashioned mainstream outlets were terrible. They operated on a basis of contempt for the honest concerns of ordinary people.They hid Hillary Clinton’s scandals from public view as though oblivious to the fact that in the internet age, the truth cannot be hidden nor suppressed by the failing media-industrial complex.Long before Donald Trump declared his candidacy, the systematic problems of mainstream media in the west were well known.The total deceit with which they cover international affairs, slandering countries which do not actively pursue neoliberal policies, was in full view. Their job is to report the facts and collect information. Instead they have acted like mad agitators for their pet geopolitical projects.As the mainstream media begins to collapse, so too are common misconceptions about war and peace. In 2003 when mainstream media still had a fairly stern grip on public consciousness, many were duped into believing Bush and Blair’s lies about Iraq. Thanks to new media, people in the west have a far better understanding of the realities in the Middle East than they did thirteen years ago. It explains why popular support for war in Syria and by extrapolation on Russia, something that the likes of Hillary Clinton have wildly campaigned for, remains deeply unpopular with ordinary people. The Biggest Winner After Donald Trump , the biggest winners were Julian Assange and Wikileaks . Wikileaks did what honest journalists ought to do, they publish information that is vital to the public interest without having a hidden agenda. Assange expressed his personal disdain for both Trump and Clinton and recently explained the scientific reasons why Wikileaks released damning information on Clinton and not Trump. In all he said he was fair minded and open minded.This remained the case despite Hillary and her supporters making death threats to Assange and Assange having his internet connection at the Ecuadorian Embassy in which he remains captive, cut off after the US State Department put pressure on the Government of Ecuador. But Assange persisted and leak after leak showed American voters and the wider world who Hillary Clinton actually is. It is a very different image from the sugar coated picture painted by the mainstream media. [Her allegiance to the Rothschilds and NWO master manipulator George Soros has also been confirmed , as well as her strong ties to Monsanto .]Wikileaks exposed how Hillary says one thing in public and other to her friends in Wall Street. Wikileaks exposed lie after lie, cover-up after cover-up. Julian Assange’s place in history as someone who has exposed the lies of politicians like Hillary Clinton is now assured. He is owed a debt of gratitude by all those who value truth and justice. By Adam Garrie (excerpt) Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
Stay updated via Email Newsletter: Related | 0 |
This is unbelievable! Donald Trump must be the next Nostradamus! One year ago, Donald Trump said something so profound that it is almost unbelievable. Take a look: #TRUMP was right again!
— Trump Super PAC (@TrumpSuperPAC) October 28, 2016
On August 29th, 2015, just after news broke that Huma Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner, had been sexting young women, again, Trump said something that has turned out to be both profound and prophetic.
“I only worry in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have close proximity to highly classified information.”
He has also said:
“Her No. 1 person, Huma Abedin, is married to Anthony Weiner, who’s a sleazeball and pervert,” Trump said, referring to the former New York congressman’s repeated scandals over lewd texts and direct Twitter messages he sent to other women. “I’m not saying that, that’s recorded history,” Trump continued. “I don’t like Huma going home at night and telling Anthony Weiner all of these secrets.”
Trump intuitively knew that Hillary’s top aide, Huma Abedin, was a massive liability.
Now look at what just happened today!
The New York Times reports:
The FBI is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The Bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case – one federal official said they numbered in the thousands – potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the Presidential Campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the Election.”
Let that sink in.
The FBI had closed the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and now has reopened it after finding emails on Anthony Wieners devices as part of a sexting scandal and investigation.
Trump was right about Huma and Wiener!
There are other scandals that intersect with this one, as well.
The pay-for-play questions that have been raised about the Clinton Foundation are in play, as Huma Abedin worked daily with the Clintons on countless issues.
Is this the issue that will take Hillary down for good?
Time will tell. | 0 |
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” while discussing President Donald Trump’s attacks on the press, Sen. John McCain ( ) said that was “how dictators get started. ” McCain said, “I hate the press. I hate you especially. But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital. If you want to preserve — I’m very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started. ” He added, “They get started by suppressing free press. In other words, a consolidation of power when you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I’m not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I’m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
JUDGMENT DAY: The One Reason Why Every Christian And Jew In America Should Vote For Donald Trump The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 is a public law of the United States passed by the 104th Congress on October 23, 1995. It was passed for the purposes of initiating and funding the relocation of the Embassy of the United States in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 8, 2016 Jerusalem will be the portal through which God administers His Justice to a depraved world. Jerusalem will be His “burdensome stone” with which He judges the world.
“The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.” Proverbs 16:33 (KJV)
As Americans who love this country, it is absolutely crystal-clear who we should vote for. Only one candidate’s campaign slogan is Make America Great Again, only one candidate says that they will # DrainThe Swamp . I think you get the idea. But you can be a patriotic America and not be a Christian, right? Trump: It’s Time To Drain The Swamp In Washington, D.C – Five-Point Plan For Ethics Reform So is the a compelling, overarching reason why a Bible believing Christian should vote for Donald Trump? Yes, there is
Donald Trump has made as part of his platform a promise to move the American Embassy from its current location in Tel Aviv to its new location in Jerusalem. In fact, it was signed into law in 1995, read this:
The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 is a public law of the United States passed by the 104th Congress on October 23, 1995. It was passed for the purposes of initiating and funding the relocation of the Embassy of the United States in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem , no later than May 31, 1999, and attempted to withhold 50 percent of the funds appropriated to the State Department specifically for “Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad” as allocated in fiscal year 1999 until the United States Embassy in Jerusalem had officially opened. The act also called for Jerusalem to remain an undivided city and for it to be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel. Israel’s declared capital is Jerusalem, but this is not internationally recognized, pending final status talks in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict . The United States has withheld recognition of the city as Israel’s capital. The proposed law was adopted by the Senate (93–5),and the House (374–37).
Contained in the Jerusalem Embassy Act is a prophecy bombshell , perhaps when you skimmed through it just now you missed so let me break it out for you, ready?
“…called for Jerusalem to remain an undivided city and for it to be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.
Now please pause at this juncture and think about what that means for a Bible believer. Do you know why the Palestinians have, for 20 years, refused to accept the so-called Two State Solution ? Because the Two State Solution does not give Jerusalem to Palestine, it gives it to its rightful owner, Israel. The Battle of Armageddon will be fought over who will gain control of, not just Israel in general, but the rights to Jerusalem in particular! The word “Jerusalem” appears 811 times in your King James Bible, think that God places a lot of importance on it?
“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.” Zechariah 12:2 (KJV)
God says if you go against His city of Jerusalem that it will mean “lights out” for you. Jerusalem will be the portal through which God administers His Justice to a depraved world. Jerusalem will be His “burdensome stone” with which He judges the world.
“And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” Zechariah 12:3 (KJV) NTEB PRESENTS: Donald Trump, Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy
We just launched a YouTube channel for Bible teaching and prophecy, and here is our very first video of our radio show on Donald Trump and Jerusalem. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel by clicking here , thank you!
Bible believers, let’s be honest. God is not really so much concerned with any election in any nation so much as He is with His nation of Israel and its capital city of Jerusalem. That’s where God’s passion is, that’s where His heart is. Genesis says that if you want God’s blessing, then bless His nation of Israel and bless His chosen people, the Jews.
“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Genesis 12:3 (KJV) Christian, do you need a reason from the Bible to vote for Donald Trump?
I just gave you two, very powerful and very Biblical reasons to vote for Donald Trump. He will move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and he will love Israel and God will bless us for that. Now, get up, put your “big boy” and “big girl” pants on, and go out and vote .
Not for the “lesser of two evils” as some erroneously assert, but for the only candidate that will fulfill Bible prophecy
Donald J. Trump. | 0 |
Короткая ссылка 25 Совет РАН по космосу утвердил параметры проекта «Система обнаружения дневных астероидов» (СОДА), целью которого является мониторинг космических тел, приближающихся к Земле со стороны Солнца.
Бюджет, выделенный на научно-исследовательские работы по проекту СОДА составит 10 млн рублей, пишет газета «Известия. На научно-исследовательскую работу «СОДА-обнаружение»— математическое моделирование работы СОДА — будет выделено 2,5 млн рублей. Головным исполнителем назначен Институт астрономии РАН (ИНАСАН).
По данным издания, проект СОДА предусматривает строительство космического аппарата, который планирую отправить в одну из точек Лагранжа на расстоянии 1,5 миллиона километров от Земли. Телескоп, размещённый в аппарате, будет предупреждать о телах, которые направляются к Земле со стороны Солнца.
По словам научного руководителя ИНАСАН Бориса Шустова, необходимость в подобной системе стала ощущаться после падения метеорита «Челябинск» в 2013 году, которое показало, «что никакими наземными средствами невозможно обнаружить космическое тело, приближающееся к нам со стороны Солнца».
Ранее жители Бурятии и Иркутской области стали свидетелями падения болида. | 0 |
by Nick Bernabe
A small Standing Rock Sioux site in North Dakota called the Sacred Stone Camp has been propelled into the national news narrative following their stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Due in part to independent media coverage of the ongoing standoff, the Sacred Stone camp has grown into a formidable opposition against the $3.8 billion, 1,200-mile long pipeline.
Due to misinformation coming from law-enforcement, political favoritism toward the pipeline builders, and the media’s blatant reluctance to report on the pipeline, it’s hard to tell truth from fiction. Anti-Media , along with our partners in the independent media and our embedded journalist at the opposition encampment, have been covering the unfolding standoff continuously. Here are five things you need to know.
1. Who is opposing the pipeline — and why
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is leading the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. They have been joined by the largest tribal coalition in over 100 years in their stand against the pipeline. The coalition is also comprised of activists, allies, and environmentalists, collectively known as “water protectors,” at the Sacred Stone Camp, an encampment close to the location where the pipeline is planned to cross the Missouri River in North Dakota. According to the Sacred Stone camp website , they are opposing the pipeline because “[t]he Dakota Access threatens everything from farming and drinking water to entire ecosystems, wildlife and food sources surrounding the Missouri.”
The Standing Rock Sioux also say the pipeline is violating treaty land , Sioux territory that was established many years ago by the federal government. “We will not allow Dakota Access to trespass on our treaty territory and destroy our medicines and our culture.”
The opposition to the pipeline spreads across several states and is not opposed solely by Native Americans. Farmers, ranchers, and landowners are also opposed to the pipeline. Many of them have had their land taken from them against their will and given to the pipeline via eminent domain.
2. The U.S. government and the pipeline corporation are continuing a long tradition of disrespecting Native Americans
The United States has a very bad reputation for treating Native Americans, the original inhabitants of this land, as less than human. In many instances in the past, the land where Native Americans lived was deemed to be of higher value than the Natives’ lives.
Such has been the case in North Dakota — not only now, but in the past as well. According to The Atlantic :
“The land beneath the pipeline was accorded to Sioux peoples by the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. Eleven years later, the U.S. government incited and won the Great Sioux War, and ‘renegotiated’ a new treaty with the Sioux under threat of starvation. In that document, the tribe ceded much of the Laramie land, including the Black Hills of South Dakota, where many whites believed there to be gold.”
After the federal government relegated the Sioux people to the “Great Sioux Reservation” in 1851 , the treaty was re-written and “renegotiated” by force whenever resources were discovered or when the U.S. government wanted land. Essentially, the Sioux people were victims of U.S.-sanctioned murder, and their land was stolen because gold was discovered on it.
Fast forward to 2016 and the Sioux people are once again making a stand on land that was once — and still is , according to the tribe — theirs. How is the government reacting to this stand? By brutally arresting the Native American water protectors for trespassing . If that is not a miscarriage of justice, I don’t know what is.
Further, Energy Transfer Partners, the company pulling the strings behind the DAPL, has deep pockets, and its lobbyists have cozied up to federal, state, and local governments with jurisdiction over the pipeline route. This could explain why the company began its construction of the pipeline on Army Corps of Engineers land without even securing an easement , which is required by law. Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, has also used the strong-arm of government to force farmers and landowners to hand over their land to the pipeline against their will.
3. Violent acts are being carried out in North Dakota, but not by the water protectors
Violence is breaking out at the Dakota Access Protest site, but the protesters have nothing to do with it. Pipeline police, bolstered by the North Dakota National Guard and sheriffs imported from around the country, have turned the standoff into a war zone. Water protectors are regularly pepper sprayed, tear gassed, and violently arrested. Over the weekend, 127 people were detained in the biggest mass arrest to date.
Militarized police at the Dakota Access Pipeline site are decked out in riot gear, armed with military grade weapons, use armored cars or MRAPs with snipers on top of them, and have regularly used LRADs, a type of mass crowd dispersal weapon that uses a high pitched noise to hurt people’s ears — sometimes permanently .
Early reports of protesters being armed and violent have proven to be instances of misinformation spread by law enforcement apparently seeking to demonize the opposition. No credible reports of violence by the protesters have been confirmed or prosecuted. Nearly all arrests stem from trespassing charges or crimes of journalism.
When protesters initially began using civil disobedience to physically shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline site, they were confronted violently by security guards from British mercenary firm G4S. The mercs sicced dogs and used pepper spray on the protesters in an assault that went viral and helped catalyze even more support for the water protectors.
4. Independent media is under attack at the Dakota Access Pipeline — and the corporate media is ignoring it
Independent media’s broadcasts over the Internet are basically the only reason people around the country and the world now know about the struggle at Standing Rock. Unfortunately, journalists are not immune to the police crackdowns in North Dakota. Dozens of journalists have now been arrested, and an arrest warrant was issued for high-profile journalist Amy Goodman. One independent media outlet, Unicorn Riot , saw four of their journalists arrested in one day in North Dakota. One filmmaker is facing up to 45 years in prison for filming acts of civil disobedience against the pipeline.
Anti-Media ’s journalist on the ground, Derrick Broze, was tased by law enforcement while covering the protests on Thursday as this article was being written.
Meanwhile, the national corporate media ignored the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline as long as they could. For months, despite the DAPL emergence into the national narrative, ABC and NBC refused to air any coverage about it. A woman was arrested for protesting the pipeline on her own farm after Dakota Access LLC gained access to it against her will via eminent domain — yet there was still no corporate media coverage on the incident.
5. How you can help the opposition
Now that you see what water protectors are up against in North Dakota, here’s what you can do to help.
Get yourself to the Sacred Stone Camp. The water protectors need reinforcements as people are regularly arrested. The bigger the stand, the more likely the pipeline’s construction will be halted. Here’s how to get there . Send supplies or donations. Water protectors need your help with supplies and funding. Go to this link to send supplies. Go to this link to donate to the cause. Support independent journalists that risk arrest to bring you the news from the front lines. Follow Sacred Stone Camp on Facebook. Share this article. For 10 more ways to get involved, click here . Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).
Contributed by The Anti-Media of theantimedia.org .
The “Anti” in our name does not mean we are against the media, we are simply against the current mainstream paradigm. The current media, influenced by the industrial complex, is a top-down authoritarian system of distribution—the opposite of what Anti-Media aims to be. At Anti-Media, we want to offer a new paradigm—a bottom-up approach for real and diverse reporting. We seek to establish a space where the people are the journalists and a venue where independent journalism moves forward on a larger and more truthful scale. | 0 |
BERLIN (AP) — A German court has convicted a Iraqi man of raping two Chinese college students in the western city of Bochum. [The dpa news agency reported Tuesday that the court sentenced the man to 11 years in prison. The defendant, who wasn’t identified by name, acknowledged in court that he assaulted the women in August and November last year. DNA evidence linked him to both crimes. The defendant came to Germany as an more than a year ago with his wife and children. The victims, who were 21 and 27 years old at the time, had been studying at Bochum university. The case was one of several that fanned a national debate in Germany about how to respond to a rise in violent crimes committed by migrants. | 1 |
What Does it Take to Bring Hillary Clinton to Justice?
By Pepe Escobar
RT " - Virtually the whole planet holds its collective breath at the prospect of Hillary Clinton possibly becoming the next President of the United States (POTUS).
Hows that humanly possible, as the (daily) Bonfire of The Scandals relentlessly fed by WikiLeaks revelations and now converging FBI investigations - can now be seen from interstellar space? Its possible because Hillary Clinton, slouching through a paroxysm of manufactured hysteria, is supported by virtually the whole US establishment, a consensual neocon/neoliberalcon War Party/Wall Street/corporate media axis.
But History has a tendency to show us theres always a straw that breaks the camels back.
This could be it as revealed by WikiLeaks ; March 2, 2015, the day when John Podesta wrote, we are going to have to dump all those emails.
That happened to be the exact same day it was revealed Hillary Clinton had used a personal email server as Secretary of State.
Yet this reveals only part of the puzzle. Theres got to be a response to Podestas email which WikiLeaks may, or may not, leak in the next few days before the election. If the back and forth clearly shows intent (to mislead), then weve got a 100 percent smoking gun: the whole Clinton (cash) machine narrative according to which Hillary just deleted "personal" emails crumbles like the ultimate House of Cards.
Moreover, that would unveil what was from the start the privileged Clinton machine strategy: to thwart the subsequent internal State Dept. and FBI investigations.
As far as the Clinton machine is concerned, an interlocking influence peddling pile up is the norm. John Podesta also happens to be the founder of the Center for American Progress a George Soros operation and prime recruiting ground for Obama administration officials, including US Treasury operatives who decided which elite Too Big To Fail (TBTF) financial giants would be spared after the 2008 crisis. DCLeaks.com , for its part, has connected Soros Open Society foundations to global funding rackets directly leading to subversion of governments and outright regime change (obviously sparing Clinton Foundation donors.)
Exceptional bananas, anyone? The perfectly timed slow drip of WikiLeaks revelations, for the Clinton machine, feels like a sophisticated form of Chinese torture. To alleviate the pain, the relentless standard spin has been to change the subject, blame the messenger, and attribute it all to evil Russian hacking when the real source for the leaks might have come straight from the belly of the (Washington) beast.
At the Valdai discussion club last week, it took President Putin only a few sentences to debunk the whole Clinton machine narrative with a bang:
Another mythical and imaginary problem is what I can only call the hysteria the USA has whipped up over supposed Russian meddling in the American presidential election. The United States has plenty of genuinely urgent problems, it would seem, from the colossal public debt to the increase in firearms violence and cases of arbitrary action by the police.You would think that the election debates would concentrate on these and other unresolved problems, but the elite has nothing with which to reassure society, it seems, and therefore attempt to distract public attention by pointing instead to supposed Russian hackers, spies, agents of influence and so forth.
I have to ask myself and ask you too: Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia can somehow influence the American peoples choice? America is not some kind of banana republic, after all, but is a great power. Do correct me if I am wrong.
Reality, though, continues to insist on offering multiple, overlapping banana republic instances, configuring a giant black hole of transparency.
Anthropologist Janine Wedel has been one of the few in Clinton-linked US mainstream media acknowledging how Bill Clinton, while Hillary was Secretary of State, perfected his version of philantro-capitalism (actually a money laundering pay to play racket), a practice by no means confined to the Clintons.
And the racket prospered with inbuilt nuggets, such as Hillary being perfectly aware that prime Clinton Foundation donors Qatar and Saudi Arabia were also financing ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.
Huma, the Fall Princess Now, less than a week before the election, we have come to the crucial juncture where the WikiLeaks revelations are merging with the FBI investigations - all three of them.
Exhibit A is this WikiLeaks bombshell ; Peter Kadzik, whos now in charge of the Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into the 650,000 emails found on the laptop shared by Clintons right-hand woman Huma Abedin and her estranged, pervert husband Anthony Wiener, is a Clinton asset.
Not only Kadzik was an attorney for Marc Rich when he was pardoned by Bill Clinton; Podesta as also revealed by WikiLeaks - thanked Kadzik for keeping him out of jail ; and it was Kadzik who gave Podesta a secret heads up on the Clinton email investigation.
The Clinton machine, starring a self-described virtuous Madonna, is actually a pretty nasty business. Huma and her familys close connections to Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood are legendary (that includes her brother Hassan, who works for Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi). Podesta, by the way, is a handsomely remunerated lobbyist for Saudi Arabia in Washington; thats part of the Clinton Foundation connection.
Yet now, with Huma in the spotlight still maintaining she didnt know all those emails were in her and Wieners laptop - its no wonder Hillary has instantly downgraded her, publicly, to one of my aides . She used to be Hillarys ersatz daughter ; now shes being framed as The Fall Princess.
And that brings us to the intersection of those three FBI investigations; on Hillarys Subterranean Email Server (in theory closed by FBIs Comey last summer); on the Clinton Foundation; and on Wieners sexting of minors. The FBI has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for over a year now. Lets try to cut a long story short.
Follow the evidence Last July, the DOJ under Clinton/Obama asset Loretta Lynch - decided not to prosecute anyone on Emailgate. And yet FBI director Comey who nonetheless stressed Hillarys extreme carelessness turbo-charged his no-denial mode on another investigation, as in the FBI sought to refocus the Clinton Foundation probe.
Soon we had Clinton Foundation FBI investigators trying to get access to all the emails turned over in the Emailgate investigation. The East District of New York refused it. Very important point; up to 2015, guess who was the US attorney at the East District; Clinton/Obama asset Lynch.
Enter an extra layer of legalese. Less than two months ago, the Clinton Foundation FBI investigators discovered they could not have access to any Emailgate material that was connected to immunity agreements.
But then, roughly a month ago, another FBI team captured the by now famous laptop shared by Huma and Wiener - using a warrant allowing only a probe on Weiners sexting of a 15-year-old girl. Subsequently they found Huma Abedin emails at all her accounts from [email protected] to the crucial [email protected] . This meant not only that Huma was forwarding State Dept. emails to her private accounts, but also that Hillary was sending emails from the secret clintonemail.com to Huma at yahoo.com.
No one knew for sure, but some of these emails might be duplicates of those the Clinton Foundation FBI investigators could not access because of the pesky immunity agreements.
Whats established by now is that the metadata in the Huma/Wiener laptop was duly examined. Now picture both teams of FBI investigators Clinton Foundation and pervert Wiener comparing notes. And then they decide Humas emails are relevant.
Key questions apply; and the most pressing is how the emails were deemed relevant if the investigators could only examine the metadata. What matters is that Comey certainly was made aware of the content of the emails a potential game-changer. Thats why one of my sources insists his decision to go public came from above.
The other key question now is whether the DOJ via Kadzik? - will once again thwart another investigation, this time on the Clinton Foundation. Senior, serious FBI agents wont take that massive euphemism kindly.
The FBI has been on the Clinton Foundation for over a year. Now, arguably, they are loaded with evidence and they wont quit. Winning the presidency now seems to be the least of Hillary Clintons Bonfire of Scandals problems.
Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. | 0 |
Waking Times
Normal is coming unhinged. For the last eight years it has been possible for most people (at least in the relatively privileged classes) to believe that society is sound, that the system, though creaky, basically works, and that the progressive deterioration of everything from ecology to economy is a temporary deviation from the evolutionary imperative of progress.
A Clinton Presidency would have offered four more years of that pretense. A woman President following a black President would have meant to many that things are getting better. It would have obscured the reality of continued neoliberal economics, imperial wars, and resource extraction behind a veil of faux-progressive feminism. Now that we have, in the words of my friend Kelly Brogan , rejected a wolf in sheep’s clothing in favor of a wolf in wolf’s clothing, that illusion will be impossible to maintain.
The wolf, Donald Trump (and I’m not sure he’d be offended by that moniker) will not provide the usual sugarcoating on the poison pills the policy elites have foisted on us for the last forty years. The prison-industrial complex, the endless wars, the surveillance state, the pipelines, the nuclear weapons expansion were easier for liberals to swallow when they came with a dose, albeit grudging, of LGBTQ rights under an African-American President.
I am willing to suspend my judgement of Trump and (very skeptically) hold the possibility that he will disrupt the elite policy consensus of free trade and military confrontation – major themes of his campaign. One might always hope for miracles. However, because he apparently lacks any robust political ideology of his own, it is more likely that he will fill his cabinet with neocon war hawks, Wall Street insiders, and corporate reavers, trampling the wellbeing of the working class whites who elected him while providing them their own sugar-coating of social conservatism.
The social and environmental horrors likely to be committed under President Trump are likely to incite massive civil disobedience and possibly disorder. For Clinton supporters, many of whom were halfhearted to begin with, the Trump administration could mark the end of their loyalty to our present institutions of government. For Trump supporters, the initial celebration will collide with gritty reality when Trump proves as unable or unwilling as his predecessors to challenge the entrenched systems that continually degrade their lives: global finance capital, the deep state, and their programming ideologies. Add to this the likelihood of a major economic crisis, and the public’s frayed loyalty to the existing system could snap.
We are entering a time of great uncertainty. Institutions so enduring as to seem identical to reality itself may lose their legitimacy and dissolve. It may seem that the world is falling apart. For many, that process started on election night, when Trump’s victory provoked incredulity, shock, even vertigo. “I can’t believe this is happening!”
At such moments, it is a normal response to find someone to blame, as if identifying fault could restore the lost normality, and to lash out in anger. Hate and blame are convenient ways of making meaning out of a bewildering situation. Anyone who disputes the blame narrative may receive more hostility than the opponents themselves, as in wartime when pacifists are more reviled than the enemy.
Racism and misogyny are devastatingly real in this country, but to blame bigotry and sexism for voters’ repudiation of the Establishment is to deny the validity of their deep sense of betrayal and alienation. The vast majority of Trump voters were expressing extreme dissatisfaction with the system in the way most readily available to them. (See here , here , here , here ) Millions of Obama voters voted for Trump (six states who went for Obama twice switched to Trump). Did they suddenly become racists in the last four years? The blame-the-racists (the fools, the yokels…) narrative generates a clear demarcation between good (us) and evil (them), but it does violence to the truth. It also obscures an important root of racism – anger displaced away from an oppressive system and its elites and onto other victims of that system. Finally, it employs the same dehumanization of the other that is the essence of racism and the precondition for war. Such is the cost of preserving a dying story. That is one reason why paroxysms of violence so often accompany a culture-defining story’s demise.
The dissolution of the old order that is now officially in progress is going to intensify. That presents a tremendous opportunity and danger, because when normal falls apart the ensuing vacuum draws in formerly unthinkable ideas from the margins. Unthinkable ideas range from rounding up the Muslims in concentration camps, to dismantling the military-industrial complex and closing down overseas military bases. They range from nationwide stop-and-frisk to replacing criminal punishment with restorative justice. Anything becomes possible with the collapse of dominant institutions. When the animating force behind these new ideas is hate or fear, all manner of fascistic and totalitarian nightmares can ensue, whether enacted by existing powers or those that arise in revolution against them.
That is why, as we enter a period of intensifying disorder, it is important to introduce a different kind of force to animate the structures that might appear after the old ones crumble. I would call it love if it weren’t for the risk of triggering your New Age bullshit detector, and besides, how does one practically bring love into the world in the realm of politics? So let’s start with empathy. Politically, empathy is akin to solidarity, born of the understanding that we are all in this together. In what together? For starters, we are in the uncertainty together.
We are exiting an old story that explained to us the way of the world and our place in it. Some may cling to it all the more desperately as it dissolves, looking perhaps to Donald Trump to restore it, but their savior has not the power to bring back the dead. Neither would Clinton have been able to preserve America as we’d known it for too much longer. We as a society are entering a space between stories, in which everything that had seemed so real, true, right, and permanent comes into doubt. For a while, segments of society have remained insulated from this breakdown (whether by fortune, talent, or privilege), living in a bubble as the containing economic and ecological systems deteriorate. But not for much longer. Not even the elites are immune to this doubt. They grasp at straws of past glories and obsolete strategies; they create perfunctory and unconvincing shibboleths (Putin!), wandering aimlessly from “doctrine” to “doctrine” – and they have no idea what to do. Their haplessness and half-heartedness was plain to see in this election, their disbelief in their own propaganda, their cynicism. When even the custodians of the story no longer believe the story, you know its days are numbered. It is a shell with no engine, running on habit and momentum.
We are entering a space between stories. After various retrograde versions of a new story rise and fall and we enter a period of true unknowing, an authentic next story will emerge. What would it take for it to embody love, compassion, and interbeing? I see its lineaments in those marginal structures and practices that we call holistic, alternative, regenerative, and restorative. All of them source from empathy, the result of the compassionate inquiry: What is it like to be you?
It is time now to bring this question and the empathy it arouses into our political discourse as a new animating force. If you are appalled at the election outcome and feel the call of hate, perhaps try asking yourself, “What is it like to be a Trump supporter?” Ask it not with a patronizing condescension, but for real, looking underneath the caricature of misogynist and bigot to find the real person.
Even if the person you face IS a misogynist or bigot, ask, “Is this who they are, really?” Ask what confluence of circumstances, social, economic, and biographical, may have brought them there. You may still not know how to engage them, but at least you will not be on the warpath automatically. We hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. So let’s stop making our opponents invisible behind a caricature of evil.
We’ve got to stop acting out hate. I see no less of it in the liberal media than I do in the right-wing. It is just better disguised, hiding beneath pseudo-psychological epithets and dehumanizing ideological labels. Exercising it, we create more of it. What is beneath the hate? My acupuncturist Sarah Fields wrote to me, “Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.”
I think the pain beneath is fundamentally the same pain that animates misogyny and racism – hate in a different form. Please stop thinking you are better than these people! We are all victims of the same world-dominating machine, suffering different mutations of the same wound of separation. Something hurts in there. We live in a civilization that has robbed nearly all of us of deep community, intimate connection with nature, unconditional love, freedom to explore the kingdom of childhood, and so much more. The acute trauma endured by the incarcerated, the abused, the raped, the trafficked, the starved, the murdered, and the dispossessed does not exempt the perpetrators. They feel it in mirror image, adding damage to their souls atop the damage that compels them to violence. Thus it is that suicide is the leading cause of death in the U.S. military. Thus it is that addiction is rampant among the police. Thus it is that depression is epidemic in the upper middle class. We are all in this together.
Something hurts in there. Can you feel it? We are all in this together. One earth, one tribe, one people.
We have entertained teachings like these long enough in our spiritual retreats, meditations, and prayers. Can we take them now into the political world and create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex? It is time to do it, time to up our game. It is time to stop feeding hate. Next time you post on line, check your words to see if they smuggle in some form of hate: dehumanization, snark, belittling, derision.., some invitation to us versus them. Notice how it feels kind of good to do that, like getting a fix. And notice what hurts underneath, and how it doesn’t feel good, not really. Maybe it is time to stop.
This does not mean to withdraw from political conversation, but to rewrite its vocabulary. It is to speak hard truths with love. It is to offer acute political analysis that doesn’t carry the implicit message of “Aren’t those people horrible?” Such analysis is rare. Usually, those evangelizing compassion do not write about politics, and sometimes they veer into passivity. We need to confront an unjust, ecocidal system. Each time we do we will receive an invitation to give in to the dark side and hate “the deplorables.” We must not shy away from those confrontations. Instead, we can engage them empowered by the inner mantra that my friend Pancho Ramos-Stierle uses in confrontations with his jailers: “Brother, your soul is too beautiful to be doing this work.” If we can stare hate in the face and never waver from that knowledge, we will access inexhaustible tools of creative engagement, and hold a compelling invitation to the haters to fulfill their beauty. About the Author | 0 |
— Jim Kearney (@JimboDKearney) October 27, 2016
As Twitchy told you , Hillary Clinton is so popular and beloved and popular that at her rally today, she turned the stage over to Michelle Obama. Now, you may wonder why Hillary would be giving Michelle the spotlight at her own rally, but as it turns out, there’s a very simple explanation: Michelle Obama is just so gosh-darn inspiring! “Seriously, is there anyone more inspiring than Michelle Obama?” —Hillary
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 27, 2016
Seriously, you guys. I get liking Michelle Obama, even admiring her. But the notion she's off the charts inspiring is lost on me. https://t.co/TdGvODBQUu
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) October 27, 2016
Don’t worry — it’s lost on a lot of other people, too: @JonahNRO @bennyjohnson can we honestly ask why she's inspiring at all? What has she done that my wife couldn't have given FLOTUS assets?
— Todd Lemmon (@toddlemmon) October 27, 2016 . @JonahNRO Michelle being the "most inspiring person ever" is like Clinton being the "most qualified candidate ever"
— Andrew Chouinard (@alchouin) October 27, 2016
Did someone wipe Hillary’s memory clean? Like, with a cloth? @JonahNRO @bennyjohnson the bar has been set really low this year
— John Allen (@JohnTAllen) October 27, 2016
OK, fair enough. But still. It’s not very hard to come up with a list of people more inspiring than Michelle Obama. @HillaryClinton yeah … how about the troops? | 0 |
LONDON — Caught in what appeared to be a classic British newspaper exposé, an opposition lawmaker on Tuesday relinquished leadership of an influential parliamentary committee over allegations that he paid for the services of prostitutes and offered to buy drugs for them. Two days after The Sunday Mirror published a report about the encounter involving the lawmaker, Keith Vaz, a prominent member of the Labour Party and a former minister for Europe, Mr. Vaz said it was “in the best interest” of the Home Affairs Select Committee, which he led, for its work to be “conducted without any distractions whatsoever. ” “I am genuinely sorry that recent events make it impossible for this to happen if I remain chair,” Mr. Vaz said in a statement. After the allegations were published on Sunday, Mr. Vaz argued that it was “deeply disturbing that a national newspaper should have paid individuals to have acted in this way,” adding that he would refer the report to his lawyers. Britain’s freewheeling tabloid press has been more restrained in recent times, after scandals over telephone hacking that led to an inquiry into ethical standards at the country’s newspapers. The Sunday Mirror sought to justify its report by pointing to the political responsibilities of Mr. Vaz, suggesting that his conduct had compromised his ability to fulfill his duties. As chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee in the House of Commons, he enjoyed a prominent role in oversight of the Home Office, the department that controls Britain’s policy on, among other things, drugs and prostitution. Even before his announcement on Tuesday, some politicians had suggested that his resignation was inevitable. John Whittingdale, who served as culture secretary under former Prime Minister David Cameron, said on Sunday that he understood that Mr. Vaz would relinquish his leadership of the committee. “Given the areas of which the committee is responsible, that does seem to me to be a sensible course of action,” Mr. Whittingdale told Sky News. According to The Sunday Mirror, Mr. Vaz, who is a married father of two, met with two men, identified by the tabloid as prostitutes, on Aug. 27 at an apartment in London. Before meeting with them, Mr. Vaz texted one of the men and asked him to bring poppers, a class of chemicals called alkyl nitrites that can be inhaled for a quick high or to enhance sexual pleasure, although the paper reported that Mr. Vaz had said that he did not use the drug himself. Mr. Vaz also discussed paying for cocaine but said he would not consume it, the paper reported. In Parliament, Mr. Vaz has argued against including poppers in a list of banned substances. During the encounter, Mr. Vaz told the men that his name was Jim and that he was a salesman for industrial washing machines, The Sunday Mirror reported, but one of the escorts recognized the lawmaker from his television appearances. | 1 |
Before the LORD the whole universe is as a grain from a balance or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth. But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people’s sins that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O LORD and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things! Therefore you rebuke offenders little by little, warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O LORD! New map of the Universe
Here’s a video on 3,000 scientists and professors with Ph.D.s who became believers of Creation, based on evidence, not faith. Some examples are Duane Gish, Cornell U. researcher with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from U.C. Berkeley; Henry Morris, Ph.D., professor of Hydraulic Engineering at Virginia Tech.
