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Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the 13th National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, Tuesday about President Trump’s commitment to the faith community. Pence reiterated the administration’s goal to advance Catholic causes, such as religious freedom and protecting the unborn. [“I had the honor to stand by President Trump as he signed an executive order to restore religious liberty in the public square,” Vice President Pence said to a standing ovation. “This administration hears you. This administration stands with you,” he continued. “Remember to bow the head and bend the knee to pray in these challenging times. Not so much pray for a cause but as for our country. ” Pence’s remarks were well received by those attending and speaking. “I was very encouraged to hear the vice president, to express his faith overtly and to exhort us here to pray for our country,” former Ambassador to the Vatican R. James Nicholson told Breitbart News. “Nobody knows President Trump better than Vice President Pence, and when he affirms the president’s commitment to the sanctity of life, it’s very encouraging. ” “The vice president is sending the right message in the right moment. Unity is important, and it is promoted by faith. Embracing God, we will be one nation,” said Mario E. Dorsonville, the auxiliary bishop of Washington and the event’s invocation speaker. One attendee, Kevin Francis, voiced the overall attitude of the gathering, emphasizing that “it’s very encouraging that [Pence is] supportive of the sanctity of life and religious freedom, which is fundamental to not just being an American but being a person as well. In fact, I think that religious freedom is one’s most fundamental right. With that in mind, it’s also important that [Pence] expressed solidarity with all persecuted religious minorities everywhere, including imperiled Christians in Iraq and Syria. ” | 1 |
In the past, Virgil has taken note of various Main Stream Media tricks, such as the false “argument from authority” and the “assertion of a false conflict. ” [Well, the MSM is at it again. This newest trick can be called, “build him up so as to try to knock him down. ” A case in point is the lead editorial in The New York Times on January 31, entitled, “President Bannon?” That editorial was mostly the usual lefty litany of attacks against Stephen K. Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, now serving in the White House as President Donald Trump’s Chief Strategist. Indeed, the utter familiarity of the attacks makes Virgil conclude that Times writers must think that Times readers never get tired of reading the same “golden oldie” . However, there was one thing new in that latest attack. And that was the headline, “President Bannon?” Even people a lot younger than old Virgil can plainly see what the Times was trying to do here namely, build Bannon up into sort of giant existential threat. In this telling, he’s a threat not only to liberalism, but also, a threat to the constitutional order of the Republic. The reader is thus supposed to think to himself or herself, “Steve Bannon is bad enough. But President Bannon? Yikes!” The goal is to provoke ever more outrage from readers. And the goal, of course, is to somehow knock out Bannon, as a way of somehow knocking out President Donald Trump. The latest flashpoint of MSM angst is Bannon’s participation in the National Security Council (NSC). On January 28, President Trump issued a memorandum outlining his update to the structure of the NSC it’s typical for any new president to do this at the beginning of his term. In the course of all the legalese, the new presidential document assigned Bannon a place on the “Principals Committee” of the NSC. That is, Bannon will participate in NSC deliberations — under the direction, of course, of the President. Other members of the NSC include Vice President Mike Pence (who is to preside over NSC meetings in the President’s absence) the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, as well as six others, including Bannon. In addition, another senior figures in the government are mentioned as frequent, or likely, participants. In other words, the most that one can say is that Bannon is one of ten regular “Principals,” and nearly a score of total attendees. And yet since the MSM mantra is All All The Time, obedient journos have gone into overdrive. For example, veteran Jonathan Alter, a fixture on MSNBC, has tweeted: Breaking: obscure law requires Sen confirmation for WH aide like Bannon to serve on NSC. 50 U. S. Code § 3021 Wow. Citing an exact legal code makes Alter’s claim sound so official. But then, a lot of fake news sounds official. Yet as Jack Landman Goldsmith — who served as a appointee in the Bush 43 Justice and Defense Departments, and is now a professor at Harvard Law School — tweeted in response: Bannon is not on the NSC. Order says he is invited to attend as attendee. Lots and lots of people not on NSC attend. Goldsmith has it right: According to federal law — the National Security Act of 1947, as amended — the National Security Council, and also, the more recent Homeland Security Council, have a very few “statutory” members that is, formal memberships, enumerated in the underlying statute. And nothing that Trump decided last week changes that such a change would require an act of Congress. In other words, while Bannon certainly has a high position in the Trump White House, he has no statutory role in the NSC. He is not, for example, in any way a part of the National Chain of Command that’s another matter of statute. Bannon is simply a valued member of the President’s team — and we all already knew that. And yet the reality of the situation notwithstanding, the Times went to work. In that editorial, “President Bannon?” the purported newspaper of record attempted to whip Bannon’s elevated role into some sort of coup d’etat: A new executive order, politicizing the process for national security decisions, suggests Mr. Bannon is positioning himself not merely as a Svengali but as the de facto president. Got that, Times readers? Bannon isn’t merely some sort of wickedly hypnotic figure, he’s on his way to being the “de facto president. ” As we have seen, there’s not a scintilla of truth to any of this, but as we have also seen, the Times loves . And with that in mind, the editorial made the same fallacious point a second time: While Mr. Trump long ago embraced Mr. Bannon’s politics, he would be wise to reconsider allowing him to run his White House. You get the idea: “de facto president,” “run his White House. ” As they say, sometimes a falsehood, repeated often enough, becomes persuasive — at least that’s the result that the Times is striving towards. This repetitive technique is sometimes called “The Big Lie. ” Or, as Virgil likes to say, magnum mendacium. Of course, the Times is hardly alone on the bandwagon right now, a hashtag campaign on Twitter, #StopPresidentBannon, is going full blast. Indeed, much of the MSM is joining in this attempted stampede. Here, for example, is a headline from the Beltway publication, Foreign Policy: “Steve Bannon Is Making Sure There’s No White House Paper Trail, Says Intel Source: The Trump administration’s chief strategist has already taken control of both policy and process on national security. ” Got that? The goal of all this reportorial alarmism is to make you afraid, very afraid. In this instance, the supposed issue of import is NSC . Given that the Trump administration is not even two weeks old, it’s unlikely that any sort of precise precedent for records has been established, and yet that didn’t stop reporter Kate Brannen from declaring, “The lack of a paper trail documenting the process is also troubling. ” Brannen’s source for all this ominousness, we might add, was an “intelligence official. ” Ah yes, the “intelligence official,” always ready to give a reporter a juicy quote. We might note that is the modus operandi of the Deep State. In the past, Virgil has chronicled the Deep State’s effort against the Trump administration, as well as, of course, the MSM campaign waged against Bannon. So this latest is just another blast from the Deep State, dutifully trumpeted by the MSM. Amusingly, that Foreign Policy article held up the Bush 43 administration as the gold standard of NSC . That might be a source of amusement — albeit bitter amusement — for those who remember the follies of, for example, the Iraq War. And yet for veterans of that vainglorious conflict, and for the families of the fallen and the wounded, it’s no comfort to know that the Bush NSC was careful to write up a thorough “summary of conclusions” after every meeting. The rest of us, too, can quickly see: the critical issue is the quality of the decision, not the quantity of the paperwork. Yet as we know by now, the MSM attacks — grabbing any available hammer, no matter how ridiculous — will never stop. The same Foreign Policy, we might add, made ample room on the same day for another this one from dedicated #NeverTrumper Max Boot: “President Bannon’s Hugely Destructive First Week in Office: The puppet master is leading the Trump administration down a road of carnage. ” For his part, Virgil has always figured that hardcore supporters of the Iraq War, such as Boot, ought to be a little more circumspect before throwing around phrases such as “road to carnage. ” Still, the real issue isn’t Bannon. Instead, the real issue is Trump. And Foreign Policy gave that game away in yet another story, headlined, “3 Ways to Get Rid of President Trump Before 2020. ” That piece, written by Rosa Brooks, a former under secretary of defense in the Obama administration, raises the idea — Virgil kids not — of a military coup d’etat against Trump. Okay, so Brooks is showing a high degree of kookiness that should forever disqualify her from future public service. And yet, of course, the Trump administration is young, and so there’s plenty of time for other “progressives” to join Brooks’ extremity. Meanwhile, the rest of us can watch these antics with a combination of bewilderment and bemusement. The only thing we should always bear in mind is that the MSM’s real target is Trump. | 1 |
. Finding the Doorway Out of the Matrix I am a bigger picture person. I have studied the light and the dark sides on this reality and of mys... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/finding-doorway-out-of-matrix.html I am a bigger picture person. I have studied the light and the dark sides on this reality and of myself intensively, and I have found that there is one thing that will make my doorway or exit from this reality appear. This thing that I speak of has been forgotten m=by many playing the game of the intense polarities.The main focus of my website is to share my personal experience and insights on the true nature of our reality and who we really are.In summary, it is my observation that the reality that we see, taste, touch, feel, and see is a holographic matrix created in order to experience a third dimensional physical reality.Within this reality that we are experiencing is an extreme polarity of dark and light. The reason for the extreme polarity is that Earth is shifting out of this vibrational frequency into a higher vibrational frequency, and in order for humanity to follow suit, they need to “wake up”. Waking up involves questioning everything in your reality and awareness. Extreme circumstances push people toward change and out of stagnation. Who are you and why are you here? Waking up also involves knowing who you are and how you got here. It is very similar to waking from a dream. When you know who you are and when you realize that you are not your body and that you never die, a freedom washes over you that allows you to have an inner peace while our reality collapses. This brings us closer to the understanding and remembrance of what we need to do to find the doorway out. You are here on Earth at this time so that you can wake up and exit the matrix that you have been a part of for eons of “time”, as Earth serves as a portal out of the third dimension and extreme polarity. You had to come here first in order to return home. There are even some some souls that left their peaceful worlds to come here to help those that have been stuck a very long time find the door when it is available. The key to exiting the matrix I have served the darkness (mostly from ignorance or trickery) and I have also served the light in many lifetimes. I have been the extreme pendulum, swinging back and forth in order to rectify karma and to expand my soul’s experience. The one thing that I am striving for in this lifetime that will allow me to exit this reality is BALANCE.True balance is achieved when you can see all viewpoints from a higher perspective. You understand the dark’s necessity for energy vampirism and you also understand the light’s need to serve, protect, and fight for freedom. You realize that even the light team can easily become unbalanced, and being an extreme “lightworker” simply attracts the dark like moths to a flame because that is how balance works. For every action their is an equal and opposite reaction.When you realize that ultimately you are only fighting yourself and that by being extreme in anything you are going to attract the opposite polarity, then you can step back and try to figure out how you can stop that fight. It doesn’t mean that you lie down and let the dark take over. It also doesn’t mean that you stand in the power of light will ultimately win the battle for earth and humanity. It means that you pull the dark and light aspects within you, accepting that you played this game to experience everything it had to offer. Zero point Balance brings forth the zero point energy that opens the portal for exiting this reality. Some call it ascension and some call it incension. This portal exists within you and is activated through connecting the heart chakra with the endocrine system. Earth is also receiving frequencies aligned with activating or re-arranging our latent DNA. Only you can activate your portal by accepting and flowing with these frequencies. Once it is activated, you can never be influenced by extreme polarity again and you begin to attract a new reality which is harmonized and balanced. You simply move toward a frequency that resonates with your own frequency.When you begin unlocking the portal, you begin to become the observer of what is unfolding in this reality. You are “in this reality but not of it”. You notice that you are the creator of your reality based on contracts and agreements made before incarnating, but you also see how you can change your reality by making conscious decisions in the now moment that change the past as well as the future. Zero point is the removal of the veil of forgetfulness and the alignment of the wheels of time so that you may see the exit and move toward it. You are an aspect of Source Source created dark and light both. Source created the beings that took over the organic template of Earth and the organic template of the human body that allows experience of the organic Earth. If it was a forbidden thing to do, Earth’s consciousness would not have allowed it in the first place. If it was such a horrible thing, we would never had incarnated into it. We made ourselves a bet before we came here: would we awaken to who we are and realize that we are all of it? Would we learn how to stop the extremity within ourselves into a harmonious balance which sings a new vibration? Escape 'Their' TRAP and Set Your Soul FREE Masculine and feminine imbalance Balance is also missing between the masculine and feminine. Ever since the androgynous human was split into a male and a female for reproductive purposes, there has been a battle for domination and control of the sexes. In Orion, the female queen rules, and on Earth the patriarchal has ruled while the feminine has been suppressed. We have to be careful when we bring the feminine back to Earth that it is not to rule or to dominate males. Currently there are a number of dominating, controlling female programs running that overcompensate for male domination. Since the outer reality is a reflection of within, balancing the male and female aspects of us individually will help to balance it in our reality. This means women can let go of the media programming of oversexuality, high heels, and and starvation and men can learn to feel their emotions rather than playing the tough guy. Chaos brings change and transcendence As Standing Rock unfolds , as the U.S. election comes near , and as your life circumstances seem to morph and change now faster than ever, you realize that the waking life is just a dream or matrix that you wanted to experience. The real you is your oversoul that exists outside of the matrix. This realization brings calm and balance into your life and allows you to observe rather than react and interact with the battle. With this knowledge, you keep your energy for yourself rather than giving it away within the matrix . This energy will then propel you where you need to go when the doorway opens. Don’t get caught up in the distraction of “look over here”. Instead, focus on looking within and moving further away from the illusion.As you continue to observe, your float higher and higher away from the battle into a place of peace and knowing that allows you to continue to reach a higher understanding of what has happened, what is currently happening (and why) and what your future holds. I feel that my future holds a place where extreme polarity no longer exists because it is no longer needed. It will have been a tool for propelling me out of the matrix as I merge with all that I am and all of the lifetimes that my oversoul has had. There is a whole new game waiting for us, and zero point through balance is the stargate that will open the door to a whole new reality. By Michelle Walling Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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Financial Markets , Market Manipulation , U.S. Economy Anthony Wiener , Clinton Foundation , neocons admin
The propaganda machine in place that pervades the western hemiphere military and economic bloc was developed by Edward Bernays. Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s nephew. His propaganda theories were adopted by the Third Reich, U.S. Corporations, the U.S. military and Deep State and the media. The article below will help explain the current domestic political chaos in this country as well as the re-emergence of the Cold War between the U.S. neocon warmonger and Russia.
Inside the Invisible Government: War, Propaganda, Clinton & Trump Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was “engineering the consent” of people in order to “control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it”. He described this as “the true ruling power in our society” and called it an “invisible government” . Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career as a journalist and film-maker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does now and to go unchallenged .
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Why in the world would she start a business at this time? | 0 |
A few days ago, Cesar A. Hidalgo published a very important article titled, What I Learned From Visualizing Hillary Clinton’s Emails .
So who is Cesar Hidalgo?
César A. Hidalgo is associate professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the author of Why Information Grows: The evolution of order from atoms to economies . He has also lead the creation of data visualization sites that have received more than 100 million views, including datausa.io, dataviva.info, atlas.media.mit.edu, immersion.media.mit.edu, pantheon.media.mit.edu, streetscore.media.mit.edu, and others (see chidalgo.com for more details).
At this point, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m highlighting this guy’s post two days before the Presidential election. It’s for two reasons. First, the piece offers a very good representation of the sort of peer pressure that can come down upon an academic for being seen as having the “wrong” political opinion. Second, and perhaps most important, his email visualization tool taught him that the current state of our government in these United States simply can’t achieve the best outcomes for the public at current scale (size, geographic/cultural diversity, etc).
With all that out of the way, I’m going to highlight what I found to be the most powerful part of his piece.
Enjoy: So what did we learn by making this dataset accessible? We learned a few things about what Clinton’s emails said, about how the media works, and about how people interpreted the project. We made clinton.media.mit.edu publicly available last Friday night (October 28, 2016). We launched with a single story , written by Alejandra Vargas from Univision. My intuition was that the story was likely to get picked up by other news sources. After all, the tool facilitated people’s ability to read and understand the content of these emails, and the connections of the people involved in them. But I was wrong—it has been nearly a week since we released the project and no other major news source has picked up the story, despite having been viewed by more than 300,000 people in less than a week. So how did we get so much traffic without any news coverage? The answer is social media. So far, the tool has been shared widely on Twitter, Facebook, and for a brief but intense time, on Reddit. Its spread has been fueled by different motives, and also, has been battled in different ways. Many reporters shared the news on their personal accounts understanding that the tool represents a different form of data reporting, or data journalism: one where people are provided with a tool that facilitates their ability to explore a relevant dataset, instead of being provided with a story summarizing a reporter’s description of that dataset. Another group of people that shared the news were interface designers, who understand that there is a need to improve the tabular interface of present day email clients, and that the inbox we presented in this project was an attractive new alternative. But many people also shared our site claiming that this was evidence of Clinton’s corruption, and that the site supported Trump. More on that later. But the spread of the site was not without its detractors. A few hours after we released the site I received a message from a friend telling me that what I had done was “a huge mistake” and that I should have waited to post this until “later in the year.” A few days later, outside my lab, a member of a neighboring research group called me a “Trump supporter” and told me that I should have only made that site available if it also included Trump’s emails. I told him that I would be happy to include them, but I had no access to the data. In haste, this colleague began emailing me news articles, none of which provided access to the alleged public dataset of Trump emails. Later, a friend of one of my students posted the news on Reddit, where it went viral. And I mean really viral. It became the top story of the Internetisbeautiful subreddit, and made it to Reddit’s front page. It collected more than 3,000 upvotes and 700 comments. But as the story peaked, a moderator single-handedly removed it in an authoritarian move, and justified this unilateral silencing of the post by adding a rule banning “sites that serve a political agenda or that otherwise induce drama.” Of course, the rule was added AFTER the post was removed. Reddit appears to be rampant with censorship these days. So when it comes to media, social or not, I learned that providing information directly to people so that they can inspect it and evaluate it, is a value that many people consider second to supporting their preferred electoral choice. The twist is that I don’t support Trump. In fact, I don’t support him at all. I think he is potentially a threat to global security, and also, a candidate that has shown repeatedly to be a dividing rather than unifying force. He has failed to respect contracts numerous times, defrauding contractors; and he certainly has shown little respect for people’s development by creating a fraudulent university. So I think he is ill prepared for most jobs, including a difficult one like that of being president. I support Clinton in this election, and even though I don’t get to vote (As a green card holder I just pay taxes), I want her to win next Tuesday. I really do. But I understand that this is my own personal choice, a choice that I want to make sure is informed by my ability to evaluate information about the candidates directly, and by a media that is more transparent than the one we now have. Trust me, if I had Trump’s tax records, I would also think it is a good idea to make a tool that makes them more easily digestible. But my reason to make that tool, once again, would not come from my support for Clinton, or my opposition to Trump. It would come from my support for a society where people have direct access to relevant sources of information through well-designed data visualization tools. Now here’s where we get into very important lessons about the future. So what did I learn about Clinton’s emails? One of the advantages of helping design a data visualization tool is that you get an intimate understanding of the data you are visualizing. After all, you have to explore the data and use the tool to make dozens of design decisions. In this case, the development cycle was particularly fast, but nevertheless I got to learn a few things about the data. Of course, the whole point of making this tool is that you can use it to come up with your own interpretation of the data. That said, you might be curious about mine, so I’ll share it with you too. What I saw on Clinton’s emails was not surprising to me. It involved a relatively small group of people talking about what language to use when communicating with other people. Also, it involved many unresponded-to emails. Many conversations revolved around what words to use or avoid, and what topics to focus on, or how to avoid some topics, when speaking in public or in meetings. This is not surprising to me because I’ve met many politicians in my life, including a few presidents and dozens of ministers and governors, so I know that what work means to many people in this line of work, on a daily basis, is strategizing what to say and being careful about how to say it. I am sure that if we had access to Trump’s emails we would see plenty of the same behavior. So what I got from reading some of Clinton’s email is another piece of evidence confirming my intuition that political systems scale poorly. The most influential actors on them are spending a substantial fraction of their mental capacity thinking about how to communicate, and do not have the bandwidth needed to deal with many incoming messages (the unresponded-to emails). This is not surprising considering the large number of people they interact with (although this dataset is rather small. I send 8k emails a year and receive 30k. In this dataset Clinton is sending only 2K emails a year). Our modern political world is one where a few need to interact with many, so they have no time for deep relationships — they physically cannot. So what we are left is with a world of first impressions and public opinion, where the choice of words matters enormously, and becomes central to the job. Yet, the chronic lack of time that comes from having a system where few people govern many, and that leads people to strategize every word, is not Clinton’s fault. It is just a bug that affects all modern political systems, which are ancient Greek democracies that were not designed to deal with hundreds of millions of people. On another note, this exercise also helped me reaffirm my belief that the best way to learn about the media is not by reading the news, but by being news. I’ve had the fortune, and misfortune, to have been news many times. This time, I honestly thought that we had a piece of content that some media channels would be interested in and that it would get picked up easily. I have many reporter friends who are enthusiastic about new forms of data journalism, and that actually have been positive and encouraging this week. So I imagined that there was a good chance that a reporter would see the site, go to his or her editor, and say: “Hey, I have an interactive data visualization of all Clinton’s emails. Can I write a story on it?” and the editor would say: “Of course, make it quick.” I don’t know if these conversations actually happened, but given the large volume of traffic our project received I would be surprised if they didn’t. I learned that the outcome was not the one I intuited. And this brings me to my final point, which is that while I support Clinton in this election, and I think Trump is a bad choice for president (a really bad one), I still think that we should work on the creation of tools that improve the ability of people to personalize scrutinize politically relevant information. I now understand that much of the U.S. media may not share that view with me, and that I think this is an important point of reflection. I hope the media takes some time to think about this on November 9 (or the week after). Also, the large number of people who were unable to interpret our tool as anything but an effort to support or oppose a political candidate — and that was true for both liberals and conservatives — speaks to me about an ineffective public sphere. And that’s something I think we should all be concerned about. This polarization is not just a cliché. It is a crippling societal condition that is expressed in the inability of people to see any merit, or any point, in opposing views. That’s a dangerous, and chronic, institutional disease that is expressed also in the inability of people to criticize their own candidates, because they fear being confused with someone their peers will interpret as a supporter of the opposing candidate. If you cannot see any merit in the candidate you oppose, even in one or two of the many points that have been made, you may have it. So that’s how this election has muddled the gears of democracy. When we cannot learn from those we oppose, or agree when they have a valid point, our learning stops. We keep on talking past each other. I know that this election has made learning from those we oppose particularly difficult, but the difficult tests are the ones that truly show us what we are really made of. These are the situations that push us to see past all of the things that we don’t like, or don’t agree on, so we can rescue a lesson. You may not agree with me, but I hope at least I gave you something to think about. While his points about media censorship and peer pressure are self-explanatory, I want to take a quick moment to discuss his most meaningful insight, which is the idea that “ political systems scale poorly.” This is hugely important, because as the current status quo system collapses, many of us in the Western world will be presented with an incredible opportunity to do things completely different. Unfortunately, none of the candidates in the 2016 election (including Sanders and Trump) have been promoting the idea of political decentralization, which is the direction I think we need to move toward. In voting for Brexit, that’s exactly what the British people professed a preference for, and it’s what we need here in America. In some important ways, I think we should look back toward the original concept of government as understood by our founders. A loose-knit collection of largely self-governing states that are bonded together in certain important ways, yet independent and sovereign in all other ways. Indeed, I think we can break things up even further than that, but let’s start there for the time being. If we want to stick with representative democracy, I think for it to work best, it needs to be very local. I think the future of mankind depends on us getting our political systems right, and I think governance has to be shifted to the local level as much as possible. This all reminds me of Aldous Huxley’s extremely prescient warning in his 1958 book Brave New World revised (see my review of it), in which he wrote:
Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government. Bottom line: We need to decentralize everything, especially government. In Liberty, | 0 |
WASHINGTON — In Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ’s 11 years on the Supreme Court, his unfolding legacy has been marked by a debate over whether his very occasional liberal votes in major cases were the acts of a statesman devoted to his institution, a traitor to his principles or the legal umpire he said he aspired to be at his confirmation hearings. This election could settle that debate. If Donald J. Trump becomes president and follows through on his vow to appoint a conservative to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice Roberts will continue to lead a court dominated by five conservative justices. But the absence of Justice Scalia, the court’s longest serving and in some ways most dominant member when he died in February, means Chief Justice Roberts could lead in a more assertive way. Were a liberal to replace Justice Scalia — whether it was President Obama’s pick, Judge Merrick B. Garland, or someone named by Hillary Clinton should she win the presidency — a majority of the justices would be Democratic appointees for the first time in almost 50 years. That would open a new chapter at the court, and leave Chief Justice Roberts, a Republican appointee with a generally conservative voting record, in the minority in many closely divided cases. And it could force him to choose between becoming a marginal figure or concluding that a new era on his court requires a new kind of leadership — and a move to the left. “It’s been a long time since there was a chief justice who was in dissent across a wide range of important issues,” said Pamela S. Karlan, a law professor at Stanford. As a practical matter, a chief justice in perpetual dissent would give up a crucial tool: assignment power. When the chief justice is in the majority, he gets to choose who will write the majority opinion. Much can turn on that choice. The alternative is to find ways to vote more often with the majority, and that could mean tilting toward a liberal outcome. Recent history provides an analogy. Chief Justice Roberts served as a law clerk to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1980 and 1981, and he saw a shift in his old boss’s voting patterns after President Ronald Reagan elevated him to chief justice in 1986. “Chief Justice Rehnquist, when he was an associate justice, was often on the losing end of votes,” said David Strauss, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “When he became chief, he moved conspicuously to the center. ” Lee Epstein, a law professor and political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, said the data supported that view. Before his elevation, Justice Rehnquist dissented 21 percent of the time. Once he became chief justice, the rate dropped to 16 percent. The difference is statistically significant. “Perhaps in an effort to keep control of opinion assignment, Rehnquist dissented less frequently and, as a result, moved to the left,” Professor Epstein said. Chief Justice Roberts has used his power vigorously and strategically. He has kept major opinions for himself, partly to shape and hone them and partly because it seems fitting for the chief justice to speak for the court in big cases. He has assigned other important majority opinions to trusted allies, notably Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. If the chief justice is in the minority, the assignment power shifts to the senior justice in the majority, meaning the one with the longest tenure. That role would fall to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on a court with five Democratic appointees in cases where justices split along ideological lines. “We may have, de facto, the first female chief justice,” said Akhil Reed Amar, a law professor at Yale. In an interview in July, Justice Ginsburg seemed eager to take on a larger role should Judge Garland or another Democratic appointee join the court. “It means that I’ll be among five more often than among four,” she said. That notion cannot cheer Chief Justice Roberts, Professor Karlan said. “On a court with five liberals, the chief justice faces the prospect of assigning cases involving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Bankruptcy Act,” she said, “while Justice Ginsburg assigns the cases that make the front page of The Times. ” Professor Strauss said Chief Justice Roberts would not tolerate that sort of irrelevance. “I don’t think this chief justice will accept being in a permanent minority on the court,” he said. With two notable exceptions, Chief Justice Roberts’s voting record in major cases has been generally conservative since he joined the court in 2005, succeeding his old boss. He was in the conservative majorities that decided District of Columbia v. Heller, which established an individual right to own guns Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which amplified the role of money in politics and Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the core of the Voting Rights Act. And he dissented when a narrowly divided court’s rulings meant liberal victories on gay rights, abortion rights and affirmative action. Chief Justice Roberts has been the subject of withering criticism from the right for twice voting to sustain Mr. Obama’s health care law. But those votes were exceptions, especially for major cases. In cases, Chief Justice Roberts voted in a conservative direction 85 percent of the time, a rate higher than that of any other member of the court, according to a study last year in The Journal of Legal Studies and to related data. The study was prepared by Professor Epstein William M. Landes, a law professor and economist at the University of Chicago and Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. “He is a reliable conservative in the most closely contested cases but moderate when his vote cannot change the outcome,” the authors wrote. “This is consistent with a chief justice’s interest in being on the winning side in most cases otherwise it looks as if he cannot control his court. ” That pattern would most likely continue were a President Trump to name the next Supreme Court justice. Mr. Trump has released a list of potential nominees, all reliable conservatives, and none of them would shift the essential balance of power on the court. In any event, Chief Justice Roberts is unlikely to compromise on his core commitments, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine. “There are some areas where Roberts holds very conservative views, such as marriage equality, abortion and affirmative action, and he will be in dissent if Justice Scalia is replaced by a Democratic president,” Professor Chemerinsky said. In other areas, he added, “I think Roberts will do all he can to steer the court into narrow rulings whenever possible. ” Much will depend on the docket. The run of blockbusters that marked the Roberts court’s first 11 terms is unlikely to be matched anytime soon. “We shouldn’t assume that the cases of the next decade or two will precipitate the same ideological division as today’s cases,” Professor Strauss said. He added that the court could soon face hard questions on national security and police conduct. “Issues like that could scramble the lineups we’re accustomed to,” he said, “and that would make it easier for the chief justice to maintain a leadership role. ” More vacancies are likely, too: Justice Stephen G. Breyer is 78, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is 80 and Justice Ginsburg is 83. That means the next president could not only shift, but also cement, the direction of the court for a generation. It also means that there is a fair prospect that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 62, will soon be the senior member of a liberal bloc. Chief Justice Roberts is just 61, and he is likely to preside over many iterations of the Roberts court. If a Democratic president chooses not only Justice Scalia’s successor but also several others, he may face dispiriting choices. “He’s a young man,” Professor Amar said about the chief justice, “so for the foreseeable future it might very well be that his vision will be in eclipse rather than ascent. ” | 1 |
Our New Country: Women And Minorities Hit Hardest The rape culture the media won't cover. October 27, 2016 Ann Coulter Every ethnic group except whites bloc-votes for the Democrats. Coincidentally, the Democrats have brought in another 30 to 40 million nonwhite immigrants in the last few decades. It doesn't help that white voters can't agree on what constitutes an acceptable candidate. In 2012, working-class whites sat out the election, rather than vote for the out-of-touch rich guy they saw in Mitt Romney. This year, the out-of-touch rich guys say they'll vote for Hillary because Trump is tacky and gross. The sad irony is that the only people who will be better off in our new country are mostly white plutocrats -- the top .01 percent. The rest of us will be their servants. The people who will be worse off are everybody else -- the working class, the middle class (who will soon be working class) and, most of all, women, minorities, children, the elderly, the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Look to Mexico for your future -- or any Third World country. Or to Univision's Jorge Ramos. The ruling class in Mexico is composed of European-looking, white descendants of Spanish conquistadors who raped the native population, giving them only their Spanish names in return. (British settlers in America brought women with them.) Explaining Latino culture's acceptance of incest and child rape, criminal justice researcher Shana Maier writes in a book about rape that "the male is the head of the household, and women are subordinate to men. ... Hispanics and Latinos are more likely than other racial/ethnic groups to blame the victim. The victim, not the perpetrator, is blamed for bringing dishonor to the family.” One American detective said that, today, police are being taught to keep an "open mind" about child rape because "it's a cultural thing.” When it comes to multiculturalism, you can't say, We love the empanadas -- but we don't want 40-year-old men raping their nieces. This isn't an a la carte menu. We get ALL the attributes of the cultures we're importing. As described in excruciating detail in Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole , our media already have a totally "open mind" about incest and child rape -- and murder! -- when it's committed by immigrants. Thus, for example, where I would have chosen the headline: "Illegal Alien Convicted of Incest, Child Rape," The Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press went with the less catchy: "Man guilty in case of human smuggling.” And where I would have used the headline, "Illegal Alien Repeatedly Raped 14-year-old Girl at Job Site," The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus, Mississippi, went with the more subtle, "Columbus resident charged with molestation.” Immigrant women arrive in America, thrilled to have escaped cultures where rape, incest and spousal murder are acceptable, only to discover that those crimes are perfectly acceptable in this country, too -- provided the perpetrator is from the very culture they fled. In 1989, Brooklyn judge Edward Pincus sentenced a Chinese immigrant to probation for a premeditated murder of his wife, on the grounds that the murder flowed from "traditional Chinese values about adultery and loss of manhood." The female head of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Margaret Fung, applauded the ruling. Somewhat amazingly, newspapers are more likely to report black crime than immigrant crime. (Anything to keep the Third World immigration flowing!) In 2013, a 13-year-old girl was gang-raped by about a dozen illegal aliens, who cheered and videoed the attack. When the news first broke, Shaneequa Jupiter, who lived with her children in the apartment building where the gang rape occurred, complained that neither the police nor apartment security had warned residents about the danger. (That could reflect poorly on illegal immigrants!) Even if Shaneequa had scoured the headlines, she would have been on the lookout for "Austin men." Or "Two.” Compare these headlines about the same brutal sexual attack: -- "Two held in attack on child" -- Austin American-Statesman (Texas), July 19, 2013 -- "Two Mexicans placed on immigration detainers as third man is arrested over five-day gang rape hell of teenage runaway during which she smoked crack" -- Daily Mail Online (UK), July 24, 2013 Needless to say, The New York Times did not cover the Mexican illegal alien gang rape at all. By contrast, the Times, and every major American news outlet, extensively covered another gang rape -- of a girl about the same age, at about the same time, in about the same place. The second case only was "rape" because of the girl's young age -- she was 11. But she was an enthusiastic participant, sneaking out of her house at night to meet the men for sex. Those rapes, just a few years earlier, got a full-court press. The defendants were African-American. The victim was Mexican. That time, there were articles in the Huffington Post, GQ, Slate, Salon and Mother Jones. It even made The New York Times, despite no connection to a college fraternity or lacrosse team. Similarly, within a few months of one another in 2013, two men were arrested in separate child rape cases in Decatur, Alabama, for assaults on 9-year-old girls. One suspect was African-American, the other was a Hispanic immigrant. Only one made the newspaper. Guess which one? When excitable Muslims raped American reporter Lara Logan in Tahrir Square (another one of Hillary's foreign policy successes!), journalists immediately set to work to find the shortest line from the Muslim rapists to white American men. Conclusion: The real problem was the female reporters' American bosses and colleagues. (Definitely not Islam!) Sampling of New York Times commentary on Logan's rape: -- "Why We Need Women in War Zones" ("I would never tell my bosses for fear that they might keep me at home the next time something major happened. ... This attack also had nothing to do with Islam.”) -- "Reporting While Female" ("Women reporters face another set of challenges. We are often harassed in ways that male colleagues are not. ... In my experience, Muslim countries were not the worst places for sexual harassment.”) Perhaps American men could do better, but, as American women may soon discover: They never had it so good. Manifestly, the purpose of our immigration policies is not to help Americans -- or the immigrants who wanted to live in a place like America. They are designed to funnel welfare-dependent voters to the Democrats and cheap labor to the rich. (The Chinese immigrant who got probation for murdering his wife, for example, came to America based on his specialized skill of being a dishwasher.) Our country will be Zimbabwe, but -- if all goes according to the Democrats' plan -- they'll get to be Mugabe! That's Hillary's dream. If she wins, Joe Sobran's parody of the typical New York Times headline (about anything) will come true: "Women and Minorities Hit Hardest.” | 0 |
Behind the headlines - conspiracies, cover-ups, ancient mysteries and more. Real news and perspectives that you won't find in the mainstream media. Browse: Home / On Being Aloof and Democratic Essential Reading They Live By wmw_admin on August 19, 2012
Considered by some as prophetic, many will find eerie echoes of present day concerns in John Carpenters 24-year-old ‘They Live’. View the cult classic here The Essene Gospel of Peace II By wmw_admin on April 26, 2007
Translated by Purcell Weaver and Edmond Szekely from its original Aramiac, a language that today few know but 2000 years ago was the language that Christ spoke and taught with Bloody Bill Clinton – American Caligula By wmw_admin on September 1, 2006
The real legacy of Clinton’s term of office: the chilling body count of those connected with him, who died in unusual or suspicious circumstances Hellstorm – Exposing The Real Genocide of Nazi Germany (Full Documentary) By wmw_admin on May 10, 2015
What happened in the aftermath of World War II has been one of the darkest and best kept secrets in world history. Greg Palast is Related to Mossad Chief David Kimche By Christopher Bollyn on October 23, 2013
Greg Palast may well be a Mossad disinfo agent. Christopher Bollyn provides the hard documentary evidence to prove it runs in his family The Life of an American Jew in Racist Marxist Israel Part II By wmw_admin on October 27, 2006
Written nearly twenty years ago, Jack Bernstein’s words now have a prophetic ring which he paid for with his life Who Really Murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman? By wmw_admin on February 28, 2015
Revelations that a US soldier was the killer would have jeopardised public support for the “War on Terror”. Hence a frame-up was required. A Joe Vialls classic recovered. 9/11 and Zion: What Was Israel’s Role? By Nick Kollerstrom on August 31, 2012
When Netanyahu said the very next day, ‘This is very good for Israel”, he wasn’t just blurting out something indiscreet, he was publicly congratulating the various agents who had worked so hard | 0 |
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 18:01 UTC Reports from Western Iraq said Israeli spies and reporters have used forged passports to enter the country after the start of the Mosul Liberation Operation. Israel is not recognized by Iraq, similar to many other Muslim states, and its citizens are not allowed into Iraq. But two major Israeli networks have sent their crews to the battlefield near Mosul and are releasing daily reports from the war. The Israeli coverage from Western Iraq caused concerns among the Arab, specially Iraqi media, and several reporters have approached the two teams to verify how they have entered the country. Hedas Haroush, an Al-Masdar reporter, said that "the Israelis have used forged European passports to get into Iraq. Ever since the war started numerous reports have surfaced the media claiming that Israeli and Saudi intelligence officers have been sighted among the ISIL terrorists, mostly to help the terrorist cult organize its structure and plan its war strategy. In the first such case, Iraqi army sources in Mosul testified that tens of Israeli officers were among the first group of foreign nationals that deployed in Mosul only a month after the city fell to ISIL in 2014. | 0 |
Amy Schumer’s latest comedy special for Netflix, The Leather Special, has been inundated with negative reviews on the streaming service, with viewers of the program calling it “awful,” “unfunny,” and “unwatchable. ”[The special, which debuted on the streaming service on March 7, currently boasts an average rating of one star out of five. “This past year, I’ve gotten very rich, famous, and humble,” Schumer says at the beginning of her unapologetically raunchy routine. She riffs about such subjects as how she came to grips with realizing her own beauty despite being called “very fat” by Hollywood honchos, and how “gun nuts” constantly fight against stricter firearms laws. A week after its release, however, The Leather Special is a critical flop. As The Federalist noted, of the member reviews of the special currently posted on Netflix. com, more than 700 users gave it just one star. Some have even given the special zero stars. “Absolutely horrible. Amy is 1 special away from being broke and homeless. Female comics are the best! Amy is not,” one Netflix user wrote. “I’ve had migraines that were way funnier than this performance. Very poor show,” another wrote. Schumer’s comedy special isn’t faring much better on The Internet Movie Database (IMDB). There, The Leather Special is currently holding a 5. 5 out of 10 rating. “I enjoyed her shows before, but Schumer was neither funny nor insightful in this special,” one IMDB user wrote. “A huge swing and a miss. With the exception of the gun riff, she relied on old material focused mainly on her smelly body parts. Maybe that is why none of the big premier pay channels picked up this special. ” “Netflix will have to do better in the future choosing streaming material,” the user added. This was Schumer’s first special since 2015’s Live at the Apollo, which was nominated for two Emmy Awards. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
written by Admin
A victory for freedom, justice and human happiness it isn’t. Those currently frothing at the mouth about the dawn of a new golden age of peace and equality really should know better. A billionaire and friend of billionaires just won an election. 1789 it isn’t.
But Clinton would have blown up the world. Trump probably won’t. Which makes the current situation a very tiny, possibly temporary, but still vanishingly rare moment of sanity in a largely insane world. For that small reason alone sane people everywhere should welcome it for what it is.
So, what to make of those who don’t?
Hysteria. Fainting. Screaming. Pseudo-Leftists happy to support Obama’s imperialism and domestic tyranny, beating their chests and seeking counselling for PTSD because democracy happened. “Mass” riots of thousands (or is it only hundreds? Depends on your source) of outraged identity-politicians.
What do these protesters think they are protesting?
Fascism? Well, ok, but where were they during the past sixteen years during which America has been dragged by inches into becoming the proto-facist state it now is? Besides what is more fascist-populist that using riot and civil unrest to overturn a democratic vote?
Racism? Sexism? Climate-denial? Which of these offenses is worse than nuclear war? And where is it written in the US constitution that they justify the reversal of an election?
And what about those alt news types supporting the “protesters”? Do they agree with Change.org that the vote should be overturned by the electoral college and Clinton given the presidency because she has a vagina and her chums can mobilise mass-hysteria? Are they basically saying they were for Hillary all along, because the Pentagon and Wall Street and WW3 are the lesser of two evils?
If that’s not what they are saying, then what? Protest needs an aim, so what is the aim here? More Obama? Martial Law? Total societal disintegration?
All better than Trump?