Pull quotes from the video, spoken by Dr. Jerry Bergman, co-author of the book Persuaded by the Evidence :
1:09 mark: “The book basically summarizes accounts of why people became creationists . . . . So many people believe that creationists are . . . just born that way or raised that way . . . . We want to show that many people became creationists because of the scientific evidence. In fact, many people in the book, including myself, became creationists by the evidence, not because we were raised this way.”
6:55 mark: “In fact, when I was an atheist, we used to often call these, what they call theistic evolutionists, ‘useful idiots’ . . . and that term was heard over and over again. They felt they’re [theistic evolutionists] useful for now. Once we convince the world of Darwinism . . . then there’ll be no need for religion, and they [theistic evolutionists] in essence are digging their own grave.”
8:07 mark: “Many [of the 3,000 scientists and professors in the book] stress very strongly that I would not be a Christian today if it was not for my study of evolution and my realization that evolution is not supportable by the science. And therefore they became creationists, and then they became Christians.”
8:54 mark: “I began to question atheism for a number of reasons. One reason was a lot of the scholarship that atheists did, I realized due to a lot of reading, was just not valid. Like the claims about Galileo and Bruno, and the claims that the Church executed many, many scientists because of their science. I realized that these claims are just not true, they’re just false. So I became disillusioned with atheist scholarship. And the next step was, indeed, is there any evidence for evolution because a major reason why many people are atheists is because they are convinced we do not need a Creator to account for the origin of life and the Universe. This is a foundational doctrine of atheism. So I decided, ‘Well, if this is not true, if evolution is not valid, then that negates the reason why many people are atheists.'”
11:28 mark: The evolutionary progression from ape to man that’s “commonly presented” is “either faked or they are distorted or the evidence is very unpersuasive for what they call a monkey or primate into man.”
11:48 mark: “Dogmatic evolution, I find, is interfering with science . . . because you are looking at the world with very distorted glasses. You’re not looking at what’s there; you’re looking at what you want to see there . . . . You must not force the facts into an evolutionary interpretation, and this all too often is done.”
An example of science forcing the facts into an evolutionary interpretation is pseudogenes and junk DNA. 12:33 mark: “It was said for a long time that . . . 95% of the DNA is junk, it has no function . . . . I said all we can say now is we don’t know that it has a function . . . . Over and over I argued with colleagues about this. Now it’s widely recognized that much, if not most, possibly almost all of this so-called junk DNA now we know has a function. Much of it has a regulatory function.” Helix Nebula , dubbed “Eye of God,” in the constellation Aquarius, 700 light years from Earth.
May the peace and love of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you!
~Eowyn | 0 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • With the stroke of a pen, President Trump formally abandoned the Partnership, a drastic reversal of decades of trade policy that removes a counterweight to China’s economic might. “We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” Mr. Trump said, calling the withdrawal “a great thing for the American worker. ” Mr. Trump also ordered a hiring freeze for federal workers outside the military, and reinstituted a bar on aid to health providers abroad who offer counseling abortion as a option. Senators are nearing confirmation votes for Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas to lead the C. I. A. and Rex W. Tillerson for secretary of state, in a cabinet more white and male than any since that of Ronald Reagan. _____ • The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave his first official briefing, two days after angrily berating reporters and making false claims about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd that one of his team defended as “alternative facts. ” Our reporters offered analysis of the marathon session, which you can see here, along with the full video. One of our correspondents observed that “Spicer’s plan for getting back on the right side of the press appears to be to stand here and answer every question possible. ” _____ • Japan is a step closer to allowing Emperor Akihito of Japan to abdicate. A government panel’s support for a provision clears the way for the governing Liberal Democratic Party to propose a measure applying only to the emperor, which is expected in April. _____ • South Korea’s political crisis took on a cultural dimension after revelations that thousands of artists deemed unfriendly by the government of the impeached president, Park had been blacklisted from various programs. Critics of the country’s intensely hierarchical power structure found new ammunition in the problems facing Samsung over its multibillion dollar losses on the Galaxy Note 7. But record earnings in its chip business helped drive operating profits sharply up. Separately, the cancellation of three concerts in China to be given by Sumi Jo, the famed South Korean soprano, above, heightened suspicions of Chinese payback over Seoul’s decision to deploy a U. S. system to counter North Korea’s growing military capabilities. _____ • The Times has started a weekly email that explains the ideas and context behind major world events. You can sign up for The Interpreter here. _____ • Britain’s government, awaiting today’s Supreme Court ruling on Parliament’s role in Brexit plans, unveiled a new economic approach that emphasizes business and government coordination and cooperation instead of . • Hugo Barra, the Google veteran at the top of China’s struggling smartphone Xiaomi, is returning to Silicon Valley. • At least 14 activists and workers have been detained since labor unrest began last month in Bangladesh, source of much of the world’s clothing. • Alibaba announces quarterly earnings, offering a gauge of how much the growth of its Singles’ Day business has slowed. • The U. S. Congressional Budget Office releases its annual Budget and Economic Outlook, with projections to 2027, and President Trump meets with the leaders of GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler. • The dollar weakened. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • Tornadoes and thunderstorms killed at least 18 people the U. S. states of Georgia and Mississippi, with damage also reported in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas. [The New York Times] • Multinational talks to end Syria’s war got off to a rough start in Astana, Kazakhstan. A government negotiator referred to the Syrian opposition as “armed terrorist groups,” and the rebels called the government “a bloody despotic regime. ” [The New York Times] • China tightened its Great Firewall, requiring government approval for all cable and VPN services. [South China Morning Post] • California got drenching rains — along with flooding, damaging winds and mudslides. [The New York Times] • Lawmakers in India’s state of Tamil Nadu adopted an emergency law to reverse a ban on jallikattu, an ancient sport, after days of protests that turned violent on Monday. [The New York Times] • The police in Brisbane, Australia, are investigating the death of actor who was shot during the filming of a music video using firearms as props. [ABC] • A investigation Pandora led police to thousands of archaeological artifacts and other artworks looted from countries by a trafficking network. [The New York Times] • In Bangladesh, textbook revisions sought by Islamic scholars have alarmed secular intellectuals, who warn against accommodating any shift toward radical Islam. [The New York Times] • A monthly roundup of China’s best photojournalism. [ChinaFile] • Insomnia keep you tossing and turning last night? Online therapy could make a difference. • Marriage may help you survive a stroke: Social relationships can have immediate and lasting consequences on health. • Recipe of the day: Try this carrot and red lentil ragout over rice, and turn any leftovers into soup. • The author of “Shanghai Grand,” a book celebrating the glamorous Paris of the Orient on the eve of World War II, visits another side of the city: its “alleyway homes. ” You can too, in our latest 360 video. • From gorillas to gibbons, a new study has found an alarming decline in the world’s primates that threatens more than half of their species with extinction. • Oscar nominations are due today, so get ready to join the office pool. Here’s our complete coverage of the season. Super Bowl history was made 35 years ago today when John Madden, the former N. F. L. coach and TV commentator, drew diagrams on a screen for viewers watching the 49ers beat the Bengals in Super Bowl XVI. The tool he used is now a staple of sports and weather broadcasts. The Telestrator was invented by Leonard Reiffel, a former NASA scientist and onetime colleague of the astronomer Carl Sagan. Mr. Reiffel developed the tool for a children’s science show he hosted in Chicago. He successfully pitched the technology to the sports and weather departments. Networks in New York took notice, and after the 1982 Super Bowl, CBS ordered four of the devices, Mr. Reiffel said. At first, a pen was used to draw on one of Mr. Reiffel’s handmade, wooden consoles. Today, tablets are typically used. For his work, the National Academy of Arts and Sciences honored Mr. Reiffel with an Emmy in 2004. His mother coined the name Telestrator, which was slightly catchier than Mr. Reiffel’s description: a “superimposed dynamic television display system. ” _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
A Hampshire College student allegedly assaulted a member of the Central Maine Community College girl’s basketball team over concerns that one of their players had “culturally appropriated” a hairstyle. [Hampshire College student Carmen Figueroa ordered members of the Central Maine Community College girls basketball team to remove braids from their hair, claiming that their use of the hairstyle is “cultural appropriation. ” According to The Daily Hampshire Gazette, Figueroa allegedly assaulted the girls after they refused to comply with her demand that they remove their braids: When the players did not comply and began to leave the building, Figueroa allegedly initiated a fight towards one of the players. At the same time, another unknown Hampshire College student pulled the hair of a visiting women’s basketball player causing her to fall to the ground, according to court documents. Figueroa was charged with disorderly conduct, assault and battery, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after an altercation that erupted over her concerns about the hairstyle sported by some members of the basketball team. Figueroa denies all charges. Oxford Reference defines cultural appropriation as the “taking over of creative or artistic forms, themes, or practices by one cultural group from another. It is in general used to describe Western appropriations of non‐Western or non‐white forms, and carries connotations of exploitation and dominance. ” “Overall, the topic of dispute on whether or not a white woman can wear braids is a very tricky blurred line — since cultural appropriation (CA) changes as our cultures blend and mesh it’s difficult to make a contention on whether or not braids are CA,” Madison Campbell, the Young Americans for Liberty President at Hampshire College, told the online campus watchdog site Campus Reform. “However, regardless of whether or not the hairstyle worn by the plaintiff is CA, it is completely wrong to victimize and brutally attack another individual for their hair. ” “I do not condone the violence brought on from this Hampshire student, and believe if the defendant had problems with the hairstyle that they should have expressed their opinion verbally rather than abusively,” Campbell added. This incident is similar an incident caught on video at San Francisco State University in which a white student with dreadlocks was confronted by a black student in March last year. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about education and social justice for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She now spends most of her time in India and other parts of Asia researching a book about textile artisans. She also writes regularly about legal, political economy, and regulatory topics for various consulting clients and publications, as well as writes occasional travel pieces for The National .
All right, all right. I can’t take it any more. Yesterday I read a Facebook post that blamed the current US electoral predicament on the “pointless” 22nd Amendment. For those of you without a US Constitution handy, the 22nd Amendment is the one that limits US presidents to serving two terms.
That Facebook post implies that without the 22nd Amendment we’d get to see a third term for the Obamamometer . That risible suggestion, combined with the incessant legacy-burnishing that he’s indulged in– at least until he realized that HRC might be in trouble and started to hit the campaign trail in earnest– made me realize the time for shredding aspects of that legacy is way overdue.
When the Obamamometer finally settles on what he’ll do next– whether that would be run a sports team, become a venture capitalist, found a new religion, cure cancer, or merely hob nob with the global elite and play lots of golf, I’m sure he’ll make a fine job job of it– just as he’s done with his Presidency. Over the next couple of months, I intend to post occasionally on this legacy: but rather than burnishing that record, I’ll indulge in a bit of legacy busting.
First up, the rule of law and corporate crime.
The Holder Doctrine
Federal prosecutors, and regulatory agencies, have turned into toothless tigers when it comes to prosecuting C-suite types, and pursuing corporations seriously, for economic crimes. Both financial institutions and their management got virtually a free pass for their activities that led to the Great Recession. And not only for those, but for subsequent foreclosure abuses, LIBOR and other market manipulations, money laundering, tax scams, and doing business contrary to US sanctions policy. Yet to date, not a single C-suite type has been indicted.
It’s not just financial institutions that’ve received a free pass. Big Pharma, for example, has also been lucky, as have companies that have engaged in creative tax minimization strategies (Apple, anyone?). And if looked at from the perspective of legal topics, rather than corporate actors, entire areas of law– antitrust, for example– are not really relevant anymore.
You don’t have to take my word for it. No less a source than the NY Times’ DealBook column– not a venue, incidentally, renowned for its trenchant, timely critiques of either Wall Street or other corporate behavior– in September lamented, Law Enforcement ‘Not Winning’ War on White Collar Crime . I wrote about this article in a September post and so won’t rehash all the arguments I made then here. But a few points are in order.
The lack of enforcement not only means that the guilty don’t pay. It also determines what corporate strategies get pursued, which business models are developed or rejected, what attitudes corporations take to risk, and how resources get allocated to name just a few consequences. And as I’ll discuss below, it also shapes how attorneys practice law, and the impact their advice carries in deterring certain types of corporate behavior.
I never thought I’d be nostalgic for President George W. Bush’s Department of Justice (DoJ). Now, I’m well aware of the scandal that ensued over Attorney General Alfred Gonzales imposing ideological litmus tests on assistant US attornies. Nonetheless, in the wake of the collapse of the dotcom bubble, the Bush DoJ actually enforced the law. It prosecuted cases and claimed scalps. Companies such as Adelphi, Enron and WorldCom all saw top-level management prosecuted, and malefactors sent to jail.
Change We Can’t Believe In
Those who voted for Hope and Change in 2008 certainly got the change part– at least with respect to the DoJ. But when we look at the DoJ’s enforcement priorities and the track record that followed, it’s perhaps not the change they were hoping for. The Obamamometer’s first Attorney General, Eric Holder, outlined and followed what came to be known as the Holder doctrine.
Allow me to quote from my September post:
[Under the Holder doctrine the DoJ eschewed corporate charges against companies and executives, instead opting for negotiated settlements (often imposing de minimis, slap-on-the wrist penalties that were significantly undersized compared to the magnitude of damage done, especially by TBTF banks and other financial predators, to name just a few).
The DoJ under Obama’s second AG, Loretta Lynch, originally followed the Holder doctrine, until that was superseded when Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates authored a memo outlining a new approach in September 2015. Under this approach, the DoJ intended to increase accountability for corporate wrongdoing, and this included an increased focus on pursuing criminal charges against responsible individuals. The DoJ sought to drive a legal wedge between individuals and the corporations for whom they worked by only allowing corporations to receive “cooperation credit” that would reduce their potential exposure (including penalties) if the corporation cooperates in surrendering as early as possible comprehensive detailed information concerning the individual misconduct.
There’s much more in a similar vein in that earlier post, for those with an interest. But the bottom line for purposes of this post is what has this supposed policy shift, from Holder’s doctrine to Yates’s memo, meant in practice. The short answer: bupkis. We’re still waiting for the more robust enforcement approach the Yates memo supposedly heralded to kick in. As an attorney I know who specializes in white collar defense work summed it up to me, “The DoJ’s walking a new walk, and talking a new talk, but nothing’s really changed.”
In fact, in only two areas have we seen the DoJ take a muscular approach toward enforcement during the Obamamometer’s administration, insider trading, and offenses under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
Insider Trading
US Attorney for the southern district of New York Preet Bharara has compiled an undefeated string of convictions for insider trading (some of which may be at risk of being overturned due to some appellate decisions, which are beyond the scope of this post). But as I wrote last month in The SEC Fiddles While the System Burns: Insider Trading Enforcement As Securities Law Theater , focusing on insider trading as an enforcement priority constitutes a form of securities law theater. Scare prosecutorial resources are expended on insider trading abuses, rather than being deployed to investigate, punish, and (hopefully) deter, far more serious systemic problems.
The insider trading focus provides the illusion that the DoJ is doing something about high-level cheating. Yet it has little broader deterrent effect on stymieing the wider corporate scams that misallocate resources and erode confidence in the integrity of the system. Insider trading enforcement is usually directed at individuals, and doesn’t implicate wider considerations of corporate strategy or policy. Prosecuting insider traders maintains the myth that the greatest threats to US capitalism are individual bad corporate actors, rather than anything more sweeping or systemic. Catch the bad actors, fine them or throw them in jail, and never think about any deeper problems.
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Another area highlighted as an enforcement priority is bribery and foreign corruption, with prosecutions undertaken under authority of the FCPA. Allow me to quote from a speech made by assistant attorney general Leslie R. Caldwell last week:
The effects of foreign corruption are not just felt overseas. In today’s global economy, the negative effects of foreign corruption flow back to the United States. American companies are harmed by global corruption when they are denied the ability to compete in a fair and transparent marketplace. Instead of being rewarded for their efficiency, innovation and honest business practices, U.S. companies suffer at the hands of corrupt governments and lose out to corrupt competitors.
….
This is why the fight against international corruption has been, and continues to be, a core priority of the Department of Justice. It has been a core priority for the Criminal Division, and our commitment to the fight against foreign bribery is reflected in our robust enforcement record in this area, which includes charges against corporations and individuals alike from all over the world. Since 2009, the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section has convicted more than 65 individuals in [FCPA] and FCPA-related cases, and resolved criminal cases against more than 65 companies with penalties and forfeiture of approximately $4.5 billion.
Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, after all, no one would come right out in favor of more international corruption?
But when we unpack it, we butt up against a few problems. First, to quote my contact the white collar defence specialist again. The lack of an effective DoJ deterrent has enormously complicated his practice and his ability to get his clients to understand and act on prudent legal advice. “What I’ve seen happening more and more in the last couple of years is the chairs of audit committees of major companies openly mocking the DoJ’s enforcement capability.” This leads the companies to pursue courses of action that they wouldn’t dare to undertake if they worried that the DoJ would aggressively pursue securities law violations.
Where does this leave their lawyers? Well, it often means that they must either moderate their advice, or risk losing their clients. Clients who want to do something will resist their impulses and continue to listen to what they hear as their lawyers crying wolf only for so long. Eventually, the less scrupulous among them are going to ignore the contrary advice, or get another lawyer. The lack of effective enforcement at the DoJ hinders the efforts of the best, most prudent, and most ethical members of the legal profession to practice law as we would want them to.
So, what happens instead? Well, the most scrupulous of them will continue to give what they regard as sound legal advice (even if what some privately call the Department of Jokes does not enforce the law in a way that lends credence to that approach). But that means they often have to develop new areas of expertise when their clients beat a path away from their doors. “We have to act sometimes as shoe salesmen, flogging competence in FCPA violations, that occur in subsidiaries or with foreign suppliers,” says my white collar defense specialist contact. “This work leads us to countries and legal systems we don’t know well, to uncover chickenshit violations that occur far from home.” Far better, he believes, would be for the DoJ to focus on law-breaking that occurs in the United States, as that could be effectively deterred by the agency refocusing its enforcement priorities. Now that would be a legacy we could all believe in.
Bottom Line
On the contrary, one persistent legacy of the Obamamometer is to say one thing and then do another. The DoJ has recently signalled its intention to get tougher on white collar crime. But so far, there’s been no follow through on the rhetoric. Instead, we see federal prosecutors either turning a blind eye to major problems, or conducting various forms of enforcement theater– much sound and fury, but in the end, signifying nothing.
Some legacy! | 0 |
And cops wonder why they get no respect. Stupid fucker | 0 |
RIO DE JANEIRO — Simone Manuel woke up Friday morning to confirmation that her victory in the freestyle a few hours earlier had not been a dream. The proof was perhaps more surreal than Thursday night’s payoff: Instagram posts from LeBron James and Serena Williams. Manuel’s friend and fellow trailblazer Lia Neal had forwarded the messages after stumbling across them on Twitter. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I wish I could see her reaction right now,’” Neal said. “She doesn’t need to hear from anyone else. Those are like her two favorite athletes. ” Manuel’s popularity got an emphatic spike after she became the first woman to win an individual swimming event at the Olympics. Manuel, a Texan, shared the gold medal with Penny Oleksiak, who also made history, becoming the youngest gold medalist from Canada. James wrote that he watched the race with his daughter. Williams posted a picture of Manuel and Simone Biles, who won the gymnastics gold medal, and called them “amazing. ” One mother posted a photograph on Twitter of her exuberant young black daughter posing in front of a television screen that showed Manuel being interviewed. By early Friday evening, it had more than 12, 000 likes. “I saw that picture,” Neal said. “I retweeted it. I was tearing up again. ” The top of the medals podium at Olympic Aquatics Stadium was crowded Thursday night, and not because there were medalists for the first time in the Olympics since 2000, when Anthony Ervin, whose father is and American Indian, tied his teammate Gary Hall Jr. in the 50 freestyle. Standing on the podium with her, Manuel said, were Neal, Ervin, Maritza Correira, Cullen Jones and all the black swimmers whose success shaped Manuel’s dreams. “This medal is not just for me, it’s for some of the that have come before me, have been inspirations and mentors to me,” Manuel said. In 2012, Neal became the second woman to make a United States Olympic swim team, after Correia in 2004. Neal was 17 and a rising senior in high school. Neal and Correia earned medals as members of 4x100 freestyle relays in their first Olympics. Correia won a silver, Neal a bronze. On Saturday, Neal raced in the morning heat for the American 4x100 relay team, which later took the silver. Neal, a rising senior at Stanford who grew up in Brooklyn, was asked which medal she considers more precious, her silver or the gold that Manuel earned in an upset. “I think Simone’s gold,” Neal said. “I just felt more when she touched the wall and saw that she won. I knew exactly what went into winning that gold medal. ” Neal feels a sisterly bond to Manuel, who is one year behind her at Stanford. In the to the Olympics, they often felt as if people saw their stories as being only skin deep. On the way to becoming the first two black women to grace the same United States Olympic swimming team, Neal and Manuel often compared notes after news media interviews. To their growing frustration, race was often discussed more than their races. “We talk about it and acknowledge that other people talk about it,” Neal said, “but we’re like ‘O. K. we’re here, like everyone else here we’re training toward winning, toward representing their country in the best way possible. History comes along with that. ” She added, “It’s cool because we’re not seeking to make history or change lives, we’re just doing what we love. ” Neal sat with Manuel roughly two hours before Thursday’s final. They listened to music, including the song “1, 2 Step” by Ciara and Missy Elliott. Neal’s parting words were “Pipe It Up,” from Migos. Neal said she was shaking before Manuel’s race and started crying during the last 10 meters when it dawned on her that Manuel might win. The prerace favorites were Cate Campbell of Australia, who lowered the world record to 52. 08 in July, and her sister, Bronte, who had clocked a 52. 58 in April. Manuel posted a 53. 32 in the heats, a 53. 11 in the semifinals and a 52. 70 in the final. “I was super surprised,” Manuel said after the race. “I don’t think there was a definitive point where I thought I had the race. ” How shocking was the outcome? Sarah Sjostrom, the Swede who finished third, said, “Penny and the American girl winning, I think that was the biggest surprise of the meet. ” (Never mind that “the American girl” had finished sixth, four places behind Sjostrom, in the freestyle final at last summer’s World Championships in Kazan, Russia). After Manuel finished giving interviews in the mixed zone, she fell into the arms of Neal and another Stanford teammate, Maya DiRado. “She was just bawling,” Neal said. “She was like: ‘I’m so happy you guys are my teammates. I couldn’t have done this without you guys. I love you. ’” Manuel’s sentiments meant the world to Neal, who was disappointed when she did not qualify for these Games in an individual event. “Why I broke down in tears and why I felt so much emotion when she won was because I was there with her every step of the way,” Neal said. “I knew exactly what it took to get to that point and win a gold medal firsthand. ” How long will it take for swimming in the United States to become colorblind? Is one gold enough to change the questions Manuel and Neal face? “I think this definitely catapults us many steps forward,” Neal said, adding, “I think just that one medal will bring so many different people into the sport and inspire so many different people. ” Manuel, who on Friday qualified for Saturday’s freestyle final, said she looked forward to the day when she is known simply as a champion. After the 100 final, she said, “I would like there to be a day where there are more of us and it’s not Simone, the black swimmer, because the title ‘black swimmer’ makes it seem like I’m not supposed to be able to win a gold medal or I’m not supposed to be able to break records. ” | 1 |
ISTANBUL — Turkey’s quarrel with Europe worsened over the weekend after the Turkish president accused the Dutch government of Nazism, and Turkish politicians were barred or disinvited from events in two European countries, amid tensions ahead of a tight referendum on a new Turkish Constitution. Having criticized German officials for barring their Turkish counterparts from campaign events this month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned his ire on the Netherlands after the Dutch stopped the Turkish foreign minister from landing there for a rally on Saturday, and then escorted the Turkish family minister out of the country early on Sunday, citing risks to public order and security. It was an unusually strong reaction from the Dutch, who have generally taken an open stance toward diverse points of view, but who are in the midst of an election campaign in which immigration and integration are major topics. “When those incidents began, I said those are fascistic measures,” Mr. Erdogan said in a speech on Sunday afternoon. “I said Nazism had risen from the dead. And then I added: I thought Nazism was over, but I was wrong. ” The remarks from Turkey inflamed tensions among the Turkish community in the Netherlands, who protested in Rotterdam until the early hours of Sunday, when they were dispersed by police officers wielding batons and water cannons. The police arrested 12 people, and seven were injured, including a policeman, whose hand was broken. Though Turkish law technically bars the practice, Turkish ministers are touring Europe to persuade the Continent’s sizable Turkish diaspora to vote yes to an expansion of Mr. Erdogan’s powers, amid fears that the “no” campaign may hold the edge in the April referendum. But this campaign has collided with closely fought local elections in the Netherlands and France, where politicians have sought political capital from stoking tensions with the Turks. The push for votes also comes at a time of increased European alarm over Turkey’s democratic backslide and rising concerns over immigration and integration. The Dutch government said it refused to allow the Turkish foreign minister’s plane to land after the Turkish government publicly called on “Dutch nationals of Turkish origin to turn out in great numbers. ” The two countries were negotiating over finding a smaller venue like the Turkish Consulate to hold the meeting, but “before these talks had been concluded,” Turkey “publicly threatened the Netherlands with sanctions” making a “reasonable compromise” impossible, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said. Elsewhere in Europe, the Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, canceled a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Binali Yildirim, in protest of Turkey’s “rhetorical attacks. ” In Sweden, a lawmaker from Mr. Erdogan’s party, Mehdi Eker, rearranged a campaign event after the meeting’s initial hosts backed out for safety reasons. In France, two candidates, François Fillon and Marine Le Pen, criticized the decision to allow the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to proceed with a rally in France. Switzerland and Austria have previously made it clear that Mr. Erdogan’s campaign is unwelcome there. In the Netherlands, both the conservative prime minister, Mark Rutte, and his opponent, Geert Wilders, hoped to benefit from the dispute, though it was not immediately clear if either would see appreciable gains. The election is on Wednesday, and while it was Mr. Wilders who first elevated the issue publicly, Mr. Rutte could get credit for barring the Turkish ministers. “Rutte now has premier bonus,” said Bianca Pander, a political strategist at BKB, which works on campaign strategy, referring to his status as prime minister. “He can now show what leadership means. ” He is also benefiting from nearly constant news media coverage on the issue. “Rutte is in the picture now: He’s on every TV show, and on every newspaper,” Ms. Pander said. Mr. Rutte said the pejoratives leveled at the Dutch were “bizarre” and that the “Turkish republic is moving in the wrong direction for a democracy. ” In response, Mr. Erdogan accused the Dutch government of playing to a domestic audience by blocking his ministers. “Holland, if you are sacrificing relations because of the election on Wednesday, you will pay the price,” Mr. Erdogan said Sunday. Inside Turkey, Mr. Erdogan, too, was accused of trying to curry favor with the country’s voters. With the referendum result in doubt, some of the president’s critics argued that he was manufacturing fights with Europe to win the support of nationalists in Turkey who were undecided about whether to back the expansion of his mandate. “Turkish foreign policy today — whatever it is, wherever it is, from Syria all the way to the Netherlands and Germany — is related to the domestic political agenda,” said Cengiz Candar, a veteran Turkish columnist and academic. “There is no Turkish foreign policy now,” Mr. Candar added in a telephone interview. “Turkish foreign policy is related to Mr. Erdogan’s referendum campaign. ” But others supported Mr. Erdogan’s stance. The leader of the main Turkish opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is against the proposed Constitution, called on Mr. Erdogan to suspend relations with the Netherlands. A small crowd of protesters gathered outside the Dutch Consulate in Istanbul, while an unknown intruder briefly managed to replace the consulate’s Dutch flag with a Turkish one. In a province west of the city, another crowd of protesters squeezed a series of oranges, in a theatrical gesture apparently intended to insult the Dutch, whose national color is orange. Arriving back in Turkey after her deportation, the Turkish family minister, Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, accused the Netherlands of hypocrisy for claiming to stand up for human rights while restricting her own. “We faced a very inhumane, unethical treatment,” she said at Istanbul’s main airport, according to Anadolu Agency, a news wire. “We had a really very painful night in Holland, which talks about democracy, freedoms, freedom of speech. ” In addition to targeting wavering members of Mr. Erdogan’s own party, some analysts said the Turkish government’s movements in Europe were particularly aimed at supporters of the country’s largest nationalist movement, the Nationalist Movement Party, which is known in Turkey as the M. H. P. The M. H. P. has traditionally been wary of Mr. Erdogan, but its leadership now supports giving him more power, in the private expectation that its own cadres will subsequently be rewarded with more influence. While an estimated three million German residents are of Turkish origin, as well as about 400, 000 Dutch residents, the number of people in Germany and the Netherlands who are eligible to vote in the Turkish elections is far lower, said Alexander Clarkson, a specialist on the Turkish diaspora at King’s College London. Mr. Erdogan’s recent gestures were therefore primarily targeted at the M. H. P. ’s rank and file in Turkey, many of whom are skeptical of their leadership’s alliance with Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Clarkson said. “The audience isn’t really the diaspora the audience is at home,” Mr. Clarkson said of the government’s stance toward the Netherlands and Germany. The heated language helps achieve this goal, Mr. Clarkson said, since “it enables Erdogan and the A. K. P. to say: We are out there protecting the rights of Turks abroad. ” The A. K. P. is an acronym for Mr. Erdogan’s group, the Justice and Development Party. Mr. Erdogan was accused of hypocrisy for criticizing Europe’s perceived authoritarianism while overseeing a sweeping crackdown on dissent in his country. Since a failed coup in July, Mr. Erdogan’s government has ruled mostly by decree, allowing it to suspend or fire more than 120, 000 government employees, and arrest an estimated 45, 000 people suspected of being dissidents or rebels. The detainees come from a broad section of public life and include soldiers, police officers, teachers, judges, academics, journalists and lawmakers. “He is the president of a country,” Mr. Candar said of Mr. Erdogan, “where more than 150 journalists, writers, columnists, opinion makers are in prison. And the leaders of the caucus in the Turkish Parliament” — as well as 12 other members of Parliament who belong to it — “are also in prison. ” Turkey, Mr. Candar argued, “has transformed into a republic of fear. ” | 1 |
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One of the more interesting lessons Democrats may learn in their newfound enthusiasm for George Orwell’s Nineteen — which is a critique of socialism, but never mind — is the way that totalitarian societies destroy intimate relationships. [In the dystopian future envisioned by Orwell, children betray their parents to the Thought Police, and sex is discouraged because it creates relationships outside the state. A secret love is the most revolutionary act — and, ultimately, a futile one. Today, in the United States, we are witnesses to — and participants in — the destruction of friendships and relationships over political disputes that rage uncontrollably on social media, carry over into the workplace, and even continue into the home. A few weeks ago, a poll revealed that 39% of Americans had argued about politics with friends and family, and had “stopped talking to a family member or friend because of the election. ” True, 40% of respondents said they had not had those kinds of arguments, but that may also be because Americans are increasingly withdrawing into political camps. It is fashionable, especially in Washington, to blame these divisions on an increasingly partisan media. And that is partly true. Orwell observed — separately, in 1944 — that modern innovations in communication and travel had inspired new ways to divide people, rather than bringing the world together. Of radio, for example, he observed: “It is nonsense to say that the radio puts people in touch with foreign countries … each national radio is a sort of totalitarian world of its own, braying propaganda night and day to people who can listen to nothing else. ” The same is true of social media and domestic politics today. Theoretically, Facebook and Twitter ought to make it easier for us to communicate with, and understand, people with different views. In practice, they encourage us to huddle with people and sever relations with the other side. Twitter is the most brutal of social media platforms, because it allows people to bash each other from behind pseudonyms and avatars. But Facebook is even more damaging, because it takes associations — families, schools, towns — and exposes them to the ravages of intense political debate. On Twitter, we form alliances with strangers who agree with us on Facebook, we discover the opposing political views of people with whom we may have shared close lifelong connections. Social media platforms are increasingly important sources of news. And so the new political divisions in the world of journalism are filtering into our social media, which in turn exacerbates those media divisions in a seemingly endless feedback loop. But the media are not solely responsible. The deliberate politicization of intimacy began with a specific campaign — namely, President Barack Obama’s 2008 run, which used social media technology to drive a political message. Obama told his supporters explicitly to approach their neighbors and “argue with them, and get in their face. ” His surrogates took that approach even further. Hollywood celebrity Sarah Silverman encouraged Obama’s Jewish supporters to travel to Florida and tell their ostensibly racist grandparents to vote for him. Later, once Obama was in office, the supposedly Rock the Vote organization told young people to withhold sex from partners who refused to support Obamacare. The politicization of intimacy has been a Democratic campaign strategy ever since. And after the 2016 election, it has only continued. Anecdotally, conservative acquantances report that their (understandably) frustrated and (irrationally) fearful liberal Facebook friends have tried to hold them personally responsible for every perceived misstep by President Donald Trump. As much as conservatives disliked Barack Obama and his policies, that kind of behavior seemed far less common. Just recently, a friend posted on Facebook: “I got blocked by a liberal tonight. My brother. ” This quiet dissolution of American social life should worry us, for the simple reason that the intimate connections among neighbors, family, and friends are the glue that holds our otherwise individualistic society together. Alexis de Tocqueville noted in Democracy in America, nearly 200 years ago, that our system functions because of the overlapping associations we form with one another. Those are at risk. Fifteen years ago, Americans were deeply divided over the results of the 2000 presidential election and the Florida recount. It took the horrific events of September 11th, 2001 to bring the nation together. One hopes it does not take a similar event this time. This week, in addressing Congress, President Trump united the nation in applauding and comforting the widow of a fallen Navy SEAL. It was a rare moment of unity, a reminder that we can — and must — renew what we still hold in common. 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 |
From a single gust of wind, Clare Hollingworth reaped the journalistic scoop of the century. Ms. Hollingworth, the undisputed doyenne of war correspondents, who died on Tuesday in Hong Kong at 105, was less than a week into her first job, as a reporter for the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, on that windy day in 1939. Driving alone on the road from Gleiwitz, then in Germany, to Katowice, in Poland — a distance of less than 20 miles — she watched as the wind lifted a piece of the tarpaulin that had been erected on the German side to screen the valley below from view. Through the opening, Ms. Hollingworth saw, she later wrote, “large numbers of troops, literally hundreds of tanks, armored cars and field guns” concealed in the valley. She knew then that Germany was poised for a major military incursion. Hastening back across the border to the Polish side, she telephoned her editor with the news, a world exclusive. The date was Aug. 28, 1939, and her article, published the next day, would become, as the British paper The Guardian wrote in 2015, “probably the greatest scoop of modern times. ” On Sept. 1, Hitler’s forces invaded Poland, marking the start of World War II. For the next four decades, Ms. Hollingworth (who over the years contributed articles to The Telegraph, The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal) covered World War II from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and North Africa the Greek and Algerian civil wars hostilities between Arabs and Jews in the waning days of the British mandate in Palestine and the Vietnam War, among other conflicts. Often under fire, occasionally arrested and possessed of such a keen nose for covert information that from time to time she was accused of being a spy — both by local governments and by the British — Ms. Hollingworth was friend, or foe, to seemingly everyone in a position of power in the world at midcentury. She obtained the first interview with Mohammed Reza Pahlavi after he became the shah of Iran in 1941, and what was very likely among the last, after he was deposed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. In 1965, wanting to cover hostilities between India and Pakistan but discovering that reporters were barred from the front, she simply secured permission from an old acquaintance, Indira Gandhi, who was then India’s minister of information and broadcasting. Ms. Hollingworth was also one of the first Western journalists to report regularly from China, opening The Telegraph’s Beijing bureau in 1973. Her other major scoops included a 1963 article for The Guardian in which she cautiously identified the British intelligence agent Kim Philby as the “third man” in the ring of Soviet spies then known to include the Englishmen Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. Another was a 1968 article for The Telegraph in which she reported the United States’ incipient plans for peace talks with Vietnam. (The talks opened in Paris later that year and were concluded in 1973.) Ms. Hollingworth was never so happy, she often said, as when she was roaming the world equipped with little more than a toothbrush, a typewriter and, if need be, a revolver. Embedded long before the term was applied to journalists, she slept in trucks and in trenches, at times buried up to her neck in sand for warmth on cold desert nights. She once held off an armed Algerian policeman by threatening to hit him about the head with a shoe. Had her eyesight not begun to fail some 20 years ago, it was a life, Ms. Hollingworth made clear, that she would gladly have continued to the end of her days. “I must admit that I enjoy being in a war,” she told The Telegraph in 2011, on the eve of her 100th birthday. In 1989, though nearly 80 and nominally retired, Ms. Hollingworth, attired in a safari suit, her working uniform of choice for 60 years, was spotted in Tiananmen Square shinnying up a lamppost for a bird’ view of the government’s violent crackdown against civilian protesters. She periodically slept on the floor of her home in Hong Kong well into her 90s, just to keep from going soft. Through all her travels, with all their attendant rigors, there was only one thing, Ms. Hollingworth said, that she truly could not abide. “I do not mind not washing for a week or more,” she wrote, “but I do hate getting fleas in my hair. ” Her Graham Greene existence, with its typewriter, revolver and most particularly its fleas, was a far cry from the life her conventional, British parents had envisioned for her — one of quiet propriety, dutiful wifehood, charity balls and hunting. Clare Hollingworth was born on Oct. 10, 1911, in Knighton in central England, outside Leicester. As a child, she enjoyed touring the historic battlefields of England and France with her father, who ran the family’s boot and shoe factory. At her parents’ insistence, the young Ms. Hollingworth attended domestic science college in Leicester, an experience that did nothing to make the prospect of hearth and home attractive. (“Although it is useful to be able to make an omelet,” she later wrote, “my domestic science training caused me to hate having anything to do with housework. ”) Partly in deference to her upbringing, she became engaged “to a suitable young man,” though she soon broke off the engagement and further scandalized her parents by announcing her intention to become a journalist. “My mother thought journalism frightfully low, like a trade,” Ms. Hollingworth said in the 2011 interview with The Telegraph. “She didn’t believe anything journalists wrote and thought they were only fit for the tradesmen’s entrance. ” In the 1930s, Ms. Hollingworth attended the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London and afterward studied at the University of Zagreb, then in Yugoslavia. Working for the League of Nations Union, a peace and social justice group established in Britain in 1918, she was dispatched to Warsaw. There, in early 1939, she aided thousands of refugees from the Sudetenland — the region of Czechoslovakia that had been annexed by the Nazis in October 1938 — arranging travel documents that would let them cross into Poland. She wrote about their plight for small publications in Britain. The Telegraph learned of Ms. Hollingworth’s work in Poland, and on Aug. 25, 1939, while she was visiting London, it hired her as a correspondent. Assigned to cover the prelude to war in the region, she flew to Warsaw the next day. From Warsaw she traveled to Katowice, commandeering an official car from the British consul general there. It was in that car, Union Jack boldly flying, that she drove over the border, past astonished Nazi guards and into Germany on Aug. 28. Ms. Hollingworth’s scoop comprised two parts. The first was her story of Aug. 29, about the advent of war. The second was her report on the start of the war itself. Awakened by explosions at dawn on Sept. 1, Ms. Hollingworth, from her quarters in Katowice, saw German bombers overhead and the flash of artillery fire in the distance. She telephoned a friend at the British Embassy in Warsaw. “The war has begun!” she cried. “Are you sure, old girl?” he said. Her published article notwithstanding, Ms. Hollingworth later wrote, British officialdom persisted in thinking that war remained weeks away. She held the receiver out the window as German tanks roared outside. The embassy was persuaded and soon, too, was her editor. Ms. Hollingworth’s article on the start of hostilities appeared in The Telegraph the next day. Her work from this period is unbylined — few reporters were accorded bylines then — a state of affairs she pronounced as being for the best: It simultaneously spared her parents familial anxiety and social indignity. What followed was more than 40 years of chasing danger, for it was in the most dangerous places, Ms. Hollingworth often said, that the best stories lay. Traveling with British troops in North Africa, she was buried in the sands for the night when she awoke to the sounds of a German reconnaissance party. “A sneeze would have brought death to us all,” she later wrote. She held her breath in the darkness, and the party passed unseeing. In Vietnam, a sniper’s bullet narrowly missed her head. Ms. Hollingworth’s first husband, Vandeleur Robinson, whom she married in 1936, divorced her for desertion 15 years later. (“When I’m on a story, I’m on a story — to hell with husband, family, anyone else,” she told The Guardian in 2004.) Her second husband, Geoffrey Hoare, a journalist whom she married in the early 1950s, died in 1965. Her death was confirmed by Patrick Garrett, her grandnephew and her biographer. Her survivors include a stepdaughter, Hilary Sandre. Over time, some members of the British press grew alienated by what they saw as Ms. Hollingworth’s imperious manner. “Ms. Hollingworth’s snobberies are very tiring, her cozy relations with British embassies irritating,” the English journalist Robert Fisk wrote, reviewing her 1990 memoir, “Front Line. ” But she remained a widely admired, even venerated, figure, a recipient of the Order of the British Empire in 1982 and a perennial fixture at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong, where she had made her home since the early 1980s. Her other books include “The Three Weeks’ War in Poland” (1940) “There’s a German Just Behind Me” (1942) “The Arabs and the West” (1952) and “Mao and the Men Against Him” (1985). As Ms. Hollingworth made clear in later interviews, though there was no dearth of wars to accompany her old age, she did not truly expect to be called upon to cover them. Yet to the end of her life she slept with her passport and a pair of shoes within easy reach, just in case. | 1 |
A black man said the police in North Miami, Fla. shot him on Monday as he tried to help a patient with autism who had run away from the group home where he works. The man, Charles Kinsey, 47, who identified himself as a caretaker of the patient, was on a city street with the patient when officers arrived, a lawyer for Mr. Kinsey said. When the officers drew their weapons, Mr. Kinsey told them there was no need for firearms, lay down in the middle of the street and tried to explain what had happened, the lawyer said. The video shows him trying to calm the patient, urging him to sit and to lie down. “All he has is a toy truck — a toy truck,” Mr. Kinsey said, according to video obtained by the Miami television station WSVN. “I am a behavior therapist at a group home,” he added. But then an officer opened fire, striking Mr. Kinsey in the leg. The North Miami police did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment on Thursday. The North Miami police chief, Gary Eugene, who held a news conference on Thursday, said an investigation would be led by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Chief Eugene said, “The law requires us to gather every fact and resolve every question. ” No gun was recovered at the scene, he added. On Friday, North Miami leaders identified the officer as Jonathan Aledda, a member of the SWAT team, and said he had been placed on administrative leave without pay, according to The Miami Herald. Another officer was also placed on leave for allegedly giving misleading statements during the inquiry. In a preliminary statement Tuesday, the North Miami Police Department said officers had responded to a call about “an armed male suspect threatening suicide. ” “Arriving officers attempted to negotiate with the two men on the scene, one of whom was later identified as suffering from autism,” the statement said. “At some point during the negotiation, one of the responding officers discharged his weapon. The video shows Mr. Kinsey in a and shorts with his back on the ground and his hands in the air. Seated next to him on a street is another man, who Mr. Kinsey says is the patient he was trying to help. Mr. Kinsey tried to defuse the situation, his lawyer, Hilton Napoleon, said. “He asked the police officer, ‘Why did you shoot me?’ He told my client, ‘I don’t know,’” Mr. Napoleon said. Clint Bower, the president and chief executive of MACtown Inc. where Mr. Kinsey works, expressed frustration at how the police responded, but praised Mr. Kinsey for his actions. “Needless to say, after viewing the video, my employee Charles Kinsey, behavioral support professional, is a hero. He saved the young man with autism from being shot,” Mr. Bower said in an email on Wednesday. “He put his own life at risk, which is evident in the video. ” Mr. Napoleon said he met with city officials on Wednesday and had discussed the possibility of a settlement. Whatever the resolution, he said, the city should start by censuring the officer. “The best thing that the City of North Miami can do is come out and condemn the officer,” he said. . In a statement on Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida said: “We have to stem the tide of violence, both nationwide and here in Florida. It starts with holding people accountable for their actions. There must be a thorough and independent investigation into this shooting that covers both whether officers violated internal use of deadly force policies and whether criminal charges should be brought. ” | 1 |
The Path to Total Dictatorship: America's Shadow Government and Its Silent Coup
By John W. Whitehead Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people . Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state . The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government . This group is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.
Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech
Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law.
Say hello to Americas shadow government.
A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.
No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government also referred to as The 7th Floor Group may well have played a part in who will win the White House this year.
To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.
The first shadow government, referred to as COG or Continuity of Government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a catastrophe. COG is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstancesa terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdownto bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.
Yet it is the second shadow government also referred to as the Deep Statethat poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government is the real reason we the people have no real control over our government.
The Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power, makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.
So who or what is the Deep State?
Its the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal law enforcement agencies in order to establish themselves as a standing army. Its the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. Its the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice. Its the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. Its the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government. Its what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies : the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.
Its every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the governments power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.
These are the key players that drive the shadow government.
This is the hidden face of the American police state that will continue long past Election Day.
Just consider some of the key programs and policies advanced by the shadow government that will continue no matter who occupies the Oval Office.
Domestic surveillance.
No matter who wins the presidential popularity contest, the National Security Agency (NSA), with its $10.8 billion black ops annual budget, will continue to spy on every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. Thus, on any given day, whether youre walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Local police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alikeincluding homes. Coupled with the nations growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Global spying.
The NSAs massive surveillance network, what the Washington Post refers to as a $500 billion espionage empire , will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSAs Echelon program intercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone in the governments attempts at political and corporate espionage .
Roving TSA searches.
The American taxpayer will continue to get ripped off by government agencies in the dubious name of national security. One of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers has been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars worth of airport full-body X-ray scanners, punitive patdowns by TSA agents and thefts of travelers valuables. Considered essential to national security, TSA programs will continue in airports and at transportation hubs around the country.
USA Patriot Act, NDAA.
Americas so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the U.S. Constitution, is the map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected.
Militarized police state.
Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, Americas law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, controlled, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.
SWAT team raids.
With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by local police for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession.
Domestic drones. The domestic use of drones will continue unabated. As mandated by Congress, there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth as much as $30 billion per year. These machines, which will be equipped with weapons, will be able to record all activities, using video feeds, heat sensors and radar. An Inspector General report revealed that the Dept. of Justice has already spent nearly $4 million on drones domestically, largely for use by the FBI , with grants for another $1.26 million so police departments and nonprofits can acquire their own drones.
School-to-prison pipeline.
The paradigm of abject compliance to the state will continue to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior. School districts will continue to team up with law enforcement to create a schoolhouse to jailhouse track by imposing a double dose of punishment: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court.
Overcriminalization.
The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.
Privatized Prisons.
States will continue to outsource prisons to private corporations, resulting in a cash cow whereby mega-corporations imprison Americans in private prisons in order to make a profit. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.
Endless wars.
Americas expanding military empire will continue to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.
Are you getting the message yet?
The next president, much like the current president and his predecessors, will be little more than a figurehead, a puppet to entertain and distract the populace from whats really going on.
As Lofgren reveals, this state within a state, concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue , is a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.
The Deep State not only holds the nations capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater) and Silicon Valley.
This is fascism in its most covert form, hiding behind public agencies and private companies to carry out its dirty deeds.
It is a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate fat cats.
As Lofgren concludes:
[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.
In other words, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , as long as government officialselected and unelected alikeare allowed to operate beyond the reach of the Constitution, the courts and the citizenry, the threat to our freedoms remains undiminished.
So the next time you find yourselves despondent over the 2016 presidential candidates, remember that its just a puppet show intended to distract you from the silent coup being carried out by Americas shadow government.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected] . Publication Guidelines / Reprint Permission: https://www.rutherford.org | 0 |
Tuesday 8 November 2016 by Gary Stanton Americans given historic opportunity to tell Donald Trump to go fuck himself
Americans are today being given a once in a lifetime opportunity to tell Donald Trump to go fuck himself.
According to experts, today’s vote is less an opportunity to select the leader of the free world, so much as the chance to remind Donald Trump what an arsehole they all think he is.
Democratic countries around the globe are today united in telling Americans they have a unique chance to show the world that they have the ability to guide a leading nation in the direction of societal harmony, equality for all, and telling racists to go fuck themselves.
US political expert, Chuck Williams, told us, “Setting the persuasive policy arguments made by the candidates to one side, the United States will wake on Wednesday morning to either of two plausible realities.
“One in which the downcast misogynist billionaire leader has been roundly told to fuck the fuck off, or another in which he enjoys a prolonged, ill-tempered orgasm on the Fox News network.”
Williams urged Americans to imagine a forward-looking country in which Donald Trump isn’t constantly forced to appear on the news in order to defend himself against accusation after inevitable accusation of improper behaviour, both privately and professionally.
He concluded, “You can either offer a number of quiet ‘fuck you’s at him many, many times over the next four years, or you can give him one enormous one today.
“Choose wisely.” Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 0 |
Looking to the federal government to rein in police excesses can be an exercise in managed expectations. On Friday, Chicago agreed to revamp its police department after the Justice Department found routine use of excessive force, and the mayor said he would negotiate a settlement, known as a consent decree. But that is no guarantee of results — and not just because the man most likely to be the next attorney general has said he is skeptical of such endeavors. Attempts to force change in police departments have met with mixed success even under the Obama administration, which made police reform a signature issue. It has opened 25 investigations into law enforcement agencies over issues like excessive force, racial bias and poor supervision, issuing reports choking with outrage. Los Angeles, which was under a consent decree for 11 years, is regarded as one of the great success stories. “Los Angeles is a different place today because of the consent decree and the leadership of the department,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington think tank. In Detroit, which emerged from a consent decree last year, officer shootings and warrantless arrests have declined significantly. But Pittsburgh, the target of the first consent decree based on a Justice Department finding of a “pattern and practice” of misconduct, later backslid after changes in leadership, said Samuel Walker, a criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. And while Miami reduced police shootings to zero for 20 months after a federal investigation in 2002 that was later closed with no settlement, the Justice Department in 2013 reinvestigated and found a pattern of excessive force with firearms, underscoring some experts’ view that consent decrees or other settlements are needed for enduring improvements. Last year, Miami settled the 2013 inquiry by agreeing to improve supervision, training and internal investigations. The “pattern and practice” approach developed after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles in 1991 forced a period of national introspection over how to curb misconduct if individual officers could not be held accountable. A jury’s decision not to convict the four officers charged in the attack on Mr. King incited deadly riots. Since the early attempts, Mr. Walker said, consent decrees have evolved to be more sophisticated and comprehensive. “The general pattern is that there is some backsliding on some issues,” he said, “but I don’t think there’s a case where a department has completely collapsed back to where it was before. ” Still, Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama and the nominee for attorney general under Donald J. Trump, called them “dangerous,” writing in 2008 that they “constitute an end run around the democratic process. ” At his confirmation hearing this past week, he softened that critique, saying there were some circumstances that legitimately demanded consent decrees and that those already in place would be enforced. But, Mr. Sessions said, lawsuits could unfairly target whole police departments for the misdeeds of a few bad actors. “These lawsuits undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing their work consistent with fidelity to law and fairness,” he said. His critique did not extend to how well consent decrees actually work. But experts say that even systemic changes, like greater oversight of officers’ use of force, can be slow to yield results. “They change the ‘inputs’ through training, record keeping, community involvement and other internal reforms, but the inputs don’t necessarily translate into changes in ‘outputs’ including racial disparities, use of force, or other constitutional issues,” wrote Jeff Fagan, a Columbia University law professor, in an email. “The results have been quite variable. ” Consent decrees can span years and many of the Obama administration’s key settlements have just begun, including those in Cleveland and Albuquerque. So it would be premature to assess their success. Some reform advocates have expressed fears that the Trump administration will fail to investigate police departments or enforce consent decrees, robbing them of what they view as a crucial lever to compel change. Even some police chiefs might mourn a retreat from consent decrees. Baltimore’s police commissioner, Kevin Davis, has said that a consent decree would aid community relations. Charles H. Ramsey, who as Washington’s police chief invited the Justice Department to review his department, said, “The DOJ gives legitimacy to the changes that you’re making. ” Chiefs may want consent decrees in order to insulate them from political and union opposition to change, as well as make it easier to demand money to pay for reforms. Mr. Sessions wrote in his critique of consent decrees in 2008 that he is aware of that strategy. “Such decrees are particularly offensive when certain governmental agencies secretly delight in being sued because they hope a settlement will be reached resulting in the agency receiving more money,” he wrote. “Thus, the taxpayers ultimately fund the settlement enacted through this undemocratic process. ” | 1 |
30 Views November 18, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
With continued weakness in the precious metals markets, did this major divergence just trigger a bottom in gold and silver?
The gold and silver markets are now showing a huge divergence which may prove to be a key in terms of seeing the bottom of this correction in the metals. Below we see that the price of gold (GLD used as a proxy) is hitting new lows (see chart below).
At the same time, the price of silver is also hitting new lows (see chart below). Unlocking The Key: Here Is The Major Divergence
Meanwhile, the HUI (Gold Mining Index) is diverging by trading above recent lows (see chart below).
And the XAU (Gold Mining Index) is also diverging by trading above its recent lows (see chart below).
KWN also spoke with one of the top mining CEO’s today and he said, “The selling in the mining stocks is looking very tired right now and they are just looking for an excuse to rally.”… IMPORTANT… To find out which company is set to become one of the highest grade producing gold mines on the planet CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
The divergence in the HUI and XAU mining indexes vs gold and silver is a major clue that a bottom may be forming. If the miners can hold above the recent lows that will give the signal that the correction has now officially come to an end and the uptrend in gold, silver, and the mining shares will resume. I t will be very interesting to see if this divergence did in fact mark a bottom in gold and silver in the days ahead.
Look At These Markets Seeing Massive Waterfall Declines As Chaotic Global Trading Continues | 0 |
BLACKPOOL, England — “Ramones forever!” C. J. Ramone yelled to a tightly packed crowd at the Rebellion Festival here earlier this month, and a little roar rippled through a sea of mohawks, spikes — and more than a few balding heads. It was 40 years ago this summer that the Ramones flew to London and played a July 4 concert at the Roundhouse in Camden, an event that many cite as the moment that punk rock first took flight in Britain. A month earlier, a London group called the Sex Pistols had played a gig at Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester. It has been said that there were only a few dozen people in attendance, but every one went out and started a band. “I’ve said this quote before, but I’ll say it again,” Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks said in a recent interview over a pint of Guinness in London. “If Jesus was born in Bethlehem, British punk was born in Manchester at that gig. ” The anniversary of that summer is being celebrated in Punk London, a citywide, yearlong series of exhibitions, talks and concerts supported by the mayor’s office and the National Lottery. Proving, perhaps, that punk’s rebellious spirit hasn’t yet receded into rock’s history books, this institutional endorsement of an movement has drawn skepticism, a little bit of ridicule and even some mild acts of resistance. “We heard our song on BBC News,” as part of the anniversary celebrations, Noel Martin, 61, of the band Menace, which formed in the said outside the Blackpool festival grounds. The song, “G. L. C. ,” which stood for Greater London Council, took aim at the city government, whose conservative members had called for a ban on punk concerts. “BBC banned that song 40 years ago, how come they’re playing it now?” In March, Joe Corré, the son of the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols manager, Malcolm McLaren, vowed to burn 5 million pounds, or about $6. 46 million, worth of punk memorabilia to protest what he saw as the of the movement. (The event, which is planned for this fall, was promptly added by a City Hall staff member to the Punk London website). In July, the singer Viv Albertine of the band the Slits visited the British Library for a talk connected to Punk London. While there, she stopped by the institution’s punk history exhibition to scrawl over the names of prominent female punk artists in permanent marker onto to the show’s signage. “What about the women! !” she wrote on a sign, crossing out the names of male punk groups and replacing them with acts like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Spex. The concerts of the summer of ’76 proved a crucible: In the months that followed, punk broke into public consciousness across Britain. The Clash, the Buzzcocks and the Damned gained nationwide attention. And the Sex Pistols became tabloid sensations, both for their wild behavior and their lyrics, particularly for “God Save the Queen,” an screed that suggested the queen was the head of a “fascist regime. ” The reaction from the news media was swift: Sex Pistols tracks, including “Queen” and “Anarchy in the U. K.,” were banned from the BBC, and, after reports that band members had spit on and yelled at staff at Heathrow Airport, the Pistols were dropped from their record label, EMI. The Sex Pistols dissolved in spectacular fashion months later, but the Ramones soldiered on for another 20 years (C. J. Ramone joined the band in the late ’80s). Fans and musicians at the Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, a resort town on the Irish Sea, noted the incongruity of the establishment’s embracing of punk rock, but they said the British punk scene was vibrant and even growing. “We go to gigs every week here, Manchester, Birmingham,” Graham Norris, 51, a fan of punk, said over a hot dog on the first day of the festival. “There’s lots of good bands coming through, a lot of them,” said Mr. Norris, who carried a cane and had a single synthetic green dreadlock threaded onto his last wisp of natural hair. “Maybe their dads were punks, maybe their mothers were punks and they’ve picked up on it. ” This festival’s lineup reflected that intergenerational spirit: Early bands like Agnostic Front and the Buzzcocks split the bill with newer acts like Youth Man and Angry Itch. Outside the main venue, a group of young punk fans gathered on a stoop, smoking and swigging from liquor bottles. One young musician, Connor MacPherson, 18, whose band the Antiseptics played at Punk Weekender, a concert series held at the Roundhouse in July to commemorate the anniversary of the Ramones concert, said that the punk spirit was particularly relevant now that conservatives control Britain’s government. Describing himself as a “socialist with anarchist tendencies,” Mr. MacPherson got a rousing response from the others when he lobbed a shot at David Cameron, the former prime minister. “We have got a government that doesn’t care about the youth, that doesn’t care about the people,” he said. “We need punk more than ever — we need punk more than they needed it in 1977. ” Nella Bellinzoni, 62, was selling bags and sweaters in the halls of the festival. With blue hair sprayed vertical and reaching about a foot above her head (she said it took her around one and a half cans of hair spray and three hours to achieve the look) Ms. Bellinzoni, who described herself as an “old punk, from the beginning,” expressed a sunny vision of punk’s future. “It’s getting more and more stronger,” Ms. Bellinzoni, a native of Italy who lives near Blackpool, said. “All the kids, when their father or mother was punk, then they’re punk as well. ” One duo was Simon Reynolds, 50, who took a train from London to Blackpool and his son, Oscar. Mr. Reynolds, who started listening to punk in the early ’80s, said he thought that the movement had cleaned up its act somewhat since the early years and grown a “conscience. ” Oscar, with spiky green hair and a advertising the punk band Gnarwolves, said he became interested in punk about eight years ago, through skateboarding and through his father. He said that he appreciated the sympathy for the working classes, and also that he liked that the music was different from what his friends listened to. Asked whether he ever felt strange dabbling in the same music scene as his father, he looked briefly incredulous. “No, no,” he said with a chuckle, before his face got serious and he added, “My dad’s rad. ” | 1 |
Lukas Mikelionis, Heat Street, October 24, 2016
{snip} According to Misao Dean, Professor of English at the University of Victoria, the canoe can be a symbol of colonialism, imperialism and genocide due to history. She also accused the canoers of cultural appropriation because they are primarily white men and have a privileged place in society.
In a radio interview for CBC Radio , which wasn’t picked up by the Internet until several months later, she claimed “we have a whole set of narratives that make the canoe into a kind of morally untouchable symbol, something that seems natural, that seems ordinary, and seems to promote values that we ascribe to.”
“But I think if you look a little further that narrative obscures or erases another narrative–and that narrative is about, to be blunt, it’s about theft and genocide”, the professor said.
{snip}
“It’s not a coincidence that it was white men of a certain age . . . Certainly the majority of wilderness canoers are people who have a very privileged place in society. They’re frequently highly educated people. They’re almost completely white,” she said.
CBC Radio host Jim Brown then asked a question: “Should we look at the canoe as a non-controversial symbol or should we look at it as a symbol of colonialism?”
To which the academic replied: “Absolutely a symbol of colonialism. It seems to me that this narrative we tell ourselves about the canoe about how canoeing makes us in touch with nature, how canoeing makes us in some way guiltless of the terrible things that the Canadian government and Canadians in general did to First Nations people.”