Would be great to get some feedback here. Rate this: | 0 |
The 89th Academy Awards may well be remembered for its epic Best Picture gaffe ending — but that wasn’t the only mistake made on the broadcast. [During the annual In Memoriam segment Sunday night, a tribute to costume designer and nominee Janet Patterson was botched when the Academy mistakenly used a photo of Australian producer Jan Chapman. The error was noticed quickly by dismayed Australian film industry veterans. “Oh dear. The #Oscars put up what I think is a photo of Jan Chapman, instead of Janet Patterson, for the In Memoriam segment,” film reviewer Rhett Bartlett wrote on Twitter. Oh dear. The #Oscars put up what I think is a photo of Jan Chapman, instead of Janet Patterson, for the In Memoriam segment. pic. twitter. — Rhett Bartlett (@dialmformovies) February 27, 2017, Others noted that Patterson is still “very much alive. ” Pic of my pal Jan very much alive — was just featured in In Memoriam. #Oscars, — Virginia M Moncrieff (@VMMoncrieff) February 27, 2017, hey @TheAcademy you need to pull this and replace with a photo of Janet Patterson, not very much alive Jan Chapman https: . — palace films (@palacefilms) February 27, 2017, As it turns out, both Patterson and Chapman were very close friends and longtime collaborators, according to the Hollywood Reporter. But the photo gaffe wasn’t the only issue with the traditional segment. According to the Daily Mail, the segment left out actress Alexis Arquette, comedian Garry Shandling, producer Dan Ireland, actress Doris Roberts and actor Robert Vaughn. The in memoriam gaffe came before the chaotic and disastrous end to Sunday’s ceremony that saw Moonlight win the prestigious best picture award — but only after La La Land was mistakenly handed the statuette. For more from the Oscars, including the full list of winners, check out Breitbart News’s livewire. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
October 30, 2016 4056 The intense anti-Russian campaign in the West is a sign of weakness rather than strength. The Russian air defence system in Syria has closed down the US's military options. Hillary Clinton knows it and her policies in Syria if she is elected President will be simply a continuation of Obama's. Share on Facebook October 2016 will one day be recognised as one of those months – like October 1962 and October 1973 – when the world passed through a period of great danger. The cause of the danger was the collapse in September of the Kerry-Lavrov agreement and the resulting stand-off this October between the US and Russia in Syria. This culminated in high level discussions within the US government about possible attacks on Syrian army bases , followed by public threats from Russia to shoot down US aircraft if such attacks took place. As The Duran reported – but as the Western media has conspicuously failed to do – following these threats from Russia, the US backed down . These events have been barely reported in the West. Instead what we have witnessed is a deafening cacophony of abuse of Russia for its actions in Syria, with the country baselessly accused of war crimes , and with things written and said about its political leadership which go far beyond what was written and said even during the height of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014. At one level this abuse is an attempt to embarrass the Russians to call off the Syrian army’s offensive on the Jihadi held districts of eastern Aleppo. However it undoubtedly also reflects the huge anger and sense of humiliation in Washington and in certain other Western capitals caused by the US climbdown earlier in the month. The intensity of the media campaign against Russia is however creating something of a climate of fear, with most people unaware that the most dangerous moment of the crisis has in fact already passed. Much of this fear is centred on the personality of Hillary Clinton, now widely expected to be the next US President. Based on her record and her statements, she is widely supposed to be a hardline foreign policy hawk who has never seen a war she didn’t like or want to join, and who is widely expected to escalate dramatically the confrontation with Russia in Syria and elsewhere. Many also point to Hillary Clinton’s known previous support for a no fly zone in Syria, and her comments on the campaign trail, which many see as suggesting that she plans one still. Is all this however true? Is the greatest moment of confrontation between the US and Russia in Syria still to come? Will things really get far more dangerous if Hillary Clinton becomes President? Are we really looking at World War III? In my opinion these fears are wrong. The great confrontation has already taken place, and it took place this October. A direct clash between the US and the Russian militaries in Syria was avoided, and there is now no possibility that it will happen. What this means is that there is now no possibility of Hillary Clinton imposing a no fly zone on Syria or of her ordering an armed confrontation with the Russians there. Nor is there any chance of Barack Obama doing so in the few months left to him. Nor is there any chance of either Obama or Hillary supporting Boris Johnson’s hare-brained idea for a no bombing zone in Syria, or of either of Obama or Hillary Clinton ordering US attacks on Syrian military bases. The reason none of these things will happen is because the US’s uniformed military opposes all of them. In the face of the US military’s opposition none of them can happen. The reason the US military opposes these schemes is because they would all require the US military to take on the very extensive and very sophisticated air defence system the Russians have set up in Syria. The US military has made it absolutely clear that it is completely opposed to doing this. In the days immediately following the US climbdown brave reports appeared in parts of the media which claimed the US military is confident of its ability to take on and defeat the Russian air defence system. It did not however take long for a report to appear in The Washington Post – obviously sourced from the US military – which made it clear that this is not the case. The Washington Post article, in addition to giving a comprehensive picture of the scale of the Russian air defence system in Syria, contains a frank admission that the US military is far from confident of its ability to defeat it “While there is some disagreement among military experts as to the capability of the Russian systems, particularly the newly deployed S-300, “the reality is, we’re very concerned anytime those are emplaced,” a U.S. Defense official said. Neither its touted ability to counter U.S. stealth technology, or to target low-flying aircraft, has ever been tested by the United States. “It’s not like we’ve had any shoot at an F-35,” the official said of the next-generation U.S. fighter jet. “We’re not sure if any of our aircraft can defeat the S-300.”” Since this article appeared in The Washington Post information has trickled out showing just how formidable the Russian defence system in Syria actually is. Whatever the precise purpose of the Russian military’s complaint about the alleged Belgian air raid on Hasajek , it does at least show that the Russians can now track US and NATO aircraft as they take off from their bases in Jordan, and almost certainly from Incirlik air base in Turkey as well. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has also admitted that the Russian air defence system is restricting the operations of the Israeli force, with the US based internet journal Al-Monitor reporting – based obviously on information provided by Israeli sources – that “The S-300 and S-400 missile systems that Russia put in place cover all of Israel up to the southern Negev. Russian radar will immediately lock on Israeli jets taking off from any base, except for the Uvda air force base near the southern city of Eilat, and their flight patterns will be under constant surveillance . That is how the Russians keep an eye on the Israeli air force’s activities over “hotspots” along the borders between Syria and Lebanon. Should he want to, Putin can simply push a button and turn the lives of Israeli pilots and the commanders who sent them on offensive strikes in Syria into a living hell.” (bold italics added) Meanwhile we know US intelligence is advising the US government that the Russians not only have the capability to shoot down US aircraft, but are not bluffing when they say they will do so. No less a person than Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, speaking to the Council of Foreign Relations on Tuesday 25th October 2016, has said as much “I wouldn’t put it past them ( NB: the Russians – AM ) to shoot down an American aircraft if they felt that was threatening to their forces on the ground. The system they have there is very advanced, very capable and I don’t think they’d do it – deploy it – if they didn’t have some intention to use it.” The Washington Post article confirms that the US military was always reluctant to impose a no fly zone over Syria because of Syria’s sophisticated air defences. In the face of the vastly more sophisticated air defence system the Russians have created in Syria the option of declaring a no fly zone over Syria or of undertaking any of the other US military options that have been talked about in Syria for all practical purposes no longer exists. In saying this I realise some people continue to imagine terrifying scenarios of the US swamping the Russian air defence system in Syria by launching hundreds of aircraft and missiles against it whilst daring Russia to escalate. In the real world of political and military decision making, it beggars belief the US military would be prepared to do this in view of the heavy casualties and the possibility of uncontrolled escalation it would risk. There is simply no chance of the US military willingly engaging in a military confrontation with the Russians in Syria and risking World War III in order to rescue a gang of Al-Qaeda led Jihadi terrorists in Aleppo and to fulfil some people’s fantasies of regime change there. None of this is going to change if Hillary Clinton is elected President in November. Whilst Hillary Clinton could in theory try to order the US military to take military action and risk confrontation with the Russians in Syria against its wishes, in practical political terms doing this is all but impossible since it would leave her catastrophically exposed in the very likely event that something went badly wrong. In addition Hillary Clinton would almost certainly face a massive groundswell of opposition from Congress and the nation, which would surely dwarf the one that caused Obama to back off his proposed missile strikes against Syria in 2013, if she tried to do such a completely reckless thing. Hillary Clinton, whatever her faults, is far too experienced a politician to take on these well-nigh unbelievable risks. It is not as if Hillary Clinton does not know the huge risks of ordering military action in Syria. Here is what she said about them back in 2013, when she discussed the prospects of imposing a no fly zone in Syria during a private speech to Goldman Sachs “They ( NB: the Syrians – AM ) are getting more sophisticated thanks to Russian imports. To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians. So all of a sudden this intervention that people talk about so glibly becomes an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians. In Libya we didn’t have that problem. It’s a huge place. The air defenses were not that sophisticated and there wasn’t very—in fact, there were very few civilian casualties. That wouldn’t be the case. And then you add on to it a lot of the air defenses are not only in civilian population centers but near some of their chemical stockpiles. You do not want a missile hitting a chemical stockpile.” Note that Hillary Clinton said all these things back in 2013, long before the Russians deployed their own vastly more sophisticated air defence system in Syria. If she had doubts about the wisdom of military action in Syria in 2013, then she will have far greater doubts about it now If a President as belligerent and confrontational as George W. Bush was unable to order the US military to attack Iran against its wishes – as he undoubtedly wanted – then there is no possibility Hillary Clinton – who despite her reputation is neither stupid nor a fanatic – can order the US military against its wishes to attack the Russian military in Syria now. What then of Hillary Clinton’s supposed campaign statements about wanting a no fly zone in Syria? When these are read carefully it becomes clear that Hillary Clinton plans no such thing. Here is what she had to say on the subject during her third debate with Donald Trump “First of all, I think a no-fly zone could save lives and could hasten the end of the conflict. I’m well aware of the really legitimate concerns you have expressed from both the president and the general. This would not be done just on the first day. This would take a lot of negotiation, and it would also take making it clear to the Russians and the Syrians that our purpose here was to provide safe Zones on the ground .” (bold italics added) In other words what Hillary Clinton is really supporting is not a no fly zone across the whole of Syria, but a “safe zone” within Syria the terms of which would be negotiated with the Syrians and the Russians. That is of course exactly what the Turks – with US support – are already busy setting up in north east Syria through their Operation Euphrates Shield. In fact the more carefully Hillary Clinton’s comments are analysed the clearer it becomes that her policies if elected would be essentially the same as those of the current Obama administration. In her private 2013 comments to Goldman Sachs she made it clear that her preferred way of working in Syria was not through direct confrontation with the Syrians but covertly – in other words by arming and aiding the famously elusive “moderate rebels” in Syria in exactly the way the US under Obama has been doing “And there is still an argument that goes on inside the administration and inside our friends at NATO and the Europeans. How do intervene—my view was you intervene as covertly as is possible for Americans to intervene . We used to be much better at this than we are now.” (bold italics added) However in her final third debate with Donald Trump she let slip that she is no more keen for Jihadis to get hold of sophisticated weapons (including by implication anti aircraft weapons) than Obama is, even if she tried to hide the fact by making a bizarre point about terrorists being prevented from buying guns across the counter in the US “That’s why I want to have an intelligence surge that protect us here at home while we have to go after them from the air, on the ground, online. Why we have to make sure here at home we don’t let terrorists buy weapons. If you’re too dangerous to fly, you’re too dangerous to buy a gun.” This is consistent with what Hillary Clinton said in 2013 to the Jewish United Fund Advance & Major Gifts Dinner, where she admitted that the large scale presence of militant Jihadi groups sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Qatar in Syria has made distinguishing between “moderate rebels” and Jihadi militants – and preventing weapons supplied to “moderate rebels” from falling into the hands of Jihadi militants – all but impossible “Some of us thought, perhaps, we could, with a more robust, covert action trying to vet, identify, train and arm cadres of rebels that would at least have the firepower to be able to protect themselves against both Assad and the Al-Qaeda-related jihadist groups that have, unfortunately, been attracted to Syria. That’s been complicated by the fact that the Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons—and pretty indiscriminately—not at all targeted toward the people that we think would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems in the future, but this is another one of those very tough analytical problems.” Overall it is impossible to see any real difference between the policies Hillary Clinton advocates and those Barack Obama is already following in Syria. Like Barack Obama Hillary Clinton does not intend to impose a no fly zone. Like Barack Obama Hillary Clinton is wary of supplying sophisticated weapons to the “moderate rebels” in case they might fall into the hands of Jihadi militants. Hillary Clinton does want to set up a “safe zone” in Syria, which she believes (almost certainly wrongly) will give her “leverage” over the Russians in future negotiations about Syria’s future. However she realises this has to be negotiated with the Russians, and besides it is what Erdogan and Obama are already busy trying to set up in north east Syria through Operation Euphrates Shield, so far with only very partial success. Even Hillary Clinton’s immediately declared objectives are the same as Obama’s . Like Obama her priority is not regime change in Damascus or the capture of Aleppo; it is the capture first of Mosul and then of Raqqah “The goal here is to take back Mosul. It’s going to be a hard fight. I’ve got no illusions about that. And then continue to press into Syria to begin to take back and move on Raqqah, which is the ISIS headquarters.” It is no coincidence that shortly after these comments the Obama administration openly discussed plans to capture Raqqah . The similarity of positions on Syria between Obama and Hillary Clinton in fact reveals an important truth about a future Hillary Clinton administration: it would not be a new administration at all, but rather it would be an extension of the present one. This is not surprising. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama worked closely together when Hillary Clinton was Obama’s Secretary of State. Obama obviously wants her to win the election and is pulling out all the stops to help her . it is a certainty she is being consulted about administration policy and has a role in making it, and that issues like the capture of Mosul and Raqqah are discussed with her. Just as Obama is less of a dove than he sometimes likes to pretend, so Hillary Clinton is less of a hawk than she sometimes wants people to think. It is often overlooked that Obama and Hillary Clinton are both lawyers. Both are skilled at using language to give a sometimes misleading impression of what they are about. There is no doubt about the huge anger and of the sense of humiliation in Washington at the climbdown Russia forced on the US this October. There is also no doubt that there are lots of people in the US foreign policy establishment who yearn for a President who will “put Putin in his place” and who will take a more confrontational line with Russia on Syria and elsewhere. These people unfortunately have achieved a lock-grip on the US and Western media, and this enables them to a great degree to shape the public discussion with the result that they have a disproportionate influence on policy. Unfortunately Hillary Clinton has chosen to fight her election campaign by pandering to these people. The result is that she gives the impression of intending a more confrontational policy in Syria than a careful analysis of her words shows she really does. Thus she has fostered the impression that she is looking to impose a no fly zone on Syria when a careful analysis of her words shows she intends no such thing. This is going to create many problems for Hillary Clinton if she does win the election. However that does not change the fact, which Hillary Clinton certainly knows, that following the events of this October a direct military confrontation between the US and the Russians in Syria because of the opposition of the US military quite simply cannot happen. The US is not going to declare a no fly zone over Syria, or ride to the rescue of the Jihadis in Aleppo, or take any other military steps there beyond those it has already taken, whether Hillary Clinton is elected US President in November or not. What we are unfortunately likely to see is a case of more of the same, even though that is a same which has already repeatedly failed. Thus we can expect more attempts to identify and train “moderate” Jihadis and to supply them with more weapons – this time inside the Turkish controlled “safe zone” that is being created for them – and perhaps more efforts to redirect the more radical Jihadis from Iraq to Syria to cause more trouble for the Russians and for the Syrian government. In my opinion these policies – which are simply continuations of the policies the US has been following in Syria ever since the war started there more than four years ago – are unsustainable, and are bound eventually to fail. With the populous areas of western Syria and the main cities all likely to fall soon under the secure control of the internationally recognised Syrian government, these policies cannot achieve regime change in Syria. If the US persists with them the US far more than Russia risks becomes bogged down in Syria in a war it cannot win. As a matter of fact there are tell-tale signs this is already happening, with the US plan to advance on Raqqah already causing problems with the US’s Turkish ally. Putting all that aside, the sound and fury of the current anti-Russian campaign should not mislead us. It is not a reason for fear. It is a product of weakness and failure, not of confidence and strength. Its exceptionally high volume and its ferocious tone are the product of the US’s feelings of humiliation and failure in Syria following the events of this October. It is after all natural for someone who feels defeated to over-compensate by being over-assertive, and that is what we are witnessing now. Certainly the anti-Russian campaign is not a sign the US is about to go to war with Russia, whether in Syria or anywhere else. On the contrary it is a reflection of the fact war cannot happen precisely because the US in the form of the Russian air defence system in Syria is now faced with an adversary it is not confident it can defeat at any remotely acceptable cost. Irrespective of whether Hillary Clinton wins the Presidency in November, that is the reality. The moment of greatest danger in the Syrian crisis has passed. | 0 |
‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. South Jersey veterans have miles to go for better care By Arnaldo Rodgers on November 1, 2016 veterans
BY VINCENT JACKSON
Phil Cinquina, who served in the Army in the 1940s, makes it a priority to maintain his health by working out several times a week.
Cinquina, 89, has been more fortunate than other members of his American Legion Post in Weymouth Township. He said he can’t understand why veterans with health problems can’t get help locally.
Instead, to visit a VA hospital, local veterans have to travel by bus or van hours away to Pennsylvania, Delaware or northern New Jersey.
“In Northfield, you have to catch the bus, and it’s a two-hour ride to the hospital. They will go on the bus together. Everybody has to wait until everyone on the bus is done (seeing a doctor), and then it comes back,” Cinquina said.
Read the Full Article at www.pressofatlanticcity.com >>>> | 0 |
A woman who watched in horror at the gang rape broadcast live on Facebook Sunday morning has told Swedish newspaper Expressen how she was raped by one of the perpetrators in 2015. [Watching footage of the attack in Uppsala for which three men were arrested Sunday, as it unfolded on Facebook, the recognised one of the attackers as having raped her 15 months earlier the Swedish newspaper reported. “I had anxiety when I saw him” the woman recalled, adding, “When I saw what was happening, I knew exactly how the girl felt. ” The said she was in an apartment with the suspect and three acquaintances when the attack took place. She was taking a shower when the man she identified from the video as having raped her unlocked the bathroom door and attacked. “I pushed him away several times and said no. I used all my strength to try to push him away, but in the end I gave up and felt it was impossible [to stop him]” she said, describing the man’s behaviour as “sick”. “I had bruises and scratches all over my body, the throat, and where he squeezed my breasts” the said, and reported having been badly affected by the attack, following which she required “urgent psychological care”. “I hope he is convicted, this should not happen again” said the woman, whose own complaint regarding the man reached a dead end when police were unable to prove that what occurred was a crime. “You have been raped” one of the men involved in the attack broadcast Sunday morning told their victim while laughing, according to witnesses. Viewers also reported a gun being drawn in the shocking footage, the livestream of which was only shut off after police arrived on the scene. According to Fria Tider, the attacker identified by the woman is from Iran, and has multiple criminal convictions including for assault, drug offences, and theft. Kurdish economist Tino Sanandaji blasted the media in Sweden for hiding the foreign background of the attackers, noting on Facebook that “offenders of foreign origin account for the majority of gang rapes”. Speaking of the attack in Uppsala, Sanandaji said the government has a responsibility to report all the facts when it comes to serious crime, and slammed its recent decision to block a request for data that would detail links between immigration and crime. | 1 |
Americans preparing for strong possibility of violence on Election Day Are you worried about violence on Election Day? By Vic Bishop - October 28, 2016
With the U.S. presidential elections just around the corner, concerns about violence on Election Day seem to be escalating. Several schools have announced that they will not hold classes when the polls are open due to fears of potential violence. According to a recent survey of voters, “A 51% majority of likely voters express at least some concern about the possibility of violence on Election Day; one in five are ‘very concerned.’”
Voters have been very obsessive in what’s been an emotional presidential election year. It is possible that supporters of the winning party make a public display showing off their victory to emphasize the painful fact that the other candidate has lost. Will they become easy targets? Whoever has lost may question the validity of the election and accuse of opposing side of manipulating the results. If it comes to this, should we expect civil unrest? It may be smart to stock up on a few days of extra food and water , so you can just hole up at home if need be.
More details from the aforementioned survey can be found here . Election Year Has Been Filled With Political Hostilities
It’s no surprise people are apprehensive about Election Day. Voters in the U.S. have been passionately divided when it comes to the candidates. Many are fervent to keep the worse of two evils out of office. Decisions seem to be driven more by animosity towards one candidate, rather than by inspiration or vision offered by the other.
Regardless if the voter survey offers an accurate representation of how Americans truly feel, we cannot deny that political discord has already incited violence in communities across the States. A summary here offers just a glimpse at the various incidents that have occurred during the year. Take a look below at the reception a man wearing a Trump hat received when attending a Clinton rally.
Violence isn’t exclusive to Clinton supporters. Two videos below show how Trump supporters respond to unwelcome demonstration by their opposition.
With so much hatred and hostility surrounding the election, one can reasonably expect a violent, or at least unpleasant, conclusion. And any aggression will likely be exacerbated by the news media, which will make matters worse. Confidence In The Election Process Falters
In addition to the looming question of who will be named president, another big unknown is how will U.S. citizens react? Will they accept the results of the election ? As per the previous mentioned voter survey, it seems that the confidence Americans once had in their election process is definitely floundering. Three of four say they have confidence that the United States will have the peaceful transfer of power that has marked American democracy for more than 200 years, but just 40% say they are “very confident” about that. More than four in 10 of Trump supporters say they won’t recognize the legitimacy of Clinton as president, if she prevails, because they say she wouldn’t have won fair and square. More than two-thirds of Trump voters say they worry the election returns could be manipulated. In contrast, eight in 10 of Clinton voters say the returns can be trusted to be fair and accurate. ( source ) Best Course is to Stay Prepared
The drama of the election year will likely continue after November 8. It is reasonable to expect that some communities will experience civil unrest, particularly where divisions are strong. It only makes sense to prepare, at least at the basic level, with a week’s worth of storable food and water available in your home. It might also be smart to stock up your bug-out bag . Of course, some may feel the need to be a bit more aggressive with their preparedness plans: “Since the polls are starting to shift quite a bit towards Hillary Clinton, I’ve been buying a lot more ammunition,” says Rick Darling, 69, an engineer from Harrison Township, in Michigan’s Detroit suburbs. In a follow-up phone interview after being surveyed, the Trump supporter said he fears progressives will want to “declare martial law and take our guns away” after the election. ( source )
Are you worried about violence on Election Day? Do you have a preparedness plan in place in case of civil unrest? Please share your views in the comments section below. Via Activist Post Featured Image: Jamelle Bouie/Flickr | 0 |
November 7, 2016 - Fort Russ News - PolitRussia - translated by J. Arnoldski -
The Russian president’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has replied to NATO General Secretary Jens Stolstenberg’s statement on strengthening forces due to Russia’s “activeness.” The Kremlin’s spokesperson categorized such as evidence of the “aggressive nature of NATO” and recalled that the blocs which NATO members opposed have long since disappeared, but the alliance’s behavior has not changed.
“Stoltenberg’s statement once again testifies to the aggressive nature of this organization. Despite the fact that the counter-bloc to NATO no longer exists, still this nature is impossible to eradicate for ideological and political reasons,” Peskov is quoted as saying by TASS.
The approach of NATO military infrastructure up to the borders of the Russian Federation is a fact indicative of the aggressive intentions of the alliance. Meanwhile, “in terms of ensuring its national security, Russia is acting within its borders and these actions do not threaten anyone,” Putin’s press secretary added.
Jens Stoltenberg earlier stated that NATO is planning to transfer a portion of its troops to strengthen its operations in response to Russia’s activities.
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Having not yet recovered from the severe earthquakes of recent months, central Italy was struck by 10 earthquakes in succession over a period Wednesday, all of them registering over 4. 0 on the Richter Scale. [Wednesday’s earthquakes varied in magnitude between 4. 1 and 5. 7, and several lasted a significant amount of time. The first quake, measuring 5. 3, struck the beleaguered city of Amatrice at 10:25am local time, and the shock waves could be felt in contiguous regions and all the way south in Rome. Amatrice had already been laid waste by a powerful earthquake last August 24, which destroyed the town and left nearly 300 dead. After the quake, the mayor of Amatrice announced: “The town is gone. ” The second quake — the strongest of all — hit just a few miles from the epicenter of the first, 45 minutes later. In all, five of the 10 quakes struck within five miles of Amatrice. The bell tower of the church of Sant’Agostino was one of the few monuments in Amatrice to survive last summer’s earthquake, but Wednesday’s quakes finished the job, bringing the tower crumbling to the ground. To add insult to injury, central Italy had been covered with snow prior to the quakes and was suffering from exceptionally cold temperatures. Civil Protection Chief Fabrizio Curcio said that the wide scope of the tremors, along with the snow, made a comprehensive assessment of the situation difficult. “The situation is quite complicated,” Curcio said. “We are receiving reports from all over the nation. Obviously the quake was felt clearly all over the center, as far as the capital. ” In Rome, children were sent home from school at mid morning, public buildings were evacuated and authorities shut down the subway system. Wednesday’s seismic activity was the third major event of its kind in Italy in less than half a year. The August 24 earthquake demolished several towns of central Italy, including Amatrice, and three more quakes during the night of Oct wreaked still more devastation and displaced thousands of persons. The October earthquakes reportedly shook Rome’s world heritage ancient buildings, including the Colosseum and Pantheon, and some of the damage has not yet been repaired. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
Last month, about 50 new movies opened in New York and Los Angeles. Some, like a Robert De Niro vehicle called “The Comedian,” showed up in one or a handful of theaters to qualify for Oscar consideration. Some showed up everywhere. (Hi, “Assassin’s Creed. ” Hello, “Rogue One. ”) Who’s got time to see them all? But just in time for Sunday’s Golden Globes broadcast, we plucked four movies from the glut to discuss on “Still Processing”: “Fences,” directed by and starring Denzel Washington the romance “Passengers,” with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt the Los Angeles romantic musical “La La Land,” starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling and “Patriots Day,” about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, starring a bunch of people but especially Mark Wahlberg. Jenna calls that one “the perfect movie for our time. ” We like a couple. We’re mixed on another. And one we hate. That’s life — at the movies, anyway. We also had to take a minute to express our heartfelt sympathies for — and total bafflement about — Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve debacle: so uncomfortable, so funny, so, so her. From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a preloaded app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. (This link may help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “Still Processing” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a preloaded app called “Play Music” with an icon. (This link may help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for “Still Processing” and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 1 |
Former Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos and Pamela Geller held a protest against Linda Sarsour’s speaking engagement at The City University of New York (CUNY) on Thursday.[ Calling out CUNY chancellor James Milliken for making Sarsour the keynote speaker at the commencement address, Geller started by claiming, “First of all, this is not about free speech. ” “I’m a free speech activist. Linda Sarsour is free to speak on college campuses and does frequently,” she continued. “The idea of inviting her to keynote the commencement address, those invitations are bestowed upon people to enhance a college’s reputation. Why would you hold her up as a role model? As Representative Carolyn Maloney said, ‘surely CUNY can do better?’ The norming of evil and terror and Jew hatred, surely CUNY can do better?” “She’s earned a reputation as one of this country’s most vicious activists, she has called Netanyahu a ‘waste of skin’. She tweeted a picture of a young Muslim child throwing a rock at Jews, calling him the definition of courage. Surely CUNY can do better?” continued Geller. “She’s the leader of the Boycott Divestment movement, which is in its calls for the boycott of the Jewish state. These boycotts are illegal, and inhumane. The German’s boycotted businesses, this was a direct antecedent to the Boycott Divestment movement. Surely CUNY can do better?” Continuing her speech to applause, Geller added that Sarsour “has partnered with Rasmea Odeh, a convicted terrorist who killed students at Hebrew University, and threatened to bomb the British consulate. Surely CUNY can do better?” “Linda Sarsour was outraged when police and an FBI agent killed a jihadi, who was on his way to behead me. She said it was police violence. She said that at the end of the day, a black man was shot at a bus stop on his way to work. Beheading me is work for the jihadi … Surely CUNY can do better?” Sarsour declared. “She’s an open supporter of the Sharia, she says a Jew cannot be a feminist, but she says nothing about Islamic honor violence, gender apartheid, female genital mutilation, and the oppression of women under Islam. Surely CUNY can do better?” “Sarsour said that the underwear bomber, who tried to detonate a bomb on an airplane in 2009, was a CIA plot in America’s war on Islam. Surely CUNY can do better?” concluded Geller. “She has solicited funds for Hamas. Surely CUNY can do better? … Anyone who tells you that this is Islamophobia, I want to quote Christopher Hitchens: ‘Islamophobia is a word created by fascists, used by cowards, to manipulate morons,’ and the morons are to my left. Silence is affirmation, we will not be silent, resist. ” Assemblyman Dov Hikind followed Geller onstage, declaring simply that “Linda Sarsour supports terrorism. ” “Let us talk about her record, that’s all we’re interested in doing,” he proclaimed. “The fact that she’s a woman is not an issue of course. The fact that she’s a Muslim, is not the issue. That is not the issue. The fact that she is Palestinian is not the issue. That is not the issue. That’s what Linda Sarsour wants people to believe. When CUNY invites Linda Sarsour to be the commencement speaker, that is something that’s imposed upon the students … When CUNY imposes Linda Sarsour on the students, that’s outrageous. Shame on CUNY. ” Hikind continued to display a picture of the two victims of Rasmea Odeh, who was jailed for terrorist attacks in Israel, adding, “Linda Sarsour thinks Rasmea Odeh is a great hero. ” Other speakers included Nonie Darwish from Former Muslims United, who detailed her escape from Sharia law, and David Wood, who spoke about the indoctrination of young people before Milo took to the stage. “I notice there aren’t that many Muslim protesters, but if you’ve ever tried to walk in a sodden burka, you’ll know why,” joked Milo, referencing the rain. “It’s enough to dissuade even the most determined jihadi. ” “Now we all agree on a few things, don’t we? We all agree for instance that Linda Sarsour is a ticking of progressive horror,” he continued. “We agree on that. Now I’ll call her Linda, because her surname Sarsour, did you know this, it means cockroach in Arabic, and I do so hate to be disrespectful. So we’ll call her Linda. ” “Yes, I’m back, and just as much of a waspish c*nt as ever. This week, another Muslim loser, a friend of Linda’s probably, strapped a bomb to his chest in Manchester and murdered over 20 people, including children,” Milo stated. “Does Linda Sarsour in her dark hut approve of this atrocity? If she feels any remorse at all, maybe its for the Muslim grooming gangs and Pakistani child rapists who have 20 fewer victims this week. What Manchester has done is once again raise the stakes. ” Milo continued to declare that “It’s now more important than ever to fight Islam in America and particularly its emissaries like Linda Sarsour,” before explaining the importance of America hearing bad ideas. He made it clear that he did not want Sarsour banned from speaking but that she must be held accountable for her views: I believe that Linda Sarsour should be allowed to speak at CUNY. In fact, if they’d asked me, I would’ve paid her fee, no matter how many goats she asked for. And the reason that I think she should be allowed to speak is that her words, odious as they are, should be broadcast far and wide. The best response to authoritarianism is not more censorship, but more speech. I want America to hear her. I want America to listen to her arguments and weigh their merits. I am a free speech fundamentalist. I believe that in an open marketplace of ideas, the best ideas prevail. In America you don’t have an open marketplace of ideas, because the massed ranks of the establishment media, academia, and the entertainment industry are set up to condemn conservative and libertarian points of view as hateful, bigoted, and oppressive. They are none of those things. And so one of the real enemies here isn’t just ordinary Muslims. It isn’t Linda Sarsour. The bigger enemy, and the enemy to American freedom has always been from within. The enemy here are the progressive elites who run the entertainment industry, academia, and the media in this country. It is only through the open marketplace of ideas, with no more censorship of conservatives and libertarians, and no more oppressive speech codes from the left, that I believe America can realize its promise and its destiny, and that is why this country is the greatest country in the history of human civilization. That is why we are out here, in the pouring rain, because this stuff f*cking matters. And when we reach that goal, when we reach that day, when there is a full, free, frank, open exchange of ideas, when anyone can present their ideas to scrutiny, when anyone can present their system of belief, for discussion and debate, then people will see Linda Sarsour for what she is. It’s true that her ideology is as ugly as Chelsea Clinton, it’s true that Linda wants to replace graduated women’s mortar boards with hijabs, and when that happens the burka will replace those graduation robes . Linda wants to substitute prayer rugs for diplomas, and CUNY is going right along with her. It’s true CUNY is going to see the consequences of this. They’re going to see it in enrollment, they’re going to see it in alumni donations. And the other speakers here have done a much better job than me of explaining why she is wrong about absolutely everything. So if you disagree with a commencement speaker, hold back on giving money to this university. Don’t enroll your kids. Teach them a lesson the American way, which is with your speech and with your wallet. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
I. Memorializing the Greatest Generation, Memorial Day is the day in which we remember, with solemn gratitude, all those who gave their lives in military service to our country. Elsewhere here at Breitbart News, others have recollected the fallen as Abraham Lincoln said in eulogizing those who died at Gettysburg in 1863, “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. ” Interestingly, Memorial Day was once known as Decoration Day. After all, it was, and is, the virtuous custom to decorate the graves of the . And in the name “Decoration Day,” we see something important for the sake of our civic life: the ability of each patriot to offer appropriate honors in his or her own way. That is, with flowers, cards, notes, or perhaps a bit of memorabilia. Today, such personalized displays of devotion are particularly common at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC. Why? Most likely, because that war is relatively recent plenty of people alive now still feel a close connection to warriors. Yet the passing of the years has meant that other American wars are rapidly receding from our personal memory. For instance, we might point to World War II. During that conflict, from 1941 to 1945, the population of the US was about 133 million. And yet in 2010, less than 5. 5 million Americans were over the age of 85 that is, born in 1925 or earlier. Which is to say, the number of Americans today who could have had any adult participation in the war is small — and rapidly getting smaller, as old age takes its toll. Yes, it’s painful to think that all the heroism of that era is no longer with us, at least not in a personal way. To be sure, there are many museum displays, history books, movies, and TV shows about World War II. And yet still, there’s nothing like the power of a personal reminiscence, as anyone who has ever sat at the knee of a revered elder knows full well. It will indeed, be a sad moment when the last voice from that era is stilled. So the least that each of can do is help to make sure that every one of those vital voices is archived in some form. Moreover, perhaps on this Memorial Day we can recall more of the voices from World War II, reaching beyond the ranks of the heroes who died in uniform. That is, for the sake of the enlarging the historical record, we can recollect some of the memories about those who served, too, on the homefront, namely, in war production. If their personal risk and sacrifices were less than those who fought in battle, their contributions were nonetheless enormous: As Virgil has argued many times, America’s greatest comparative edge in World War II was its industrial production. For instance, in a March 17 piece, “Donald Trump, Rosie the Riveter, and the Revival of American Economic Nationalism,” Virgil took note of President Trump’s speech, two days earlier, recalling the plant at Willow Run, Michigan. That was the plant that built 9, 000 bombers that we used to flatten enemy targets. And that piece brought forth an outpouring of WW2 memories from Breitbart readers, many of them recording what they had heard, over the years, from fathers, mothers, and other loved ones who lived, worked, and fought in that era. Virgil sifted through all the comments, more than 1800 of them these left him inspired, informed, amused, and, okay, sometimes bemused. For starters, Virgil enjoyed the comments specifically about a key theme of the article, which was war production in World War II these postings were often from descendants of workers and veterans. Let’s take a look: Reader “MadMen” said simply, “It makes me really miss my grandparents who both worked in those factories. ” Meanwhile, reader “NHnative” reported that one family’s inheritance from WW2 includes, to this day, a devotion to sewing: My grandmother was sewing parachutes . . . She moved on to sewing the uniforms. She’s still sewing daily at age 91 on her 1953 Singer. . . . All the girls in my family are accomplished seamstresses and it all started with those parachutes. Reader “Last Ride” recalled a father who is, shall we say, particularly close to the Liberators made at Willow Run, Michigan, and other parts of the country: My dad started his career in the USAF as a pilot just as they were being retired from service, and ended his career as a pilot. He loves the and moved to Ohio to be near the USAF museum to be able to visit one of the last ones around. He told my mom she should feel lucky that the plane could not say “I do” or she would have been replaced, I believe him. Meanwhile, the legendary Rosie the Riveter received much attention. Reader “Feet2Fire” reminded fellow commenters that there’s plenty to learn about Rosie from the website Diaryofarosie. Yet reader “53Skylark” raised a point of personal privilege — or, more precisely, Pittsburgh privilege — when he asserted: The iconic Rosie the Riveter was based on a woman riveter employed by Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. In the original iconic picture she is wearing a Westinghouse employee badge. She did NOT originate at Willow Run. And, all of the steel for the planes, ships, tanks, bullets, etc. was made in Pittsburgh. The former steel capital of the world. To which reader “Jonsen” replied: Rosie became a symbol of more than one woman, though. She was a symbol for all women working at home to help the cause. (As Virgil noted, while the actual Rosie the Riveter worked at Willow Run, the larger story of “Rosie” is complicated: The immortal “We Can Do It!” image does, indeed, come from Pittsburgh. Yet the great artist Norman Rockwell, too, added his own image of Rosie — and his model was from Vermont.) Indeed, Rosie was more than just an individual she was, and is, an archetype. Reader “TexanForever” recalled: My mom was a “Rosie the riveter” at the North American plant in Grand Prairie, Texas. While I was in grade school in Dallas she was riveting together ’s. Being by nature very modest, she hated wearing slacks, but she did it for the war effort. Or as reader “Sam Houston” put it: This hits home to me as my Father and Uncle were WWII Vets. My Step Mom was a Rosie the Riveter on the Liberator, tail section, at Consolidated Air Force Plant #4 at Carswell Army Airfield in Fort Worth, Texas. She left the dairy farm in Yantis (East Texas) for the War Effort. . . . I am so proud of her and our Greatest Generation! The actual Rosies, of course, are mostly departed by now, which makes commenters wish all the more to savor their memory. As reader “william couch” recalled, “In the early ’70’s, I worked with 2 Rosies. It was @ the plant in Rosecrans, CA. ” And reader “Gary Eaker” offered a strong summary lesson: Great image. Rosie the Riveter. Americans joining together to do what needs to be done to PROTECT AMERICA. We must join together. Of course, Rosie will always live on in spirit. Indeed, as reader “Vypurr” explained, she holds up well: “Rosie had more Moxie and balls than any liberal crybaby Beta male today. ” Yes, the Rosies had spunk reader “backhome1999” recalled this anecdote of female feistiness: My Mom was one of those women. The story she tells, she was responsible for of the airplane to connect everything to the pilot’s area, and she would finish in a few days while her male counterpart doing the same job on the other of the airplane took up to 2 weeks finishing his side. She asked for a raise . . . she finally made as much as a man during that time, which was unheard of. But she did her job in the time (and they knew it). Other commenters compared and contrasted two very different women named Rosie, often adding observations about how things have changed, for the worse, since the 40s. One such was reader “Cindy”: Now instead of Rosie the Riveter, we have the likes of Rosie O’Donnell and Amy Schumer making more for doing worse than nothing than most of us make in a lifetime. Long before the celebs showed their true colors, America made the yuge mistake of placing people who don’t contribute to our society in a meaningful way on a high pedestal so kids would dream of becoming THAT. And speaking of popular culture, reader “chicodon” added: Every young person should see this. Glenn Miller was the hottest musical act on the scene for young people in 1942. The entire country was patriotic, including Hollywood. It’s from before my time but it was America. . . . Can you picture ANY act today doing this? Rooting for the military? Indeed, the lyrics to the Glenn Miller song “chicodon” links to, “People Like You And Me,” are stirring: Say, get a load o’ those guys, High in the skies, Wingin’ to victoryUp and at ’em in the fight forPeople like you and me! Hey, get a load o’ those gobs, Doin’ their jobs, Keepin’ the sea lanes freeJust to make the future bright forPeople like you and me! “Gobs,” we might note, was affectionate slang for “seamen. ” At the same time, in that song, the vital work on the homefront was also not forgotten: We’ll have to roll up our sleeves, Tighten our belts, But through the dark we’ll seeThe lady with the liberty light forPeople like you and you and you, And people like me, People like you and me! Miller, we might recall, joined the US Army during WW2 at the peak of his career — and at age 38. He died on December 15, 1944, when his airplane crashed into the English Channel he had been preparing the next leg of his famed orchestra’s tour for the troops. Of course, Miller’s sacrifice was common many celebrities joined the armed services, and many more pitched in — and more than a few died. For his part, reader “Euclid” took note of the visual elements of Virgil’s article, for which the author can claim no credit: LOOK AT THOSE PHOTOS! Black and white American men and women all working together in harmony. . . . Look at us now! The most divided ever among race, gender, class, age, etc! Yes, everyone found a way to pitch in back then as Trump likes to say, the blood of patriots is all the same color. Without a doubt, we were mostly inspired by patriotism back then, and yet for some, the production effort was personal. Here’s how reader “Katherine” recalled the war work of her grandfather please note the kicker at the end: My grandfather was a tool and die maker for Ford, and was asked to be a foreman at the Pratt and Whitney plant in Highland Park, Michigan, which built the engines for the . He didn’t want to be a foreman, but he did it because one of his three sons who were in the service was a bomber pilot, and he wanted to be sure his son had good engines to fly. So it’s little wonder that even today, many remember the good work that was done. For instance, reader “Havegunwilltravel” wrote: My father was a pilot in WW 2. He flew from England over Germany and he often told me that it was his airplane that brought him back every time. The was hard to fly, no pressurization but she was tough not like what we have today, “MADE IN CHINA” crap. I would like to thank all the people who worked at Willow Run who took pride in their work and built one of the greatest airplanes in the world. Another commenter, reader “Jake Manchester,” added: I love stories about America’s exceptionalism. Imagine building one every hour. Now that, my friends, is American exceptionalism. Yet in those days, as reader “sally forth” recalled, just about everyone was exceptional: It wasn’t just Rosie, it was everyday citizens with victory gardens, scrap metal drives. Those that sold war bonds those that bought war bonds. It was rationing of food gas. Farmers entire families produced more food. Every PATRIOTIC American was somehow involved to win the big one bring the boys home. And yes, Virgil will say it again, a great led us to victory. As reader “backhome1999” remembers: My Mom worked in a factory building planes for the WWII effort, and the photo of FDR reminds me of her story about FDR driving through the plant one day on her way into work and waved at her. She helped build ’s, Douglas plant, Long Beach, Calif. Virgil recognizes that not every Breitbart commenter, including reader “Crazycatkid,” is a fan of Franklin D. Roosevelt. And yet we all might recall that his fellow Americans thought so highly of FDR that they elected him to the White House four times indeed, each of his presidential victories was a landslide. Moreover, the fact that his image has been on the US dime for the last 70 years tells us something about his enduring popularity even two Republicans, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, revered him. Yet in addition to the warm glow of nostalgia from those days, there’s also the chill pang of loss. Reader “Texan Forever” wrote: We were a nation united. . . . During this period my favorite cousin, T. J. Morrow, was a left waist gunner on a . In 1943 while over Germany he was killed instantly by flak. The crippled bomber managed to limp to Belgium where the remaining crew bailed out. T. J.’s body went down with the plane and was buried by a Belgian farmer. His remains were later brought back to America. Indeed, we never forget those who gave all. And if personal memories are now flickering out, well, the rest of us will have to step up our game and keep the remembrance going. As reader “HandsomeRogue” added, “It’s our American history. It’s a legacy our lived and we have — largely — failed to share. ” Those who hear the call to remember our history should, of course, visit grave sites and battlefields. Yet in addition, there are other ways to gain perspective. As reader “WTP1776” noted, “Every year they fly the WWII planes right over my house . . . I love hearing the dishes shake in the cupboard . . . they look so swell. ” In fact, learning about the winged marvels that brought victory in WW2 can be fun, as well as informative. As another reader posted: If you EVER have the opportunity to ride in a WWII warbird and have the money, do it. It’s an experience of a lifetime. Not just for the flight experience itself, but for at least getting a hint first hand what those young kids crewing them must have gone through in combat conditions. II. The Task Ahead, The point of Virgil’s article was not only to take note of President Trump’s celebration of Rosie and the Greatest Generation, but also to observe that the outlines of an American manufacturing revival — which is to say, a revival of American greatness, including military greatness — can now be seen. And plenty of readers see it, too: Virgil lost track of the number of “MAGAs” scattered through the comments. Yet some Michiganders had a more immediate reaction. For instance, one Michigan reader wrote, “I have seen President Trump mention us in Michigan more (in a good way) in the past 3 months, than my entire life (since 1960). ” Yet at the same time, there are lessons for all Americans to learn. For example, one reader connected the success of the national effort during WW2 to earlier American team efforts: This is truly the American way. It has always been our way. It is only a short distance in time and space from the in farm country to the factory at Willow Run. From that to Willow Run to today we are Americans who work and succeed together. As reader “Vypurr” observed, “Nationalism is what kept America alive in WWII. ” And reader “Tiger Kitten” turned that point into a larger sentiment: Nationalism is a good thing, it keeps cultures intact, countries strong, and morale high, whereas globalism does nothing but destroy cultures. Without borders you not only have no country, you have no culture, either. Meanwhile, reader “FLGibsonJr” added valuable historical perspective, linking Trump’s ideas on trade today with the American tradition — as described by Virgil — of Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay: America was famous around the world for its Protectionism. In fact it was Protectionist Tariffs that paid for essentially our entire government including all of our military. Furthermore, it was Bismarck who looked at the American System of high tariffs and the British System . . . of free trade and chose the American System of high tariffs and then went about building one of the great economic powers in the world. “FLGibsonJr” continued by urging a fellow commenter not to be seduced by “globalist corporate propaganda. ” The policies stemming from such propaganda, he added, might enrich companies, but they will be “devastating for countries like the United States. ” Meanwhile, reader “American Worker’s Warrior” put the matter in even starker terms: We couldn’t win a war like WW2 today, not after the uniparty’s NAFTA decimated our industrial base, and now we have to rely on China and Asia to make the microchips for all our smart missiles and tech. Others added policy prescriptions, connecting past to present. One such was reader “newsies2”: The Willow Run Bomber Plant was as example of what our great Country was capable of doing, when the need arose. This plant went up in the space of less than a year, and was capable of producing an airplane that helped win the war. One has to admit that it was a great success. In my thinking, the article, as it mentioned, is about ! . . . Trump is talking about our People working together to be strong and self sufficient once more. Today, some are already doing their part. For instance, reader “JRG” has a personalized trade policy: During WW2 my mom worked in a factory making piston rings while my dad was in the Pacific doing what Marines do. I go out of my way to purchase products that are made in the USA even though I know it will cost me more. Still, many commenters made the point that automation will change the factory of the future and factory employment in the future. And this is undoubtedly true. Indeed, some, such as reader “greg,” went out of their way to make the point, sharply, at Virgil’s expense: This article is ridiculous. It would have you believe that there is some chance that there will be manufacturing jobs coming back to the US. To which reader “Jonsen” riposted, “It’s about the can do spirit. ” “Jonsen” added, quoting Virgil, “before WWII ‘we had the resources in place. ’” And those resources, as Virgil noted, included a quality workforce. As reader “Kris Johnson” wrote of those we’ days: Tears fill my eyes at the thought of the America of my grandfather. . . . To imagine a time when management was proud to provide good people with good jobs. Good American companies built excellent American products that worked and lasted beyond expectation. Indeed, as reader “AngelHorseMomMD223” pointed out, even today, labor is still important: If automation was THE issue in regards to employment, they’d be importing machines, not highly skilled H1B visa workers or unskilled laborers. Indeed, the issue of trade came up often in the comments. For instance, reader “MechMan” wrote, “We must be careful not to become trade. Free trade is a good thing. ” To which reader “Mbekos” responded, “There is no free trade, none. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Germany, all of them had ways to win the trade war with US. ” And reader “GSR” added, “Free trade can benefit a company, but too much of it can destroy a nation. ” Meanwhile, reader “GahD of Socialism,” the name notwithstanding, made a powerful point about capitalism: “When a country has a economy, it thrives. ” Yet at the same time, reader “Franco” added a point that was widely understood in the 40s, and less widely understood today: “Can’t have a manufacturing sector without strong consumption and demand. ” That is, people need the money in their pockets to buy the things that are being made too much concentration of wealth at the top means too little demand for products — and so the economy stalls. Thus reader “Tyler’s” point on the distribution of wealth, then vs. now, deserves to be taken seriously: “During those years CEO and leadership pay was 80 times the median worker. Now it’s 900 times the median worker. ” In addition, reader “Gregory Brittain” added another good point about the value of widespread prosperity: In addition to the economic effects, the social effects of good jobs are at least as important. Good jobs leads to more marriage, families, more children, more stable communities, less crime and more social harmony as a bigger piece of pie is available to all who work for it. Another reader took note of a line from Virgil’s article, describing corporate culture back then: “A employee was loyal to a company, and the company, in turn, was loyal to the employee. ” Then the reader added a crucial observation about corporate practices today: THIS is what has fallen by the wayside with the infection of the globalist mindset. Billionaires see themselves as countries unto themselves, and have no loyalties to anyone or anything else. For his part, reader “Lew Ross” was even more blunt: I wish there was some way to prosecute politicians who purposely hurt American wages [by] assisting globalists in cheap labor and higher profits abroad and south of the border. For almost two decades average household earnings have been stagnant for the and nobody has paid any price for betraying the nation. Not surprisingly, President Trump figured in many of the comments. Reader “Stella S” posted, “I listened to that speech. It was heartfelt from an American President to American workers. ” Or as reader “NYPATRIOT” declared, “Make America Great Again, and the manufacturing powerhouse of the world!” And reader “Buckeye Ken” wrote: President Trump bringing the globalists to heel is a good thing. Lord knows that he is not opposed to anyone making money, but the overall good of the nation must be considered first. To be sure, Trump had critics, too, among the commenters. One such was reader “Stever Collette,” who jibed: “ALL of Dishonest Donald’s products are made overseas. His hotels and clubs continue to use foreign workers on temp visas. ” Okay, in American everyone can have his or her own opinion, and more than a few of those opinions seem to end up in the Breitbart comments section. And reader “ConfidentSpaceman” put all these diverse options into a useful context, saying of this site,“It has become the modern equivalent of the public square. ” And so maybe that’s a good place to stop. WW2 was fought, in part, for freedom, and so those who fought — on the battlefront and on the homefront — would be gratified to know that freedom is still a cherished value. Finally, Virgil is grateful to the following readers for their nice comments: “aha! ,” “Alexa,” “AngelHorseMomMD223,” “Brick Wilson,” “DesertSun59,” “DJTWILLWIN,” “HandsomeRogue,” “Jake Manchester,” “larry king,” “Lizzy,” “MadMen,” “Marianne,” “NHnative,” “NK210,” “Sam Houston,” “Texan Forever,” and “Tiger184. ” And thanks to all the other commenters, too, even those who were not so nice Virgil learns from all of them. And more to the point, thanks to those who shared their personal histories, the overall canon of American history has thus been enriched. Listen to Breitbart’s Rebecca Mansour discuss this article on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM: | 1 |
هزة أرضية وسط إيطاليا بقوة 6.3 على مقياس ريختر
تاريخ النشر: 26.10.2016 | 19:32 GMT | آثار زلزال 24 أغسطس/آب في إيطاليا A+ ضربت هزة أرضية بقوة 6.3 درجة بمقياس ريختر، منطقة ماركي في وسط إيطاليا، مساء الأربعاء 26 أكتوبر/تشرين الأول، بعد سلسلة هزات أقل قوة شهدها عدد من مناطق البلاد.