{snip}
Either way, somebody should break the news to Canada’s woke Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about this. It’s 2016, after all. Thrilled to let you know we’re going to need another seat in our canoe: Sophie is pregnant! #threeisthenewtwo pic.twitter.com/gm76BwAe4p | 0 |
. CDC Scientist Confirms Donald Trump is Right About Vaccines and Autism Donald Trump is no stranger to controversy, including the vaccine debate. In a series of tweets and ... http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/cdc-scientist-confirms-donald-trump-is.html Donald Trump is no stranger to controversy, including the vaccine debate. In a series of tweets and interviews over the past few years, the presidential candidate has stated that he strongly believes that there is a link between "monstrous" vaccines and autism . He has suggested that delivering vaccines in smaller doses over time could reduce autism rates among U.S. children. Despite being cast to the lunatic fringe by the mainstream media for his remarks, CDC scientist Dr. William Thompson has confirmed Trump's suspicions — namely, that autism is real .Congressman Bill Posey from Florida helped expose the corruption of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) . He recently read a statement on the House floor written by CDC scientist Dr. William Thompson.In the statement, Dr. Thompson admitted to omitting data from a study which showed that autism rates were higher among African American boys who received the MMR vaccination before the age of three.(1) "Regardless of the subject matter, parents making decisions about their children's health deserve to have the best information available to them. "They should be able to count on federal agencies to tell them the truth. For these reasons, I bring the following matter to the House floor," Posey stated.(2) He then proceeded to read the statement provided by Dr. Thompson. The statement pertained to a 2004 study published in the journal Pediatrics. The doctor revealed that he and his colleagues intentionally destroyed data in the study which showed that African American MMR-vaccinated boys under the age of three had for autism. According to the whistleblower, the CDC held a meeting of scientists to discuss whether they should destroy the evidence. The authors decided to scrap their findings. Fortunately, Dr. Thompson saved computer files and hard copies of the omitted data for legal reasons.(3) "Mr. Speaker, I believe it is our duty to insure that the documents that Dr. Thompson are not ignored. Therefore I will provide them to members of Congress and the House Committees upon request. "Considering the nature of the whistleblower's documents as well as the involvement of the CDC, a hearing and a thorough investigation is warranted," Posey concluded.(2) Because the report pertains to vaccines, the mainstream media continues to ignore these revelations. Meanwhile, they continue to parade Donald Trump as a kook for suggesting that there is a link The double standard boggles the mind and sickens the stomach.Trump hasn't backed down from the vaccine debate despite the mainstream media's backlash against his remarks. In 2015, he appeared on the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham's show stating: "I've known people that had totally magnificent children, functioning a hundred percent, everything beautiful, smart as a whip, and they go for this shot and get this shot of this massive dose, of everything at one time, and they end up with horrible autism."(4) In addition, Trump stated on a Fox News television program in 2012: "I've seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations and a month later the child is no longer healthy."(5) Trump made similar remarks in a series of tweets in 2014, after a CDC report revealed that autism rates in U.S. children had increased by 30 percent in the last two years.(6)The CDC report that coincided with Trump's tweets did not actually state what caused the spike in autism rates. Given Dr. Thompson's recent testimony, however, it's easy to think of at least one possibility. By S. Johnson | 0 |
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 Donald Trump’s policy agenda and the confirmation hearings for his nominees. [Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin will discuss Gen. James Mattis’ confirmation hearing and David Shulkin’s nomination for VA Secretary. Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots will discuss Speaker Paul Ryan’s CNN town hall. Former RNC Chair and Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele will discuss President Obama’s legacy. Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff will discuss Trump’s efforts to separate himself from his business interests and his promise to “drain the swamp” in D. C. Mercedes and Matt Schlapp, the Chairman of the American Conservative Union, will preview this year’s CPAC conference. 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 |
Thanks for everything cowboy nation. @candiceromo, A post shared by Tony Romo (@tony. romo) on Mar 9, 2017 at 12:56pm PST, With the Dallas Cowboys set to part ways with quarterback Tony Romo, either via trade or release, the posted a goodbye video on his Instagram page with Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are ” playing in the background. “I just wanted to come to tell you it’s been a crazy 48 hours here,” Romo says. “Me and my family felt the outpouring of support and love from all of you. It’s been overwhelming and it doesn’t go unnoticed. I wanted to say thank you and we have a lot to think about here going forward. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Donald J. Trump’s election victory was powered in part by forceful opposition to what he described as an economic and political system rigged against the American people for the benefit of shadowy forces in the news media, the banks and the government. Trump and his allies often describe that system with one word: globalism. It is a word that conjures many images, none of them good: shuttered factories, unchecked immigration and a distant cabal that, believers say, controls the economy and the media. Analysts who track extremist groups in the United States have expressed alarm at the use of the word by the . They say it carries multiple meanings — from benign to sinister — and often serves as a “dog whistle” for racist, and antigovernment conspiracy theorists. “Globalism is a principle driver for the fears that animate the radical right in the United States,” said Ryan Lenz, the editor of Hatewatch, a blog published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “It is the enemy, ultimately. ” Globalism is often used as a synonym for globalization, the system of global economic interconnection that has been critiqued for decades by liberal groups like labor unions, environmental organizations and opponents of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But for the far right, the term encapsulates a conspiratorial worldview based on racism, xenophobia and according to Mark Pitcavage, a researcher at the League. Lauren Southern, a host on the Canadian media site Rebel Media, explicitly rejected its use as a synonym for globalization in a video she posted online in September. She said the word meant rule by autocrats — such as President Obama, former President George W. Bush and the United Nations — who value “the false flag of diversity” and “unchecked immigration from the third world. ” “Globalists almost always sneer down their nose at tradition, disdain national culture, laugh at religion and generally despise the West while holding a creepy affection for the third world,” she added. “They want open borders, cheap labor and antinationalism to benefit their business and political visions, and are all too willing to shaft the little people to achieve it. ” Breitbart News, the website run by Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s newly appointed chief White House strategist, frequently attacked globalism and “globalist elites” during Mr. Bannon’s tenure there. But no one may have done more to popularize the idea of a globalist conspiracy than Alex Jones, a radio host who commands an online audience of millions through his Infowars media empire. He has been called “the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among his claims: the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn. was a hoax and the Sept. 11 terror attacks were an inside job. Mr. Jones posted his own definition of globalism to YouTube in 2014. In his trademark shout, he described it as a “global digital panopticon control system” engineered by shadowy corporate and political elites. He called it “the total form of slavery. ” The host, who has enthusiastically supported Mr. Trump, hailed the Republican as a “George ” historical figure. Mr. Trump, who appeared on his show last year, has in turn heaped praise upon Mr. Jones. “Your reputation is amazing,” Mr. Trump said. “I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed, I hope. And I think we’ll be speaking a lot. ” So what is Mr. Trump talking about when he talks about globalism? His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, provided a definition in an email before the election last week: groups in the United States began to refer to globalism at the end of the Cold War, when it replaced communism as an idea that was an danger to the nation, Mr. Pitcavage said. They have also referred to it as the New World Order, and soon they saw its tentacles everywhere. The shape of that conspiracy had distinctly overtones, in part because many of communism’s foes had historically seen communism as inextricably linked to Judaism, Mr. Pitcavage said. Members of the far right became fixated on prominent Jews like the businessman and philanthropist George Soros. Those conspiratorial beliefs were bolstered when former President George Bush celebrated the end of the Cold War in a 1991 speech by saying it was the dawn of a “new world order. ” His use of the phrase was taken as proof by many that a globalist conspiracy really was afoot. “It was very easy for them, especially because he was the one who said it, to take that ball and run with it,” Mr. Pitcavage said. “From that point on, the phrase became the short hand for that kind of globalism conspiracy theory. ” The term’s multiple meanings have made it a powerful political tool, and Mr. Trump’s and his allies’ frequent references to globalism have drawn in a wide and varied audience. “ is a very efficient net to unite disparate parts of the right” from the mainstream to the extreme, said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. Professor Levin called globalism “the defining folklore and narrative for the racist right” but said it had also “become a convenient boogeyman to explain the various declines that the United States is perceived to be in. ” Globalism was an important theme in the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s campaign, for example, when he told a rally in Florida in October that his opponent for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, had sat at the heart of a conspiracy with international bankers “to plot the destruction of U. S. sovereignty. ” The League criticized the speech for “evoking classic themes. ” Conspiratorial talk has continued after the election. Mr. Trump referred to a plot against him again last Thursday, when he complained on Twitter that protests were the work of the news media and paid protesters. Lou Dobbs, a Trump ally and host on Fox Business News, later accused Mr. Soros of “inciting riots. ” Many on the far right have celebrated Mr. Trump’s election victory as a momentous blow against the globalist conspiracy. Last Friday, Mr. Jones claimed on YouTube that Mr. Trump had called him personally to thank him and his audience for their support and to offer to appear on his show again soon. Ms. Hicks, the Trump campaign’s spokeswoman, did not reply to an email seeking comment late Sunday night. Mr. Jones then pivoted to what he thought was most important: the coming destruction of “the globalists that hijacked the country,” primarily the news media and international business people. Soon they would be destroyed once and for all, he suggested. “This is America battling back to restore humanity and to break the chains,” he said. “There’s not gonna be any détente. We know you’re scum, and we’re just here to let you know you’re scum. ” | 1 |
ATLANTA — With local television programming interrupted and a camera trained on the defendant’s emotionless face, an father was convicted of murder on Monday for causing the death of his young son by deliberately leaving him in a hot car more than two years ago. A jury in southeast Georgia, where the case was tried because of intense pretrial publicity here, returned guilty verdicts against the man, Justin Ross Harris, 35, on eight counts, including malice murder and cruelty to children. Mr. Harris, who sometimes glanced downward as the verdict was read in Brunswick, could be sentenced to life in prison for the death of his son, Cooper. The verdict, announced on the jury’s fourth day of deliberations, ended the suspense of a trial that began on Oct. 3, and it capped nearly 29 months of sordid allegations and scrambled loyalties. The cause of Cooper’s death was undisputed — Mr. Harris left him in a Hyundai Tucson while he worked as a software engineer at Home Depot on June 18, 2014 — but it fell to jurors to decide whether he had been malicious or merely . The manner of Cooper’s death is a heartbreakingly familiar one: At least 39 children in the United States have died of “vehicular heatstroke” this year, according to statistics compiled by a San Jose State University researcher. But the case against Mr. Harris was striking because of the severity of the charges and the state’s argument that he was eager to end his responsibilities to his family. “This killer’s heart abandoned this child long before he died,” Charles P. Boring, an assistant district attorney, said during his closing argument. “This defendant’s heart abandoned this child when he left him to die a terrible death in that car. ” In a statement after the verdict, the district attorney’s office noted a message that Mr. Harris sent minutes before he left his vehicle, Cooper still in his car seat: “I love my son and all, but we both need escapes. ” But near the end of a trial in which Mr. Harris was vilified as a man with a compromised marriage, one of his lawyers, H. Maddox Kilgore, argued that moral failings did not make a motive for murder. “There is no evidence of any kind of hatred or bad feelings or anger,” Mr. Kilgore said. “Whatever term you want to come up with, any term you come up with, there’s no evidence that Ross expressed that toward his son. ” In the end, Mr. Harris was convicted on all eight counts for which he was indicted. Three of the charges were not connected to Cooper’s death and instead focused on Mr. Harris’s electronic communications with at least one underage girl. He will be sentenced next month. Although Mr. Harris’s former wife, Leanna Taylor, filed for divorce after Cooper’s death, she testified in her husband’s defense. Ms. Taylor’s lawyer, Lawrence J. Zimmerman, said she was “deeply disappointed” by the verdict. | 1 |
Richard N. Bolles, a former Harvard physics major, Episcopal minister and career counselor whose own twisting vocational path led to his writing “What Color Is Your Parachute?” — the most popular ’s manual of the 1970s and beyond — died on Friday in San Ramon, Calif. He was 90. His son Gary said he died in San Ramon Regional Medical Center. Mr. Bolles lived nearby in Danville, Calif. Mr. Bolles (pronounced bowls) originally his manual in 1970 as a photocopied booklet for unemployed Protestant ministers. In 1972, he recast it to appeal to a wider audience and found an independent publisher in Berkeley, Calif. willing to print small batches so that it could be frequently updated. Since then, “Parachute” has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and has never been out of print. In 1995, the Library of Congress placed Mr. Bolles’s book squarely within the canon of classic American literature by including it, along with Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and the “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,” in “25 Books That Have Shaped Readers’ Lives,” a list compiled as part of a nationwide program. The book’s unconventional yet pragmatic advice, whimsical narrative style and vintage graphics — reminiscent of “The Whole Earth Catalog,” another survivors’ manual of the time — earned it respectful reviews for its reliable research and an early following among career counselors and personnel directors. It also found a fan base among attracted to Mr. Bolles’s homespun style — a fusion of boot camp rigor ( should spend at least 40 hours a week hunting) practical advice (“If you’re being interviewed over lunch, never — never — order a drink . .. Don’t . .. do . .. it! . .. Even if they do it”) and muted spirituality. was an art form, more like dating than like selling a used car, he told readers. “You may never understand why things sometimes work, and sometimes don’t,” he wrote. With that in mind, Mr. Bolles said, “What Color Is Your Parachute? ,” subtitled “A Practical Manual for and Career Changers,” was framed less as a guide to the job market than as a guide to help readers understand themselves — to help them figure out what they really liked doing so that they could find the job that would let them do it. “You need firm ground to stand on,” Mr. Bolles told an interviewer in 2000. “From there you can deal with the change. ” Mr. Bolles, an ordained Episcopal minister until 2004, when he left the ministry, said the title of his book came from an discussion he had in the 1960s with parishioners who were unhappy in their jobs. They would say they were thinking of bailing out. “And I always thought of an airplane when I heard that phrase,” he said. “So I would respond, ‘What color is your parachute?’ ” “Parachute” climbed rankings slowly but steadily throughout the decade. In 1979, it reached the New York Times list, where it remained for more than a decade, returning intermittently for years afterward. Mr. Bolles was well qualified to write a handbook on changing direction he had changed his own several times, from planning a career in the chemical industry to becoming a minister and then, at 41, experiencing being fired and enduring the anxiety of unemployment at a time when he and his wife then, the former Janet Price, had four small children. It had never entered his mind, though, that he would write a blockbuster. “I was just trying to help people be better prepared than I was when I was fired and started looking for a job,” he said in an interview for this obituary in 2014. Yet whether he knew it or not, Mr. Bolles had anticipated a sea change in the relationship between workers and employers in the United States, said Micki McGee, an associate professor of sociology at Fordham University and the author of “ Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life,” a 2005 examination of literature that includes an analysis of Mr. Bolles’s book. She said “Parachute” had come along at the beginning of a historic shift, when corporate strategies like outsourcing, subcontracting, downsizing and mergers were starting to erode traditional notions of job security. The idea that you could stay in one job for a lifetime began coming undone in the early 1970s, and “Parachute’s” perennial sales reflected, at least in part, this new reality. Mr. Bolles said he had come to acknowledge that connection over time, but, he added wryly, the success of “Parachute” had also reflected the fact that it was a pretty good book. Richard Nelson Bolles was born on March 19, 1927, in Milwaukee, the first of three children of Donald Clinton Bolles, an editor for The Associated Press, and the former Frances Fifield, a homemaker. His brother, Donald Jr. who followed his father into journalism, was killed in 1976 in Phoenix when a bomb detonated under his car. Don Bolles was then working as an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic, and the killing was widely believed to be linked to a series of exposés he had been writing about corporate and organized crime in the state. The assassination resulted in the prosecution of one person but remained largely unsolved. After serving in the Navy at the tail end of World War II, Richard Bolles studied chemical engineering for two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then transferred to Harvard, where he earned his bachelor’s degree cum laude with a major in physics. While still an undergraduate, he was moved by a sermon he heard one Sunday at church about a critical shortage of ministers. After graduation, instead of accepting a lucrative job offer in the chemical industry, he decided to become an Episcopal minister. He attended General Theological Seminary in New York, where he received a master’s degree in New Testament studies and was ordained in 1953. He served as a rector at several churches in northern New Jersey, including St. John’s in Passaic, where he often counseled teenagers on sex and drug use. After participating in the 1963 March on Washington led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. he reached out to an church in Passaic and, with its pastor, the Rev. Avery Johnson, led the integration of their churches, despite the opposition of some parishioners. Mr. Bolles had been a clergyman for 18 years when a combination of budget problems and philosophical differences with superiors led to the elimination of his job and his dismissal in 1968 as a pastor at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the flagship church of the Episcopal Diocese of California. After six months of anxious searching, he landed a job in 1969 with United Ministries in Higher Education, an interdenominational church organization that had long been involved in recruiting and supporting college chaplains across the country. But college chaplains were increasingly being laid off, leaving Mr. Bolles a new mission: to help chaplains at campuses in seven Western states find new careers. That effort led him into research that inspired him to write the manual that evolved into “What Color Is Your Parachute?” Among his other books was “The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them,” on balancing work and personal life. Besides his son Gary, he is survived by his wife, Marci Mendoza Bolles two other children from his first marriage, Stephen and Sharon Bolles and 10 grandchildren. A third son, Mark, died in 2012. In the 2014 interview, Mr. Bolles said he hoped his franchise would continue after he was gone. His son Gary, he said, had asked him about updating future editions of “Parachute” and finding other experts who might provide new advice. “I told him to make sure to find people who were funny, have a lightheartedness about them,” Mr. Bolles said. “When you are out of work and on the ropes, that is so important. ” | 1 |
Donald Trump’s chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon delivered a powerhouse presentation along with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus at CPAC on Thursday, in which one of Bannon’s main messages was that the media’s daily war against the Trump administration will continue unabated. [As Bannon explained to the CPAC audience: [President Trump] is going to continue to press his agenda as economic conditions get better, as jobs get better, [and] they are going to continue to fight. If you think they are going to give you your country back without a fight, you are mistaken. Every day, it is going to be a fight. Bannon also clearly and bluntly stated the reason that the media onslaught will continue, saying, “The corporatist, globalist media is adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has. ” Bannon’s message is solidly based in fact, and a deeper understanding of what he means by the “corporatist, globalist media” goes a long way toward explaining why the establishment media will be battling Trump tooth and nail. For one thing, the “corporatist, globalist media” is really a very small number of companies — something that Steve Bannon understands well given his background in both media and on Wall Street. As Business Insider reported five years ago, six corporations control 90% of the media in America, which puts a huge amount of power in the hands of a very few people. That number is down from 50 companies back in 1983. Who runs things? A ranking of the world’s largest media companies of 2015 says that Comcast Corporation is the largest media conglomerate in the U. S. with The Walt Disney Company, Century Fox, and Time Warner in the second, third, and fourth slots. The members of the media, the “opposition party at the back of the room,” are really just cogs in this machine — the foot soldiers who’ve been put through a rigorous program of indoctrination in journalism school. These members of the progressive left not only face corporate pressure to conform to certain narratives, but members of the modern American media have also been taught that they possess a moral superiority and are on a mission to help make the world a better place. This combination of corporate overlords and leftist propaganda is what allows the media to avoid the inherent contradictions in the system that they defend. It’s why the media can spread the message of “open societies” and a world based on “love, not hate” that is being directed by billionaire funders like George Soros and his multimillionaire allies like the Clintons. Now add in the internationalist factor at an ownership level, even with fundamentalist Muslim countries like the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As Forbes reported, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia and the company Kingdom Holding have stakes in media ventures like Twitter and even the parent of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The Saudi Prince owns about 1% of the company, plus 6. 6% shareholding in 21st Century Fox Inc. worth about $1. 7 billion. Kingdom Holdings also has substantial shareholding in Time Warner, the parent of CNN. This is just one small example of the complex world of globalist media that the Trump administration is facing and part of the reason that more and more people are turning to new media upstarts like Breitbart News to get real information. As former executive chairman of Breitbart, it’s a world that Steve Bannon sees clearly. | 1 |
I recently interviewed Ken Clark, a Texas elector for the Republican Party in the Electoral College. Ken detailed the intense pressure he received from the Gore people to change his vote to Gore in the Gore v. Bush election.
Mr. Clark expects the Democrats to pull out all the stops in the upcoming election and he expects to see corruption on a massive scale.
Here is the interview.
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“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government .” —John Lennon
How do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels , sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs?
Politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.
No matter who sits in the White House, the shadow government will continue to call the shots behind the scenes.
Relying on the courts to restore justice seems futile.
Indeed, with every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts, largely lacking in vision and scope, rendering narrow rulings focused on the letter of the law. This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Even so, justice matters.
It matters whether you’re a rancher protesting a federal land-grab by the Bureau of Land Management, a Native American protesting an oil pipeline that will endanger sacred sites and pollute water supplies, or an African-American taking to the streets to protest yet another police shooting of an unarmed citizen.
Unfortunately, protests and populist movements haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.
It doesn’t matter who the activists are (environmentalists, peaceniks, Native Americans, Black Lives Matter, Occupy, or the Bundys and their followers) or what the source of the discontent is (endless wars abroad, police shootings, contaminated drinking water, government land-grabs), the government’s modus operandi has remained the same: shut down the protests using all means available, prosecute First Amendment activities to the fullest extent of the law, and discourage any future civil uprisings by criminalizing expressive activities, labeling dissidents as extremists or terrorists, and conducting widespread surveillance on the general populace in order to put down any whispers of resistance before it can take root.
Thus, if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
Just recently, in fact, an Oregon jury rejected the government’s attempts to prosecute seven activists who staged a six-week, armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
In finding the defendants not guilty—of conspiracy to impede federal officers, of possession of firearms in a federal facility, and of stealing a government-owned truck—the jury sent its own message to the government and those following the case: justice matters.
The Malheur occupiers were found not guilty despite the fact that they had guns in a federal facility (their lawyers argued the guns were “as much a statement of their rural culture as a cowboy hat or a pair of jeans”). They were found not guilty despite the fact that they used government vehicles (although they would argue that government property is public property available to all taxpayers). They were found not guilty despite the fact that they succeeded in occupying a government facility for six weeks, thereby preventing workers from performing their duties (as the Washington Post points out, this charge has also been used to prosecute extremist left-wingers and Earth First protesters ).
Many other equally sincere activists with eloquent lawyers and ardent supporters have gone to jail for lesser offenses than those committed at the Malheur Refuge, so what made the difference here?
The jury made all the difference.
These seven Oregon protesters were found not guilty because a jury of their peers recognized the sincerity of their convictions, sympathized with the complaints against an overreaching government, and balanced the scales of justice using the only tools available to them: common sense, compassion and the power of the jury box.
Jury nullification works.
As law professor Ilya Somin explains, jury nullification is the practice by which a jury refuses to convict someone accused of a crime if they believe the “law in question is unjust or the punishment is excessive .” According to former federal prosecutor Paul Butler, the doctrine of jury nullification is “premised on the idea that ordinary citizens, not government officials, should have the final say as to whether a person should be punished.”
Imagine that: a world where the citizenry—not the government or its corporate controllers—actually calls the shots and determines what is just.
In a world of “ rampant overcriminalization ,” where the average citizen unknowingly breaks three laws a day, jury nullification acts as “ a check on runaway authoritarian criminalization and the increasing network of confusing laws that are passed with neither the approval nor oftentimes even the knowledge of the citizenry.”
Indeed, Butler believes so strongly in the power of nullification to balance the scales between the power of the prosecutor and the power of the people that he advises :
If you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote “not guilty” — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights ; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
In other words, it’s “we the people” who can and should be determining what laws are just, what activities are criminal and who can be jailed for what crimes.
Not only should the punishment fit the crime, but the laws of the land should also reflect the concerns of the citizenry as opposed to the profit-driven priorities of Corporate America.
This is where the power of jury nullification is so critical: to reject inane laws and extreme sentences and counteract the edicts of a profit-driven governmental elite that sees nothing wrong with jailing someone for a lifetime for a relatively insignificant crime.
Of course, the powers-that-be don’t want the citizenry to know that it has any power at all.
They would prefer that we remain clueless about the government’s many illicit activities, ignorant about our constitutional rights, and powerless to bring about any real change.
In an age in which government officials accused of wrongdoing—police officers, elected officials, etc.—are treated with general leniency, while the average citizen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, jury nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.
For too long we’ve allowed our so-called “representatives” to call the shots. Now it’s time to restore the citizenry to their rightful place in the republic: as the masters, not the servants.
Nullification is one way of doing so.
Various cities and states have been using this historic doctrine with mixed results on issues as wide ranging as gun control and healthcare to “ claim freedom from federal laws they find onerous or wrongheaded .”
Where nullification can be particularly powerful, however, is in the hands of the juror.
The reality with which we must contend is that justice in America is reserved for those who can afford to buy their way out of jail.
For the rest of us who are dependent on the “fairness” of the system, there exists a multitude of ways in which justice can and does go wrong every day. Police misconduct. Prosecutorial misconduct. Judicial bias. Inadequate defense. Prosecutors who care more about winning a case than seeking justice. Judges who care more about what is legal than what is just. Jurors who know nothing of the law and are left to deliberate in the dark about life-and-death decisions. And an overwhelming body of laws, statutes and ordinances that render the average American a criminal, no matter how law-abiding they might think themselves.
If you’re to have any hope of remaining free—and I use that word loosely—your best bet remains in your fellow citizens.
Your fellow citizens may not know what the Constitution says (studies have shown Americans to be abysmally ignorant about their rights), they may not know what the laws are (there are so many on the books that the average American breaks three laws a day without knowing it), and they may not even believe in your innocence, but if you’re lucky, those who serve on a jury will have a conscience that speaks louder than the legalistic tones of the prosecutors and the judges and reminds them that justice and fairness go hand in hand.
That’s ultimately what jury nullification is all about: restoring a sense of fairness to our system of justice. It’s the best protection for “we the people” against the oppression and tyranny of the government, and God knows, we can use all the protection we can get. It’s a powerful way to remind the government—all of those bureaucrats who have appointed themselves judge, jury and jailer over all that we are, have and do—that we’re the ones who set the rules.
We could transform this nation if only Americans would work together to harness the power of their discontent.
Unfortunately, the government’s divide and conquer tactics are working like a charm.
Despite the laundry list of grievances that should unite “we the people” in common cause against the government, the nation is more divided than ever by politics, by socio-economics, by race, by religion, and by every other distinction that serves to highlight our differences.
The real and manufactured events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have all conjoined to create an environment in which “we the people” are more divided, more distrustful, and fearful of each other.
What we have failed to realize is that in the eyes of the government, we’re all the same.
In other words, when it’s time for the government to crack down—and that time is coming—it won’t matter whether we supported Hillary or Trump, whether we stood with the pipeline protesters or opposed BLM, or whether we spoke out against government misconduct and injustice or remained silent.
When the government cracks down, we’ll all suffer.
Here’s the thing: the government wants a civil war.
The objective: compliance and control.
Its strategy: destabilize the economy through endless wars, escalate racial tensions, polarize the populace, heighten tensions through a show of force, intensify the use of violence, and then, when all hell breaks loose, clamp down on the nation for the good of the people and the security of the nation.
The government has been anticipating and preparing for such a civil uprising for some time now.
Those protests in Ferguson , Baltimore and Baton Rouge to protest police brutality? The militarized police “ clad in Kevlar vests, helmets, and camouflage, armed with pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, and tear gas ” turning towns into war zones? The kenneling of pipeline protesters in North Dakota?
Those were just dress rehearsals for the government to work out the kinks in its operating manual on how to deal with civil unrest.
They were also previews of what’s in store if we continue to challenge the powers-that-be.
After all, it’s hard to persuade anyone to stand against tyranny when all you can promise them as a reward is persecution, prosecution and a one-way trip to the morgue. And when the outcome seems to be a foregone conclusion—the government always wins—it can seem pointless, even foolhardy, to dare to challenge the system.
So how do you not only push back against the police state’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?
You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.
Employ militant nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience , which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts and marches.
Take part in grassroots activism, which takes a trickle-up approach to governmental reform by implementing change at the local level (in other words, think nationally, but act locally).
And then, as I explain in more detail in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , nullify everything. Nullify the court cases. Nullify the laws. Nullify everything the government does that is illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
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Contributed by John W. Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute .
Since 1996, John W. Whitehead has taken on everything from human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, protection of religious freedom, and child pornography, to family autonomy issues, cross burning, the sanctity of human life, and the war on terrorism in his weekly opinion column. A self-proclaimed civil libertarian, Whitehead is considered by many to be a legal, political and cultural watchdog—sounding the call for integrity, accountability and an adherence to the democratic principles on which this country was founded.
Time and again, Whitehead hits the bull’s eye with commentaries that are insightful, relevant and provocative. And all too often, he finds himself under fire for his frank and unadulterated viewpoint. But as he frequently remarks, “Anytime people find themselves under fire from both the liberal left and the conservative right, it means that that person is probably right on target.”
Mr. Whitehead’s commentaries have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times and USA Today. | 0 |
More Than 1/4 Trillion In New Debt In 30 Days The Daily History of the Debt Results
Historical returns from 09/25/2016 through 10/25/2016
The data for the total public debt outstanding is published each business day. If there is no debt value for the date(s) you requested, the value for the preceding business day will be displayed. | 0 |
Carol Adl in News , UK // 0 Comments
A Tory councillor believes that homeless people in Bradford city centre should be ‘grabbed by scruff of the neck’ and ‘dealt with’.
The comments by David Heseltine, a Conservative Party Councillor in Bradford caused outrage during a meeting of the Council’s regeneration overview and scrutiny committee. He said :
“The tramps and drunks sleeping in doorways. What we need to do is get them by the scruff of the neck and deal with them. People have said they’d go into Bradford if they were eliminated.”
He claimed that while plans to redevelop the city centre were all well and good, the investment had been ruined by the homeless.
So what exactly does Mr Heseltine envisage when he suggests grabbing the homeless “by the scruff of the neck” and eliminating them?
EvolvePolitics reports:
Why Councillor Heseltine believes that perpetrating an assault on the homeless would rectify the problem is a mystery. He would be better advised to encourage his colleagues to work towards providing people with homes, opportunities for employment, improving mental health services and providing interventions for alcohol and drug addiction.
The ‘Nasty Party’ Councillor said that he had spoken to people who claimed that they would not visit Bradford city centre due to the number of drinkers and beggars.
Heseltine is correct in his assertion that Bradford council – like many other councils – places the town centre aesthetic above the needs of those that live in and around them. However, his suggestions for dealing with the problem of homelessness are utterly reprehensible. These are people, not dogs or vermin to be disposed of to make your town look just a little better.
Most people are never more than three paychecks away from being homeless. Our elected representatives would be well advised to remember that. | 0 |
October Boomerang ‹ › David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.com and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio . Talk Nation Radio is on VT Radio and is syndicated by Pacifica Network. The show also airs on WTJU, Charlottesville, VA; WCSX-Detroit, MI; KGHI, Westport, WA; WHUS, Storrs, CT; WPRR, Grand Rapids, MI; KRFP-LP, Moscow, ID; KZGM, Cabool, MO; KMUD, Garberville, CA; WAZU, Peoria, IL; WXRD, Crown Point, IN; Geneva Radio, Geneva, NY; KKRN, Round Mountain, CA; KSKQ-LP, Ashland, OR; WUOW-LP, Oneonta, NY; No Lies Radio, Pinole, CA; WYAP-LP, Clay, WV; The Detour, Johnson City, TN; WZRD, Chicago, IL; WEFT, Champaign, IL; WXPI, Pittsburgh, PA; WDRT, Viroqua, WI; Veracity Now, online; Liberty and Justice Radio, Shirley, MA; Ithaca Community Radio, Ithaca, NY; WMCB, Greenfield, MA; PRX.org; KAOS 89.3fm, Olympia, WA; WUSB 90.1 FM, Stony Brook, NY; WOOL-FM, Bellow Falls, Vermont; WSLR-LP 96.5 in Sarasota, Florida. He also blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org And is a prolific author. His latest books are; War Is A Lie , Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union , and When the World Outlawed War Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Read his full and complete biography at DavidSwanson.org and also visit book site at War Is Crime . All Governments Lie, The Movie By David Swanson on October 31, 2016 A Film About Liars and the Journalists That Expose Them
By David Swanson
Picture, if you will, video footage of vintage (early 2016) Donald Trump buffoonery with the CEO of CBS Leslie Moonves commenting on major media’s choice to give Trump vastly more air time than other candidates: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
That’s the introduction to a powerful critique of the U.S. media. A new film screens in New York and Los Angeles this week called All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone .
The website AllGovernmentsLie.com has screening dates , a list of lies , and a list of good journalists who expose lies . The lists on the website are not identical to the content of the film, but there’s a good deal of overlap — enough to give you a sense of what this project is about.
I’d have made various changes and additions to the film. In particular, I’m tired of all the focus on Iraq 2003. This film touches on war lies since then, but still gives that one particular set of war lies prominence.
Still, this is a film that should be shown in cities, homes, and classrooms across the United States. It includes and is driven by Noam Chomsky’s analysis of how the media system is “rigged” without those doing the rigging believing they’ve done anything at all. It’s a survey of skullduggery by corporate media. It’s an introduction to numerous journalists far superior to the norm. And it’s an introduction to I.F. Stone. It includes footage of a presentation of the annual Izzy Award which goes to journalists acting in Stone’s tradition.
One of the lies listed in the film and on the website is that of the Gulf of Tonkin (non-)Incident. Anyone paying attention knows of it now as a war lie. And it was a transparent war lie at the time in a particular sense. That is: had the North Vietnamese really shot back at a U.S. ship off their coast, that would not have been any sort of legal, much less moral, justification for escalating a war. I’d love it if people could grasp that logic and apply it to the Black Sea, the Red Sea, and every other part of the earth today.
But the Gulf of Tonkin lies about Vietnamese aggression against the U.S. ships innocently patrolling and firing off the coast of Vietnam were not transparent to people with faith in the U.S. role of Global Policeman. Someone had to make the lies transparent. Someone had to document that in fact the Secretary of So-Called Defense and the President were lying. Sadly, nobody did that in the first 24 hours after the Congressional committee hearings, and that was all it took for Congress to hand the president a war.
And it was decades before White House transcripts came out and before the National Security Agency confessed, and additional years before former Secretary Robert McNamara did. Yet, those revelations simply confirmed what people paying attention knew. And they knew it because of I.F. Stone who just weeks after the (non-)incident published a four-page edition of his weekly newsletter exclusively about Tonkin.
Stone’s analysis is useful in looking at the incident or lack thereof this past month in the Red Sea off Yemen. And in fact it is to Yemen that Stone immediately turned on page 1 in 1964. The United Nations, including its U.S. ambassador, had recently condemned British attacks on Yemen that Britain defended as retaliatory. President Dwight Eisenhower had also warned the French against retaliatory attacks on Tunisia. And President Lyndon Johnson, even at the time of Tonkin, Stone notes, was warning Greece and Turkey not to engage in retaliatory attacks on each other.
Stone, who tended to look even at written laws that nobody else paid any heed to, pointed out that three of them banned these sorts of attacks: the League of Nations Covenant, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the U.N. Charter. The latter two are still theoretically in place for the U.S. government.
The United States in Vietnam, Stone goes on to show, could not have been innocently attacked but itself admitted to having already sunk a number of Vietnamese boats. And indeed the U.S. ships, Stone reports, were in North Vietnamese waters and were there to assist South Vietnamese ships that were shelling two North Vietnamese islands. And in fact those ships had been supplied to South Vietnam by the U.S. military and the good old American tax payers.
Stone did not have access to closed committee hearings, but he hardly needed it. He considered the assertions made in speeches by the only two senators who voted against the war. And then he looked for any rejoinders by the chairmen of the committees. He found their denials to be non-denials and nonsensical. It made no sense that the U.S. ships simply happened to be randomly hanging around in the vicinity of the South Vietnamese ships. Stone didn’t believe it.
Stone also filled in the background information. The United States had been supporting guerrilla attacks on North Vietnam for years prior to the non-incident. And Stone raised numerous suspicions, including the question of why the U.S. ships had supposedly made sure they were out in international waters for the (non-)incident to (not) occur, and the question of why in the world Vietnam would take on the United States military (something nobody could explain, though Eugene McCarthy proposed that perhaps they had been bored).
Missing from the film and website of All Governments Lie is I.F. Stone’s work on lies about the outbreak of the Korean War. We’ve learned more since he wrote it, but seen little more insightful, relevant, or timely for our understanding of Korea and the world today.
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org . Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie . He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio .He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook .
Help support DavidSwanson.org, WarIsACrime.org, and TalkNationRadio.org by clicking here: http://davidswanson.org/donate . | 0 |
Trump and Brexit Defeat Globalism, for Now Anyway 14, 2016
Trumpism as a stress test for democracy …. A series of populist anti-globalism shocks is a test for Western democracies. Trump’s stunning ascent to the White House is the clearest signal yet of an anti-establishment revolt unfolding in major democracies, stretching across the Atlantic. – Swiss Info Tech
Was Trump’s victory actually created by the very globalist elites that Trump is supposed to have overcome?
There are some who believe the elites are actually splintered into numerous groups and that domestic US elites have positioned themselves against the banking elites in London’s City. We see no fundamental evidence of this.
The world’s real elites in our view may have substantive histories in the hundreds and thousands of years. US elites are basically in the employ of a handful of families, individuals and institutions in our view.
It is confusing because it is hard to tell if Hillary, for instance, is operating on her own accord or at the behest of higher and more powerful authorities.
It is probably a combination of both but at root those who control central banks are managing the world’s move towards globalism. History easily shows us who these groups are – and they are not located in America.
This is a cynical perspective to be sure, and certainly doesn’t remove the impact of Trump’s victory or his courage in waging his election campaign despite what must surely be death threats to himself and his family..
But if true, this perspective corresponds to predictions that we’ve been making for nearly a decade now, suggesting that sooner or later elites – especially those in London’s City – would have to “take a step back.”
More:
The vote to propel Trump to the US presidency reflects a profound backlash against open markets and borders, and the simmering anger of millions of blue-collar white and working-class people who blame their economic woes on globalisation and multiculturalism.
“There are a few parallels to Switzerland – that the losers of globalisation find somebody who is listening to them,” said Swiss professor and lawyer Wolf Linder, a former director of the University of Bern’s political science institute.
“Trump is doing his business with the losers of globalisation in the US, like the Swiss People’s Party is doing in Switzerland,” he said. “It is a phenomenon which touches all European nations.”
Again, this article presumes that Trump has “won” and that he intends to attack the larger globalist enterprise and the bankers funding it. On the other hand, it could be that both Trump and Brexit have been engineered to look as if the tide is turning against globalism when it is not.
Why would those in charge want to portray this point of view when it may not be so? Because of what we call the “Internet Reformation” that has blasted open the secretive manipulations of the globalist elite in the past decade or so.
It is almost impossible for globalists to promote internationalist memes in this environment. Yet it is the secretive injection of internationalist memes into the body politic that moves society toward the globalist enterprise.
As we have suggested before, it is perfectly possible that a decision has been made to pretend to grant the larger society a “victory” over internationalism.
Following this analysis, certain trends would be identified and encouraged that would seem to portray globalism as falling back on its metaphorical heels.
In truth, if this analysis is correct, globalism’s retreat is a kind of pretense that will steer society less obviously in a globalist direction.
One way this could happen is by ensuring the splintering of Europe – but not in a way that actually reduces control from Brussels. It will APPEAR to be so but won’t actually happen. The same thing could take place in the USA under Trump.
Again, this is not to say that Trump is party to this plot or even approves of it. But the idea that Trump is part of a co-option is certainly a feasible alternative to an alternative analysis that takes what is happening at face value.
Nonetheless, even if an alternative elite strategy has been decided on to realize globalism in another fashion, it ought to be pointed out that things have changed. And the Internet and its revelations are surely responsible.
This is a very big deal and it is one that ought to be emphasized repeatedly. Brexit and Trump could be, somehow, the result of a different elite approach – but the approach HAS changed nonetheless.