وأفاد مراسل لوكالة نوفوستي الروسية بأن التذبذبات الأرضية كان يمكن للمرء الشعور بها حتى في العاصمة روما.
ووقعت الهزة الأرضية بقوة 5.4 في محافظة متشيراتا في الساعة 19:11 بالتوقيت المحلي، كما تم رصد هزات أخرى في أربع محافظات أخرى هي أومبريا ولاتسو وماركي وأبروزو.
وقال مسؤول في الدفاع المدني الإيطالي إن شخصين أصيبا بجروح في مدينة فيسو بمحافظة ماشيراتا، جراء الزلزال، فيما تم رصد دمار بعض المباني في ما أطلق عليه "المنطقة الحمراء" بالقرب من بؤرة الزلزال (بقوة 6.0 درجة) الذي ضرب وسط إيطاليا في 24 من أغسطس/آب الماضي. وراح 298 شخصا ضحية ذلك الزلزال الذي خلف أيضا مئات الجرحى وأكثر من 3 آلاف مشرد.
المصدر: وكالات | 0 |
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Ever since 9-year-old Alexa Perry was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in March, life has been tough. Fortunately, someone amazing is looking out for her. When the CEO of Firestone Tires heard Alexa’s story, he surprised her by showing up at the hospital with dozens of exclusive photos of the company’s entire 2017 tire lineup.
What an amazing gesture!
The rest of us will have to wait until next July to see these tires, but thanks to the incredible generosity of Firestone CEO Gary Garfield, Alexa got a special advance peek on Tuesday. According to Alexa’s parents, Garfield entered the ward totally unannounced carrying a large briefcase containing what he called “a glimpse of the future of American tires.”
Garfield then had the hospital room cleared to make sure that the photos of Firestone’s tire offerings were for Alexa’s eyes only. Staying for a full hour despite his busy schedule, he was able to give Alexa detailed descriptions of the tread life, fuel efficiency, and all-weather performance for the full range of tires set to be released under the Firestone brand next year.
“Alexa has been incredibly brave and strong. I’m so glad I could share these tire design specs with her,” said Garfield. “Usually you’d have to be an industry insider to get this kind of advance info, but in Alexa’s case, we were happy to make an exception and show her some pictures of slick road tread patterns that no one outside of Firestone headquarters has seen before.”
Wow. Thanks to this CEO’s kindness, Alexa now knows more about Firestone’s tires than just about anyone. Kudos to Firestone for doing their part to make this youngster’s day very, very special. | 0 |
Presidents never get second chances to make first impressions. So, Donald Trump’s opportunities to repeal and replace ObamaCare after this week’s failures diminish as time passes. [The late Milton Friedman in his book The Tyranny of the Status Quo noted that “a new administration has some six to nine months in which to achieve major changes if it does not seize the opportunity to act decisively during that period, it will not have another such opportunity. Further changes come slowly or not at all, and counterattacks develop against the initial changes. The temporarily routed political forces regroup, and they tend to mobilize everyone who was adversely affected by the changes, while the proponents of the changes tend to relax after their initial victories. ” From Franklin Roosevelt’s accomplishments during his first hundred days to Ronald Reagan’s Economic Recovery Act, the signature legislative achievements of presidential administrations generally conform to Friedman’s axiom. Rahm Emanuel’s “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” axiom proves an exception to this rule. Assassination attempts, wars, and other unforeseen events allow presidents to steamroll their legislation through Congress. A second exception involves legislation that receives bipartisan support. Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986, which represented a larger cut than his initial reduction, received support from such Democrats as Senator Bill Bradley and Dick Gephardt. Bill Clinton’s reluctant welfare reform, one of the more significant legislative achievements of his presidency, similarly received support from important figures in the opposition party, notably Speaker Newt Gingrich, as most members from his own Democratic Party voted “no. ” Given the partisan rancor surrounding ObamaCare, foreseeing a scenario where the parties get together to repeal and replace seems the stuff of fantasy. And the idea of a crisis erupting that leads to repeal appears equally . So, either the Republicans regroup to unite to get this done now or look forward to a future in which ObamaCare becomes as much as an untouchable third rail as Medicare or Social Security. For the side, “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good” comes to mind as the strongest argument. Instead of Americans get ObamaCare because of the recalcitrance of conservative members of Congress. The people want their Republican colleagues to act like they control the House, Senate, and the presidency instead of capitulating to the people who no longer control the House, Senate, and presidency as they did when ObamaCare passed. Why settle for a status quo when they could get the status quo ante? Seven years ago, all Republicans opposed ObamaCare. Now in the majority, can’t they whip up 90 percent of their caucus in the House to repeal it? Prospects for Republicans fulfilling their promise to the American people now look bleak. And conservatives, once again, find themselves conserving liberal laws. “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” predicted Paul Ryan after his bill went down in flames before it even received a vote. Congressman Michael Burgess bluntly explained, “We’re done with this. ” Deflated Republican voters may similarly find themselves done with their representatives on the Hill. The GOP enjoyed a floating pitch down the middle of the plate. They whiffed. Such golden opportunities rarely present themselves. That’s the tyranny of the status quo. | 1 |
Doug Hagmann
The recent show in which Doug Hagmann and myself discussed all election scenarios was one of the liveliest hours in the history of The Common Sense Show.
The topic centered around the Constitutional crisis that Clinton is creating by refusing to withdraw from the race. Who will ultimately decide the race. Will it be George Soros’ voting machines? Will it be Obama? Will it be the Supreme Court? Most importantly, we discussed the real possibility of martial law and war. Please note, there was insider testimony from a Postal worker from the Phoenix area who discusses ballot stuffing in Arizona.
The details are included in the following video.
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Phyllis Schlafly, whose campaigns against Communism, abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment galvanized conservatives for almost two generations and helped reshape American politics, died on Monday. She was 92. Her death was confirmed by the Eagle Forum, the conservative organization she founded in 1975. In her time, Mrs. Schlafly was one of the most polarizing figures in American public life, a housewife who displayed a moral ferocity reminiscent of the prohibitionist Carry Nation. Richard Viguerie, who masterminded the use of direct mail to finance causes, called her “the first lady of the conservative movement. ” On the left, Betty Friedan, the feminist leader and author, compared her to a religious heretic, telling her in a debate that she should burn at the stake for opposing the Equal Rights Amendment. Ms. Friedan called Mrs. Schlafly an “Aunt Tom. ” Mrs. Schlafly became a forceful conservative voice in the 1950s, when she joined the crusade against international Communism. In the 1960s, with her popular book “A Choice Not an Echo” (it sold more than three million copies) and a growing legion of followers, she gave critical support to the presidential ambitions of Senator Barry Goldwater, the Arizonan who went on to lead the Republican Party to electoral disaster in 1964, but who planted the seeds of a conservative revival that would flower with the rise of Ronald Reagan. And in the 1970s, Mrs. Schlafly’s campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment played a large part in its undoing. The amendment would have expanded women’s rights by barring any distinctions in federal and state laws, and it was within hailing distance of becoming the law of the land: Both houses of Congress had passed it by a vote of more than 90 percent, and 35 state legislatures — only three shy of the number required for adoption — had approved it. But the amendment lost steam in the late 1970s under pressure from Mrs. Schlafly’s volunteer brigades — mainly women, most of them churchgoing Christians (Mrs. Schlafly was Roman Catholic) and not a few of them lugging apple pies to cajole legislators. Despite an extension of the deadline, the amendment died, on June 30, 1982. Many saw her ability to mobilize that citizens’ army as her greatest accomplishment. Angered by the cultural transformations of the 1960s, beginning with the 1962 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting prayer in public schools, her “little old ladies in tennis shoes,” as some called them, went from ringing doorbells for Goldwater to serving as foot soldiers for the “Reagan revolution. ” “Schlafly had discovered a genuine populist sentiment in a large female population that opposed the E. R. A. feminism and modern liberalism with the same intensity of emotion that feminists brought to their cause,” Donald T. Critchlow wrote in “Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade” (2005). Without her and her followers, Mr. Critchlow said, the conservative intellectuals, research organizations and foundations that are often credited with reshaping the contours of American politics might have failed. The conservative theorist and organizer Paul Weyrich said that Mrs. Schlafly “dressed up the conservative movement for success at a time when absolutely no one thought we could win. ” Even liberals conceded her impact. “If political influence consists in transforming this huge and cantankerous country in one’s preferred direction,” the political scientist Alan Wolfe wrote in The New Republic in 2005, “Schlafly has to be regarded as one of the two or three most important Americans of the last half of the 20th century” — although he hastened to add that “every idea she ever had was scatterbrained, dangerous and hateful. ” For all her political heft, it was Phyllis Schlafly the person who often animated discussion. With her pearls, perfect posture and Daughters of the American Revolution pedigree, she basked in depictions of herself as the perfect wife and mother. She let it drop that she all six of her babies and that she had taught all her children to read before they started school. Feminists said it was her husband’s wealth — he was a lawyer from a rich Illinois family — that had liberated her to politick. Her energy was formidable. She wrote or edited more than 20 books, published an influential monthly newsletter beginning in 1967, appeared daily on nearly 500 radio stations and delivered regular commentaries on CBS television in the 1970s and CNN in the ’80s. In 1972, she formed a volunteer organization called Stop ERA, which three years later became the Eagle Forum, to coordinate her campaigns. In 1975, when she was living in Alton, Ill. Mrs. Schlafly announced to her family at dinner that she was going to enter law school at Washington University in nearby St. Louis. Her husband, by her account, disapproved of the idea at first, and she abandoned it, only to resurrect it when he changed his mind. She received her law degree in 1978, ranked 27th in a class of 186, and passed the Illinois bar a few months later. Some opponents called Mrs. Schlafly a hypocrite for pursuing so energetic a career while championing traditional female roles. She replied by calling her political career “a hobby” and saying she would never offer an opinion on whether women should or should not work outside the home. Other detractors, like Karen DeCrow, a former president of the National Organization for Women, praised Mrs. Schlafly even as they castigated her politics. “She’s an extremely liberated woman,” Ms. DeCrow said in an interview with Carol Felsenthal for her book “The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority: The Biography of Phyllis Schlafly” (1981). “She sets out to do something and she does it. To me, that’s liberation. ” Still, Mrs. Schlafly’s pronouncements drove her antagonists to distraction, though they suspected that her biting language was calculated precisely to provoke their outrage. She said that “sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women” and that “ classes are like sales parties for abortions. ” She called the atom bomb “a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God. ” In 1980, a protester threw an apple pie in her face at a Women’s National Republican Club reception in New York, painfully scratching an eye. But Mrs. Schlafly was never outwardly ruffled. When Ms. Friedan, during a debate at Indiana University in 1973, recommended that she burn at the stake, Mrs. Schlafly replied in an even voice that she was pleased Ms. Friedan had said that because, she said, the comment had made it plain to the audience just how intolerant “intemperate, agitating proponents of the E. R. A. ” were. She was born Phyllis McAlpin Stewart on Aug. 15, 1924, in St. Louis, the oldest of two daughters of the former Odile Dodge, a teacher with two college degrees, and John Bruce Stewart, a machinist and industrial equipment salesman who was 17 years his wife’s senior. Fired by Westinghouse at the onset of the Depression, Mr. Stewart was never quite able to put the family’s finances back together. In 1944, he won a patent for a rotary car engine, of the type the Japanese automaker Mazda later sold, but it went nowhere. Despite his hardships, Mr. Stewart remained a staunch Republican, fiercely opposed to the New Deal. Mrs. Stewart, who was ambitious for her daughters, supported the family with a series of jobs: department store saleswoman, elementary school teacher and librarian at the St. Louis Art Museum. In her spare time, she wrote a book on the history of St. Louis. Ms. Felsenthal suggested in her book that Mrs. Schlafly’s impatience with women who denigrated homemaking stemmed in part from her mother’s wish that she could have kept house and worked for good causes rather than report for work six days a week. Phyllis Stewart attended Maryville College of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis (now Maryville University) and transferred to Washington University. She had no time for friends, dates or sororities, she wrote instead, as a student, she worked nights at a munitions factory guns. Even so, she managed to graduate Phi Beta Kappa in only three years, at 19. She won a scholarship to study political science at Radcliffe, and earned a master’s degree there in nine months. Her politics were middle of the road at first. In 1940, she supported the moderate Republican Wendell Willkie in his bid to deny President Franklin D. Roosevelt a third term, and in graduate school she wrote papers supporting an active United Nations. Her ambition was to work for the federal government in Washington. When no government jobs turned up, she found a spot at a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Association, the forerunner of the American Enterprise Institute. Educating herself in conservative philosophy, she submitted articles against the New Deal to Redbook and other magazines, but they were rejected. In 1946, she returned to St. Louis to work on the successful congressional campaign of Claude I. Bakewell, a Republican. After that, she worked as a librarian and researcher at a bank and, at 24, met John Fred Schlafly Jr. a lawyer and politically engaged conservative from an Alton family that had made its money in banking and industry. They were married on Oct. 20, 1949. At the ceremony, Mrs. Schlafly said, she did not promise to obey, only to cherish. But she delighted in portraying herself as a traditional wife, even as she kept to a hectic pace of travel, writing, speaking and campaigning after her oldest child turned 18 months. “I want to thank my husband, Fred, for letting me come here” was a favorite opening for speeches. (“I like to say that,” she said, “because I know it irritates women’s libbers more than anything else. ”) But the writer Gail Sheehy suggested that Mrs. Schlafly had used marriage to liberate herself from paying jobs. “Phyllis Schlafly’s formula for the better life, then, is based on marrying a rich professional, climbing the pedestal to lady of leisure and pulling up the rope ladder behind her,” Ms. Sheehy wrote in The New York Times in 1980. Mrs. Schlafly was introduced to electoral politics in 1952, after Republicans had asked her husband to run for Congress. When he turned them down, Mrs. Schlafly, who was 27, volunteered in his stead. She won the Republican primary but lost the general election. That experience, she said, helped her overcome her natural shyness, and she went on to make dozens of speeches in Illinois as an officer of the Daughters of the American Revolution and to start building a national network of conservative friends. She was the president of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women from 1956 to 1964. In 1958, she and her husband started the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation — named for the Roman Catholic leader who was tortured and imprisoned by Hungarian Communists — to educate Catholics on the dangers of Communism. Beginning in 1962, she hosted a radio show on national security called “America Wake Up. ” It was carried by 25 Illinois stations. The Schlaflys’ politics were concentrated on the external threat posed by Communism, not the crusade against domestic Communist infiltration led by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. They opposed summit meetings and limits on nuclear testing and favored a constitutional amendment to prevent the president from negotiating international treaties. Many members of the Mindszenty Foundation were also members of the ultraright John Birch Society, and its founder, Robert Welch, once called Mrs. Schlafly “one of our most loyal members. ” The Schlaflys denied they were members. In 1964, Mrs. Schlafly was an active supporter of Goldwater’s presidential campaign. In her book promoting his candidacy, “A Choice Not an Echo,” she contended that Republican presidential nominations were rigged by “secret kingmakers. ” By some estimates, the book sold as many as 3. 5 million copies. Writing in The New Yorker in 2005, Elizabeth Kolbert said the book “mixed fact, sensational accusations, commonsensical truths, and elaborate conspiracy theories into a compelling but evidently bogus narrative. ” Mrs. Schlafly became closely identified with Goldwater’s landslide defeat in 1964, and in 1967 she lost a bitter campaign for the presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women. Another run for Congress, from another Illinois district, in 1970, also ended in defeat. During much of the 1960s and ’70s, Mrs. Schlafly wrote books about national defense issues, often working with Chester Ward, a retired Navy admiral. Their “Kissinger on the Couch” (1975) begins with a proposition: “Suppose that Henry Kissinger is, in the common parlance, ‘some kind of nut or something. ’” In more than 800 pages, they argued that he was. Mrs. Schlafly hardly noticed the Equal Rights Amendment when it was first debated in Congress. Her initial inclination was to support it, as “something between innocuous and mildly helpful,” she told Ms. Felsenthal. But when, in December 1971, a friend asked her to debate a feminist on the amendment, she read up on the issue and decided that the E. R. A. was dangerous and needed to be stopped. It had already passed the House. The next October, Mrs. Schlafly founded and appointed herself chairwoman of Stop ERA, the volunteer organization that became the Eagle Forum. The “stop” was an acronym for “stop taking our privileges,” effectively summarizing the position of the amendment’s opponents. They worried that earlier laws written to protect women — guaranteeing alimony and exempting women from combat, for instance — would be jettisoned. “I simply didn’t believe we needed a constitutional amendment to protect women’s rights,” Mrs. Schlafly told The Times in 2006. “I knew of only one law that was discriminatory toward women, a law in North Dakota stipulating that a wife had to have her husband’s permission to make wine. ” Proponents of the amendment have said that even though courts and legislatures have set aside statutes that discriminate based on sex, the amendment would still retain symbolic importance. Mrs. Schlafly’s followers only grew in number after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, an issue that social conservatives saw as a further erosion of the country’s moral values. After her husband died in 1993, Mrs. Schlafly moved from their limestone house on the bluffs of the Mississippi River in Alton to a brick house in the suburbs of St. Louis, where the Eagle Forum has its headquarters. Mrs. Schlafly is survived by six children, 16 grandchildren and three . Her son John gained attention in 1992 when a gay activist revealed that he was homosexual. Mrs. Schlafly said she considered the disclosure a deliberate attempt to embarrass her. The revelation did not alter her disapproval of gay marriage. In 2010, she said of gay couples: “Nobody’s stopping them from shacking up. The problem is that they are trying to make us respect them, and that’s an interference with what we believe. ” (John Schlafly defended his mother and refused to repudiate Republican politicians, like Pat Robertson, who had condemned homosexuality. “Family values people” are “not out to bash gays,” he said.) Mrs. Schlafly maintained an energetic pace into advanced age. In 2011, she spoke out for “shotgun marriages” as the solution to unwanted pregnancies. Even as supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment tried to revive it, Mrs. Schlafly strove to make sure it stayed dead. In March of this year, she endorsed Donald J. Trump for president, saying he had “the courage and the energy” to do “what the want him to do. ” In her 2006 interview with The Times, she attributed the improvement in women’s lives in the 20th century not to feminism but to devices like the indoor clothes dryer and paper diapers. “Feminism has changed the way women think, and it has changed the way men think,” she said, “but the trouble is, it hasn’t changed the attitudes of babies at all. ” | 1 |
SORE LOSER: George Soros Declares War On America As Violent MoveOn.Org Protests Fill The Streets Hillary Clinton supporters were filmed setting fire to the US flag while marching through the streets of Portland, Oregon. Footage also emerged of activists setting tyres and rubbish bins on fire, blocking main roads and lighting flares. People also burned an effigy of the President-elect, who will be officially sworn into office in January. 10, 2016 As Donald Trump totally destroyed the Hillary Clinton political machine, George Soros radical pro-amnesty liberals started riots in California.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Former teenage Nazi George Soros spent tens of millions of his ill-gotten gain to try and stop Donald Trump from winning, but to no avail. His handpicked puppet Crooked Hillary was roundly rejected by the American people. So naturally, if you’re George Soros, the only thing left to do is pay unemployed liberals and leftists to march in the streets, spouting filthy curses while burning the American flag.
Crowds of angry protesters have taken to streets across the United States chanting “ Not Our President ” while setting fires and smashing windows. Hundreds of people descended on California minutes after it was announced that Donald Trump had won the election . George Soros Leftists burn American flag:
GRAPHIC WARNING: As is usual with George Soros people, there is foul language in this video.
Hillary Clinton supporters were filmed setting fire to the US flag while marching through the streets of Portland, Oregon, shouting “F*** Donald Trump”. Footage also emerged of activists setting tyres and rubbish bins on fire, blocking main roads and lighting flares. People also burned an effigy of the President-elect, who will be officially sworn into office in January. Hillary supporters burn US flag after Trump wins presidency:
GRAPHIC WARNING: As is usual with George Soros people, there is foul language in this video. MoveOn.org released the following press release Wednesday afternoon:
Americans to Come Together in Hundreds Peaceful Gatherings of Solidarity, Resistance, and Resolve Following Election Results Hundreds of Americans, dozens of organizations to gather peacefully outside the White House and in cities and towns nationwide to take a continued stand against misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. Tonight, thousands of Americans will come together at hundreds of peaceful gatherings in cities and towns across the nation, including outside the White House, following the results of Tuesday’s presidential election. The gatherings – organized by MoveOn.org and allies – will affirm a continued rejection of Donald Trump’s bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and misogyny and demonstrate our resolve to fight together for the America we still believe is possible. Within two hours of the call-to-action, MoveOn members had created more than 200 gatherings nationwide, with the number continuing to grow on Wednesday afternoon. WHAT: Hundreds of peaceful gatherings of solidarity, resistance, and resolve nationwide WHEN / WHERE: Find local gatherings here . Major gatherings include in New York City’s Columbus Circle and outside the White House in Washington, DC . RSVP: Please email [email protected] to confirm attendance. “This is a disaster. We fought our hearts out to avert this reality. But now it’s here,” MoveOn.org staff wrote to members on Wednesday. “The new president-elect and many of his most prominent supporters have targeted, demeaned, and threatened millions of us—and millions of our friends, family, and loved ones. Both chambers of Congress remain in Republican hands. We are entering an era of profound and unprecedented challenge, a time of danger for our communities and our country. In this moment, we have to take care of ourselves, our families, and our friends—especially those of us who are on the front lines facing hate, including Latinos, women, immigrants, refugees, Black people, Muslims, LGBT Americans, and so many others. And we need to make it clear that we will continue to stand together.” source | 0 |
‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. Why veterans are underrepresented in Congress By Arnaldo Rodgers on October 30, 2016 veterans
By Rebecca Burgess, Gary J. Schmitt
George Washington’s assertion that “When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen” is justly famous for capturing the traditional attitude of the American citizen-soldier. While the nation at times has requested or required that citizens to fulfill the highest form of civic duty, there have always been individuals who have voluntarily donned its uniform. Viewing military service as a form of public service, many, not surprisingly, have followed their days in the military by pursuing other forms of civic service, notably in the halls of government.
Although American democracy demands a military-civilian divide in regard to political power, voters have shown they are comfortable with electing officials with military service on their resume. Indeed, despite the colonists’ Revolutionary-era complaints about the British conflating military and political power, of the first 25 men to become president, 21 had military experience.
Read the Full Article at www.aei.org >>>> Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VNN, VNN authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. Notices Posted by Arnaldo Rodgers on October 30, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Veterans . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can leave a response or trackback to this entry FaceBook Comments
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KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents struck at the German Consulate in the northern commercial hub of late Thursday night, killing at least two people and wounding at least 90, Afghan officials said. Sayid Sarwar Hussaini, spokesman for the regional police zone in northern Afghanistan, said that there were two large explosions at the Mazar Hotel, which German diplomats have been using as their consulate in the city. A suicide car bomb apparently initiated the attack at the compound’s security wall, followed by gunfire and an explosion inside the hotel. The provincial police force issued a statement saying that no German Consulate personnel had been hurt, and that the police had cleared the consulate of attackers. Mirwais Rabee, the head of the public health department in Balkh Province, which includes said that the casualties had been transferred to the regional hospital there. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, called the attack a reprisal for airstrikes in Kunduz this week. German troops have been based in northern Afghanistan for years. After the end of the formal NATO combat mission in 2015, roughly 1, 000 German service members have remained at a multinational military base near mostly responsible for training and supporting Afghan security forces. A spokesman for the German special forces command at its headquarters in Potsdam, Germany, said that Afghan police forces responded and fought with Taliban attackers soon after the initial bombing outside the consulate. He said that soldiers from the military base nearby also came to the scene. Even as the Taliban have pushed major offensives in Afghanistan in recent years, including in the nearby northern city of Kunduz, attacks have been relatively rare in . | 1 |
Wednesday, TBS “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee slammed Democrats for their poor turnout at the polls, despite being all about #TheResistance, saying, “Democrats suck at voting. ” In her monologue, Bee exclaimed, “It’s not enough just to yell your opinions — that’s my job! You need to vote. ” “For all their passion and earnestness and mad crafting skills, Democrats suck at voting, especially when it counts the most,” she later said. Bee then urged viewers to get out and vote for Democrats in their congressional elections. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Internet at Risk! Don't Trust those With Good Intentions to Ruin Liberty. # Edward777 0
People are worried about young people's access to porn on the internet. People are often dismayed at bullying and general mean commentary in forums and social media. However, is it a good idea to limit internet freedom to solve these problems? Do we really want to go down that dangerous road of requiring an ID number to log onto the internet? Do we really trust the government with the right to ban us if we say something the government objects to? Tags | 0 |
Saker Message: No current Saker messages. Why Hillary Clinton Will Appoint Old World Nationalists to Cabinet Positions and the Quasi-Legal Coup-Hillary Clinton Information Operations In Election 2016 3178 Views November 07, 2016 19 Comments Analyses The Saker
by GH Eliason
Whether you are for Hillary Clinton or against her, the problem with Hillary Clinton isn’t her lack of experience. Almost the entire political establishment is behind her. Throughout all the bumps and scandal in this whole election cycle, Republicans and former presidents are coming out of the woodwork supporting her. According to the LA Times she may well be one of the most experienced candidates in US history, while even accounting for severe conflicts of interest inside the Clinton Foundation. Neither friend or foe doubt Hillary Clinton’s experience after 30 years in politics.
The problem is even Hillary Clinton’s friends say she has a history of acting without thinking, of making bad decisions. According to Neera Tanden : “Almost no one knows better than me that her instincts can be terrible.”
Does Hillary Clinton show bad instincts and terrible decision-making skills, and if she does, how will this affect the USA?
According to journalist Robert Parry “the people that will be taking senior positions and especially in foreign policy believe “This consensus is driven by a broad-based backlash against a president who has repeatedly stressed the dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East… Taken together, the studies and reports call for more aggressive American action to constrain Iran, rein in the chaos in the Middle East and check Russia in Europe.”One of the lead organizations revving up these military adventures and also counting on a big boost in military spending under President Clinton-45 is the Atlantic Council, a think tank associated with NATO that has been pushing for a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.”
The Atlantic Council is the think tank for the CEEC which is associated with NATO. The CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition) has only one goal. At the beginning of the presidential campaign they put out a small list of questions for the candidates to decide who they would support for the president.
The first question was essentially “Are you willing to go to war with Russia?” Hillary Clinton has answered that question and received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. Who is the CEEC?
The Central and Eastern European Coalition represent the various Central and Eastern European countries to the US government. What makes them special in an election is that they control a 20 million person strong bloc vote in key states across the country and sway elections by themselves. The price of a Clinton win is war with Russia.
If that seems a little too much to be believable, reconsider the Iraq war. All it took was for the Iraqi diaspora to develop strong ties with like-minded people from “The Project for the New American Century” that wanted regime change in Iraq. Many of the people associated with the PNAC crossed over into the Bush administration . They pushed the invasion together.
“ Walt Vanderbush’s essay, “The Iraqi Diaspora and the US Invasion of Iraq” (chapter 9), traces the collaboration between leaders of the Iraqi diaspora and neoconservative Americans, many of them linked to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), to convince the US government to wage war and bring about “regime change” in Iraq… The INC claimed credit for placing 108 articles in the news media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Times (of London), during a nine-month period before the war.”
It wasn’t terror, Osama, or even oil that the Iraq war was fought for. It was a guy named Ahmed Chalabi who was the only victor of the Iraq war.
American-emigre groups use their strategically settled populations in key battleground states, deep pockets, and unbridled political ambition to gain control over their home “old” countries. Even more insidious is the influence they exert over the United States to destroy old enemies.
Do we want senior cabinet and policy positions filled by people that think starting WWIII is a good goal? Let’s take a look at the make-up and politics of some of these.
Starting at the top let’s look at the Ukrainian emigres which lead the CEEC and the Atlantic Council. One thing anyone represented by the UCCA (Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America) or the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) has in common is Axis-political heritage and beliefs. The OUN is the political grouping of Ukrainian nationalists and it would vote for Adolf Hitler if he was running in a heartbeat.
Unless real Nazi political views (not neo-nazi) found a way to survive all these years with this group of people, the statement is just insulting. Anyone reading should be insulted because that level of offensiveness in a politically charged environment is wrong.
Nazism or Axis-Nazism are political beliefs and principles that structure your government the same as Republican or Democratic control would. The only difference is the “ism.” The “ism” means everything you do in your life revolves around your politic so it’s not just political or social guides or guidelines. It’s your lifestyle and everything wraps around it. Anything or anyone that goes against it is an enemy of the state, and it is personal.
From their own words in the Ukrainian Weekly, real, active political Nazi’s are alive, kickin’ and ready for a Clinton win! It is the sheer number of groups self-identifying as practicing real Nazi beliefs in the US gaining policy and cabinet positions under a Clinton win that is incredible.
The Ukrainian World Congress with its affiliates in over 40 countries and others work tirelessly in trying to keep Ukraine and the Ukrainian spirit front and center.
“We have had a minister of finance, Natalka Jaresko, in the Cabinet. We now have Ulana Suprun as acting minister of health. We have many from the diaspora assisting with strategizing, reforming and supporting the overall cause. We have a highly successful program in Patriot Defence. We are out to change the way business is done.
Unity to act when required has been the diaspora’s mantra – this cannot be disputed.
As time moves on, we see that things take a natural course. We see that two wings of the OUN – (OUNb)Banderivtsi and (OUNm)Melnykivtsi – are working actively on the international level, working in partnership and currently are in strong negotiations about becoming a single entity again.”
With all you’ve heard about Stepan Bandera’s OUN since the Maidan coup in Ukraine, I’ll bet you didn’t know they call New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia home.
The UCCA and the UWC still celebrate their Nazi SS because they are still Axis-nazis. The OUN were the vile Holocaust murderers during and after WWII and their politics live on in their children today. This is no different from the children of other Waffen-SS leaders or if Hitler had surviving children that stood up and ran other countries based in Hitler’s policy. These American kids are sent to Ukraine to learn how to copy and act like Stepan Bandera before they come back to America and get involved in policy making.
“ OUNb leader Ivan Kobasa also took responsibility of making sure the Ukrainian-Americans received the proper secondary education at Ukrainian nationalist schools(MAUP) in Ukraine. From the mid-2000’s enrollment in this educational system has skyrocketed. Today almost all members of the current Ukrainian government are graduates of this ideological system that was taught to them by moderates like David Duke who is also a graduate of the MAUP system.”
While American media criticizes David Duke’s support for Donald Trump, they say nothing about Hillary’s strongest supporters hiring David Duke as a professor to teach their children college level history. Is Hillary Clinton too far right for David Duke? After all, he has no plans to conquer Russia.
When you look at her campaign coffers and the most active political activists supporting Hillary Clinton, many are groups whose politics are not republican or democrat, but old-world nationalist. They are spread across America and still idolize their Waffen SS heroes, literally. They have statues and holidays and children’s groups across America in cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago celebrating some of the vilest mass murderers in history. And they teach their children to idolize them and grow up using them as role models. They also bring up their children in the same political mold of ultra-nationalism.
Now they want an America that will do the same. Over the last 30 years, the old world nationalists have moved into media and policy positions to make this happen. If that wasn’t enough they control a 20 million person bloc vote in key states and swing states in important cities across America.
I am not using the word nazi as an insult, this isn’t neo-nazi or even a nazi revival. These groups have been the most extreme political activists in the USA over the last 50 years and are a continuation of what their parents were in the 1930’s. In their own words, they never assimilated into American culture. They assimilated the culture to them. In the words of the CIA, they are political animals. Today, their wagons are circled around a Hillary Clinton presidency.
The OUN were the guards at the Holocaust prison camps, Waffen SS, and volunteer brigades that were famous for torture and murder. In Ukraine, they killed over 3 million people and conducted the first act of Holocaust at Babi Yar.
The funny part if there was one is that with every fiber of your being, you want to argue against these facts. The OUN on the other hand featured at least one of my articles on their rise in American politics even though I called them devils. The fact they find me credible shouldn’t get lost on you.
When these good friends of Hillary Clinton from the CEEC start getting tapped for advisory posts, and cabinet positions through the Atlantic Council or Project for a new American Century, will they automatically become Democrats or Republicans?
Does America want a war with Russia so the losers of WWII can settle old scores?
For the first time, under a Clinton presidency, America will have unbridled Axis-nazis/old world nationalists/ nazis in most of the cabinet and policy positions. They are getting the positions because they are delivering donations, bloc votes, political propaganda, and hard activism in battleground states.
The results for the Clinton campaign in emigre dominated states is the same as it was when they first got together. Clinton is up by 11 points in important emigre bloc voting districts.
…In last month’s heavily publicized Pennsylvania Senate race. Ukrainian and Baltic groups, protesting the administration’s attempts to prevent the break-up of the USSR, supported the Democratic candidate, Harris Wofford. This position contributed to the defeat of Dick Thornburgh, a former attorney general in the Bush administration….”The Ukrainian Weekly, December 8, 1991, No. 49, Vol. LIX
In a Ukraine Weekly interview with candidate Bill Clinton-“For the last 40 years, many Ukrainians have been supporters of the Republican Party. However, Mr. Bush severely damaged his relations with Ukrainians with his “Chicken Kiev” speech, and by his unwillingness to see Ukraine’s point of view in disputes with Russia. How will your party seek to secure the goodwill of voters concerned by this issue?” …
Clinton’s answer…“The Bush administration has had a spotty record abroad…including the president’s insulting warning against “suicidal nationalism” made before proindependence forces in Kiev in the summer of 1991 — and a failed economic record at home. We hope Ukrainian Americans will join our effort to put people first.” – Interview with Candidate Bill Clinton-Ukrainian Weekly Issue 43, 1992
In what has become the ultimate pay to play scheme, the Clinton’s gave over Ukraine to OUNb nationalists to run as they saw fit. This was payment for political support and bloc votes that won the 1992 elections for Bill Clinton. American citizens were given a country to run and represent in any manner they chose to do it.
According to Ukrainian nationalist scholar Taras Kuzio , the Axis- nazi political beliefs started to be taught to children in Ukraine after the OUNb took the reins. This was the preparation for what would become a nationalist coup in 2014 Ukraine.
This pattern follows the Clinton-NATO expansion and every CEE (Central and Eastern European) country freed by the Clintons followed suit. In Croatia, Croatian-Americans have more parliamentary seats and representation than any group from Croatia.
Other than American-emigre groups gaining rule and representing the “home country” in the US, there is only one other universal factor each of them revived. Axis- nazi politics and political views became normal in their home countries. In Croatia, they even revived the Waffen SS Battalions.
The people at the CEEC are behind the Atlantic Council and PNAC will be making the domestic and foreign policy decisions in a Clinton administration. While I would not call Hillary Clinton a Nazi, the people she surrounds herself with actively are. There is very little doubt that Victoria Nuland, a Ukrainian-American brought up in these beliefs will be Secretary of State under a Clinton Administration.
To get an understanding of what that means, the same people that are deciding Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy will be sending their people to those cabinet positions.
The one thing for sure is even publications that support her candidacy wonder about Hillary Clinton’s lack of judgment and surrounding herself with nationalist war-hawks that want war with Russia.
According to the WEEK “At first, Obama went over the top of public opinion to avenge American honor against ISIS. Slowly, America’s mission has crept to include some form of regime change with the ouster of Assad. Now Clinton is selling the American people on greater military interventions so that the U.S. can challenge Putin. Clinton seems unable to distinguish between what is of vital interest to the Russians and peripheral interest to America. She combines this with her bias toward always taking action — of any sort, for good or ill. The combination is dangerous.”
The article ends in the hope that Clinton is once again lying. Both current president Obama and Hillary Clinton are trying to sell America on the idea that there are moderates fighting a civil war in Syria. We are arming and training them. Are there moderates in Syria worth supporting? Do we have any business there to begin with? The article goes as far as stating the US is determined to overthrow every country that is friendly to Russia.
Right now Clinton wants to establish a no-fly-zone to protect her moderates. Who are they? US Special Forces on the ground are adamant that Clinton wants to give US military support to ISIS even if it means starting an open war with Russia.
“ Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’” “I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added.
Since 2014, Ukraine has fully supported al Nusra and at the beginning of the civil war pulled 200 ISIS fighters to the Ukrainian front lines. These fighters are jihadis from Crimea. They have also set up an ISIS training camp near Mariupol. Like all other volunteers, they don’t receive government support and rob to make a living.
Before this, the Kosovo example looms large. Does inviting indicted mass murderers and people preparing for illegal organ trade (crimes against humanity) trials to your national party convention as special guests qualify as good judgment? Does it showcase Hillary Clinton’s good instincts to be president?
Welcome to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Hillary Clinton’s special guest from Kosovo took time-out from preparing for his crimes against humanity case to give support and wish her well.
“Invited as a guest to the 2016 Democratic National Convention is none other than Kadri Veseli, the Speaker of the Kosovo Assembly. Veseli is a former Kosovar Albanian leader of the KLA and its spy organization SHIK. He’s being indicted along with the current president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci for small things like organ trafficking and crimes against humanity .’
The main witness against Clinton friends, Veseli and Thaci, is a man that was ordered to cut the heart out of another man that was begging for mercy. In a 1998 interview with the BBC , US special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard had this to say about Veseli and Thaci; “I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists.”
Clinton’s relationship with the Albanian and Kosovo killers stretches back to the first Clinton election in 1992. During the campaign season the Clinton duo found out quickly how powerful the emigre national vote was in America. In one fell swoop, the Albanians and the KLA after them went from what the USA definitely recognized as Islamic terrorists to victims we were going to war for.
The Clinton humanitarian bombing in the Balkans drove victims into the waiting clutches of the KLA, and the spread of Islamic terrorism worldwide.
In what became her first executive decision, first lady, Hillary Clinton brow-beat the unwilling president Clinton into bombing the Balkans and creating a humanitarian catastrophe. Today, as a result of this, ISIS is setting up training camps in what is widely referred to as Clinton country.
“On the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, the local police detained three militants of so-called “Islamic State” (a terrorist organization banned in Russia), is going to organize a series of terrorist attacks in Serbia.” Terrorists LIH (IGIL/ISIS) break through the Balkans to Western Europe March 2016
Clinton’s jihadi bloc vote in America remains central to her winning this election along with the rest of the CEEC. Does America want people advising the president that openly support genocide like the Kosovars, Albanians, or Ukrainians?
Hillary Clinton is not an Islamist. Hillary Clinton is not a Nazi. But the question remains. Why is she surrounded by and listening to people that are? Is that her best judgment?
The Quasi-Legal Coup-Hillary Clinton Information Operations In Election 2016
“The purpose of ” Inform and Influence Operations” is not to provide a perspective, opinion, or lay out a policy. It is defined as the ability to make audiences “think and act” in a manner favorable to the mission objectives. This is done through applying perception management techniques which target the audiences emotions, motives, and reasoning.
These techniques are not geared for debate. It is to overwhelm and change the target psyche.