Think of it this way: Hillary represented the blunt approach toward the realization of further globalism. Her way included an aggressively expanded war and the pursuit of other globalist trends.
Trump, rhetorically anyway, has a different approach in mind that would gut many internationalist trends.
If Trump follows through on his rhetoric, the trend toward an internationalist world will be reduced. And while there is controversy over Trump’s recent staff appointments we should also bear in mind that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) both seem to be failing now.
If indeed Trump’s election has damped the progress of TPP, and TTIP, this is a huge event. As we’ve pointed out, both agreements effectively substituted technocratic corporatism for the current sociopolitical model of “democracy.”
The elites were trying to move toward a new model of world control with these two agreements. This is similar to what happened after the advent of the Gutenberg Press when the elites of the day moved away from royal control and apparently swapped in democracy.
It seems evident that internationalism is now going to take a longer time to realize than we thought. However, this observation may not be entirely accurate if Trump turns out to be something other than his rhetoric suggests – or if Brexit is denied in Europe.
Additionally, one of the elite’s most powerful, operative memes today is “populism vs. globalism” that seeks to contrast the potentially freedom-oriented events of Trump and Brexit to the discarded wisdom of globalism. See here and here.
The reality of these two events, the victories of both Trump and Brexit, stand as signal proof that elite stratagems have been defeated, at least temporarily. Though whether these defeats have been self-inflicted as part of a change in tactics remains to be seen.
Conclusion: But the change has come. One way or another the Internet and tens of millions or people talking, writing and acting has forced new trends. This can be hardly be emphasized enough. Globalism has been at least temporarily redirected | 0 |
WASHINGTON — It must have been uncomfortable for Rick Adams, chief of Paralympic sports for the United States Olympic Committee, to sit between two gymnasts during the congressional hearing about sexual abuse on Tuesday. To his right, Jamie Dantzscher started crying during her testimony. She described how she was molested by the former U. S. A. Gymnastics national team doctor Larry Nassar when she was a teenager. Dantzscher, 34 and a former Olympian, said Nassar abused her “all over the world. ” “In my own room, in my own bed, in my hotel room in Sydney at the Olympic Games,” she said, through tears. “I thought I was the only one. ” To Adams’s left, Jessica Howard, a former national champion in rhythmic gymnastics, testified that Nassar began assaulting her when she was 15, during what he called therapy for a hip injury. “He began to massage my legs, and then quickly moved inwards on my thighs,” she said. “He then massaged his way into me. ” Give these women credit for telling their stories. They’re a main reason Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, decided to introduce a bill that would make it mandatory for national governing bodies of Olympic sports to report sexual assault to the police. It would be a federal crime not to report abuse. Give Adams credit, too. In the past, the Olympic committee had failed to prioritize the issue of sexual assault and appeared to turn a blind eye to the issue by handing it off to the governing bodies of each Olympic sport. But on Tuesday, finally, Adams said something that was a long time coming. He said sorry. “The Olympic community failed the people it was supposed to protect,” said Adams, the head of organizational development for the national governing sports bodies, which exist under the umbrella of the United States Olympic Committee. “We do take responsibility, and we apologize to any young athlete who has ever faced abuse. ” Nassar was fired by U. S. A. Gymnastics in 2015 and is currently in jail in Michigan, where he is facing multiple sexual assault charges and federal child pornography charges. He has denied any wrongdoing. You would think U. S. A. Gymnastics would also go out of its way to apologize for its role in a scandal that has shaken Olympic sports and caused the ouster of its president, Steve Penny. More than 80 athletes have accused Nassar of abusing them. But the gymnastics organization did not even have a representative in that Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room. Feinstein had asked U. S. A. Gymnastics to testify, and said its board chairman, Paul Parilla, was thinking about it but backed out. Instead, Parilla provided a statement. It said that the board of directors offered “our sincere and heartfelt regrets and sympathies” to any athlete harmed and that U. S. A. Gymnastics was “appalled that anyone would exploit a young athlete or child in the manner alleged. ” No apologies. Court documents released this month showed U. S. A. Gymnastics had complaint files on 54 coaches regarding sex abuse claims from 1996 to 2006. No apologies, even for its lack of a backbone and for sending only a lobbyist to the hearing. That lobbyist first identified himself as working for U. S. A. Gymnastics — which I figured, considering he was holding a file folder that said, “USAG 50 copies” on it. A few minutes later, he said, no, he was actually there for U. S. A. Hockey. The federation has had no shame, either. When the sex abuse bill was introduced, Penny and others from U. S. A. Gymnastics met with Feinstein about the federation’s sexual assault policies. How about this for a stunt: Tagging along was Mary Lou Retton, the smiling, bubbly sweetheart from the 1984 Games, as they said that the federation’s policies were solid and that gymnastics was a happy, safe place. On Tuesday, Feinstein and her fellow senators weren’t thrilled that the gymnastics federation had ditched them this time. “If they really cared, they would be here,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said as he looked at Dantzscher and Howard, the abused gymnasts who testified. “They have to answer for what happened to you. ” At a news conference later, Blumenthal called for an investigation into “who knew what and when. ” Feinstein said she would like to see the gymnastics board of directors change and for its replacement to be people who make the sexual assault issue a priority. The U. S. O. C. should hasten that change. It can do so by decertifying U. S. A. Gymnastics, which would basically kick the federation out as the national governing body for the sport of gymnastics in the United States. To let U. S. A. Gymnastics back into the family, the Olympic committee could demand that the federation clean house and start new with fresh faces. The committee has used this power with other federations, and it used its influence to push out Penny when the Nassar case exploded into one of the biggest abuse scandals in sports history. It might as well go a step further, if only to show athletes and other federations that it won’t tolerate sexual abuse on its watch. When asked if U. S. A. Gymnastics knew about the abuse of gymnasts at the hands of Nassar, Feinstein said: “Do I believe they knew about it? Absolutely, yes, I do. ” But they didn’t report it, she said, and that’s the culture of the sport. If Feinstein’s bill passes, it would help change that culture. The new U. S. Center for SafeSport — a nonprofit formed to prevent and handle abuse in Olympic sports — should help, too, if it ever gets going the way it should. Last week, after many delays, including a struggle by the Olympic committee to find funding, the center finally opened for business. There should be a hotline for athletes and others to anonymously report abuse in Olympic sports. Good luck finding it on the center’s website. Feinstein said the Olympic committee should easily find money to fund the site and keep it running, whether it’s through raising money from the private sector or using its own cash. “The Olympic committee has money, so they can use it the way they want to use it,” she said. Mattie Larson was sitting in the public seats at the hearing on Tuesday. She is 24 now, but I first met Larson, a senior at U. C. L. A. when she was 15, sometime before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She was quiet, and a rising star. She said she was being molested by Nassar around that time. So many years later, in 2016, when The Indianapolis Star published an article about a gymnast who accused Nassar of abusing her, Larson’s former teammate on the national team called her and said, “Read the story and tell me what you think. ” The two said they realized that Nassar had abused them. It had never occurred to them that his “intravaginal treatment” was sexual assault. After all, he was the head doctor for U. S. A. Gymnastics. If the federation trusted him, they should, too. Now Larson replays the abuse in her head, again and again. What could she have done to stop it? What should U. S. A. Gymnastics have done to stop it? “I’m mad at myself for not knowing,” she said of the abuse. “On so many levels, it was complete betrayal. “You’d think in a sport with young girls, with young girls wearing leotards, prancing around with their legs flying all over the place, that U. S. A. Gymnastics would educate gymnasts and coaches and parents about sexual abuse. But they didn’t. And they knew they should have. ” Larson said it could have saved her and others, countless others, if the U. S. Center for SafeSport had existed when she was competing. “There are so many more victims who haven’t come forward yet,” she said. “I know them. They’re national team members, Olympians. ” At the very least, U. S. A. Gymnastics or the United States Olympic Committee could have mandated sexual abuse awareness training for athletes and their parents. The committee didn’t require its national governing bodies to run abuse education programs, or even conduct criminal background checks, until 2014. When Adams was asked why so many years had passed with no independent entity like the SafeSport center, his answer was vague. “It took too long to happen,” he said. | 1 |
Airbnb has capitulated to the demands of lawmakers over its operations in New York City, the company’s largest market in the United States, agreeing to drop a lawsuit in which it was pushing back against a newly passed state law that it said could have hurt its business. The home rental service on Friday settled the lawsuit that it filed against New York City two months ago. The suit challenged a New York law that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed in October. That law called for fines of as much as $7, 500 for illegally listing a property on a rental platform such as Airbnb. The company had said the large fines could have deterred hosts and impaired its revenue in New York City. Hosts in the city generated about $1 billion in revenue last year, and the company took a cut of that in fees. But Airbnb on Friday agreed that it would drop the suit as long as New York City enforces the new law only against hosts and does not fine Airbnb. The settlement takes effect on Monday. The agreement is a victory for opponents of Airbnb. The company and New York authorities have battled for years over the legality of offering lodging through the service, and the relationship has long been inconsistent. Since 2010, it has been illegal in New York to rent out a whole apartment on Airbnb for fewer than 30 days. In October, Airbnb said it was willing to crack down on people in New York City who rent out multiple homes, bowing to pressure from politicians and tenants’ rights groups who said the company had made it harder to find affordable housing in the city. “This is an astounding on the part of Airbnb, which clearly recognized that this was a foolhardy and frivolous lawsuit,” Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, who wrote the law that Airbnb opposed, said of the settlement on Friday. In a statement, Airbnb said the settlement was “a material step forward for our hosts. ” Airbnb has been fighting with local governments around the globe that are displeased with the effects of the online rental service. Cities such as Amsterdam, Miami Beach and New Orleans have been closely watching the New York case. “I expect the city will now get down to the important business of enforcing the law against the serial lawbreakers on the site” who turn affordable housing into illegal hotels, Ms. Rosenthal said in her statement. “This is a win for everyone. ” | 1 |
The man behind last year’s Daraprim controversy and numerous others, Martin Shkreli, has been suspended by Twitter. [The latest report about his Twitter activity comes from New York Mag, when they accuse Shkreli of harassing a female writer. The female writer in question is Lauren Duca, who recently appeared on Tucker Carlson’s FOX News segment to debate whether or not Ivanka Trump being verbally attacked on a plane was justified. This piece apparently caught Martin’s eye, and so follows their exchange. I would rather eat my own organs pic. twitter. — Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) January 5, 2017, NYMag has this to say: “He apparently direct messaged her a few days ago to ask her to be his plus one to the inauguration, despite the fact that she’s married and he’s, well, Martin Shkreli. “I would rather eat my own organs,” she replied publicly. “I will miss Twitter but my love for Lauren will never die. ” This story will be updated as more reports on the matter come in. | 1 |
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Seattle and Vancouver are like fraternal twins separated at birth. Both are bustling Pacific Northwest coastal cities with populations that have accepted the bargain of dispiriting weather for much of the year in exchange for nearby ski slopes and kayaking and glorious summers. Yet 140 miles of roads and an international border divide the two cities, keeping them farther apart than their geographic and cultural identities would suggest. Now the political, academic and tech elite of both cities are looking for ways to bring them closer together, with the aim of continuing the growth of two of the most vibrant economies in North America. “Vancouver has a lot more in common with Seattle than we do with Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, anywhere else in our country,” Christy Clark, the premier of British Columbia, said in an interview. “We should make the most of those cultural commonalities. ” Whether their grand vision of a “Cascadia innovation corridor” — which borrows its name from the region’s Cascade mountain range — ever materializes, leaders on both sides of the border have motives for getting cozier immediately. American tech icons like Microsoft, with voracious needs for global engineering talent, are expanding their Vancouver offices, partly because of Canada’s smoother immigration process. For its part, Vancouver wants to bring more American technology companies to the city in hopes of spinning out future entrepreneurs who will expand its comparatively small base of technology companies. One serious obstacle to Vancouver’s tech ambitions is its housing costs. The median price for a detached home in the metropolitan area in August was 1. 4 million Canadian dollars (about $1. 06 million) a 27. 8 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. In the San Francisco metropolitan area, the median single family home price was about $848, 000, according to Zillow. But while median pay for jobs is $112, 000 a year in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is just under $49, 000 in Vancouver, according to an analysis by PayScale, a compensation data firm. (Some of that discrepancy is due to a drop in the value of Canada’s currency relative to the United States dollar.) “We have San Francisco real estate prices with the incomes of somewhere between Reno and Nashville,” said Andy Yan, acting director of the city program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. On the thrumming streets of downtown Vancouver, signs of the Seattle region’s growing economic ties to the city are hard to miss. A rectangular glass and steel office building with a large Microsoft sign occupies nearly an entire city block, sitting atop a large Nordstrom store (another Seattle brand). Microsoft says it invested $120 million in its new offices in Vancouver, which opened in June, and expects to spend $90 million more annually on wages and other operating costs. It plans to employ nearly 750 people in the city. Microsoft is hiring Canadians for the facility, but the country’s more open immigration policies were an important factor in its investment, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said in an interview. Microsoft and other tech companies have long complained that the United States education system does not produce enough computer science graduates, forcing them to rely on immigrants from India, China and elsewhere. Foreign workers in the United States can wait about three times as long for a work visa as those in Canada do, the Boston Consulting Group estimates. And the prospect of Donald J. Trump winning the presidency has raised concerns among tech companies, because of the Republican candidate’s comments about further restricting immigration to the United States. “Right now, there’s just a lot of uncertainty about open immigration,” Mr. Smith said. Last month, officials and executives from both cities huddled in a Vancouver hotel to discuss how to enable people, ideas and capital to flow more freely between them, as heedless of the international border separating the cities as a pod of orcas swimming in the sea. At the Cascadia conference, Ms. Clark and Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, signed an agreement to deepen the ties between Vancouver and Seattle, including more research collaboration between the University of British Columbia and the University of Washington. Bill Gates, of Microsoft, and Satya Nadella, its current chief executive, talked about globalization and education. One proposal to deal with traffic between Vancouver and Seattle was for a rail line that would whisk travelers at more than 200 miles an hour between the cities in 57 minutes (it can take four hours or more by car). The details on financing the project — which could cost an estimated $30 billion or more — have not been worked out. A group of Seattle techies proposed a cheaper alternative: a dedicated lane for autonomous vehicles on Interstate 5, the highway connecting Seattle to the Canadian border. The plan — which relies on autonomous vehicles that still need a lot of work — would not shave much time off the commute between the cities, but could make the ride less tedious by letting travelers work or watch a movie, said Tom Alberg, a managing director at Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle venture capital firm, and an author of the proposal. With roots in timber and shipping, Vancouver’s economy has diversified in recent decades with the growth of film and video game production. The city claims a tech “unicorn” — a valued at over $1 billion — in Hootsuite, which makes social media tools. But Vancouver remains a relative small fry in tech, with about $1. 78 billion in venture capital flowing into local tech in the last decade, compared with about $8. 9 billion in Seattle, the research firm Pitchbook estimates. Still, the city’s tech boom may hit a wall if it cannot address its issues, which are by some standards more acute than those plaguing other thriving cities. Vancouver was ranked the third most unaffordable city in the world, after Hong Kong and Sydney, in a study published this year by Demographia, a consulting firm. Mr. Yan has spent years analyzing his hometown’s soaring real estate values and concluded that a surge in foreign capital, primarily from mainland China, has decoupled Vancouver home prices from the local economy. British Columbia recently imposed a 15 percent tax on new home purchases in the Vancouver area by foreign buyers, a move now facing legal challenges. The housing market is showing signs of cooling off, though it is not yet clear how much of that is because of the tax. The total number of homes sold in the area in August dropped 26 percent from a year earlier and price growth has slowed, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. Dennis Pilarinos, chief executive of Buddybuild, a Vancouver maker of developer tools for mobile apps, says affordability has been less of a problem for young tech workers, who may be willing to rent smaller apartments and live with roommates. But when get bigger, many struggle to recruit senior executives with families, said Mr. Pilarinos, who previously worked for Microsoft and Amazon in Vancouver. “Companies tend to run into scaling issues,” he said. “You end up with fewer Microsofts or Amazons. ” | 1 |
Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they’ve declared a different winner: the robots. The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M. I. T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. It appears to be the first study to quantify large, direct, negative effects of robots. The paper is all the more significant because the researchers, whose work is highly regarded in their field, had been more sanguine about the effect of technology on jobs. In a paper last year, they said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels. Just as cranes replaced dockworkers but created related jobs for engineers and financiers, the theory goes, new technology has created new jobs for software developers and data analysts. But that paper was a conceptual exercise. The new one uses data — and suggests a more pessimistic future. The researchers said they were surprised to see very little employment increase in other occupations to offset the job losses in manufacturing. That increase could still happen, they said, but for now there are large numbers of people out of work, with no clear path forward — especially men without college degrees. “The conclusion is that even if overall employment and wages recover, there will be losers in the process, and it’s going to take a very long time for these communities to recover,” Mr. Acemoglu said. “If you’ve worked in Detroit for 10 years, you don’t have the skills to go into health care,” he said. “The market economy is not going to create the jobs by itself for these workers who are bearing the brunt of the change. ” The paper’s evidence of job displacement from technology contrasts with a comment from the Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who said at an Axios event last week that artificial intelligence’s displacement of human jobs was “not even on our radar screen,” and “50 to 100 more years” away. (Not all robots use artificial intelligence, but a panel of experts — polled by the M. I. T. Initiative on the Digital Economy in reaction to Mr. Mnuchin’s comments — expressed the same broad concern of major job displacement.) The paper also helps explain a mystery that has been puzzling economists: why, if machines are replacing human workers, productivity hasn’t been increasing. In manufacturing, productivity has been increasing more than elsewhere — and now we see evidence of it in the employment data, too. The study analyzed the effect of industrial robots in local labor markets in the United States. Robots are to blame for up to 670, 000 lost manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007, it concluded, and that number will rise because industrial robots are expected to quadruple. The paper adds to the evidence that automation, more than other factors like trade and offshoring that President Trump campaigned on, has been the bigger threat to jobs. The researchers said the findings — “large and robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages” — remained strong even after controlling for imports, offshoring, software that displaces jobs, worker demographics and the type of industry. Robots affected both men’s and women’s jobs, the researchers found, but the effect on male employment was up to twice as big. The data doesn’t explain why, but Mr. Acemoglu had a guess: Women are more willing than men to take a pay cut to work in a field. The economists looked at the effect of robots on local economies and also more broadly. In an isolated area, each robot per thousand workers decreased employment by 6. 2 workers and wages by 0. 7 percent. But nationally, the effects were smaller, because jobs were created in other places. Take Detroit, home to automakers, the biggest users of industrial robots. Employment was greatly affected. If automakers can charge less for cars because they employ fewer people, employment might increase elsewhere in the country, like at steel makers or taxi operators. Meanwhile, the people in Detroit will probably spend less at stores. Including these factors, each robot per thousand workers decreased employment by three workers and wages by 0. 25 percent. The findings fuel the debate about whether technology will help people do their jobs more efficiently and create new ones, as it has in the past, or eventually displace humans. David Autor, a collaborator of Mr. Acemoglu’s at M. I. T. has argued that machines will complement instead of replace humans, and cannot replicate human traits like common sense and empathy. “I don’t think that this paper is the last word on its subject, but it’s an exceedingly carefully constructed and first word,” he said. Mr. Restrepo said the problem might be that the new jobs created by technology are not in the places that are losing jobs, like the Rust Belt. “I still believe there will be jobs in the years to come, though probably not as many as we have today,” he said. “But the data have made me worried about the communities directly exposed to robots. ” In addition to cars, industrial robots are used most in the manufacturing of electronics, metal products, plastics and chemicals. They do not require humans to operate, and do various tasks like welding, painting and packaging. From 1993 to 2007, the United States added one new industrial robot for every thousand workers — mostly in the Midwest, South and East — and Western Europe added 1. 6. The study, a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published Monday, used data on the number of robots from the International Federation of Robotics (there is no consistent data on the monetary value of the robots in use.) It analyzed the effect of robots on employment and wages in commuting zones, a way to measure local economies. The next question is whether the coming wave of technologies — like machine learning, drones and driverless cars — will have similar effects, but on many more people. | 1 |
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An intriguing Ministry of Finance (MoF) report circulating in the Kremlin today says that elite Western bankers were stunned a few hours ago after the Bank For International Settlements (BIS) registered a $1.8 billion transfer from the Clinton Foundation (CF) to the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) through the “facilitation/abetment” of JP Morgan Chase & Company (JPM)—and for reasons yet to be firmly established.
According to this report, the Bank for International Settlements is the world's oldest international financial organization and acts as a prime counterparty for central banks in their financial transactions; the Qatar Central Bank is the bank of that Gulf State nations government and their “bank of banks”; JP Morgan Chase & Company is the United States largest “megabank”; and the Clinton Foundation is an international criminal money laundering organization whose clients include the Russian mafia.
With Hillary Clinton’s US presidential campaign Chairman John Podesta having longstanding ties to the Russian mafia and money laundering, this report continues, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) maintains complete surveillance of him and his criminal associates—including both Hillary Clinton and her husband, and former US President, Bill Clinton.
On Saturday 15 October (2016), this report notes, the SVR reported to the MoF that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta met with JP Morgan Chase & Company CEO Jamie Dimon at Clinton’s Chappaqua Compound outside of New York City—and who, in 2009, both President Obama and Hillary Clinton allowed to break US laws by his, Dimon’s, being able to buy millions-of-dollars of his company’s stocks prior to the public being told his JP Morgan bank was receiving a Federal Reserve $80 billion credit line—and that caused JP Morgan’s stocks to soar and that have had an astonishing 920% dividend growth since 2010.
Within 12 hours of the Hillary Clinton-John Podesta-Jamie Dimon meeting at the Chappaqua Compound, this report continues, the BIS registered the transfer of $1.8 billion from the Clinton Foundation to the Qatar Central Bank.
To why the Clinton Foundation transferred this enormous sum of money to Qatar, this report explains, is due to the longstanding ties between this Islamic neo-patrimonial absolute monarchy and then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who oversaw the “massive bribery scheme” that allowed this Gulf State nation to secure the 2022 World Cup—and that the Qataris were so appreciative of they donated millions to the Clinton Foundation, and incredibly, in 2011, gave former US President Bill Clinton $1 million for a birthday present—bringing Hillary Clinton’s total “cash grab” from these Persian Gulf sheiks of $100 million—all occurring as recently released secret emails revealed Hillary Clinton’s knowledge that both Qatar and Saudi Arabia were, and still are, funding ISIS.
To what Jamie Dimon said to Hillary Clinton that caused her to suddenly transfer $1.8 billion to Qatar, this report notes, revolves around his JP Morgan bank being told by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in April (2016) that this “megabanks” master plan to save itself had “serious deficiencies” that could “pose serious adverse effects to the financial stability of the United States”.
Two months after the FDIC’s warning letter to Jamie Dimon, in June (2016), this report says, he cryptically “sounded a warning” that the United States sub-prime auto loan bubble was nearing collapse and stated that “someone is going to get hurt”.
Unbeknownst to the American people, MoF experts in this report explain, is that just 8 weeks ago multiple warnings began to be issued that the United States $1 trillion sub-prime auto loan bubble was beginning to collapse—and that this past week became so severe the Bank of America issued a recession warning telling its elite customers that “this market is scary”, and the British-based multinational banking and financial services company HSBC, likewise, issued a “Red Alert” warning all of its clients warning them to “prepare for a severe market crash”.
With one of the first casualties of this sub-prime auto loan bubble being the German global banking giant Deutsche Bank that is “nearing its doom” and laying off tens-of-thousands of it workers worldwide, this report grimly states, the American mainstream propaganda media is failing to allow the people of that nation to know the full extent of this looming catastrophe—who unlike Hillary Clinton who has just protected $1.8 billion of her wealth, will be left defenseless once again at the hands of their elite rulers.
As Wikileaks secret Hillary Clinton emails have now proven that the US propaganda mainstream media is now totally controlled by her, and who continue their blackout on the “Clinton Crime Story of the Century”, this report continues, the absolutely horrifying statistics released this week showing that an astounding 35% of American who have been brutalized by the Obama-Clinton regime these past 8 years are so buried in debt they can no longer pay their bills is, likewise, being kept from these most innocent of peoples. | 0 |
We had made it to Tete, Mozambique. The sun was sinking behind the Zambezi River like a scoop of orange sherbet as we sat on the motel’s deck taking in the quiet close of another long day on the road. But we avoided one another’s eyes. The table in front of us was cluttered with maps, notebooks, competing spreadsheets and empty beer bottles. “I don’t know, man,” Robert said. “Mozambique’s interesting, but it kind of reminds me of Spain in the ’80s. Maybe we should go our separate ways. ” For days, tensions had been building. It was hard traveling with another family, facing the endless of a road trip, especially this one. Robert and his wife, two Dutch friends whose children are about the same age as ours, were hankering to go west to see Botswana’s Kalahari Desert and the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. I had promised our two boys, Apollo, 6, and Asa, 4, that we would hit the beach in Mozambique, fabled for its pristine coastline. But this wasn’t just a quibble over the route, which, in the spirit of this trip, we had always intended to be flexible. We were getting on one another’s nerves. No. That’s too soft. We were annoying the bejesus out of one another. We were locking horns over everything — when to stop and fill up the jerrycans, which little guesthouse to sleep in, whether to get chicken and chips or omelets, again, for dinner, great chunks of silence sitting between us at meals. And now as we contemplated the nuclear option, breaking up, we were staring down the most treacherous road of the entire trip: Mozambique’s Tete corridor, where a conflict that had claimed thousands of lives was reawakening. Some people had just been ambushed, the motel manager told us. “By who?” I asked. He just shrugged. “Bandits? Rebels? Rogue police officers?” It was all the same to him. “And from Inchope to Save,” he said offhandedly, mentioning two towns on our map. “Meu Deus,” he said, closing his eyes. “That’s even worse. ” The next morning my wife, Courtenay, and our sons jumped into our truck. “Roll ’em up, lock ’em up,” I said as we swung out of the parking lot. We headed down a long, bright highway by ourselves. I’d told Robert that we would meet him in Cape Town, though who knew if either of us would actually make it. Cape Town was still nearly 2, 000 miles away. This odyssey — driving across the bottom half of Africa, without any firm plans — started out as a lark. We were at a birthday party at Robert’s house at the time, (which was late last year) we all lived in Nairobi, Kenya. During the festivities, Robert abruptly turned down the music and called everyone outside. He has worked all over the world for the United Nations and other international organizations and speaks about 38 languages. You know what military officers call “command presence”? Well, Robert has it in spades: tall, handsome, confident, topped by a wicked crest of pure white hair. He also has an awesome smile. The instant he told everyone to go outside, I knew what he was up to. He was going to give his wife a car, and I could tell from the glint in his eye that this was as much a selfie gift as anything. Stepping into the driveway, everyone gasped and started laughing: He had bought her an old green Land Rover Defender, the ultimate safari vehicle, and wrapped it in Christmas lights adorned with Chinese lanterns. Maybe we had all had a little too much to drink, but in the glow of the moment I swung my arm around Robert’s back and mumbled, with Champagne breath: “With a car like that, you can’t just drive to the mall. Hey, man. Why don’t we drive to Cape Town?” Of course, we could have flown to Cape Town. But we were all hopelessly smitten by the historical, romantic and mystical experience of traveling Africa overland: covering all of that beautiful countryside, savoring the long distances, losing time, not just passing through landscapes but being absorbed by them. I think each of us was also a bit worn down by the rigors of our jobs and of being mommies and daddies to young children. We believed, perhaps naïvely, that turning our Christmas vacation into a challenge could rejuvenate us. It was the most ambitious road trip any of us had ever planned: 4, 250 miles one way, 16 days, six countries, five young children, four hardheaded adults and two questionable trucks. “Sounds like a bad Christmas carol,” Courtenay muttered. To be honest, she was never into it. Most areas we intended to pass through in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa were relatively safe for drivers, northern Mozambique being the one question mark. But it wasn’t as though we had AAA for back up. You break down in rural Malawi or back roads Tanzania, where there aren’t any spare parts or much transport, and you might as well get comfortable for a week. And our truck was no spring chicken. It was a Nissan Patrol, sturdy as heck but 11 years old and with more than 100, 000 miles and a few rattles. This all might sound risky, maybe even reckless, but I’ve lived in East Africa for more than a decade and felt comfortable traveling here, knowing the region was more accessible than most people appreciate. As the date approached, our mountain of gear stupidly grew. (When you take a road trip, you’re the worst packer. You think: “Oh, yeah. We’ll have all the room in the world.) Soon we were running out of space in our operational staging area. Our guest room was heaped with mosquito nets, tarps, sleeping bags, bed rolls, tin dishes, flats of water, a monstrous medical kit containing everything from malaria prophylaxis to Tums, copies of our passports, visas and this thing called a “Carnet de Passages,” a very customs document that allows you to cross borders in your own vehicle. We’d also packed too many clothes, a satellite transmitter, spark plugs, granola, nuts, fuses, boxed milk, an air pump, a tow rope and seven packages of Huggies, for the long rides. Little did we know that within a few days, in Malawi, we would enter the dominion of Shoprite, a South African chain, where we could have bought many of these supplies if we had actually needed them. As we pulled out of our driveway, car stuffed, I looked up to see dark clouds and bright sunshine, the dramatic, schizophrenic lighting that often illuminates Nairobi’s equatorial skies. We passed zebras in Kajiado, an area that used to be rural but in the frenzied urbanization of Nairobi in the last 10 years is now more like a suburb. By midday, we reached the Tanzanian border. We spent the next hour and a half waiting in lines, to get our passports stamped, to get our yellow fever cards checked, to show our Carnet de Passages. Then we were free, out on the road again chugging past trucks with inspirational messages emblazoned on their backsides such as “Love Your Enemies. ” We crossed into Tanzania that same day, and the landscape immediately opened up: lush, green savanna unrolling from the sides of the highway. We passed through a string of villages, each specializing in a particular commodity. In the first, everyone along the road sold chickens. In the next, eggs. The village after that, oranges. We motored through spiky sisal fields that ran for miles and miles and ended in a town where dozens of people were selling wooden stools — they were actually carving them along the road, flakes of wood shavings littering the highway’s shoulders — being gently stirred by the wind of our passing wheels. In rural Africa the economy isn’t hidden, as it is in the United States. You drive right through it. Robert was right behind me as I took a curve, perhaps a little fast. Ahead, I saw a man in a white uniform step out from under a mango tree into the road. Shoot. A police officer. He had his arm up, which meant stop. In eastern Africa, most traffic officers don’t have guns, radios or cars. You could blow past them and probably never get in trouble. It’s essentially an honor system: You stop because it’s the right thing to do. The officer sauntered up to my window with a black plastic object that I could have sworn was an old hair dryer. It was actually a radar gun, one that looked like it belonged in “Smokey and the Bandit. ” I had been speeding, he said. I don’t think the radar gun even had batteries, but I knew the game. In East Africa, it’s called “kitu kidogo,” “a little something” in Swahili — a euphemism for a bribe. You have to always let them make the first move. “Do you know the fine?” the officer asked. Earnestly, I told him I did not. “Twenty thousand shillings,” he said. “But,” he smiled, “if you don’t need a receipt, I make it 10. ” Who was I to argue? Soon we were whizzing past baboons shrieking from trees. Our boys kept a running tally of all the animals we saw: monkeys, giraffes, zebras, ostriches, gazelles, antelope, warthogs, even elephants. Tanzania is rightly celebrated for its wildlife. If we’d had the time — which we didn’t — we could have gone from national park to national park and made our drive one endless safari. We did camp one night next to Mikumi National Park, home to all the big wildlife species. The Lodge was perfect: a clean spot for tents, showers and a nearby restaurant, $7 for each adult, free for children. A few bites into dinner, I could tell that the food — burgers, chips and roast chicken — was fresh and had been made with care. As we bedded down, I heard lions grunting in the distance. Or maybe it was just Robert snoring in the tent next to me. “Man, never in my life did I think I’d be here,” Robert said, smiling in the doorway of a border town barbershop where we went looking to change money. “Malawi was always distant in my memory, like this little country lost in the middle of Africa. ” One of the most pleasant African countries, Malawi is also one that Western tourists rarely visit. It is small, green, landlocked and friendly. Never aggressively colonized like Kenya or South Africa, its raison d’être is the lake. Lake Malawi is home to a thousand kinds of fish, more than any other lake in the world. It’s a beautiful place to swim and snorkel, with little industry or pollution. Scientists say you can catch bilharzia, an infection caused by a parasitic worm, but the risks are minimal along isolated beaches, where most tourists tend to go. As soon as we crested a hill and for the first time spotted Lake Malawi sunning itself, Courtenay said: “Can I sit in a beach chair just once on this trip? Is that asking too much?” Robert and company supplied the answer: Butterfly Space, a small on Nkhata Bay. It sounded amazing, from the guidebooks: “spacious beachfront,” “picturesque beauty,” an “oasis. ” We booked it from the road, calling just a few hours ahead. We did that a lot, conducting a little internet research the night before or flicking through a guidebook, which gave us flexibility, because we didn’t know how far we would get each day. We rolled in at night, always a in the dark it’s hard to tell what you’re getting. A guard steered us to a campsite that smelled of dog poop. As I was helping Robert set up his tent, I noticed garbage strewed everywhere. But I didn’t want to sound negative about a place he had picked, so I kept my mouth shut. “Hey, mon. ” It was a voice from the bushes. “Uh, yeah?” I answered, looking around. A young man stepped out, dreadlocked and . “Name’s Happy. ” “Happy what?” Robert growled. Robert and I hadn’t eaten for hours, and the two of us were dangerously crabby. We just wanted to get the tents up and find some food. “Happy Coconut, mon,” the young man answered. “Happy Coconut. I’m soooo happy. ” Robert shook his head and whispered, “I think the guy writing the guidebook was high when he passed through here. ” Butterfly Space slithered with tattooed travelers smelling of patchouli oil and Malawi Gold (the cheap and potent local ganja). We weren’t prudes, but it didn’t seem to be the ideal family spot. The next morning we hit the road. We tended to drive about 10 hours a day, starting around 8 a. m. and by dusk we would find a small hotel or guesthouse, usually for no more than $50, sometimes for as little as $10. Road trips are as much about what is happening inside the car as out. Our collective brood, all boys between ages 4 and 7, did surprisingly well, napping, looking out the windows and pulling each other’s hair only occasionally. The roads were tarmac all through Malawi and Tanzania. The only problem was gas. Malawi has few fuel stations, and I ran out twice, rescued by Robert. I think our best day of the entire trip was shortly before we split up. We had treated ourselves to a classy old whitewashed hotel, the Sunbird Livingstonia Beach Hotel, on Salima Bay. It wasn’t even that expensive, around 90, 000 Kwacha a night, or about $125, and we took the day off from driving to swim in the lake and get tossed around by the waves. I didn’t want to leave. But Robert and his team hadn’t signed up for a beach holiday, and driving all the way to Cape Town had been my great idea, after all. When we told the room steward that we had to go, he shook his head wistfully. “It’d be great to see other countries, see how other people live,” he said, folding a sheet. “In Malawi, everyone’s born in Malawi. They live in Malawi. They die in Malawi. They don’t see anything else. ” The instant we crossed the border, it felt as though we were in a different place. This is a huge benefit of arriving in a new country by land. You immediately get a sense of its development, its atmosphere, its spirit, which is hard to do in an antiseptic international airport. One of the few former Portuguese colonies in Africa (most of the continent was grabbed up by France or England) Mozambique has a palpable Latin vibe. The storefront colors were zanier, the clothes tighter, the music louder. As we cruised through a tiny village blasting salsa, Courtenay turned to me and asked, “Is this country deaf?” We were without comrades now. We had emerged unscathed from the scorched wastes of Tete and were flying downhill toward the legendary Praia do Bilene beach, on Mozambique’s southern coast. When we pulled in, I couldn’t even hear Courtenay’s yelling which way to go because of the roar of motorcycle engines. Young South Africans raced around on Ninja bikes, shirtless or in bikinis. We discovered that Mozambique during Christmas is a bit of a South African colony. After getting the keys to a rundown rondoval at a seaside hotel, we scampered to the beach, to sand that sparkled — but not in the way you might imagine. It was the day after New Year’s. Thousands of beer bottles lay at the water’s edge, as though they had been vomited up by the sea. The place was a pigsty, but our boys loved it, collecting dozens of dirty bottles and making giant bottle castles. In Kenya, you’d never see that. Poor people would have been all over that beach, scooping up the empties to make money from recycling. Courtenay and I found the whole scene depressing and consoled ourselves with heaping plates of rice, pãozinho (Portuguese rolls) and shrimp so succulent and tasty that even the boys — who usually flee at the sight of anything unusual on their plates, especially if that unusual thing has eyes — gobbled it up. But our clock was ticking. Robert was somewhere out there, chugging his way south. Though we’d had our disagreements, I missed seeing that dark green Land Rover behind me. As we hustled toward the Swaziland border, a wall of brown, stubbly mountains rising before us, I guess I started to zone out. I didn’t see her until it was too late. A corpulent police officer stepped out from under a tree. That was always their strategy: Hang out in the shade and wait for a victim. It was the equivalent of the American patrol officer on a motorcycle hiding behind a billboard. She walked into the road, arm up. When I pulled over, she fanned her face. “Que calor, que calor,” she said. (How hot.) “Indeed,” I responded. She asked for my license. I gave it to her. She asked for my insurance. I gave her that as well (a special Mozambican policy covering who knows what that I had spent $60 on at the border). She frowned. The boys stirred in the back seat, as she made a leisurely loop around the truck. She returned to my window. “You pay fine,” she said. “For what?” I asked. Her eyes darted around. “Baby no have seatbelt. ” “What? He just took it off. We’ve been stopped for three minutes. ” “Baby no seatbelt. We go police station Matola. ” “Matola?” I said incredulously. “Isn’t that an hour away?” “Then pay fine here,” she said, staring into my face. “Three hundred meticals. ” After I handed it over, she waved happily goodbye. The Kingdom of Swaziland is a strange little place: population 1. 4 million per capita income $8, 500, not bad by standards and one of the world’s lowest life expectancies, at 52 years. AIDS destroyed this place, possibly because it is a country in between. In Africa, transit points have become H. I. V. hot zones truckers are some of the worst culprits for spreading the virus. Swaziland’s roads were good, its landscape barren and windswept. We drove end to end in 2 hours 48 minutes 7 seconds. By the time we reached South Africa, we had six days of vacation left and more than 1, 000 miles to go. I had visited South Africa nearly a dozen times, but I had never driven the country. The landscape was dreamy: rippling green hills, tall trees and miles and miles of farms and vineyards stocked with grapes so plump and juicy, you just wanted to pull over and pluck them. I found myself asking: “How did this happen? How did South Africa get all the good land?” We caught one of the most beautiful sunsets I’d ever seen. Over the west side of the N2 highway, fingers of light reached into a cool, dark forest. We made three stops on the way to Cape Town, our favorite being St. Lucia, a town sporting carpets of crab grass for front lawns. It felt like Boca Raton, Fla. except for the hippos lumbering through the neat little streets at night. Set in a large estuary filled with life, St. Lucia is a great place for a boat tour to see hippos and crocodiles, which we enjoyed, booking through Hornbill House, the where we stayed. We were all eager to get to Cape Town, arguably one of the world’s most stunning cities. Our boys were excited to see the penguins at the Simon’s Town penguin colony. I was ready to stop driving. Courtenay just wanted the trip to end. As we curved around a mountain near the penguins, bubbling with the sense of triumph at having made it, a familiar green Land Rover hurtled toward us. I tooted madly. We pulled over and hugged, a lot, in a parking lot. It was great to see Robert, his wife and their children, and we were sorry that we hadn’t been able to stay together the whole time. But we had adventures to share and the children were talking fast: “We saw crocodiles!” “Well, we saw a castle!” I wished I had seen more. Driving across Africa was far more doable than I expected: The roads were safe, the border crossings not too hellish, and it was no sweat booking hotels by cellphone on the fly. But we should have taken two months, not two weeks. Then we could have explored more wildlife parks, slipped off the main roads and lingered in small, charming towns, as opposed to getting up at the crack of dawn and strapping in again. Robert, God bless him, arranged for two couples to fly to Cape Town and drive our vehicles back to Nairobi, because they wanted to have the same road trip experience. On that final Sunday, we loaded into our trucks one last time and drove to the airport, his truck right behind mine. Then eight hours later, we were all back home. | 1 |
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It was Nov. 12, and Bill Maher was about to begin his comedy act at the City National Civic in San Jose when he did something he hadn’t done in many years. He brought a drink with him to the stage a standup roadie (tequila). “And boy did I miss it,” he joked with me last week. “What an idiot all those years — drinking’s fun. You hear that, kids? Drinking’s fun!” Actually, that’s not why he did it, he said during a marathon session of talking and drinking — and, in his case, a wee bit of pot smoking — that started at his house here and ended several hours later at the nearby Polo Lounge (oh, the indignities of this job). He says he considers drinking on stage unprofessional. But that night, so soon after the election, he needed something to calm his nerves. Donald J. Trump, who Mr. Maher said “lives for vengeance,” had just won control over the most powerful instruments of the government, like the Justice Department, and, more to the point, the F. B. I. And it was dawning on Mr. Maher that “no one’s been meaner to him than me. ” Mr. Maher has a unique perspective. He resides at that most treacherous intersection where free speech meets government power and political passion, dodging traffic from left and right. He also once accused Mr. Trump of being part orangutan by birth. But first, a refresher on how Mr. Maher became a totem in 2001 with one provocative line on his ABC show, “Politically Incorrect. ” He said the Sept. 11 hijackers couldn’t be called “cowards,” especially when the United States’ preferred method of attack at the time — before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — was to lob cruise missiles from afar (“That’s cowardly,” he said). The White House criticized him, sponsors fled and, a few months later, ABC canceled his show. Whatever you might think of his argument, the moment was a dark chapter in the annals of public discourse. It could have been a too, if HBO hadn’t provided Mr. Maher with safe harbor and a new show, “Real Time,” which has an audience of about 4. 5 million viewers. Yet, Mr. Maher puts that episode within “the normal parameters of awful. ” He says he’s more worried about our new era, when no one knows what “normal” is going to look like. It’s amazing how much anxiety Mr. Trump’s imminent inauguration is stirring in the business — but perhaps not surprising given his open hostility toward the press, his willingness to use his platform against any who cross him and his seemingly proud dismissal of the government and political norms that precede him. No one knows whether a year from now, we’ll see today’s fears as overblown, underblown, or on point. Mr. Maher is taking the approach based on his own experience in the Trumpian combat caldron in 2013. That was when Mr. Maher launched a “birther” — or, “ ” — campaign about Mr. Trump, to rival the one Mr. Trump had pursued about President Obama’s citizenship. Appearing on “The Tonight Show,’’ he joked that Mr. Trump was the product of crossbreeding it was the only thing, he said, that would explain the “color of his hair. ” He said he would donate $5 million to a charity of Mr. Trump’s choice if he could prove this wasn’t the case. (Mr. Maher pledged $1 million in 2012 to a “super PAC” supporting Obama.) Mr. Trump’s lawyers replied with a copy of his birth certificate and a demand for the money, which Mr. Maher ignored. Then Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit that ultimately went nowhere. “It was worth it in comedy material,” Mr. Maher told me, taking a couple of puffs from a pipe molded into a bust of his head (a gift from a friend) as we stood by the bar in his living room. “But you definitely spent money. ” That is, Mr. Maher had the money to pay for the courage that another comedian may not have been able to afford. He takes it as a harbinger. “No one knows what this man is capable of,” Mr. Maher said. “I never, ever, ever felt worried — it never crossed my mind — that George Bush would do something crazy, even though I knew he hated me. He never sued me for a joke. ” Mr. Maher was particularly focused on reports that several F. B. I. agents were agitating before the election for more aggressive examination of Hillary Clinton, which Democrats feared was politically motivated to help Mr. Trump. (The Justice Department’s inspector general has announced a broad investigation into the F. B. I. ’s performance.) “It is a very troubling idea that the F. B. I. is politicized,” he said. “When the internal police department is politicized, that’s a place I don’t want to be on the wrong side of — I mean, that’s fascism. ” You could chalk it all up to shticky paranoia, and it’s quite a slippery slope from there to outright fascism. But with so many sharing similar worries (at least among those who didn’t support Mr. Trump) and with Mr. Trump’s continued cage rattling, I turned to Mr. Trump’s adviser, Kellyanne Conway, for a response. It seemed especially fitting because she has been a longtime guest of Mr. Maher’s, dating to the 1990s when he was first blazing the trail on Comedy Central. Given Mr. Trump’s preference for Twitter, Ms. Conway joked, using the F. B. I. would be “so last century — it’s so bureaucratic and paperwork laden. ” Turning more serious, she said, “He’s not going to use the ‘tools of state,’” repeating the wording of my question. I noted that there are, of course, guidelines, professional tenets and laws that are meant to preclude a president’s ability to use federal investigative power as a political weapon, and she agreed, saying “This is America. ” Ms. Conway acknowledged, though, that Mr. Maher’s fears were widely held, especially in Hollywood — witness Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes address. “Talk about a Hollywood story — folks are unnecessarily flattering themselves to think for two seconds that Donald Trump is going to call out the big dogs to make their lives miserable,” she said. She described some of the discomfort as a natural reaction by “the elites” to an incoming president who is merely responding to their continued attacks. “Where’s the respect — open ear and open mind? ’’ she said. “The same people who had hoped for and desired and absolutely assumed they were going to get a different election result never laid down their muskets,” she said. It was time, she said, to “take the poison out of the pen and keyboard. ” Mr. Maher has no plans to do that when his show comes back from hiatus on inauguration day, Jan. 20 (his birthday, and Ms. Conway’s). But he shares Ms. Conway’s view of the cultural stakes in the election. “We’re the losers now, so it behooves us to break out of that bubble more,” he said. Mr. Maher said speeches like Ms. Streep’s — calling actors, screenwriters and the news media to arms — weren’t going to solve anything. “It looks very insular,” he said. “Just the liberals talking to themselves, which they are very good at doing. ” Still the bane of conservatives, Mr. Maher has more recently drawn scorn from liberals for his own diatribes against Islamic extremism, for which he says liberals have too much tolerance. That’s part of what he considers a politically correct corralling of speech from the left. At the same time, his restaurant selection, the Polo Lounge, in the Beverly Hills Hotel, came in defiance of a Hollywood boycott that Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John helped start after the sultan of Brunei, whose investment agency owns the hotel, imposed a new penal code in his homeland based on Shariah law, making gay sex and adultery punishable by stoning to death. To join the boycott, Mr. Maher said as we walked through the hotel lobby, would be to submit to an ineffectual form of “tokenism. ” “As if the sultan of Brunei is up there looking at the receipts — we only sold two soups? Is Stallone still coming in?” he said. “But Sultan, your harem awaits — ‘I’m sorry, I’m still going over the receipts. ’” With that, we took our seats and the waiter approached. Surprised to see Mr. Maher, he asked “You’re not in hiding?” That got Mr. Maher all worked up again. “I can be scared,” he said, “and never pull a punch. ” | 1 |
Lydia Ko could win her second consecutive ANA Inspiration title this week, or be eclipsed by Michelle Wie winning her first in her 13th career start, and it would still be for the women in one respect. As the top golfers on the L. P. G. A. Tour compete in their first major tournament of the year, they will be to ignore the storm clouds gathering in advance of their third, the United States Women’s Open, to be held in July at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N. J. Before Donald J. Trump became the 45th president of the United States, he was the Daddy Warbucks of women’s golf, hosting the top players every year at his resort in Palm Beach, Fla. during the L. P. G. A.’s ADT Championship at Trump International Golf Club. In 2006, the tournament’s prize was $1 million, a milestone that the men had reached seven years earlier. In his prepolitics life as a real estate mogul, Trump dispensed business advice to the L. P. G. A. players and invited them to his courses for informal rounds of golf. The women generally accepted his invitations for the same reason they play events every year with dozens of other golfers, including those who harbor different political and personal beliefs: These people, usually men, sustain the Tour with their support. “Having played in the ADT Championship when it was held at his course in West Palm Beach, I have experienced nothing but good things from him and his golf course,” said Karen Stupples, a reporter for the Golf Channel and NBC who competed in the event in 2004 and 2008. “And I think the L. P. G. A. in general feels that same way, that he was very respectful to the L. P. G. A. to the tournament. ” The picture that L. P. G. A. golfers paint of Trump as a respectful supporter of women stands in stark contrast to the leering, man caught conversing with Billy Bush during a taping of a 2005 segment for “Access Hollywood” in a video that surfaced shortly before the election. Since Trump became the putative leader of the free world, he has often been seen on the golf course, and for some of those outings, he has reached out to some of the best players in the game to accompany him. The top men and women have accepted invitations to play with him with their eyes wide open. They know that what they see as a social outing will be spun as a political statement — and they seem largely not to care. In an anonymous survey I conducted in February of 56 players on the PGA Tour, 50 (or 89 percent) said they would play with Trump if extended an invitation. Three said they would not, and three declined to answer. How would the best women, whose ranks cut across more cultures than the men’s, respond? At the Founders Cup in the first L. P. G. A. event of the year held in the United States, I conducted an anonymous survey of 40 players. (or 60 percent) said they would play with Trump, nine said they would not and seven declined to comment. A joked, “I want to stay in the country so I’ll say yes. ” The women, who ranged in age from under 20 to over 50, represented 12 countries and make their homes in 11 states, including four that voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential election. One player, Natalie Gulbis, spoke in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention. Another, the Floridian Lexi Thompson, has played golf with Trump since the election. Ko, the women’s No. 1 from New Zealand, has not played a round with Trump — but only because she hasn’t received an invitation. “He’s the leader of one of the biggest countries in the whole entire world,” Ko said, “and it would be an honor if I got that call. ” Ryann O’Toole, an American who was raised in California, said, “I didn’t vote for him and I’ll still play with him. ” Ko is 19. Thompson is 22. O’Toole is 30. Stupples is 43 and the mother of a son. It is unfair, Stupples said, to expect a consensus on any political issue from a tour membership that includes women under 20 and over 40 and Americans and foreigners. “Lydia and Lexi have both led a very sheltered life,” Stupples said. “They’ve played golf and that’s it. They probably haven’t seen much of what goes on outside of the golf course and a hotel. ” She added: “Would I play golf with him? Probably not. But then that’s me. That’s because I’ve been around the block a few times and seen a few other things. But it’s only because of my life experience that I feel like I can make a good judgment on what I want to do personally. ” The United States Golf Association awarded its flagship women’s event to Trump’s Bedminster course in 2012, when his reputation as an opportunistic outsider came from supporting golf when the economy was cratering and other benefactors were bailing. “He was such a huge fan of the L. P. G. A. and of golf in general,” said Gulbis, who has known Trump since she qualified for her first ADT Championship in 2005. Throughout the years, she said, he has counseled her to fight for the same pay as PGA Tour members for public appearances or sponsorships. “These were constant conversations that I saw him have not just with me, but with lots of people in our organization,” Gulbis said. The United States Women’s Open will not be the first golf major played at a Trump course. The Women’s British Open in 2015 was held at Turnberry, a Scottish resort that Trump bought in 2014, after the tournament had been awarded. In the past few years, some other top golf events have been given to courses. This year’s Senior P. G. A. Championship will be at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, and the 2022 P. G. A. Championship will be hosted by his Bedminster club. Shaunna Thomas, the of UltraViolet, a national group assembled to fight sexism and expand women’s rights, said her organization failed to see the upside of any professional women’s sports league aligning itself with Trump. “I’ve been playing golf all my life, I’m very familiar with how deeply ingrained sexism is in the game,” Thomas said in a telephone interview. “It’s upsetting. People who aren’t fans think it’s such an easy decision for the U. S. G. A. and the L. P. G. A. to make to avoid controversy. ” She added: “The question really is, do the U. S. G. A. and L. P. G. A. want to be on the right side of history? If the U. S. G. A. wants to stay relevant to a younger generation of golfers, they’re going to have to take a look at their decision. This is an opportunity to send a clear signal to women, people of color and people with disabilities that they stand on the side of inclusiveness. ” UltraViolet staged a protest on the third day of the Founders Cup, calling for the Women’s Open to be moved from Bedminster or, barring that, for the players to boycott the event. Roughly a dozen people gathered outside the public entrance to Wildfire Golf Club, the tournament site on a Marriott property in Phoenix, and handed out items including “Dump Trump” golf balls before being escorted away by hotel security. The organization also commissioned a plane to fly over the tournament grounds with a banner that read: “LPGA: Take a Mulligan. Dump Sexist Trump. ” On the eve of the protest, the L. P. G. A. one of the world’s oldest women’s professional sports organizations, released a statement that described its mission as creating opportunities “for the best female golfers in the world to showcase their talent” and said, “As a global tour and membership, we try not to let politics get in the way” of such opportunities. The organization added that the U. S. G. A. owns and operates the United States Women’s Open and “we respect and support the decisions made by the U. S. G. A. on this matter. ” The statement did not sit well with Thomas, who grew up in Los Angeles and played golf with her father at Rolling Hills Country Club and Riviera Country Club. Many of the courses she frequented were about as integrated as Trump’s cabinet, which has a smaller percentage of women and minorities than the first cabinets of his four immediate predecessors. “The ladies that play golf shouldn’t be forced to build up the Trump brand in any way,” she said. Judy Rankin, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, is discomfited by the notion that the players should allow politics to play through in the most prestigious women’s tournament in the United States. “Back in the dark ages, I did not agree with everything Gerald Ford did,” said Rankin, whose most successful season, 1976, coincided with Ford’s last full year as president. She won six tournaments that year and became the first L. P. G. A. player to surpass $100, 000 in yearly earnings. “I found him to be the most wonderful man, and I certainly played golf with him,” Rankin added. “Because you play golf with them does not necessarily mean you support every single thing they do. But they hold the highest office in the land. And I’m not sure that an invitation to play golf should be answered with a political statement. ” | 1 |
56 Views November 14, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
As the bond market continues to melt down, interest rates rise and the Dollar Index surges above 100, legend Art Cashin gave one of his most important interviews ever to King World News about a Trump presidency, the New World Order, gold, Brexit, the Great Depression, and why we will see panic before the end of the year.
Eric King: “In Trump’s acceptance speech he said that we are going to have massive infrastructure spending. Is that bearish for gold? I don’t think so.”
Gold Market Hit As Druckenmiller Sells Art Cashin: “No. That on the face of it would not be a reason to sell gold. One of the things that may have concerned Druckenmiller was not so much your scenario of fiscal spending and building roads and highways, but the fact that despite what the Fed has been doing, the money supply has not been showing any velocity. That’s a topic you and I have discussed time and time again and it’s one of the holdups to gold because if it gets no velocity that’s deflationary.
In fact, the largest growth in money stock is in cash — green pictures of dead presidents — and that is deflationary because that does not have a lending factor that money in a bank would have. So those are two deflationary trends in money and that tends to weigh a little bit on gold and doesn’t allow it to fulfill its promise that you would expect in a somewhat inflationary period.”
Eric King: “Victor Sperandeo, a former associate of George Sorors, said to me this will be ‘pure money printing.’ That we are going to print trillions of dollars and build infrastructure — talk about how you view that. Obviously there are going to be jobs created and it will be great for infrastructure, so it will juice the economy, but what are the longer-term ramifications?”
Art Cashin: “On the face of it, it looks good. As you said, there will be jobs created and there will be improvements in roads and airports and so on. However, the other shoe to fall is that Mr. Trump is also committed to revamping the tax code. And those two things should lead to a massive increase in the deficit. And we are already deeply in debt, so people like Rosenberg and others feel like it will have virtually no impact.
On the face of it the stimulus program should be great for the economy, but because you are in such a high level of debt it might not work out that way. He and others point out that if fiscal stimulus were the answer then Japan would be the king of the world with all of those bridges to nowhere that they built. Japan spent a lot of money, built up their deficit, and their economy never really turned around.”
Eric King: “Going back even further than that and looking at the Great Depression, the United States was struggling and then FDR devalued the dollar by revaluing the price of gold higher. Those public works projects then got underway, the massive public works projects that built so much of the infrastructure here in the United States, Art. And that did turn the stock market around. It turned many things around — commodities, etc — but then it rolled over by 1937-1938 and then the war came. Is this infrastructure spending program something that can look good for a little while and then it will just roll over like we saw in 1937-1938?”
Art Cashin: “It can. And the problem (during the Great Depression) was that the thing didn’t click, as it were. It didn’t lead to the next step. You hire people, you do the road projects, you do whatever, and then you want to see them go out and spend and business begin to borrow and banks to lend. And in ’37 and ’38 that never fully kicked in. U.S. Experiences Second Stock Market Collapse From 1937 To 1938
You had high government officials, in frustration, go to Congress and testify: “We couldn’t get it started. We just couldn’t get it started.”
For all of the deficit spending, for all of the government programs, it never fully worked. That’s the fear. Again, if you go back to Japan, clearly they spent trillions of Japanese yen in massive building projects and it never kicked in, it never took over. The people continued to worry and hold onto their money.
A Worried Public Is Hoarding Cash As I’ve told you before, this whole thing about helicopter money and whatnot, if Bernanke flew over your house and dropped a million dollars in brand new money, and you were so worried that you got up and hid it in the garage until you figured out what the economy was going to do…And that is virtually what has happened to us for the past seven years.
They have tried all kinds of increases in money supply but it has never kicked in and people are so terrified that they are not spending, and basically, as I said, the large amount of growth was in cash. So they are putting it in the mattress, not even in the bank.”
Eric King: “Art, for so many years on King World News you have been talking about this lending and spending not kicking in, and you have used that Bernanke analogy over and over again. It’s not normal for you to beat up on a point as much as you have. But earlier you brought up Japan, and then when we covered the Great Depression you discussed 1937-1938, and the the testimonies before Congress from people saying, ‘We just couldn’t get it started.’ Did you know all along that it was going to unfold this way to some degree with the lack of lending and spending? Did you know that from history?”
Art Cashin: “I had a fear of it and it became pretty evident after some of the first things they (central planners) did. It is not a very difficult game. Every week the Federal Reserve reports the Money Supply and the Federal Reserve of St. Louis reports the Monetary Stock, which is the amount of raw money that the Fed adds in. “We Just Couldn’t Get It Started” – Monetary Stock Plunging
“That Shouldn’t Be” For a year now, despite all the things you have heard, despite all the programs and ‘pump-priming’ and Yellen and all the doves, the Monetary Stock has not increased all year. That shouldn’t be. 60-Year Velocity Of Money Stock Hitting New Lows
If money has velocity, then you can see the economy begin to move up. If it gets too much velocity, then you get to see inflation. But so far we are not getting a high dose of either. Although, if you ask somebody standing in the supermarket if they have inflation they might give you a bit of an argument. But by government standards it’s not quite there yet.”
Eric King: “Along those same lines, Art, you’ve warned repeatedly about Weimar Germany and the experience of the 1920s. This idea that there can be no inflation and then suddenly it just kicks in and then all hell breaks loose. You’ve warned so many time about that. Is that what’s in front of us?”
Art Cashin: “You will begin to know it. Everybody talks about the Weimar Republic where they actually printed cash money and flooded the system. It wasn’t just the bank reserves — they actually flooded the system with paper money. And amazingly, amazingly, it was a while before that actually kicked in in an inflationary manner. And as you alluded to, I’ve said this time and time again, it’s one of those things like spontaneous combustion — it’s there and it’s there and it’s there and suddenly it bursts into flames. And when it bursts into flames it consumes everything about it. And that’s when you can have a runaway inflation.
But so far it has not burst into flames. And that is why to even some degree the Fed is frustrated, hoping to get inflation up above 2 percent. And they may be in a position where, be careful what you wish for. Because if they get 2 percent and above it could suddenly combust and things could begin to move rather rapidly.”
Eric King: “Art, let me ask you this about the Trump presidency. It seems like for those people out there who, as he said, felt lost, the lost Americans, and for those out there who really felt like they were having globalism shoved down their throats in Europe and in the United States, this seemed to be a moment in time where there was going to be some backtracking. The borders were going to be closed, there would be some protectionism — we all know the plusses and minuses of that — but how did you view this Trump election and him becoming president, the idea that the elite got sand kicked in their face and that this New World Order would be slowed down, if only for a moment?”
Donald Trump’s Shocker And Why Brexit Is Nowhere Near Over Art Cashin: “I view it as yet one more extension of what looks to be a populist revolt that is sweeping the world. You saw the beginning of it with Brexit, and you have too many pundits on TV saying, ‘Well, that ended quickly in reverse.’ Brexit is nowhere near over. But the reason that markets didn’t continue to spiral (downward) is that they realized that Brexit has basically been postponed. They haven’t gone in and declared Article 50. Once they start the process in motion, the consequences of Brexit are going to be there and they are going to be drastic.
Now, if you take Trump’s election as the second leg of populism, the next thing you look for is the December 4th referendum in Italy. And there’s a good chance that will cause the government to fail and Italy will be right back in the middle of a major European crisis, and we’ll be right back where we were with Greece (only much larger in scale). So this game is far from over and we could see further panic as we head into the end of the year.”
Eric King: “Ahead of what’s going to happen in Italy, because I think that will unfold as you just predicted, Art, a Trump America going forward and this idea that the elites have been pushing globalism down everybody’s throats with NAFTA and so many things that have happened around the world. The globalism and the push to eliminate national boundaries, we’ve seen that in Europe and of course they had talked about combining Canada, the United States and Mexico into one regional unit. This idea that globalism has taken a huge blow here, is that true? Or did it just slow it down? What will a Trump presidency mean in that sense?”
“You’re Fired!” Art Cashin: “We’ve got a lot of things to see. Over the next week or two you are going to see whom he appoints to the cabinet and who holds him under their sway. It would appear, however, because of the size of his commitment, he’s got to address globalization and global trade. He’s got to go back and revisit even NAFTA.
I think some of his early attempts will be reasonably good. He will do some fiscal stimulus, some building and repairing, hopefully getting the tax structure in better order. But that will not be the end of it. He can pivot a bit but he can’t completely abandon it (his campaign promises). People will have to watch what he does.
Now, he may cleverly hire some people and put burdens on their shoulders. If after six months things don’t work out, he can revert to his TV personality and say, ‘You’re fired,’ to show the American people that he’s staying on top. But for now…KWN encourages everyone around the world to listen to one of legendary Art Cashin’s greatest audio interviews ever discussing the gold market at length, including the recent takedown in gold and what to make of Druckenmiller selling, what to surprises to expect in key markets as Trump becomes president, and what impact massive public works projects will have on the United States, inflation, gold, bonds, and much more, by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.
***KWN has now released the extraordinary KWN audio interview with whistleblower Andrew Maguire, where he discusses the gold and silver smash, at what price the large sovereign wholesale bids are located, and much more, and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.
***ALSO JUST RELEASED: Greyerz – Historic Shocker, A Difficult Road And A Major Short Squeeze About To Unfold CLICK HERE.
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On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Polk County, FL Sheriff Grady Judd stated that illegal immigrants committing felonies is a phenomenon that is at an epidemic level “across the United States. There’s not a day goes by that we all don’t arrest a lot of illegal aliens that are out here preying on the people in this country. ” Judd was asked about his prior comments that illegal immigrants committing felonies are an “epidemic. ” He said, “It is at that level across the United States. There’s not a day goes by that we all don’t arrest a lot of illegal aliens that are out here preying on the people in this country. And they’re committing felonies, violent felonies, and they’re trafficking in narcotics. And if that’s not enough, we deport them, they come back, and pick up doing the same thing again. ” He added, “We’re seeing a total[ly] different attitude by Immigration and Customs already. And what we have to do is pick them up, keep them locked up until they’re deported to their home country of origin. And I can tell you this, the community will be safer, less drugs will flow on our streets, and there will be less weapons violence. Every day my detectives go out, and they seek out and arrest people for violating the drug laws. Many of those folks are illegal aliens, here, with guns, posing a specific danger to our deputies, to our law enforcement officers, and to the community. But I have a simple question for those who think there’s a problem with that: Why don’t you take them home with you? Why don’t you rent them a home next door to you? Because you know they’re living next door to somebody in our community, and they’re terrorizing them. ” Judd also stated that he didn’t think what he proposed would result in economic losses, and “The people we arrest, they’re not harvesting any vegetables, or any citrus. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
President Donald Trump reacted to the massive rioting at in response to a scheduled campus speech by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos. [“If U. C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” Trump wrote on Twitter early Thursday morning. News of the rioting made cable news last night as students smashed ATMs and bank windows, looted a Starbucks, beat Trump supporters, pepper sprayed innocent individuals, and set fires in the street. Others spray painted the words “Kill Trump” on storefronts. The speech was canceled by police as security failed. Yiannopoulos was evacuated from the area. “The left is profoundly antithetical to free speech these days, does not want to hear alternative points of view, and will do anything to shut it down,” Yiannopoulos told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview on Wednesday night. “My point is being proven over and over and over again. ” | 1 |
Заседание Совета Безопасности от 28 октября 2016
Концепция записка российского председательства Сеть Вольтер | Нью-Йорк (США) | 27 октября 2016 français English Español عربي 中文 Сотрудничество Организации Объединенных Наций с региональными и субрегиональными орга-низациями в поддержании международного мира и безопасности: Организация Договора о коллективной безопасности, Шанхайская организация сотрудничества и Содружество независимых государств В качестве центрального мероприятия председательства Российской Феде-рации в Совете Безопасности планируем организовать 28 октября 2016 года деба-ты на тему «Сотрудничество Организации Объединенных Наций с региональны-ми и субрегиональными организациями в поддержании международного мира и безопасности: Организация Договора о коллективной безопасности, Шанхайская организация сотрудничества и Содружество независимых государств».
Глобальный характер современных вызовов и угроз, формирование коллек-тивных подходов, необходимых для их эффективного преодоления, диктуют необходимость наращивания сотрудничества между Организацией Объединен-ных Наций и региональными и субрегиональными организациями в области под-держания мира и безопасности.
Применительно к Организации Объединенных Наций это прежде всего ее универсальный характер как с точки зрения членства в Организации, так и ее де-ятельности, а также всемирно признанная легитимность. Региональные органи-зации, в свою очередь, зачастую обладают более тонким пониманием ситуации в зоне своей ответственности, а в целом ряде случаев — адаптированными к мест-ным реалиям превентивными и миротворческими механизмами. При этом важно, чтобы деятельность региональных организаций была направлена на поиск мир-ного, политического решения возникающих конфликтных ситуаций.
Именно в этом контексте высокую актуальность имеют регулярные «сверки часов» с основными региональными партнерами Организации Объединенных Наций в вопросах поддержания международного мира и безо-пасности. Так, Совет Безопасности на плановой основе проводит заседания по сотрудничеству с Африканским союзом, Организацией по безопасности и со-трудничеству в Европе, Европейским союзом. В последние годы проводился об-зор взаимодействия с Лигой арабских государств, Ассоциацией государств Юго-Восточной Азии, Союзом южноамериканских наций и другими «регионалами».
Как известно, сотрудничество между всемирной Организацией и регио-нальными партнерами включает в себя все более широкий круг проблем. K миро-творческим и миростроительным задачам добавились противодействие распро-странению оружия массового уничтожения и незаконным потокам легкого и стрелкового оружия, борьба c кибертерроризмом и нелегальной миграцией — области, где сотрудничество между рассматриваемыми организациями и Органи-зацией Объединенных Наций набирает обороты. Это имеет ключевое значение в плане поддержания мира и стабильности на широком пространстве Евразии, и в особенности в Центральноазиатском регионе.