Using these techniques information sources can be manipulated and those that write, speak, or think counter to the objective are relegated as propaganda, ill-informed, or irrelevant.”
What if the strife, rumor, and clamor were part and parcel of an Inform and Influence Operation against Americans to determine the election outcome? Bear with me for a moment as I lay out the proofs. The quote above is from an early 2015 article with the practitioner showing what it could look like in the civilian world.
” What would we do? Disrupt, deny, degrade, deceive, corrupt, usurp or destroy the information. The information, please don’t forget, is the ultimate objective of cyber. That will directly impact the decision-making process of the adversary’s leader who is the ultimate target.” – Joel Harding
IO or IIO (Inform and Influence Operations) as defined by the US Army includes the fields of psychological operations and military deception. All of this is used in the civilian world the same way by private contractors.
In this election, private contractors were hired to focus their capacity to influence the American population. This is proven and you deserve a step by step look at it if you are voting.
What Project Veritas shows is damning evidence of what I have been documenting in the emigre series articles since spring 2016.
By using mainstream media, they started an integrated approach which includes influencing their political opponent’s decision making. Media is given messages that follow the same themes and fill the entire information space by using an across the board effort. The effort drowns out any other message.
According to the Observer, this has been happening throughout the election cycle to benefit Hillary Clinton. “ Rather than informing voters to enrich democracy , the mainstream media has developed a feedback loop between support for particular candidates and the political agenda they intend to support. The freedom of the press is necessary for a democracy to function.” The article further points out that it was the media that helped rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders.
Wikileaks has clearly shown the interplay between mainstream media and the Clinton campaign. And they have shown clearly that most of the mainstream media are working to influence the election . This goes beyond partisan electioneering. All of this follows the exact pattern, a well planned Information Operation against the American public .
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was also the Ex-Officio Board Member of the BBG . The BBG (Broadcasting Board of Governors) run RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty). Most of the 8-member board, appointed by the President of the United States, are the who’s who of powerful media moguls in film, news, print, and radio. Appointment to the BBG is like being awarded an ambassador position for the media industry. It’s also why big media carries the same line or themes.
The 7th member of the board of directors which runs RFE/RL is Mathew Armstrong . He is a longtime friend and mentor to retired Brigadier general Joel Harding. He provides Harding a lot of access and influence in media. Armstrong’s background is public relations. He is an expert in IO and IIO operations. His bio: Author, lecturer, and strategist on public diplomacy and international media . He has worked on traditional and emerging security issues with both civilian and military government agencies, news organizations, think tanks, and academia across several continents.
In what appears to be a conflict of interest, at least two BBG board members are working actively for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
Karen Kornbluh is helping refine and to get Hillary Clinton’s message out. ” All of them are names to watch if Clinton wins — and key jobs at the FCC and other federal agencies are up for grabs.”
According to her bio : Karen founded the New America Foundation’s Work and Family Program and is a senior fellow for Digital Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Karen has written extensively about technology policy, women, and family policy for The Atlantic , The New York Times and The Washington Post . New York Times columnist David Brooks cited her Democracy article “Families Valued,” focused on “juggler families” as one of the best magazine articles of 2006.
Michael Kempner is the founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of MWW Group, a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, and may get a greater role if she is elected . Kempner is a member of the Public Relations Hall of Fame. Michael Kempner hired Anthony Weiner after the sexting scandal broke in 2011.
Jeff Shell, chairman of the BBG and Universal Filmed Entertainment is supporting a secondary role by being an honor roll donor to the Atlantic Council . While the BBG is supposed to be neutral it has continuously helped increase tensions in Eastern Europe. While giving to the Atlantic Council may not be illegal while in his position, currently, the Atlantic Council’s main effort is to ignite a war with Russia. This may set up a major conflict of interest.
According to journalist Robert Parry “The people that will be taking senior positions and especially in foreign policy believe “This consensus is driven by a broad-based backlash against a president who has repeatedly stressed the dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East.”
Parry goes on to say that at the forefront of this is the Atlantic Council, a think tank associated with NATO. Their main goal is a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
The Atlantic Council is the think tank for the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition) which is associated with NATO. The CEEC has only one goal. The question to candidates that mattered is “Are you willing to go to war with Russia?” Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign.
The Central and Eastern European Coalition represent the various Central and Eastern European countries to the US government. What makes them special in an election is that they control a 20 million person strong bloc vote in key states across the country and sway elections by themselves. The price of a Clinton win is war with Russia.
While the rest of the BBG board support Clinton’s proposed policy of closing Syrian airspace, the CEEC wants it because it will mean direct conflict with Russia. Hillary Clinton’s first foray into Islamic politics led to genocide and made the way for ISIS setting up training camps in Kosovo. Hillary Clinton has been friendly with jihadists for as long as she has had a national political career. According to US Special Forces on the ground in Syria training the moderates, there are NO moderates to train .
Green Berets are forced to train jihadis that they know will eventually attack us. Support our troops? Give them good, honorable missions. They deserve better, don’t they?
As you go through the above links, the information is staggering. Shown are large groups of people strategically located in swing states that will do anything to get her elected. The question is why?
Politically, we have a two party system. If you say you are Republican, people have at least a general idea of what you mean. For Democrats, it’s no different. There are different kinds of politics that fit easily under each umbrella. But the point is they are recognizable and we know where they stand on issues.
Tell me, what are OUNb beliefs? OUNb is a political party and set of beliefs just like Republican or Democrat. The reason I am asking is that you can’t tell me. The odds are you haven’t heard about it before. When the Atlantic Council or The Project for the New American Century takes all the senior positions in the Clinton White House, it will be filled with OUNb and similar political partisans for the first time without dissenting voices.
“Unity to act when required has been the diaspora’s mantra – this cannot be disputed .
As time moves on, we see that things take a natural course. We see that two wings of the OUN – (OUNb)Banderivtsi and (OUNm)Melnykivtsi – are working actively on the international level, working in partnership and currently are in strong negotiations about becoming a single entity again.”
The OUNb political party started under Stepan Bandera and their political beliefs are quite literally Nazi. In the 1930’s they swore undying loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Diaspora was directing Waffen SS battalions from America secretly even as other Ukrainian emigres were fighting them. The UCCA is the head of OUNb thought in America and now they want America to celebrate their totalitarian beliefs with them. If you disagree with totalitarian politics, you are the enemy. After a brief description of what kind of beliefs the people have from the Atlantic Council that are taking up cabinet positions, the proof it is happening now follows.
The OUNb were the SS that manned the concentration camps during the Holocaust. They successfully murdered 3 million war prisoners by starving them to death. The OUNb killed over 250,000 Jews, 500,000 Ukrainians, and committed the first Holocaust at Babi Yar. Today the UCCA is funding and running the volunteer battalions raping and killing in Donbass the same way.
They and the other emigre group leaders are also behind buying the media headlines and reach, damage control, and the Information Operation against Americans today. If you want to know what American politics will look like within a few years, look at Ukraine.
There are people who live abroad, who do not feel fully accepted as a minority, and here there is a phenomenon which I call long-distance nationalism. . .The members of the diaspora create for themselves an image of the home land, which is a stronger emotional investment than the country in which they live…One negative consequence of the diaspora experience is the emergence of what Ander-son calls non-responsible politics: diaspora participation in the politics in the country with which they identify can often be toxic, and their impact can be felt through the funding of particular political figures, nationalist propaganda, and even weapons…-Multiculturalism, memory, and ritualization: Ukrainian nationalist monuments in Edmonton, Alberta- Pers Anders Rudling
With the field day the Emigres and paid media had with Donald Trump over David Duke, they forgot to tell you that Ukrainian emigres supporting Hillary Clinton hired Duke in Ukraine as a professor of history and sent their American kids to learn there. Almost all Ukrainian politicians have been through this fascist education system known as MAUP . The Ukrainian American and other likeminded ethnics are the people that will fill the senior foreign and domestic cabinet positions.
“ OUNb leader Ivan Kobasa also took responsibility of making sure the Ukrainian-Americans received the proper secondary education at Ukrainian nationalist schools(MAUP) in Ukraine. From the mid-2000’s enrollment in this educational system has skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands. Today almost all members of the current Ukrainian government are graduates of this ideological system that was taught to them by moderates like David Duke who is also a graduate of the MAUP system.”
“I do care about social and economic issues affecting every American, but given the war in Ukraine, there is only one issue that we as Ukrainian Americans must focus on: Ukraine .
The Ukrainian issue “trumps” all other personal issues!
A vote for Trump is a vote against Ukraine!
When it comes to U.S. elections, Ukrainian Americans are a statistically minor, divided, unorganized voting group. The Central and East European Coalition is a coalition of U.S.-based organizations that represent their countries of heritage, a voting group of over 20 million people. The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and the Ukrainian National Association are member organizations of the CEEC. Americans of East and Central European heritage can make a significant difference and influence the election result if their attention is focused.” Ukraine Weekly The Presidential Election: Can We Make A Difference
Hillary Clinton’s response is she will defend Ukraine’s borders! Even though it has no eastern or northern border to defend. She has guaranteed to start a war with Russia if she is elected.
Not only is Clinton buying the media through these second parties, but they are hiring professional, former military psyops professionals to deny pertinent information from voters and disrupt her political opponents message. At the same time, they are paying an across the board mainstream media to simultaneously publish articles and video that lift her campaign up, disrupt, destroy, and drown out alternate messages.
Wikileaks noted this when it exposed the Clinton campaign’s program to incite violence and obfuscate the point. The Huffington Post example of this is” Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar , rampant xenophobe , racist , misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S”.
“ We understand the Clinton camp has hired beaucoup and Zwanzig (a lot) of trolls, we also understand the Kremlin has done the same. We just do not know if Trump has followed suit. From a counterintelligence perspective, this is confusing as heck.
One of the really neat things about this election is seeing all my information operations and information warfare friends on social media, contributing and commenting, looking darned intelligent! Theirs is normally the voice of reason, maturity, and intelligence.” Joel Harding
By systematically and continually attacking the voter’s psyche, Americans are being treated in the same way our government treats countries they overthrow . The right to make an informed vote has been denied to support any particular candidate.
What does an Inform and Influence Operation entail against the American public? Read the following carefully. The term “anti-western” refers to anyone that disagrees with whom he is working for. In this case, he works for the Ukrainian Emigres. This also covers Syria. Every media outlet or journalist writing about these subjects that aren’t carrying the line he lays out is the enemy. These are the tactics being used today during the election.
“I am building a database of planners , operators, logisticians, hackers, and anyone wanting to be involved with special activities I will call ‘inform and influence activities’. I have received a few different suggestions to help organize operations – of all sorts – against anti-Western elements. No government approval, assistance or funding. This skirts legalities. This is not explicitly illegal and it may not even be legal, at this point. That grey area extends a long way. I am only trying to assess the availability of people willing to participate in such efforts. Technology, equipment and facility offers are also appreciated. If you would like to be included in my database, please send a tailored resume to joel_harding@”
If you don’t think this is possible , this has been going on around you for a long time. look at the credentials of retired Brigadier General Joel Harding and decide for yourself. But first look at what he promises he can do for you when you hire him.
“ Information operations and warfare, also known as influence operations, includes the collection of tactical, operational and strategic information about a competitor as well as the dissemination of information and propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an competitor or adversary in the corporate, government or military realm.
It is our job to maximize your advantages over your competitor while minimizing your competitor. We work on the national level down to the individual level. We seek to give you every advantage possible in order to advance your position, increase your reputation, and maximize your standing in your field.”
“ Bio- Joel Harding spent 26 years in the Army ; his first nine years were spent as an enlisted soldier, mostly in Special Forces, as an SF qualified communicator and medic, on an A-Team. After completing his degree, Joel then received his commission as an Infantry Officer and after four years transitioned to the Military Intelligence Corps.
In the mid 1990s, Joel was working in the Joint Staff J2 in support of special operations, where he began working in the new field called Information Operations. Eligible Receiver 1997 was his trial by fire, after that he became the Joint Staff J2 liaison for IO to the CIA, DIA, NSA, DISA and other assorted agencies in the Washington DC area, working as the intelligence lead on the Joint Staff IO Response Cell for Solar Sunrise and Moonlight Maze. Joel followed this by a tour at SOCCENT and then INSCOM, working in both IO and intelligence.
Specializing in Russian Information Warfare for the past 30+ months. Consultant, advisor and subject matter expert on Information Operations, Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy with more than 19 years practical, policy in IO, SC and PD. 35 years experience in broader defense and national security matters. I have lectured all over the world about Information Warfare and Cyberwar and have spoken at numerous conferences. I am currently focusing on the Ukraine/Russia information war with a simultaneous heavy emphasis on the accompanying hybrid war. I currently teach classes about Russian Information Warfare and a second class on Propaganda/Agitprop. Specialties: Information Operations/Information Warfare, Public Diplomacy, Strategic Communication, Counter-Disinformation, Electronic Warfare, Deception, Operational Security, Cyberwar, Intelligence, Special Forces and Special Operations. Primary author Ukraine National Strategy for Information Policy, submitted in 2015 and again in 2016.”
With his resume, no guess work is needed to understand how effective his friends are. Before going further, ask yourself if this is what elections are supposed to be?
As a litmus test take Hillary’s name out and put down what is known just through Wikileaks in a list. Put McCain’s name, Kucinich, Paul, Bush, and ask yourself would this be an acceptable candidate? Add what’s been shown here. Is there an acceptable candidate?
If any of them would be acceptable, sorry like many others you drank the kool-aid already.
“ I’ve seen how our heroes, activists , journalists, and celebrities have completely sold their souls to support something no person with an iota of morality would do. I’ve seen them say and do things to derail candidates who would have been a million times better for those less fortunate around us. It’s unfortunate most pretend to fight the establishment, to act like they love the people more than they love the struggle and the relevance that it brings them. I am not one of those and I won’t continue to be until the good Lord takes me.” Cesar Vargas
Hillary Clinton is not a Nazi. But every position of relevance will be filled with people that really are political Nazis. They are technically integral nationalists. They look down on democracy in any form. At least now you know what kind of government you are voting for.
Regardless of who wins, there are 2000 tanks, artillery, and rockets pointed my way, waiting for this election to be over. I am an American that lives in Donbass, and wrote many of the early breaking stories and much of the background about the conflict in Ukraine.
If you cannot objectively look and see a more sophisticated version of what happened here through 2014 is going on, I can’t help you. Soon the OUNb will order the volunteer battalions to start killing civilians on a large scale again. I will go back to reporting on the war.
If all these things weren’t being done, I would keep it simply about policy. Russia is not an enemy of the United States. Instead, I believe I am witnessing a quiet coup that demands legality in America.
If this Information Operation is allowed to win the 2016 presidency, then elections are fruitless. Every other election will be based on the same strategy. They will have to be for any candidate to win.
Your voice, your views, your informed choice will no longer matter. The IIO practitioner kills dissent. That’s their job. They’re only doing their job.
The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 | 0 |
Assad thanks Putin for assistance in fighting terrorism 28 October 2016 TASS President Assad has instructed Walid Muallem to convey his gratitude to Vladimir Putin. Facebook putin , bashar al-assad , syria
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad conveyed his gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his assistance in fighting terrorism, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, who is on a visit to Moscow, stated during the talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.
"President Assad has instructed me to convey gratitude on behalf of the Syrian people and government to you and President Putin for your effective assistance in the fight against terrorism," Muallem said.
"We are grateful to Russia for its effective assistance in the fight against terrorism," the diplomat said.
"We seek to free our land from terrorists so we highly appreciate Russia and Iran’s efforts aimed at achieving this goal." Ceasefire in Aleppo
Damascus is ready to resume the ceasefire but only if there are guarantees that civilians will be able to leave the city, Muallem has noted.
"Recently, we have made a decision to suspend hostilities in Aleppo. The ceasefire lasted for three days," Muallem said.
"We are still ready to resume the ceasefire, but only with guarantees provided by the patrons of terrorists that the ceasefire will allow civilians leave the city."
First published by TASS . | 0 |
The economic recovery may be durable, but it is anything but dynamic. Weighed down by anemic business spending, overstocked factories and warehouses, and a surprisingly weak housing sector, the American economy barely improved this spring after its usual winter doldrums. Consumer spending advanced at a robust pace, helping to sustain a modest growth rate of 1. 2 percent, but the gain was overshadowed by the poor showing in other sectors of the economy. The quarter was the third consecutive period in which the economy advanced at less than a 2 percent annual rate, the weakest stretch in four years. The new economic data underscores the continuing frustration about the current growth cycle, which has now gone on for seven years — longer than most economic upswings — but which has repeatedly failed to break out into a higher orbit. And with the political conventions now over, and the brawl between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump for the White House in full swing, Friday’s data at least partly undercuts the Democrats’ argument that the nation’s economic health is improving. “This definitely feeds into an existing Republican narrative that the economy is growing too slowly and dials it up a notch,” said Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist who served in the Obama administration. The economic debate may intensify ahead of the election in November, particularly because the recovery’s gains have been less robust in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. States firmly in the Democratic or Republican column — California and Texas, for example — are generally doing much better. On Friday, Republican leaders were quick to cite the new data on the nation’s gross domestic product to reinforce their argument that President Obama’s policies have failed to turn things around. “After eight years of higher taxes, endless regulations and skyrocketing health care costs, the chickens are apparently coming home to roost,” said Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas. But there are other signs that the economy is on the mend, even for ordinary Americans who had, until recently, barely benefited from the rebound. The unemployment rate, which reached 10 percent after the recession, has fallen back to around 5 percent, while hiring and pay gains have been healthier lately. Those factors may ultimately contribute more to perceptions of vitality than abstract statistics on the nation’s economic output. “What really matters to people is jobs and income, and that’s most recently been a positive story,” added Mr. Bernstein, who is now a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Based on more complete information about recent years, the government revised last year’s growth rate up slightly to 2. 6 percent — the best so far since the severe downturn ended in . But that is still below the gains the American economy recorded in the let alone in the booming late 1990s. Over all, the economy’s 1. 2 percent advance in the second quarter, the Commerce Department reported Friday, was just slightly better than the 0. 8 percent pace recorded in the first quarter. Besides the decrease in inventory accumulation and business investment, weaker government outlays also held back growth, reinforcing a trend that has hobbled the recovery in recent years. The abrupt falloff in homebuilding caught analysts off guard, but it came after a series of gains in late 2014 and 2015. And with mortgage rates very low and home prices still rising in many parts of the country, the residential real estate sector is expected to contribute to growth again in the coming quarters. Household spending was the economy’s bright spot, rising at an annualized rate of 4. 2 percent. “The consumer is doing all the heavy lifting,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Markit. “Aside from technology and software, business spending was bad and housing was also surprisingly weak, which is payback for gains in recent quarters. ” On the positive side, the overstock at stores and warehouses is starting to dissipate. That could help growth in the second half of the year, Mr. Behravesh said. After a long period in which trade has weighed on the economy, the balance between exports and imports may finally be improving. The net trade picture actually lifted growth by nearly a quarter of a percentage point last quarter, the first significant improvement from trade since . In addition, Mr. Behravesh said, wages are finally beginning to inch higher for many workers after years of stagnation. Gas prices also remain low. While grappling with weaker demand from customers in Asia and Europe, many factories and mills in the nation’s midsection have been hit by the drop in energy prices as new drilling for oil and natural gas has collapsed. Regional disparities have contributed to differing perceptions of the economy. Workers in the West are finding themselves priced out of neighborhoods in booming San Francisco and Seattle, while families in less prosperous parts of the country say they feel as if the recession never really ended. Domestically focused service industries like software, health care and financial services are doing well, lifting incomes among workers. A strong real estate market in many parts of the country and the on Wall Street are also encouraging more affluent consumers to open their wallets. This week, the Federal Reserve noted improving economic conditions in the United States after a meeting of policy makers, even as the central bank held off on increasing in interest rates. A top Fed official downplayed the latest report. John Williams, president of the San Francisco Fed, said the gross domestic product reading was weak largely because of inventories and government spending, noting that underlying data that discount for swings in stock building “look good. ” Speaking to reporters after a speech in Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Williams, an influential centrist at the central bank, noted the two key employment and inflation reports before the next meeting in . “It makes sense, assuming the data continue to support that, to raise rates again this year,” he said. Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays, said the disappointing gross domestic product report makes a move by the Fed in September a bit less likely, but it could still be on track if the government issues strong jobs reports for July and August. July’s data will be released by the Labor Department next Friday. “The domestic side of the economy looks O. K. Not stellar, not fantastic, but enough to keep us on a modest growth path,” Mr. Gapen said. “And if it’s all about personal consumption, then the labor market is your best indicator. ” | 1 |
Email
An email published by WikiLeaks on Friday reveals the extent to which Democrats and their allies manipulate polls to serve their ends.
The 2008 email appears shows Democratic operatives plotting to intentionally oversample seniors in a poll in order to get their desired results.
“FYI: We are going to try to do an oversample of seniors on the poll. Sample too small otherwise,” operative Tom Matzzie wrote to Clinton adviser Paul Begala, campaign Chairman John Podesta, Media Matters for America founder David Brock, and operative Susan McCue. “Good,” Begala responded.
Trump and his supporters have claimed often that many polls showing a significant Hillary lead over Trump have been manipulated through selective sampling. There is ample evidence that this occurs in Democrat-friendly newsrooms.
“Hillary Clinton has opened up a 7-point lead over Donald Trump in an online poll that seems to reflect a ‘bounce’ for the former secretary of state after she wrapped up the Democratic nomination last week,” the Daily Mail reported in June.
"But the weekly tracking poll, from NBC News and the Surveymonkey company, included the opinions of 7 percent more self-identified Democrats than Republicans – the same margin as the poll's topline result," the article noted.
The email released by WikiLeaks Friday proves that Democratic operatives themselves engage eagerly in such tactics.
Polls are a powerful propaganda tool, and people exposed repeatedly to polls suggesting their candidate's loss is a foregone conclusion will often be influenced to stay home on Election Day.