Именно в этой сфере активны три относительно молодые организации, дей-ствующие в огромном регионе от Восточной Европы до Дальнего Востока: Орга-низация Договора о коллективной безопасности (ОДКБ), Шанхайская организа-ция сотрудничества (ШОС) и Содружество независимых государств (СНГ), — которые наращивают свой политический авторитет в мире и вносят большой вклад в укрепление региональной и международной безопасности.
В фокусе внимания в ходе дебатов будет вклад ОДКБ, ШОС и СНГ в проти-водействие угрозам миру и безопасности в регионе, в том числе в борьбу с тер-роризмом, наркотрафиком и организованной преступностью. Мероприятие также позволит подтвердить нацеленность этих трех объединений на развитие практи-ческого взаимодействия с Организацией Объединенных Наций, в том числе с ее Региональным центром по превентивной дипломатии для Центральной Азии.
ОДКБ — это многовекторная структура, способная уверенно реагировать на широкий спектр современных вызовов и угроз, с которыми могут столкнуться ее государства-члены. В этой связи перспективным видится углубление взаимодей-ствия между Организацией Объединенных Наций и ОДКБ в области миротворче-ства. В рамках ОДКБ ведется интенсивная работа по развитию собственного ми-ротворческого потенциала, в том числе для задействования в операциях Органи-зацией Объединенных Наций по поддержанию мира. Наряду c этим ОДКБ актив-но содействует международным усилиям по постконфликтному обустройству Афганистана, купированию исходящей c территории этой страны наркоугрозы.
Ее отношения с Организацией Объединенных Наций успешно развиваются по целому ряду направлений: противодействие терроризму и наркотрафику, ми-ротворчество, борьба с организованной преступностью. Поддерживаются и раз-виваются продуктивные контакты с профильными ооновскими структурами, включая Контртеррористический комитет Совета Безопасности и Управление Организации Объединенных Наций по наркотикам и преступности.
Каждые два года Генеральной Ассамблеей принимается резолюция о со-трудничестве Организации Объединенных Наций с ОДКБ. Подобную резолюцию планируется принять на семьдесят первой сессии Ассамблеи в рамках обсужде-ния пункта ее повестки дня, озаглавленного «Сотрудничество между Организа-цией Объединенных Наций и региональными и другими организациями».
Правовая база взаимодействия между Организацией Объединенных Наций и ШОС по вопросам международного мира и безопасности в соответствии с гла-вой VIII Устава Организации Объединенных Наций была заложена после подпи-сания в 2010 году совместной декларации о сотрудничестве между секретариа-тами двух организаций. В настоящее время между ШОС и Организацией Объ-единенных Наций налажено активное сотрудничество в таких областях, как предотвращение и урегулирование конфликтов, борьба с терроризмом (в этих це-лях в рамках ШОС действует Региональная антитеррористическая структура), нераспространение оружия массового уничтожения, противодействие транснаци-ональной преступности и незаконному обороту наркотиков, обеспечение между-народной информационной безопасности.
В данном контексте ШОС активно поддерживает усилия мирового сообще-ства и институтов Организации Объединенных Наций по восстановлению мира в Афганистане, последовательно выступает за сохранение центральной координи-рующей роли этой универсальной организации в процессе афганского урегули-рования.
Сотрудничество в обеспечении безопасности, противодействии современ-ным вызовам и угрозам всегда являлось и остается одной из приоритетных обла-стей интеграционного взаимодействия государств — членов СНГ.
Важным фактором активного противодействия возникающим угрозам явля-ется также конструктивное взаимодействие с международными организациями. Государства СНГ являются участниками всех важнейших международных доку-ментов, регулирующих сотрудничество в сфере обеспечения безопасности, разоружения, противодействия современным вызовам и угрозам, вносят реаль-ный вклад в их осуществление.
Совместные меры осуществляются с учетом ведущей роли Организации Объединенных Наций, необходимости развития конструктивного партнерства с другими международными институтами и их специализированными структура-ми, такими как Контртеррористический комитет, Управление по наркотикам и преступности, Международная организация уголовной полиции (Интерпол), Международная организация по миграции, Управление Верховного комиссара Организации Объединенных Наций по делам беженцев, Группа разработки фи-нансовых мер борьбы с отмыванием денег.
Как представляется, дальнейшее расширение и углубление взаимодействия Организации Объединенных Наций с ОДКБ, ШОС и СНГ на базе главы VIII Устава играет конструктивную роль в продвижении целей всемирной Организа-ции, включая преодоление современных вызовов и угроз. При этом, с одной сто-роны, эти региональные организации должны активно позиционировать себя с точки зрения задействования своего потенциала в интересах Организации Объ-единенных Наций. C другой — самой Организации Объединенных Наций следу-ет продолжать уделять необходимое внимание наращиванию координации и вза-имодействия c данными объединениями при строгом соблюдении прерогатив всемирной Организации и ее Совета Безопасности.
В этом контексте мы хотели бы предложить государствам — членам Орга-низации Объединенных Наций изложить собственное видение путей укрепления безопасности региона Евразии с опорой на имеющиеся региональные механиз-мы. Очевидно, что стабильность в этом макрорегионе станет фундаментом для экономического роста и государственного строительства стран Евразии; поэтому мы были бы признательны за соображения делегаций, в том числе и в плане увязки безопасности и развития. Убеждены, что здесь, в рамках всемирной Орга-низации, обладающей универсальной легитимностью, нам сообща будет по си-лам предложить инновационные подходы к вопросам стабилизации уязвимых ре-гионов, которые впоследствии могут быть применены и к другим частям плане-ты, находящимся в поле зрения Совета Безопасности.
В качестве докладчиков на дебатах выступят Генеральный секретарь Организации Объединенных Наций Пан Ги Мун, Генеральный секретарь ОДКБ Н. Н. Бордюжа, Генеральный секретарь ШОС Р. К. Алимов и заместитель Пред-седателя Исполнительного комитета СНГ С. И. Иванов. К участию в заседании приглашаются государства — члены вышеупомянутых региональных организа-ций и представители других заинтересованных государств. | 0 |
Bill Herz, the last surviving crew member of Orson Welles’s mock “War of the Worlds” newscast, which terrified American radio listeners in 1938 with vivid bulletins warning Newark residents to evacuate as invading Martians incinerated central New Jersey, died on May 10 in Manhattan. He was 99. The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Bill Kux, a cousin. Mr. Herz, who worked on other radio and theater productions as stage manager and casting director for Welles’s Mercury Theater company, staked one additional claim to fame. Until about six months ago, he had been a regular customer at Sardi’s restaurant, the gathering place for celebrities and tourists in the theater district, for some 82 years — beginning in 1933, just six years after it opened. That longevity alone distinguished him as a bon vivant in a shrinking cadre of original Broadway personalties. But he was also singled out periodically in the wider world as a relic of a bygone era, when a bogus radio news broadcast could provoke panic as war was brewing in Europe — however much that hysteria may have been overstated then and since. Welles’s CBS show “The Mercury Theater on the Air” presented an adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel “The War of the Worlds” for its Halloween episode on Sunday, Oct. 30, 1938. The live hourlong program began with an updated prelude to the original novel eerily warning that superintelligent beings had been coveting “this Earth with envious eyes. ” Then music, a weather report and other regular features were interrupted by simulated news bulletins and fake feeds from operators in the field. Mr. Herz, playing Operators Three and Five, took part in this exchange: Operator Three: This is Newark, New Jersey. … This is Newark, New Jersey. … Warning! Poisonous black smoke pouring in from Jersey marshes. Reaches South Street. Gas masks useless. Urge population to move into open spaces. … Automobiles use Routes 7, 23, 24. … Avoid congested areas. Smoke now spreading over Raymond Boulevard. … Operator Four: 2X2L … calling CQ … 2X2L … calling CQ … 2X2L … calling 8X3R … Come in, please. … Operator Five: This is 8X3R … coming back at 2X2L. Operator Four: How’s reception? How’s reception? K, please. (Pause.) Where are you, 8X3R? What’s the matter? Where are you? John Houseman, Welles’s producer, wrote in his 1972 memoir, “ ”: “Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less than 40 minutes. During that time men traveled long distances, large bodies of troops were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage battles fought on land and in the air. And millions of people accepted it — emotionally if not logically. ” (Mr. Houseman went on to a distinguished career in theater and Hollywood.) Mr. Herz also read Welles’s part, that of a Professor Pierson at a New Jersey observatory, during rehearsals. He said he was surprised by the public’s response to the radio show. “During the broadcast, outside, policemen were coming,” he told CBS News in 2013. “They were told on the radio that the Martians were coming, the Martians were coming!” (Later scholarship about the incident suggested that the broadcast provoked far less fear among the public than has been popularly portrayed.) In a 2010 profile in The New York Times, Mr. Herz was quoted as saying: “I had done Orson’s part in the dress rehearsal, and after I did it, I thought to myself, ‘Nobody’s going to believe this in a million years.’ Boy, was I wrong. ” William Herz Jr. was born in Detroit on Aug. 2, 1916, the son of Harold William Herz, a girdle salesman, and the former Fannie Lichtig. (Bill Herz called himself Jr. even though he wasn’t one.) He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh before moving to New York. He was briefly married to Susanne Guettel, whose brother Henry was a producer and film executive. No immediate family members survive. Mr. Herz had met Welles in Pittsburgh, where Welles, a young director at the time, had stopped while touring with a production of “Romeo and Juliet. ” They discovered that they had a common acquaintance in the actress Edith Meiser, a friend of Mr. Herz’s parents. Mr. Herz started working for Welles as a gofer. He later moved into Welles’s Manhattan home — Mr. Herz had been living with an aunt in Brooklyn — so that he could constantly be on call. They worked together on “Julius Caesar,” “The Cradle Will Rock” and “Too Much Johnson. ” Mr. Herz joined the Army Air Forces during World War II, managed a summer theater in Connecticut and produced and managed several plays in New York (including a few flops, one inauspiciously titled “The Strangler Fig”). After one failure, Vincent Sardi Sr. the founder of Sardi’s, generously invited him to keep an open tab in good times and bad. Another advantage to eating there was that Mackey’s Ticket Agency next door, where Mr. Herz later worked, had no restroom. Ivan Lesica, Sardi’s maître d’hôtel, said on Thursday that Mr. Herz would eat there once or twice a week and sit at Table Four, to the left of the dining room entrance, under his caricature. He would have coffee delivered in his own white mug, and typically order the chicken potpie or, appropriately enough for an habitué whom his cousin described as a confirmed curmudgeon, the crab meat sandwich. | 1 |
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, drew a parallel on Wednesday between the Syrian government’s targeting of noncombatants in that nation’s civil war and the accidental bombing of civilians by United forces. Attacking Hillary Clinton over what he criticized as her overly interventionist instincts, Mr. Johnson pointed to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians killed by forces loyal to President Bashar as well as civilian deaths caused by the coalition, and said Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, bore at least partial responsibility. But when pressed four times on whether he saw a moral equivalence between deaths caused by the United States, directly or indirectly, and mass killings of civilians by Mr. Assad and his allies, Mr. Johnson made clear that he did. “Well no, of course not — we’re so much better than all that,” Mr. Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, said sarcastically. “We’re so much better when in Afghanistan, we bomb the hospital and 60 people are killed in the hospital. ” The remarks by Mr. Johnson came in an interview with The New York Times after a string of damaging stumbles when he has fielded questions about foreign affairs. After failing to recognize the Syrian city of Aleppo during a television interview Sept. 8, Mr. Johnson had another difficult moment on Sept. 28, when he vainly tried to name a foreign leader whom he admired. In the Times interview on Wednesday, Mr. Johnson conspicuously sought to avoid another misstep. Asked if he knew the name of North Korea’s leader, Mr. Johnson replied, “I do. ” “You want me to name” the person, he said, then paused, before adding dryly, “Really. ” But he declined to supply the name. Mr. Johnson complained that Mrs. Clinton was being judged on her base of knowledge rather than her interventionist instincts. “Because Hillary Clinton can dot the i’s and cross the t’s on geographic leaders, of the names of foreign leaders,” he said, “the underlying fact that hundreds of thousands of people have died in Syria goes by the wayside. ” He charged that Mrs. Clinton “bears responsibility for what’s happened, shared responsibility for what’s happened in Syria. I would not have put us in that situation from the . ” More than 400, 000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war, according to the United Nations. But Mr. Johnson complained that presidential candidates were expected to talk tough about dealing with dictators like Mr. Assad or risk losing support. “This is what happens in this country right now — unless you’re willing to say that you’re going to get tough on this stuff, on these atrocities — and these atrocities are horrible — but unless you as a politician are willing to do something about these atrocities then we’re not going to elect you,” Mr. Johnson said. Mr. Johnson speculated about the deals or promises that the Obama administration may have dangled before forces, but then said at other points that he was at a disadvantage discussing world events because he has not received the classified briefings that the Democratic and Republican nominees for president have been given. Mr. Johnson also declined to say whether his running mate, former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts, had warned him of his intention to change course and spend the remainder of the presidential campaign attacking Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, as unqualified. Mr. Weld revealed those plans in an interview with The Boston Globe on Tuesday. “That may be his primary mission,” Mr. Johnson said of Mr. Weld’s plans. “We’re not scripted at all. And so I guess my role will be Hillary and his role will be Donald Trump. ” But he insisted that Mr. Weld would not drop out at any point and endorse Mrs. Clinton. “Absolutely,” Mr. Johnson said when asked if Mr. Weld would fight on until Nov. 8. Mr. Johnson said that the idea of hunkering down and trying to make an aggressive play to win his home state of New Mexico, where polls show him in contention, had crossed his mind. But he conceded that his chances of winning outright were all but gone. “Right now it’s a Hail Mary, not being in the presidential debates,” he said. | 1 |
On Thursday, Republican Senators Ted Cruz ( ) and Lindsey Graham ( ) introduced legislation that would defund the United Nations over the Security Council’s passage of UN Resolution 2334, which calls Israeli construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem “illegal. ”[The “Safeguard Israel Act” states that the U. S. government will be prohibited from giving any money to the UN, or any of its affiliates, until President Barack Obama confirms the UN resolution has been repealed and can certify that he has done so. America provides the UN with 22 percent of its budget, contributing $8 billion to the largely organization annually. “United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 falsely claims that Israel’s sovereignty over the eastern part of Jerusalem and Jewish communities in the West Bank are illegal under international law, and that the Old City of Jerusalem, along with the Temple Mount, the holiest site for the Jewish people, and the Western Wall are ‘occupied Palestinian territory,’” the Safeguard Israel Act states. The December 23 resolution 2334 passed nearly unanimously despite the Obama administration’s decision to break with tradition and abstain from voting instead of vetoing it. Because the United States is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, an American veto would have automatically stopped the resolution and prevented it from passing. “President Obama betrayed decades of robust bipartisan American support for Israel at the United Nations by permitting the passage of a biased resolution that condemns our close friend and ally,” Sen. Cruz said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday morning. “The Security Council’s resolution is only the latest example of the UN’s long history of obsessive hostility towards Israel. ” Sen. Graham said, “I begged the UN months before, don’t put me in this box. I think most Americans believe the United Nations has become more more . ” He added, “I’m a big internationalist, but we’re gonna stop the money until we get this fixed. ” The Safeguard Israel Act also notes that during his final address to the UNSC on December 16, outgoing UN Ban admitted UN bias against Israel when he stated, “Decades of political maneuverings have created a disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports, and conferences criticizing Israel. ” The legislation adds, the “United Nations passes more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country in the world. ” Last week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution on a vote objecting to the Security Council vote. Despite strong bipartisan support for the measure, at least 75 Democrats and four Republicans voted against it many of the opposing Democrats accused Republicans of introducing HR 11 to attack Obama unfairly in the last two weeks of his presidency. Rep. Jan Schakowsky ( ) Rep. David Price ( ) and Rep. Keith Ellison ( ) were among Democrats to vote against HR 11. Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNaz, | 1 |
Before you start complaining about the Philippines, take a look at your own country. We won't be entitled to criticize other countries until we've had 8 years of Trump to straighten our own messes out. | 0 |
Rose Evansky, a British hairdresser who liberated women from the prison of the domed dryer when she invented styling at her London salon in the early 1960s, died on Nov. 21. She was 94. Her death was reported only recently by the British news media. There was no information on where she died. Mrs. Evansky, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, set up as a hairstylist soon after World War II. She and her hairdresser husband, Albert, opened a small shop in Hendon, a London suburb, and did so well that, in 1954, they moved to Mayfair, where the city’s elite paid top money for styling. One day in 1962, as she faced a tedious morning of chemical and tight curling, tasks she disliked, inspiration struck. “I’d been wandering past a barbershop in Brook Street around the corner from our salon in North Audley Street, and I saw the barber drying the front of a man’s hair with a brush and a dryer,” she told W magazine in 2012. “And this image — of the barber with the dryer — flashed through my mind and I thought, ‘Why not for women? ’” She experimented on one of her clients, a Mrs. Hay. “I picked up a spiky plastic hairbrush and a hand dryer and started rolling a wet section of her hair around the brush, followed by warm air from the hand dryer held in my left hand,” she wrote in a memoir, “In Paris We Sang” (2013). “The more sections of wet hair I rolled over the brush, the easier it became, and soon part of Mrs. Hay’s curly hair looked smooth, as if it had been brushed through from a set. Exciting!” One day by chance, Lady Clare Rendlesham, the editor of the British edition of Vogue, dropped by the salon and, witnessing a in progress, stopped dead in her tracks. “What are you doing, Rose?” Mrs. Evansky recalled her shouting. Lady Clare immediately tipped off her friend Barbara Griggs, the fashion editor of The Evening Standard, who came in to behold the soft and flowing style. That afternoon, the newspaper trumpeted the news of “the blow wave” to its readers. “This instantly earned her a reputation as one of the top hairdressers in London and went on to become the norm in hair drying,” Hairdressers Journal International wrote in 2012, celebrating the industry’s pioneers. Mrs. Evansky took quiet pride in getting women out from under the sizzling heat of the dome, and in the durability of her invention. “I always look at the prices of hairdressers now, and I say, my God, it’s still there: ‘’” she told an interviewer for the beauty brand Space NK in 2013. “How wonderful, 50 years later. ” She was born Rosel Lerner on May 30, 1922, in Worms, south of Frankfurt. Her parents were immigrants from Poland. In 1938, when the family was living in Ludwigshafen, her father was arrested and imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. Speaking only German and Yiddish, she was sent to Britain on one of the last Kindertransport trains that carried Jewish children out of Germany. She lived briefly with a family in Dudley, in the West Midlands, before moving to London, just in time for the Blitz. There, she apprenticed for a barber in Whitechapel, and distinguished herself with her zeal. “I worked and practiced till late at night on anyone who’d let me get at their hair,” she wrote in her memoir. As World War II raged, she embarked on her career, finding work at a salon near Regent Street. In 1943, she married Albert Evansky. When their marriage ended in divorce, her husband bought her share of the business. He sold it in the early 1980s. What Florence was to painting and sculpture during the Renaissance, Mayfair was to the art of hairstyling in the 1950s and ’60s. Mrs. Evansky sat atop the heap, the lone woman in a field monopolized by men. In “Vidal: The Autobiography,” Vidal Sassoon called her “without question the top female stylist in the country and the equal of any man. ” Her protégés included Leonard Lewis, known professionally as Leonard of Mayfair, who died on Nov. 30. Mrs. Evansky was in the forefront of the Mayfair style, which emphasized “freedom and movement, rather than contrived waves and curls,” Kim Smith of the University of East London wrote in her doctoral dissertation on West London hair salons. The Mayfair look led directly to the internationally celebrated styles associated with Swinging London and the likes of Jean Shrimpton, Julie Christie and Twiggy, who was a client of Mr. Lewis. In 1965, soon after leaving her husband, Mrs. Evansky married the playwright Denis Cannan, took his last name and moved with him to the countryside in East Sussex. He died in 2011. She is survived by two stepsons, Alexander and Nicholas Cannan a stepdaughter, Crescy Cannan and two . Her own hair was naturally . “My hair is best described as ‘windswept,’ as I live near the sea,” she told W magazine. “I’ve never colored it, and I cut it myself. Why would I let anyone else when I can do it myself?” | 1 |
Brother Hodges,
There is no need to have other people discredit you. You do great in accomplishing this all by yourself. I think that what lends credence to this, is that you have NEVER been right regarding ANYTHING. EVER.
Sincerely, Your #! Fan | 0 |
Private equity firm Blackstone Group, in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, announced that they would commit $40 billion to invest in infrastructure projects, mainly in the U. S.[Blackstone, by Trump supporter Stephen Schwarzman, entered a agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) to move forward with this initiative, the Hill reported. Saudi Arabia’s PIF had agreed to put down $20 billion for the project, while the rest of the money would come from outside investors. Although Blackstone says the fund has been negotiated between the firms for the past year, the partnership is which means that there is not a formal structure for the fund yet and the firms are still discussing certain aspects of the agreement, Forbes reported. Blackstone and PIF each gave a vote of confidence to the new partnership. “This potential investment reflects our positive views around the ambitious infrastructure initiatives being undertaken in the United States as announced by President Trump,” PIF managing director Yasir said in a statement. “This will create American jobs and will lay the foundation for stronger economic growth,” Blackstone president Hamilton James said. The partnership between the U. S. and Saudi Arabian companies comes as President Trump is visiting Saudi Arabia as the initial stop of his first trip abroad as president. Trump has already signed a series of agreements with Saudi King Salman solidifying their military and economic partnerships on his first full day in the country. | 1 |
Saturated Fat and Heart Disease: “The Greatest Scam in the History of Medicine”
by Brian Shilhavy Editor, Health Impact News
Dr. Malcom Kendrick is a Scottish doctor and author of the book The Great Cholesterol Con .
Recently he wrote a blog post on saturated fat and cardiovascular disease. He commented on how the science actually proves the opposite conclusion from what is commonly believed about saturated fats:
To be honest, I have studied saturated fat consumption many, many… many, many, times. The one thing that has always stood out, most starkly, is the complete lack of any real evidence to support the idea that it causes cardiovascular disease.
On the other hand, evidence contradicting it arrives on an almost daily basis.
Kendrick goes on to quote from a recently published study which showed, in Kendrick’s words:
The more saturated fat you eat, the lower your risk of dying of cardiovascular disease, and vice-versa.
So why is this hypothesis about saturated fat and heart disease so entrenched in medical circles?
Kendrick draws an interesting parallel between the recent attacks against Dr. Waney Squier and her exposure of the theory of “Shaken Baby Syndrome” as having no scientific merit.
My thoughts were drawn to this issue by something seemingly unconnected. Which is a legal hearing in the UK concerning shaken baby syndrome. Most experts in paediatrics are absolutely convinced that there is such a thing. It is quoted in textbooks as an undisputed fact. Many parents, and other adults, have been convicted, and sent to jail, for shaking their babies so hard that it caused the ‘triad’ of shaken baby syndrome: subdural hematoma, retinal bleeding, and brain swelling
On the other hand, we have Dr. Waney Squier, a paediatrician who used to provide expert opinion on child abuse cases in the UK. She was struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC) for, well the exact judgement is, as per Derrida, impossible to understand.
Leaving the machinations of the GMC aside, the main issue is simple. Dr. Waney Squier does not believe that shaken baby syndrome exists. Of course she knows that the triad of subdural haematoma, retinal bleeding and brain swelling exists. But she believes there could be other explanations. Including, perish the very thought, an accidental fall.
Because she does not believe in shaken baby syndrome, she has presented evidence in court which has tended to undermine the prosecution case against parents and carers, accused of shaking a baby and causing severe brain damage. Much to the annoyance of the police, and they then, for it was indeed them, reported Dr. Squier to the GMC.
Now, I know what most of you are thinking. Surely ‘shaken baby syndrome’ exists. This must have been proven. Well, it has not. If you think about it, how could it be proven? How do you think a study on shaken baby syndrome could ever be done? Get five hundred children, shake them forcefully and see what happens to their brains. I suspect you might find gaining ethical approval for a such a study might be tricky. Shaken Baby Syndrome: Saturated Fat Consumption
Kendrick goes on to explain what he sees as the rationale in both scientific theories that seem to have very little evidence to support, and yet is widely held in medical circles. Regarding Shaken Baby Syndrome:
On the fact of it shaken baby syndrome and saturated fat consumption have very little in common. However, from another perspective the parallels are clear. Both are seductively simple ideas that appeal to common sense. That most deadly of all senses.
Most people can clearly see how a small, vulnerable, baby will suffer significant brain injury if it is shaken too hard. Close your eyes and you can virtually see it happening. If you can bear having that image in your head for any length of time.
Most parents, I think, can almost see themselves doing it, or having done it – when their child will ‘just not dammed well stop crying.’ In short, shaken baby syndrome can easily be visualised, and it triggers a kind of visceral horror. We can easily see how a feckless parent may lack the self-control required to stop themselves doing it. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up….’
And that, dear reader, is as scientific as shaken baby syndrome gets. A hypothesis based on visceral fear, prejudice, and knee-jerk judgement. This makes it almost perfectly resistant to any contradictory evidence. Try to argue against it, and you will meet anger and bluster and the idée fixe.
Regarding Saturated Fats causing Heart Disease:
The ‘saturated fat causing heart disease hypothesis’ comes from a very similar place called – well, it’s obvious isn’t it, just common sense. Heart disease is basically a build up of fat in the arteries, isn’t it? Where can that possibly come from? Fat in the diet. Especially the thick, sticky, gooey stuff that you get on a pork chop, or suchlike. That’s got to be it hasn’t it? The thick horrible squidgy gooey fat that you eat, ends up as thick horrible squidgy gooey fat in your arteries. Serves you right for eating fat, and McDonald’s, and suchlike.
There rests the entire scientific argument against saturated fat. As such it is difficult to argue against. Facts simply bounce off.
Comment on this article at CoconutOil.com. Published on November 9, 2016 Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!
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On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Wolf,” Senator Jeff Merkley ( ) stated that Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court is a “ scheme. ” And that if Gorsuch was principled, “he would have turned down this nomination, on the basis that the person who should be nominated is Merrick Garland. ” Merkley said he would vote against Gorsuch because “I’m not going to be part of a scheme. This seat, for the first time in US history, was stolen from one president and delivered to the next, with the hope of packing the court to the far right. And with Gorsuch, we’re talking to the very far right. ” Merkley further said that if Gorsuch was principled, “he would have turned down this nomination, on the basis that the person who should be nominated is Merrick Garland. ” He later added, “[I]f one doesn’t care about the integrity of the court, and you just want to look at this nominee from a judicial perspective, we have two other significant problems with him. The first is that the president’s team is under investigation for having potentially interfered in the US presidential election. If that turns out to be true, that is traitorous conduct. And that means that this conversation should be set aside until that is cleared up. And the second is, Gorsuch is way out of the mainstream. He hates class action lawsuits. He doesn’t want the LGBT community to be able to use the courts to end discrimination. He finds and twists a lot to find corporations — for corporations against ordinary citizens time after time after time. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
Thu, 27 Oct 2016 11:40 UTC © Joshua Lott / Reuters It will take close to two centuries for women to earn the same as men, according to the World Economic Forum's latest report. The annual Global Gender Gap Report was released Tuesday and found economic disparity between the sexes is on the rise. When looking at income and employment, we are back to similar levels of inequality seen during the 2008 financial crash. "At the current rate of change, and given the widening economic gender gap since last year, it will not be closed for another 170 years," the report read. The Gender Gap Index uses economics, education, health and political empowerment to rank 144 countries that have enough available data to use. Last year's report estimated it would take 118 years for economic equality to be achieved. Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden were the best countries on the Global Gender Gap Index having closed the gender gap in more than 80 percent of cases, but all still have disparities between the sexes. Rwanda and Ireland came fifth and sixth in the index. The UK came 20th and the US came 45th, falling 17 places from last year. Yemen came last. "There also continues to be a persistent wage gap in paid work," the report says. "Women's average earnings are almost half those of men, with average global earned income for women and men estimated at US$10,778 and $19,873, respectively. Countries that perform well in this dimension of gender parity span all regional and income groups." To examine economic participation and opportunity, the report looks at the ratio of female and male workers, wage equality for similar work and the ratio of women to men in various roles. The greatest gap between the sexes was found in political empowerment. The first Index was conducted in 2006 to track gender disparities and countries' progress over time. | 0 |
Autry Pruitt, board member of FAIRtax. org spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Friday regarding tax day rallies planned to take place across America, including in front of Trump Tower in NYC. [Said Pruitt, “FAIRtax. org is holding a rally tomorrow and we’re holding the rally to help remind President Trump of what he promised. Our fear after watching the recent events in Syria, our fear after watching what occurred with Obamacare is that President Trump is going to be urged, he’s going to get a push from the media, to turn tax reform over to the establishment. ” “And that’s exactly what we do not want,” he continued. “So, we felt that at this time it is imperative that all the people who voted for him, who’s sweat and I believe your previous guest who talked about having blood coming from their feet as they marched for him, we believe that it’s imperative that we remind President Trump we were there for you. We got you there. When nobody else said you could, we said you can and you will. ” Pruitt also authored a book titled Planes, Steak Water: Defending Donald J. Trump in September of 2016. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
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Obamacare is once again in the news – this time for the massive rate hikes Americans have to look forward to in a few months. The right is decrying the hikes, as the left desperately tries to down-play them or just deflect and change the subject.
Citizens already stretched to their budgetary limits are wondering how on Earth they will ever be able to afford the insurance premiums – some rising well over 50%. I personally fail to see how a family who is struggling to pay their current premiums will ever be able swing even a 15 or 20% increase, much less 50%.
Combine the massive rate hikes with the availability of insurers, which shrink every year, and you have a recipe for mass financial disaster. Can you say a record year for personal bankruptcy? Yeah – I think so. And always remember – Obamacare is just shoddy health insurance. It is NOT healthcare, as everyone on the left consistently and purposely sells it. The left does like their word games.
But, as has been said a myriad of times from us on the right – Obamacare is a fiasco by design. It is a premeditated failure. A single-payer, entirely government-run system has always been the end. Obamacare was always intended to be the deceptive means to that end.
As a single-payer healthcare system is the want of the leftist statists, let me site yet another example of what the future holds for many in the good ole U.S. of A.
Jolly old England is said to have the “best of both worlds” – private and public healthcare; but in fact, only the wealthiest 5-7% can afford the private care, leaving the rest to the public option – which is far from adequate.
Inadequate care and hopelessly long wait times just to receive the sub-par care is the rule in England, not the exception.
In 2011, the UK Telegraph reported that, “NHS [National Health Service] managers are deliberately delaying operations as they wait for patients either to die or go private in order to save money, according to an official report.” That’s right. In order to cut costs, bureaucrats at the NHS have become defacto “death panels.” Sound familiar?
One such poor sap who just recently ended up caught in the maze of the British healthcare bureaucracy is Paul Dibbins, a former British Army Lance Corporal. The father of three had suffered serious frost bite. After months of trying to heal his toes, he had developed gangrene.
The NHS scheduled surgery to remove his lower leg – below the knee. Without the surgery, the gangrene would spread, eventually killing him. A grim outlook either way, but having no lower leg is better than an agonizing death, he thought.
Unfortunately for the former soldier, the NHS made him wait six weeks for the procedure. And then something happened. At the eleventh hour, NHS postponed the surgery yet again, for another six weeks – no doubt, in an attempt to cut costs.
Mr. Dibbins was desperate at this point and decided to do the only thing he could. He said: “Knowing that it would take at least another six weeks to get me in front of a surgeon again, that’s when I bit the bullet and cut off the toes.”
And that he did. Using no painkillers at all, Dibbins scraped away the dead flesh from his two blackened toes and proceeded to sever the tendons with the only thing he had available – a pair of nail clippers. The procedure took him about an hour to remove both affected toes. A surgeon later told him he was crazy, but that the home-style operation was “textbook.”
So, as we proceed further down the path of a single-payer, government run healthcare system, home surgery may also be in our future – as Washington bureaucrats and death panels decide which of us is worth saving.
I better dust off my old game of “ Operation ” and start practicing. shares | 0 |
Reuters reported: ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) — U. S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Iran President Hassan Rouhani “better be careful” after Rouhani was quoted as saying that anyone who speaks to Iranians with threats would regret it. [Trump was asked in a brief appearance in the press cabin aboard Air Force One about Rouhani’s reported remarks to a rally in Tehran to celebrate the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Rouhani was quoted in media reports as saying Iran had shown in the 38 years since the revolution that “it will make anyone who speaks to Iranians with the language of threats regret it. ” “He better be careful,” Trump said. Read the full story here. | 1 |
With this week’s imprimatur from the legendary investor Warren Buffett, it should now be official: Apple, the world’s largest company by market capitalization and a symbol of American technological innovation, is a “value” stock. That may prove to be a decidedly mixed blessing. Mr. Buffett is the world’s most prominent and successful proponent of value investing — an approach that seeks stocks that are undervalued and sell for less than their “intrinsic value,” as Benjamin Graham put it his 1949 classic “The Intelligent Investor. ” Mr. Buffett credits Mr. Graham with shaping his own approach to investing. So value investors took notice when Mr. Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, disclosed it had invested $1 billion in Apple stock during the last quarter. “We’ve just looked at it again,” said Bill Smead, who manages the Smead Value Fund, one of the most successful value mutual funds over the last five years, according to Morningstar. “Anybody that discounts the thinking at Berkshire Hathaway does so at their peril, in my opinion. ” Value stocks are typically unpopular among many investors, their shares often battered by disappointing revenue and earnings results. They usually trade at very low ratios, a common valuation measure. Nonetheless, some academic studies have suggested that over time, they outperform other stocks, in part because expectations are so low. Today there are numerous value investors, value mutual funds and value funds that pursue variations of the strategy, many of them probably now considering adding Apple to their portfolios, if they haven’t already. Apple “is going to attract more value investors,” said Toni Sacconaghi, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein who covers Apple. “They’re looking for stocks with negative sentiment. Apple has traded below a market multiple for years and sentiment has become increasingly pessimistic, especially over the past month. ” Mr. Sacconaghi has a buy recommendation on the stock, “not because we believe this will be a company going forward, but because the current price is discounting a decline in cash flow forever, and we think that’s overly pessimistic. ” According to the market research firm Thomson Reuters Lipper, just 69 of 357 actively managed value funds in the United States — fewer than 20 percent — currently hold positions in Apple. That’s because Apple has long been considered a quintessential growth stock: one of the glamorous cousins to dowdy value stocks. Growth investors think growth stocks are undervalued, too, because they expect their earnings to grow faster (often much faster) than other investors recognize. As a result, valuation measures for growth stocks can go . In two prominent examples, shares of Facebook trade at a ratio of about 73, and Netflix at about 312. (The average for stocks in the Standard Poor’s index is currently about 24.) This week Apple’s ratio was just over 10. If Apple is now a value stock, though, plenty of growth investors haven’t gotten the message. Among actively managed growth funds, 249 of 619, or 40 percent, hold Apple shares, according to Thomson Reuters Lipper. That’s more than the 230 growth funds that owned Apple stock in 2014. Should growth funds suddenly decide that Apple no longer meets their criteria, there could be a mass exodus that would be only partly offset by new purchases from value investors. Some prominent value investors aren’t convinced Apple really is a value stock, despite Mr. Buffett’s blessing, or that its stock price is significantly below its intrinsic value. (Intrinsic value considers all aspects of a business, including both tangible and intangible factors.) That means Apple could fall into the neutral zone of stocks that are neither growth — because they aren’t growing fast enough — or value, because they’re still not cheap enough. “Apple is extraordinarily cheap, but it’s never been a value stock in the traditional sense,” said Bruce Greenwald, who runs the value investing program at Columbia Business School and is a of “Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond” (Wiley, 2001). “Value investing has always focused primarily on asset value,” Professor Greenwald told me. Apple’s book value, or asset value, of $130 billion isn’t even close to its market capitalization of about $515 billion. That means, in theory, that other companies could replicate Apple’s assets at relatively low cost, produce rival products and undermine Apple’s enviably high profit margins. Tech companies typically have low asset values relative to their share prices — one reason Mr. Buffett and other value investors long shunned the sector — but their patented technologies and intellectual property nonetheless often create formidable barriers to entry by competitors. For an extraordinarily technology company like Apple, the question is whether there are such “moats,” as value investors like to put it, that will continue to protect it from these competitive threats. “That’s always been the issue with Apple,” Professor Greenwald said. “How sustainable are these profit levels and how big are the barriers? The fear with Apple is that it will get overwhelmed by new entry and new competitors. The moat doesn’t seem that big. It’s not just giant rivals like Samsung, but smaller companies that can survive with even a small share of the smartphone market. ” Mr. Smead told me this week he had not added Apple to his value fund’s holdings, even though the stock is so cheap that it meets many of his fund’s investing criteria. “Over the past five or six years, when Apple was doing so well, we joked that we were the fund that didn’t own Apple,” Mr. Smead said. “Not that we didn’t wrestle with it many times. ” “Our difficulty has been that we don’t understand what kind of moat protects their technology over the next 10 years,” Mr. Smead continued. “That’s the main problem. The other is that, given Apple’s huge success and its sheer magnitude, it needs a monstrous new product or enhancement of an existing product to move the needle on growth. ” For their part, many growth investors were startled on April 26 when Apple reported its first quarterly revenue drop since 2003. Both revenue and earnings fell short of analyst estimates, and Apple shares plunged 8 percent in one day. They rallied some this week on news of the Berkshire Hathaway investment, but are still down sharply from where they were as recently as . But Apple still has defenders among growth investors. At the end of the year, Apple was the holding in the Upright Growth Fund, the growth fund so far this year, according to Morningstar. “Apple’s best and fastest growing days may be behind us,” David Chiueh, Upright Growth’s president and fund manager, told me. “But even funds like ours don’t just contain stocks with percent growth rates in our portfolio. ” He said such rapid growth was not sustainable, and added that he was happy with companies that showed “solid 8 percent to 12 percent earnings growth,” a category in which he included Apple. ”Give them some time and they will show outstanding performance,” he said. Mr. Chiueh said he was also encouraged that Apple had stepped up its spending on research and development, suggesting that new products with strong growth prospects might still be in the offing. At some fund families, Apple seems to be both a value and a growth stock, even though that seems contradictory. At the fund giant Vanguard, Apple is a major holding in the Vanguard Windsor and Windsor II funds (both value funds) and the Vanguard Morgan Growth Fund and US Growth Fund. A Vanguard spokeswoman declined to comment. All of which suggests that when it comes to Apple, “value” and “growth” may be in the eye of the beholder. Still, Mr. Buffett’s announcement this week underscores that Apple’s once sizzling growth has slowed, and suggests it may well be on the inexorable path from growth to value stock. That’s not an especially good portent for investors. Among technology companies that have already made the same transition, Professor Greenwald cited IBM, Intel, Cisco, Microsoft and Dell, companies whose share prices, after great rocket rides, have mostly languished in recent years. (Dell was taken private in 2013.) For those who failed to buy the stock early enough, “as investments, they all turned out pretty badly,” he noted. Berkshire Hathaway also disclosed this week that it had increased the stake in IBM it first acquired in 2011. IBM shares have declined over the period, but by Mr. Buffett’s standards, the investment is still too new to judge. “If you believe the iPhone will be the global standard in 25 years, you’d buy” Apple stock, Professor Greenwald said. But many value investors have already seen where smartphones can go, “which is where PCs have already gone. ” | 1 |
Email
Donald Trump has all the momentum now. Will it be enough to propel him to victory on election day? Trump’s poll numbers were improving even before we learned that the FBI had renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails , and the new survey results that came out over the weekend and on Monday make it clear that Clinton’s “certain victory” is not so certain after all. Unless something changes, Americans are going to go to the polls on November 8th with an FBI criminal investigation hanging over the Clinton campaign like an ominous cloud, and that is very good news for Trump.
The Clinton campaign was hoping that this renewed investigation would not “move the needle”, but unfortunately for them that appears not to be the case. Hillary’s unfavorable rating just hit an all-time high , a whopping 45 percent of all Americans believe that this scandal is “worse than Watergate”, and a Rasmussen survey has found that 40 percent of all undecided voters that are leaning toward voting for Hillary Clinton are still open to changing their minds before election day.
And even before this story broke on Friday, Clinton was having a difficult time getting her voters to the polls. According to the New York Times , early voting among young adults and African-American voters is significantly down compared to 2012, and those are demographic groups that Clinton desperately needs to turn out in large numbers.
But of course the key to winning the election is getting to 270 electoral votes, and poll numbers appear to be shifting in the key swing states that Trump and Clinton both desperately need. For a moment, I would like to examine what the numbers currently look like in some of the most important states…
Florida
Without Florida, Donald Trump has absolutely no chance of winning. This is something that even the Trump campaign has admitted. That is why it was so alarming that most of the polls in October had Hillary Clinton leading in the state.
Fortunately for Trump, a new survey that was conducted on Sunday shows him leading in Florida by four points .
Georgia
Georgia wasn’t supposed to be a problem. Georgia has traditionally been a deep red state, but polling throughout this election season had shown a very tight race. This had Republicans deeply concerned and the Clinton camp very happy.
But now the momentum has seemingly shifted and the latest poll has Trump up by seven points .
North Carolina
Mitt Romney won North Carolina in 2012, and Donald Trump very much needs to win it if he hopes to be triumphant on November 8th. Hillary Clinton was shown to be leading in the eight most recent polls before the email story broke, but in the first major survey conducted afterwards she is now down by two points .
Ohio
No Republican has ever won the presidency without Ohio, and Trump knows how important it is to his chances. The three most recent polls conducted before the FBI renewed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails all showed a tie, but now the very first survey conducted afterwards shows Trump up by five points .
Colorado
Hillary Clinton has consistently been in the lead in Colorado throughout this campaign, and most experts didn’t give Trump much of a chance in the state, but the latest survey shows that Clinton’s lead has been whittled down to just one point .
Arizona
A survey that was conducted in mid-October showed Clinton having a five point lead in John McCain’s home state, but now the latest major poll has Trump up by two points .
Nevada
One of the most important swing states out west is Nevada, and most surveys showed Hillary Clinton with a strong lead throughout the month of October. Unfortunately for her, a poll that was conducted on Sunday shows Donald Trump with a four point lead .
Clearly Trump has the momentum at this point, and it will be very interesting to see how the numbers change over the next few days.
And as we learn more about what is in these newly discovered emails, will her fellow Democrats stick with her? Already, some are publicly wavering. The following example comes from WND …
Longtime Clinton confidante and former Democratic pollster Doug Schoen told Fox News the newly renewed FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server is forcing him to “reassess” his support for the Democratic nominee for president.
Schoen, a Fox News contributor, made the comments to host Harris Faulkner during a live television appearance Sunday night on “Fox Report Weekend.”
Public opinion is shifting quickly, but the bad news for Trump is that more than 23 million Americans have already voted. So millions upon millions of Americans cast their votes before they even learned of this new FBI investigation. If the race is very close, that could end up making the difference.
And of course the race could dramatically change once again if the FBI comes to some sort of resolution about these new emails prior to November 8th. On Monday, CNN reported that a resolution before election day did not appear to be likely…
FBI officials are unlikely to finish their review of new emails potentially related to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server before the November 8 election.
The initial work of cataloging top Clinton aide Huma Abedin ’s emails found on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop could be done in the next few days, US law enforcement officials told CNN.
But the investigators are expected to spend more time doing other work, including likely working with other federal agencies to determine what — if any — classified materials are in the emails. This makes it unlikely there will be a resolution prior to the election.
However, late on Monday evening the Drudge Report reported that the L.A. Times has learned that investigators may have a “preliminary assessment” completed “in coming days”…
LA TIMES TUESDAY: FBI Investigators had planned to conduct new email review over several weeks. It now hopes to complete ‘preliminary assessment’ in coming days, but agency officials have not decided how, or whether, they will disclose results publicly… Developing…
Whether good or bad, I do believe that the American people deserve to hear something conclusive about these emails before November 8th.
If nothing is found to implicate Clinton, the American people should be told that.
And if evidence of very serious crimes is discovered, there is no way in the world that should be held back until after the election.
Even if it throws the election into complete and utter chaos , the American people deserve to know the truth.
But will we get it?
Stay tuned, because I think that this is going to be a crazy week.
Take a look at the future of America: The Beginning of the End and then prepare Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . shares | 0 |
Hillary Horrified As 2 Pics Surfaced Overnight That She Didn’t Want Out Posted on October 31, 2016 by Amanda Shea in Politics Share This Worried Hillary Clinton (left), Vindicated Donald Trump (right)
Hillary Clinton got a Halloween surprise early when she turned on her computer and saw what was on Google. While she slept, forgetting about everything that came against her on Friday when the FBI decided to re-investigate her emails and private server, someone else was taking full advantage of the situation and exposing the truth about her as two posts showed.
After Barack Obama gave control of the Internet to International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Hillary may have thought that her secrets would be safe. As WikiLeaks continues to prove, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Clever conservative web users are alive and well, working hard to expose the secrets that she’s enjoyed keeping behind closed doors before the Internet came along and swung them wide open, exposing the scandalous and criminal behavior that she almost got away with.
Since Google tends to lean left and caters to liberal agendas, it’s not often that the search results you’re looking for are all that accurate. However, on Sunday, almost 36 hours after news broke about the FBI investigating Hillary, if you were to search two separate terms, the results were awesomely accurate.
A tricky hacker managed to mess with the algorithm so that if anyone was looking for the definition of “pathological liar” on the popular search engine, the top result showed Hillary’s headshot alongside the description, but that wasn’t all. @triplejHack What in the Wide World of Sports is going on with Google!? pic.twitter.com/PJHC23CzDK
— Dilo on Fire (@FireDilo) October 31, 2016
The definition of this term said, “It is a stand-alone disorder as well as a symptom of other disorders such as psychopathy and antisocial, narcissistic, and historic personality disorders, but people who are pathological liars may not possess characteristics of the other disorders. Excessive lying is a common symptom of several mental disorders.” While that description may always come up in Google for “Pathological liar,” Hillary’s picture isn’t typically there, but it is the perfect example of the mental illness.
Adding to the insult was another search result the hacker altered for better accuracy. When searching for who the “45th President” is, Donald Trump’s picture showed up, which Hillary probably wasn’t too happy about. The comparison between the two searches perfectly represents both presidential candidates. With any luck, the results will stay the same after November 8 and the treatment for Hillary’s diagnosis of “pathological liar” will be prison time. | 0 |
AUGUSTA, Me. — Paul R. LePage, the embattled Republican governor of Maine, declared on Wednesday that he would not step down despite widespread criticism over a profane threat and generalizations about drugs and race that had prompted him to hint on Tuesday that he might abort his second term. “I will not resign,” said Mr. LePage, who tried to put to rest swirling questions about his state of mind. “I’m not an alcoholic, and I’m not a drug addict, and I don’t have mental issues,” he said. “What I have is a backbone. ” Mr. LePage nevertheless said he was seeking “spiritual guidance,” had apologized for his threat, and vowed to make one change to his behavior: “I will no longer speak to the press ever again after today,” he said. Behind the scenes, state lawmakers — Democrats and Senate Republicans — exasperated after six years of political controversies and what they saw as erratic behavior, were scrambling to figure out what, if anything, they could do to formally address this latest crisis. The controversy, which has galvanized the state, started last Wednesday when Mr. LePage made sweeping statements linking minorities to the state’s drug crisis. As criticism against him swelled, Mr. LePage came to believe that a Democratic lawmaker had called him a racist. The governor then left him an voicemail message, which he followed up by threatening to shoot the lawmaker between the eyes. In the ensuing days, Mr. LePage also reiterated his insistence that blacks and Hispanics were the vast majority of those arrested for dealing heroin in Maine. Both Democrats and Republicans have denounced the remarks, as many legislators called for a special session to at least rebuke the governor over his latest tirade. The state’s four legislative caucuses have said that they believe all four would have to agree for a special session to be scheduled. But on Tuesday, Mr. LePage’s Republican allies in the House, including the minority leader, Kenneth Fredette, announced that they would oppose those efforts — essentially shielding him from any official political consequence. That decision did not sit well with some other state Republicans, and on Wednesday morning, the spotlight shifted to them as the president of the Senate, whose members govern larger and more competitive districts, made a public break with his colleagues in the House. “With all due respect, I completely disagree with Representative Fredette’s position,” the Republican leader, Michael Thibodeau, said in a statement. “The Republican senate caucus has clearly stated that we need an acceptable plan for corrective action before the determination of whether the Legislature should convene is made. ” Mr. Thibodeau said many Senate Republicans were still deciding whether or not Mr. LePage’s apology and promise to seek “spiritual guidance” had allayed their concerns about the governor — a process that could deepen their divide with Republicans in the House and pull the controversy into a second week. “There should be consequences for our actions,” Mr. Thibodeau said, “and I think that’s why we’re really struggling. ” There is no precedent for such a situation here — a fact that has sent lawmakers like Senator Roger Katz, a Republican who has been critical of Mr. LePage, back to reading their state Constitutions on Wednesday to figure out what, if anything, they could do now to convene a special session. Mr. Katz, a lawyer, suggested it may require only a simple majority of the House and senate, which could reduce the House Republicans’ ability to block such a move, although he added there could be other hurdles to an agreement. “It’s never been done before, so we’re in a little bit of uncharted waters,” said Mr. Katz, who said he wanted Mr. LePage to get “a competent evaluation and follow the recommendations of the evaluator. ” Democrats have continued to call for Mr. LePage’s ouster, and on Wednesday said they were scheduling meetings with Republican leadership to discuss how to proceed. “Coming back in for a special session will be discussed and all options around the governor’s political future are on the table,” said the Democratic leader of the Senate, Justin Alfond. Mr. LePage’s six years in office here, which began as part of the Tea Party sweep in 2010, have been marked by controversy. Even as he fueled outrage among Democrats and angst among many moderate Republicans, his well of support, fed by voters drawn to his unfiltered political style, never seemed to run dry. By all indications, Mr. LePage seemed determined to again ride out the political storm. “I want to put this behind us,” Mr. LePage said, during a meeting with a select group of reporters in his office on Wednesday morning, adding, “I will never talk about it again. ” Mr. LePage spoke shortly after he met with — and apologized to — Representative Drew Gattine, the state Democratic lawmaker who had been the recipient of the angry voice mail. And in meeting with reporters, Mr. LePage spoke emotionally about Maine’s heroin crisis. But he but did not apologize for statements he made last week that linked trafficking in the drug to blacks and Hispanics. “I didn’t use racially charged language,” Mr. LePage claimed, although he also said, “Let’s leave ethnicity out of it. ” | 1 |
Colorado Radio Station’s Paul Martin Interviews Dave Hodges on Election Fraud and Standing Rock
I was recently interviewed on “The Lion” radio station in Johnstown, Colorado by guest host, Paul Martin.
Paul and I discussed how rampant the election fraud has become and the elite may still pull the plug on the election if Trump continues to surge. We also discussed the latest in Wikileaks and what it means to the election and the American people.
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LEXINGTON, Va. — “It’s just indescribable,” Sally Mann, the photographer and writer, was saying. She stood in the kitchen of the home she built on her family’s farm with Larry Mann, her husband of 46 years, and erupted in tears. “I’m just trying to keep moving,” she said. On the large dining table were her haunting, evocative photographs taken over the years of the studio in downtown Lexington where her friend, the painter Cy Twombly, had worked. Twombly was born 23 years before Ms. Mann in this same small town in Virginia. In her intimate and elegiac images, some with just the play of light on the wall and floor of the emptied studio, after his death in 2011, it was hard not to feel an acute absence — not of one man but two. In June, while preparing an exhibition of these photos, Ms. Mann suffered a sudden and most devastating loss. Emmett, her eldest child, who had struggled with schizophrenia in adulthood, took his own life, at the age of 36. Now the Twombly catalog she is gazing at, and the show, called “Remembered Light,” opening on Sept. 22 at the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan, are “suffused with grief,” she said. The name Sally Mann is inseparable from the indelible images of her children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia, in their unfettered youthful play, sometimes naked, in the countryside. In her memoir, “Hold Still,” published last year, Ms. Mann wrote that her family pictures — which in the early 1990s became engulfed in morality debates about the depiction of children’s bodies and judgment of Ms. Mann as a mother — could not be completely understood outside the context of this farm. The farm is remote and sylvan, with horses grazing alongside the winding drive, dogs underfoot and a menagerie of colorful birds in the greenhouse sharing a glass wall with the open dining area. A communal family space flows into Ms. Mann’s office, with a photograph on her desk of a young Twombly taken by Robert Rauschenberg when they were at Black Mountain College together in 1951. It leads into her studio hung with the familiar, photographs of Emmett and his sisters in their childhood. “I never separated myself as an artist and a mother,” said Ms. Mann, 65, who has always found her inspiration close to home, “in what William Carlos Williams called ‘the local,’” she wrote in her memoir. In this local realm she has created photographs of lush Southern landscapes and studies of her husband’s body revealing the effects of his progressive muscular dystrophy. Her art and motherhood “were really intertwined,” she continued. “It wasn’t hard until I had to defend it. ” Inevitably, there will be a chorus that assigns blame to the mother “for everything,” she added. Ms. Mann has barely ventured off the farm since Emmett’s death. Focusing on the printing of her Twombly images grounded her during the torturous weeks of June. In late July she offered to take a visitor with her on a foray into Lexington, a tour of the markers in Twombly’s life, and, as it turned out, her own. Her first stop would be Walmart, where she said Twombly liked to sit on a bench outside. “One of the most urbane, sophisticated humans alive, he would just sit there and watch the people come out and look at the mountains,” she said. “He was fascinated. ” Ms. Mann’s kinship with Twombly, whose wry, mentorly presence is woven throughout her memoir, began with her parents. Her father, a country doctor in Lexington for many years, first invited Twombly, then a high school senior, to dinner in the . As a hostess gift, the artist brought an abstract tabletop sculpture he had crafted from found wood and metal. (That 1946 sculpture was in the first room of Twombly’s 1994 MoMA retrospective.) Early patrons, her parents bought one of Twombly’s and pencil paintings in 1955 for $150, a transaction that may have occurred on the street. Last year, a 1968 “blackboard” painting set a new auction record for a Twombly work, of just over $70. 5 million at Sotheby’s New York. When Twombly moved back to his hometown in 1993 from Gaeta, Italy, for six months each year, “we became friends and compatriots and companions and helpmates,” Ms. Mann said. That developed just as Ms. Mann was receiving both acclaim and backlash from critics for photographs of her children. She and Twombly — a regular at her Thanksgiving dinners — visited back and forth constantly and casually. A record of their admiration for each other as artists — and for the creative process — is captured in the new exhibition. A painter of grand, abstract canvases cascading with layers of graffitilike script or explosions of vivid color, Twombly set up his studio in the most pedestrian of storefronts in downtown Lexington. “It was crude as can be, drop ceiling with water stains,” Ms. Mann said of the space that had been the gas company headquarters and then an eye doctor’s office. At Twombly’s suggestion, she began taking pictures there in 1999. “Usually I’m so blinkered when I approach work, but these were done for fun,” said Ms. Mann, who thinks her work shares with Twombly’s a kind of Southern melancholy or “moldering decadence,” as she put it. She switched from her trademark view camera to a more nimble digital camera, which she retrofitted with an uncoated antique lens to give the pictures a blinding radiance and flair. “Cy would be taking pictures, too,” she said, adding that he once pointed his little Polaroid into the reverse end of her view camera. “He taught me a lot. He was so loose and free and energetic. ” Ms. Mann’s earliest photograph in the Gagosian exhibition focuses on Twombly’s tidy lineup of paints, brushes and stained cloths in a spartan room. “I had no idea what level of misrule and chaos it would turn into,” she said. Over the sequence, the space becomes densely populated with Twombly’s secondhand finds, including a plastic flamingo and ceramic frog, and white plaster assemblage sculptures, bathed in hazy light filtering through the Venetian blinds. Next, Ms. Mann wanted to visit the Antique Mall that she and Twombly frequented together. She walked through aisles of and nodded to a deer’s head similar to one in her picture of his cluttered work table. “He just loved this kitschy stuff,” she said. “He had such a wide spectrum of embrace, from the sublime to the ridiculous. ” Looking at the images, John Ravenal, who organized her 2010 survey “Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, was struck by how Ms. Mann chose not to use her signature collodion process, which typically gives her images a high degree of distortion and painterly sensuality. “I think that is really a sign of respect,” he said. “The careful focus on the contents, on the subject matter, is rich enough that it didn’t need this extra layer of abstraction. ” Twombly’s studio is now a shop called Old Lex Mercantile. The new owners led Ms. Mann to the back to see drywall, removed during their renovation. She showed them her photographs of the same wall, intact, in the exhibition catalog. Nicola Del Roscio, director of the Cy Twombly Foundation and the artist’s longtime companion, recalled how Twombly painted a series by tacking a new canvas on top of older ones. He said that the artist appreciated the sounds of street activity and fragments of conversation that would trickle in to the studio. “He could not survive if he did not do a little trip every day around the countryside,” he said, whether strolling by the mansions of Lexington or making an excursion to Walmart. After Twombly’s death, Mr. Del Roscio asked Ms. Mann to photograph the interior of the artist’s home before its eclectic arrangements were packed up. They include one with an old master print on his mantel behind a framed sign saying “Street girls bringing in sailors must pay for room in advance. ” Today the sign graces Ms. Mann’s studio. Ms. Mann pulled up to the Lexington Restaurant, a diner where Twombly came for the grits and banter. “He would take really art people from Europe here,” Ms. Mann said, adding that it was rumored he had left $10, 000 tips for waitresses. Eyeing an older waitress who might provide confirmation, she approached the counter and began chatting her up. A couple of minutes later, Ms. Mann exclaimed loudly, “Oh, of course you are!” Slipping back into the booth, Ms. Mann said that 40 years ago the waitress had “typed my master’s thesis in creative writing, and her daughter babysat for my kids. ” And yes, the rumor was true. At the diner, Ms. Mann brought up her son. “Emmett had three terrible brain injuries,” she said. He was hit by a car when he was very young, something she examined in her book. There were two other accidents in adulthood. “That’s when the schizophrenia took over,” she explained. “We don’t know if the injuries caused it, or exacerbated it, or if it was genetic. ” She felt he had been responding well to treatment, and the family was completely caught off guard by what happened. She asked if we could make a quick stop at Emmett’s house nearby, to retrieve a small bookshelf she wanted to keep. She steeled herself before entering the bungalow. Inside was just a small drift of household items piled to one side. Unflinchingly, she hoisted the humble shelf and walked it to her car trunk. On this day, as in her writing and through her view camera, she stared as squarely as she could, contemplating the passage of time and the transience of life. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — During the 2016 campaign, Donald J. Trump’s second campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had regular communications with his longtime associate — a former Russian military translator in Kiev who has been investigated in Ukraine on suspicion of being a Russian intelligence agent. At the Republican National Convention in July, J. D. Gordon, a former Pentagon official on Mr. Trump’s national security team, met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at a time when Mr. Gordon was helping keep hawkish language on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine out of the party’s platform. And Jason Greenblatt, a former Trump Organization lawyer and now a special representative for international negotiations at the White House, met last summer with Rabbi Berel Lazar, the chief rabbi of Russia and an ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. In a Washington atmosphere supercharged by the finding of the intelligence agencies that Mr. Putin tried to steer the election to Mr. Trump, as well as continuing F. B. I. and congressional investigations, a growing list of Russian contacts with Mr. Trump’s associates is getting intense and skeptical scrutiny. Democrats see suspicious connections and inaccurate denials as part of a pattern that belies Mr. Trump’s adamant insistence that he and his associates “have nothing to do with Russia. ” The president’s supporters say innocuous encounters, routine for any incoming presidential team, are being treated for political reasons as somehow subversive. Mr. Trump denounced the furor over Russian connections on Thursday as a “total witch hunt” — but it may not have helped his case that the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, echoed his words on Friday, saying, “This all looks like a witch hunt. ” On Friday, Mr. Trump posted a picture on Twitter of a meeting between Mr. Putin and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and wrote that “we should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. ” The issue has already had momentous consequences for the new administration. Michael T. Flynn lasted less than a month as national security adviser before being forced out for mischaracterizing his conversations with Mr. Kislyak. This week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions admitted to having meetings with Mr. Kislyak that he had not disclosed during his confirmation hearing. Mr. Sessions fended off demands that he resign but agreed to recuse himself from what may be the most important investigation his Justice Department is conducting: of Russian meddling in the election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates colluded in those efforts. And that did not end the issue all nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Friday for Mr. Sessions to testify about his inaccurate denials that he had met with Russian officials during the campaign. Part of the problem underlying disputes over such contacts may be Mr. Trump’s pugnacious style, which usually leaves little room for nuance. At a news conference last month, he said that he had “nothing to do with Russia,” and that “to the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does. ” In fact, vigorous reporting by multiple news media organizations is turning up multiple contacts between Trump associates and Russians who serve in or are close to Mr. Putin’s government. There have been courtesy calls, policy discussions and business contacts, though nothing has emerged publicly indicating anything more sinister. A dossier of allegations on contacts, compiled by a former British intelligence agent for Mr. Trump’s political opponents, includes unproven claims that his aides collaborated in Russia’s hacking of Democratic targets. Current and former American officials have said that phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election. Former diplomats and Russia specialists say it would have been absurd and contrary to American interests for the Trump team to avoid meetings with Russians, either during or since the campaign. John R. Beyrle, the United States ambassador to Moscow from 2008 to 2012, said he feared that “we’re beginning to the Russians” by treating all contacts as suspicious. When he returns to Russia now, he said, “this real frenzy” prompts some old acquaintances to refuse to meet him because they worry about being tagged as too friendly to the United States. “That’s the last behavior we should model — that simply meeting with a Russian official is wrong, without any knowledge of what was said,” Mr. Beyrle said. In a possible sign that Mr. Trump hopes to put behind him the impression that he is an uncritical admirer of Mr. Putin, he is expected to name Fiona Hill, a respected Brookings scholar, to the top Russia post at the National Security Council, according to administration officials. Ms. Hill, who served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia from 2006 to 2009, is viewed as a Putin skeptic, if not as outspoken in her criticism of the Russian leader as are some other academics. Angela Stent, a Russia expert at Georgetown, said Ms. Hill was “realistic about Putin” and praised the 2013 book she wrote with Clifford G. Gaddy, “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin,” as the best biography of the Russian leader. It might take a Russia scholar to unpack the significance of particular meetings that are now coming to light in the glare of investigations and politics. Rabbi Lazar, who has condemned critics of Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine, is the leader of the Hasidic group in Russia, where it is a powerful organization running dozens of schools and offering social services across the country, while maintaining links to a lucrative financial donor network. Mr. Greenblatt, who handled outreach to Jews for the campaign, said that Rabbi Lazar was one of several Chabad leaders he had met during the campaign. He said the two men did not discuss broader United relations and called the meeting “probably less than useful. ” Rabbi Lazar said they had spoken about in Russia, Russian Jews in Israel and Russian society in general. While he meets with Mr. Putin once or twice a year, he said, he never discussed his meeting with Mr. Greenblatt with Kremlin officials. Joshua Nass, a public relations executive in New York, confirmed arranging the meeting between Mr. Lazar and Mr. Greenblatt. Mr. Gordon, the former Pentagon official, portrayed his meeting with Mr. Kislyak at the Republican convention — first reported by USA Today — as similarly unremarkable. After a panel discussion, he said, he spoke briefly with “dozens of ambassadors and senior diplomats” including Mr. Kislyak. During a brief chat with the ambassador, Mr. Gordon said, he “repeated some of the points made by the campaign on the importance of improving relations with Russia” but did not get into substantive policy matters. At a meeting to draft the Republican platform, Mr. Gordon, representing Mr. Trump’s views, opposed a delegate who wanted to call for providing “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine. Mr. Gordon said that proposal “was soundly defeated by the other delegates in the national security subcommittee meeting. ” There was no connection, he insisted, between his chat with Mr. Kislyak and the platform language. “Unfortunately some in the media have repeatedly tried to connect the dots where there was nothing to connect,” he said. The case of Konstantin V. Kilimnik, who was previously the Kiev manager of Mr. Manafort’s consulting company, Davis Manafort International, is more complicated. A dual citizen of Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Kilimnik worked years ago as a translator in the Russian military. He was hired by Mr. Manafort in 2005 after he was dismissed from the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute, an American group, amid concerns that he was informing on its activities, according to a former employee, who said he could not speak publicly about personnel matters. From August until December of last year, Mr. Kilimnik was at least formally under investigation in Ukraine on suspicion of ties to Russian spy agencies, according to documents from Ukraine’s Parliament and the prosecutor general. A defense lawyer and a former Ukrainian prosecutor characterized the investigation as unserious and politically motivated, and the inquiry closed without charges against Mr. Kilimnik. Mr. Kilimnik, in an interview in Kiev, said he had never been questioned by Ukrainian law enforcement over connections to Russian spy agencies. “If there were any truth to me talking to any security service in the world, they would arrest me,” he said. In a recent interview, Mr. Manafort said he thought there was no chance Mr. Kilimnik was a Russian agent. In their phone calls last summer, he said, the two men discussed a range of matters — including news media reports that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic targets. But at the time, he said, he and other Trump campaign officials had no idea who was responsible for the cyberattacks. | 1 |
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A man from North Korea has been arrested in the assassination of Kim the estranged half brother of the North Korean leader Kim the Malaysian police announced Saturday. The man, identified as Ri Jong Chol, 46, was arrested Friday evening, the police said, but they provided no further details. The police had been searching for four men, including at least one North Korean, who they believed had been involved in the attack on Mr. Kim on Monday at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Two women suspected of being involved in the attack, one from Indonesia and one from Vietnam, were arrested earlier in the week. A Malaysian man, described as the boyfriend of the Indonesian woman, was arrested and is said to be assisting the police in the investigation. On Friday, North Korea broke its silence on Mr. Kim’s assassination, demanding that the Malaysian authorities surrender the body and vowing to reject any they conducted. The response to the assassination, in a statement by the North Korean ambassador to Malaysia, Kang Chol, also accused the Malaysians of plotting to “besmirch” the North over the killing, heightening tensions between the two countries. The statement was read to reporters outside a Kuala Lumpur hospital where the body of Mr. Kim, 46, has been held since he was attacked on Monday at the airport. The police believe that the assassination was carried out by two women who struck Mr. Kim with a poisoned needle and wiped poison on his face as he awaited a flight to Macau, where he lives with his family. Indonesia’s national police chief, Tito Karnavian, said Friday that the Indonesian suspect, Siti Aishah, told the Malaysian police that she had thought she was engaged in a prank and had been paid a small amount for her participation. She told the police that she had not realized it was an assassination, he said. South Korean officials have said they suspect that the assassination was ordered by Kim 33, as part of his effort to consolidate power in the reclusive country, run by his family for nearly seven decades. Malaysian news media on Thursday quoted officials as saying that the North Korean government had requested the body. The ambassador’s statement on Friday did not identify the body as that of Kim . But the statement, quoted by news agencies at the scene, said that the “Malaysian side forced the without our permission and witnessing” and that “we will categorically reject the result of the conducted unilaterally excluding our attendance. ” Channel NewsAsia, in its account of the ambassador’s response, quoted him as saying, “We will respond strongly to the moves of the hostile forces towards us with their intent to besmirch the image of our republic by politicizing this incident. ” No relatives of Kim have come forward from Macau to claim the body. The South China Morning Post, quoting unidentified sources, reported on Friday that the relatives had been placed under police protection in Macau, fearing for their safety. | 1 |
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