"I think sometimes polling is done to dampen election turnout," Rand Paul said in an interview on Wednesday on "The Tom Roten Show" out of West Virginia. "When we say over and over someone can't win that is a form of rigging in the sense that it is designed to suppress turnout," he added. | 0 |
“I was called a whore and a witch,” Madonna said on Friday in a searing speech about the sexism and bullying that women face in the music industry and the culture at large. “Such a nasty woman,” Donald J. Trump interjected in October as Hillary Clinton pointed out holes in his Social Security plan during their final presidential debate. Madonna and Mrs. Clinton: both trailblazers, both polarizing figures, and both attacked for actions, choices and behavior that are broadly accepted — even applauded — when done by their male peers. Madonna herself made a connection between the two women before her speech Friday, saying it was “really important to make a stand and speak my mind” about women’s rights after Mrs. Clinton’s loss in November. Our pop music editor, Caryn Ganz, and deputy Culture editor and former political correspondent Patrick Healy looked at how Madonna and her speech put Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy in fresh perspective. PATRICK HEALY: Caryn, I’m coming off 18 months covering the presidential campaign, and frankly I’ve been wondering if Mrs. Clinton would ever give a speech like Madonna’s on Friday — calling out sexism in America and the rules that trap women but not men. “If you’re a girl, you have to play the game,” Madonna said. “Don’t have an opinion that’s out of line with the status quo. ” Madonna and Mrs. Clinton have been controversial in part because they didn’t play “the game. ” It’s easy to forget, amid their celebrity and longevity, that Madonna and Mrs. Clinton were once renegades: speaking out and pursuing power in ways that were considered overly ambitious for women. They fought for equality and respect — and they sought the kind of influence and money and fame that men have. Mrs. Clinton’s place and legacy in our culture is just starting to be considered and debated. But only after her speech yesterday did I start to think about her and Madonna as sisters in arms. CARYN GANZ: Mrs. Clinton is so buttoned up and Madonna is so, well, unbuttoned, that I think many people have been hesitant to make this connection. And because Madonna has used sexual expressiveness as code for all kinds of liberation, she hasn’t been courted as a political ally. But now that both of them have reached a certain age, the sexism they’ve faced for decades has become something more insidious, paired with ageism. HEALY: A lot of people don’t see sexism hurting Mrs. Clinton — after all, she won the Democratic nomination — but she and her advisers did. As for the sort of “liberation” that Madonna pioneered, Mrs. Clinton has a complicated relationship with it. She came of age in the era of women’s lib, and yet — to help Bill Clinton’s career in Arkansas — she changed her last name from Rodham to Clinton and got new hairstyles and glasses. And when she was most visibly liberated, including in her performances in political debates, she got called “likable enough” by Barack Obama in 2008 and a “nasty woman” by Mr. Trump this fall. Madonna, in her speech Friday, recalled that she got so much abuse after releasing her “Erotica” album and “Sex” book in 1992 that she felt like “the most hated person on the planet. ” GANZ: In a 2008 “Weekend Update” segment about Mrs. Clinton’s initial presidential run, Tina Fey said: “Maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. Let me say something about that: Yeah, she is. ” (Ms. Fey later proclaimed, “Bitch is the new black. ”) I thought about this when Madonna put the song “Unapologetic Bitch” on her most recent album, “Rebel Heart,” the record where she started to speak openly about the discrimination she’s faced as a female artist over 55. Madonna has referred to herself in many ways in songs over the years, but she waited until 2015, on her 13th album, to reclaim “bitch. ” HEALY: Mrs. Clinton knew some people used that word about her. Like Madonna, she answered the haters with a strong work ethic. Mrs. Clinton put in days, thought deeply about policy, and was a tireless campaigner even if she wasn’t the world’s most natural politician. Madonna is no Adele: She wasn’t born with a talent and voice. But she succeeded through work, grit and guts. GANZ: But she was born with a ability to understand and command the power of connecting her voice to her image. Nobody did this the way Madonna did before her, though many have followed her example. Knowing that as a woman, her appearance would be a talking point, Madonna this scrutiny as a weapon from the beginning of her career, forcing everyone to talk about what she looked like by evolving — it was a conversation she essentially started herself. But as she has gotten older, the commentary about her work is almost entirely centered on how she looks rather than how she sounds, and whether what she is wearing or saying is “appropriate for a woman her age” — a question that musicians like Mick Jagger, who is 15 years older than Madonna, have never had to answer. And certainly no other candidate was the subject of stories about what he wore to the debate and what his clothes meant. (Continuing investigations into Mr. Trump’s hair aside.) HEALY: I remember Mrs. Clinton telling me during the 2008 race that she probably woke up two hours earlier than Barack Obama each day because she had to do her hair and makeup, and he could just roll out of bed and into a suit. She has had no room for error in what she says or how she looks, her advisers felt, while a candidate like Mr. Trump could sound like a crazy man on Twitter, and many voters shrugged. Then again, Mrs. Clinton is far more of a perfectionist than Mr. Trump, as is Madonna. GANZ: But Madonna and Mrs. Clinton have had their perfectionism interpreted as a pathology. As women cutting a path no woman had traveled before, they had no choice but to be as precise and as possible, knowing the slightest failure would invite a deluge of criticism. Madonna is known to control every aspect of rooms in which she will appear, down to the color of the lampshades. While Mr. Trump was making brash statements, Mrs. Clinton was tweeting policy plans and rigorously preparing for the debates. HEALY: But Mrs. Clinton could also take control too far, like keeping her State Department email on a private server. “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible,” she wrote in 2010. And in 2008, she rarely talked about being a woman because she wanted to control her image — she wanted voters to think she would be as tough as any male commander in chief. GANZ: Trailblazing is a solitary game. They’re both lonely warriors who reached a critical moment this year: the time when they had to speak up for their achievements and call out their haters. HEALY: As Madonna said in her speech, “I remember wishing I had a female peer I could look to for support. ” But she and Mrs. Clinton have a mixed record as allies of feminists. Mrs. Clinton put aside her career to support her husband’s, and stood by him during his extramarital affairs, and she supported some policies, like a welfare overhaul, that critics regarded as . She was also a champion of women’s rights as human rights — even as she opposed gay rights like marriage. Do Mrs. Clinton and Madonna bear any responsibility for being polarizing figures, Caryn? GANZ: Oh, certainly, although Madonna has always been a steadfast supporter of gay rights (something Mrs. Clinton can’t claim). Madonna designed herself to be a polarizing figure, and her breed of feminism has evolved over the years — at times she’s been more focused on than the advancement of womankind. She has defended Sean Penn from accusations of domestic abuse. She wrote one of the most famous songs about not having an abortion. And she’s also often been a covert feminist: On “Material Girl,” a song still cited as an ode to consumerism, Madonna is the winner because “experience has made me rich, and now they’re after me. ” It wasn’t the objects she was after, or the men — it was the power. And that was in 1984. HEALY: Mrs. Clinton has been labeled since she was a young woman. And it drove her crazy, advisers said, because Mr. Trump and other men never faced that accusation. She felt held to the double standard that Madonna spoke about on Friday. I can imagine Mrs. Clinton listening to that speech and just saying “Yaaaas” over and over. | 1 |
Common Sense as defined by the Cambridge Academic Text Dictionary is the ability to use good judgement in making decisions to live in a reasonable and safe way. While that may have sounded reasonable and safe back in the sixties and seventies when I was growing up, I find myself at risk daily based on the judgement of others who make decisions that have lasting and irreversible consequences. Ever since I started writing sporadically, beginning in the early eighties for small newspapers like the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Defender, I have enjoyed the opportunity to research, find and expose resources. I started with “Canons on Careers”, which was my weekly contribution to those readers who were looking for career and employment opportunities and financial aid to pay for, and in some cases get paid for attending college. When I started “Just Saying” for the Guardian Liberty Voice in 2014, I was motivated to express my personal opinions about the world around me as I saw it through my limited world view. As I see the local landscape that I travail everyday, and the world at large portrayed to me and others by media moguls and highly paid infotainment charlatans, I write to vent my frustrations and fears that the world around me has been dumb down to the point where Common Sense will never again be Common!
Since I grew up in public housing and went to public schools, I have never really thought of myself as an intellectual or the brightest candle on the cake. I never ever thought that those around me would fall to such a level of illiteracy where the adults and the majority of inner city youth and young adults would struggle to read and write at an eight grade level or higher. I am in the business of hiring people daily and 7 out of ten people who I put to work daily cannot properly fill out an application or transfer information from a Resume’ to the application. The fact that illiteracy has been broken down to three categories, functional, cultural and moral doesn’t ease my anxieties as I see relatively modest and simple differences of opinion escalate to levels of violence and idiocy that cost people their limbs and their lives. While Functional illiteracy plagues over 24 million Americans, with over a million of them graduating from high school with a diploma the value of a wet food stamp, Cultural illiteracy is the lack of knowledge of the significant historical events that shaped this country which obscures the lessons learned ( or Not learned )! Moral illiteracy completes the three forms of illiteracy, and to my view causes the senseless and heinous callousness that prevails in the United States today! Our young are not taught the moral values of the old and therefore disrespect the old, value the new and care more about the self than the community of you! That said, how could common sense ever factor into the equation ! There is no ME in common and the only sense that counts is mine!
I’m Just Saying……What’s a fella to do? I live in a country that just elected a guy named Donald Trump, President, who says he represents the people and that he is the change agent that is going to make America GREAT again. Yes, this is the guy who going to bring back all the jobs that our poor trade polices gave away. Yes, this is the guy who says Climate Change is a hoax and all those coal mining jobs are coming back to West Virginia, Pennsylvania and all those lily white towns who used to thrive on those deadly but well paying jobs. This is also the guy who is the protege’ of Roy Cohn (the instigator and arbitrator of McCarthyism) who caused many people to commit suicide and destroyed countless lives with tactics of fear using race, misogyny and communism! In a NUTshell, Donald Trump cohnned many of America’s so-called common folk into thinking he was with them and one of them! Yep, a millionaire/billionaire (who knows, he never revealed his taxes) who claims to be a commoner! It took me a long time Dad but now I get it…….Common Sense is not Common!!!! | 0 |
Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly joked to President Donald Trump he could use a ceremonial saber on the press Wednesday, in a comment caught on a hot mic. [After being presented the saber during Coast Guard Academy commencement in Connecticut, Trump sat beside Kelly who quipped: “You can use that on the press, sir. ” “Yeah,” Trump chuckles. Gen. Kelly tells Pres. Trump ”you can use that on the press” after he’s presented with ceremonial saber at Coast Guard Academy commencement. pic. twitter. — ABC News (@ABC) May 17, 2017, Kelly’s joke sparked a predictable freakout from media and leftists. Why, Gen. Kelly? When POTUS has repeatedly aggressively attacked the press? https: . — Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) May 17, 2017, I fought with John Kelly in Iraq. This is shocking to me, and it’s not a funny joke. Professionals don’t say these kinds of things. https: . — Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) May 17, 2017, Here’s a shitty thing to say to in front of hundreds of JOs who just swore to defend the Constitution of the US https: . — Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) May 17, 2017, If it wasn’t already clear, DHS John about killing the not the champion of democratic norms he once appeared to be. https: . — Katherine Eban (@KatherineEban) May 17, 2017, But, Gen. Kelly … the pen is mightier than the sword. https: . — Ellen Rose (@icklenellierose) May 17, 2017, Nothing about this ”joke” between @DHSgov Secretary Kelly and @realDonaldTrump is funny … https: . — Joseph Amodeo (@josephamodeo) May 17, 2017, Literal saber rattling https: . — Ryan Teague Beckwith (@ryanbeckwith) May 17, 2017, During his speech to the graduates, Trump hammered the media. “Look at the way I’ve been treated lately especially by the media. No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly,” he said. “I didn’t get elected to serve the Washington media or special interests. I got elected to serve the forgotten men and women of our country, and that’s what I’m doing,” he added. | 1 |
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer denounced critics of President Donald Trump’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement as “pathetic,” after the media pointed out that Trump failed to refer to Jews in his statement. [“It is pathetic that people are picking on his statement,” Spicer said, when asked about Jewish critics of the statement during the White House press briefing. The statement recognized “the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust” but did not specifically mention “Jews. ” Spicer said that a staffer at the White House helped draft the statement who was both Jewish and the descendant of a Holocaust survivors. “The president went out of his way to recognize the Holocaust and the suffering that went through it and the people that were affected by it and the loss of life, and to make sure that America never forgets what so many people went through, whether they were Jews or Gypsies, gays, disability, priests,” Spicer said. The Republican Jewish Coalition reacted to Trump’s statement, calling it a “painful omission. ” The Zionist Organization of America specified “our chagrin and deep pain” for failing to specifically mention Jews or the that led to the Holocaust. Spicer reminded critics that Trump was very supportive of the nation of Israel, and suggested that there was a double standard in the media for the Obama’s administration’s failures. “At the end of the day, I don’t think when you look at state of Israel or the Jewish people themselves, I think there has been no better friend to Donald Trump especially after the last eight years. The tremendous respect that he’s shown Israel, the Jewish people, and to suggest anything otherwise is frankly a little disappointing. ” Spicer said. | 1 |
0 comments In many ways, this SCANDALOUS investigation is more DISTURBING than the others… It is hard to imagine an investigation more scandalous than the one presented my sexting wild man Anthony Weiner and his beautiful, estranged wife, Huma Abedin. Depending on what is found on the 650,000 emails on Weiner and Abedin’s laptop, the infamous couple could take down one of the most powerful women on the planet, Hillary Clinton. Something tells me that there is plenty of scandal to go around, however. It is now being reported that the FBI’s Miami office is investigating the Clinton Foundation for their “work” in Haiti. . @rpollockDC reports that FBI’s Miami office is conducting Clinton Fnd probe concerning Haiti work. https://t.co/w8iPeQ69nr @dailycaller
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) October 31, 2016
It is no surprise that the FBI is interested in the Clinton’s dealings in Haiti.
Since January of 2015, when a group of Haitians surrounded the Clinton Foundation’s offices in New York, carrying signs that said, “Clinton, where’s the money?”
Dhoud Andre, of the Commission Against Dictatorship, has said, “We are telling the world of the crimes that Bill and Hillary Clinton are responsible for in Haiti.”
Recent emails, leaked from the State Department, indicated that contractors seeking to provide earthquake relief to devastated Haitians were heavily vetted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team. The criteria? Contractors needed to be “FOB’s,” or “Friends of Bill.” These FOB’s were donors to the Clinton Foundation. Reportedly, if a contract company was not a donor, they were referred elsewhere, while donating contractors were given funds to work in Haiti.
Almost $4 billion was sent to Haiti for relief, and it has been noted by some Haitians that little of this money actually made it to those who need it.
Haitians also have noted that Bill Clinton was the designated UN Representative for aid to Haiti while Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State.
The Clintons were the two most powerful people controlling the funds meant to help Haitians.
Contracts went to friends of the Clintons, and, reportedly, homes were not built, schools were not built, technology was not installed, and infrastructure was not significantly improved.
Haiti did, however, gain a few million dollar hotels.
Not exactly what the poor were hoping for.
Take a look at this video, entitled “How the Clinton Foundation Got Rich Off Poor Haitians.”
The details are almost too numerous to list. For more information, visit the National Review.
One thing is certain, if the FBI continues at this pace, the details are forthcoming, and they are not likely to be pretty. | 0 |
“Sooner or later, everything old is new again,” Stephen King once wrote — an observation that’s never been truer than today. Far from being dead, vinyl records sales rose to $416 million last year, the highest since 1988, and artists like the Black Keys, Lana Del Rey and Beck are eagerly embracing the format. Instant cameras have caught on among millennials and their younger siblings. A new Pew survey shows that print books remain much more popular than books in digital formats. paper notebooks and erasable whiteboards are the technology among many Silicon Valley types, and even typewriters are enjoying a renaissance in today’s era. In his captivating new book, “The Revenge of Analog,” the reporter David Sax provides an insightful and entertaining account of this phenomenon, creating a powerful counternarrative to the belief that we would live in an world. Mr. Sax argues that analog isn’t going anywhere, but is experiencing a bracing revival that is not just a case of nostalgia or hipster street cred, but something more complex. “Analog experiences can provide us with the kind of pleasures and rewards digital ones cannot,” he writes, and “sometimes analog simply outperforms digital as the best solution. ” Pen and paper can give writers and designers a direct means of sketching out their ideas without the complicating biases of software, while whiteboards can bring engineers “out from behind their screens” and entice them “to take risks and share ideas with others. ” “The choice we face isn’t between digital and analog,” Mr. Sax asserts. “That simplistic duality is actually the language that digital has conditioned us to: a false binary choice between 1 and 0, black and white, Samsung and Apple. The real world isn’t black or white. It is not even gray. Reality is multicolored, infinitely textured, and emotionally layered. ” And it’s often analog — perhaps less efficient, less perfect, less speedy — which best captures those human imperfections, creating a tactile interface with the world. A growing number of artists have noticed that music made on old tape machines and vintage studio equipment sounds different — “more heartfelt, raw, and organic,” in Mr. Sax’s words — than music made with the latest, most sophisticated technology. Listeners, too, as the musician Jack White has observed, find that vinyl has a romance, a magic that doesn’t come with the click of a mouse: “With vinyl, you’re on your knees. ” He continued: “You’re at the mercy of the needle. You watch the record spin and it’s like you’re sitting around a campfire. It’s hypnotic. ” In these pages, Mr. Sax takes us on a spirited tour of the resurgent analog universe. He takes us to United Record Pressing, a vinyl plant in Nashville that’s churning out 40, 000 records a day, with a staff that’s tripled since 2010. He takes us to Book Culture, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, one of the many indie bookstores to open in New York and around the country in recent years. And he takes us to Snakes Lattes, a cafe in Toronto, where customers can play not only familiar childhood games but also more obscure selections from a collection. There are even “game gurus” to dispense advice — a decidedly more social experience than the solitary world of many video gamers. This desire for human interaction — and a sense of community and place — is one of the magnets that draw people to neighborhood bookstores, where readers can get expert recommendations (from a person, not an algorithm) and attend readings and discussion groups. The more time we spend in the digital world of clicks and taps and swipes, Mr. Sax writes, the more people have begun to recognize the value of interactions. So much so that work spaces (most notably, at tech companies) are being configured to promote productive meetings and serendipitous exchanges. “The whole point of all these spaces,” says Primo Orpilla, a of a firm that designs offices for digital technology companies, “is to get you to put down your device and read inflections, read body language, and have meaningful conversations. ” In an increasingly digital world where physical objects and experiences are being replaced by virtual ones, Mr. Sax concludes, “analog gives us the joy of creating and possessing real, tangible things”: the hectic scratch of a fountain pen on the smooth, lined pages of a notebook the slow magic of a Polaroid photo developing in front of our eyes the satisfying snap of a newspaper page being turned and folded back the moment of silence as the arm of an old turntable descends toward a shiny new vinyl disk and the music begins to play. In reporting this book, Mr. Sax says he found that it was less a case of older generations reaching back to familiar formats from their youth than teenagers and discovering turntables and LPs, paperback novels and film cameras. “The younger someone was, the more digitally exposed their generation was,” he writes near the end of this book, “the less I found them enamored by digital technology, and the more they were wary of its effects. ” These kids were falling in love with analog. | 1 |
Non-GAAP = SEC* FRAUD
Non-GAAP = SEC* SWINDLE
*SEC (US Swindlers Excuse Commissars) | 0 |
Hacker Guccifer 2.0 Issues Dire Warning to Americans : Democrats May Try and HACK the Election Hacker Guccifer 2.0 Issues Dire Warning to Americans : Democrats May Try and HACK the Election Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 4, 2016
Hacker Guccifer 2.0 issued a dire election warning to American voters.
According to Guccifer 2.0 the software used by FEC networks may be vulnerable to fraud.
— GUCCIFER 2.0 (@GUCCIFER_2) November 4, 2016
From Guccifer 2.0: I’d like to warn you that the Democrats may rig the elections on November 8. This may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies.
As I’ve already said, their software is of poor quality, with many holes and vulnerabilities. I have registered in the FEC electronic system as an independent election observer; so I will monitor that the elections are held honestly.
I also call on other hackers to join me, monitor the elections from inside and inform the U.S. society about the facts of electoral fraud. I'll be an independent observer at the U.S. #Elections2016 I call on other hackers to monitor the elections from inside the system
— GUCCIFER 2.0 (@GUCCIFER_2) November 4, 2016 This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
During an interview aired on Thursday’s “Hannity,” on the Fox News Channel, President Donald Trump said, “a balanced budget is fine, but sometimes you have to fuel the well in order to really get the economy going. And we have to take care of our military. Our military is more important to me than a balanced budget, because we’ll get there with a balanced budget. ” Trump was asked [relevant exchange begins around 7:00] how important a balanced budget is to him. He answered, “So, a balanced budget is fine, but sometimes you have to fuel the well in order to really get the economy going. And we have to take care of our military. Our military is more important to me than a balanced budget, because we’ll get there with a balanced budget. But we have a military that’s really depleted. And I’m negotiating the price of airplanes, can you believe this? I cut off hundreds of millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions of dollars, in a short period of time. ” He added, “I want a balanced budget eventually, but I want to have a strong military. To me, that’s much more important than anything. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 18:08 UTC © Peter Nicholls / Reuters Downing Street insists that the government will "make a success" of Brexit, despite a leaked audio recording of UK Prime Minister Theresa May predicting companies could abandon Britain if it leaves the EU. Speaking to a group of Goldman Sachs bankers on May 26 before the EU referendum, then-Home Secretary May said the economic arguments for remaining in the bloc were " clear. " In a leaked audio recording of the talk, published by the Guardian, May also claims membership in the EU makes Britain "more safe." "Being part of a 500-million trading bloc is significant for us. I think, as I was saying to you a little earlier, that one of the issues is that a lot of people will invest here in the UK because it is the UK in Europe. "If we were not in Europe, I think there would be firms and companies who would be looking to say, do they need to develop a mainland Europe presence rather than a UK presence? So I think there are definite benefits for us in economic terms." May went on to say Britain was more secure inside the EU. "There are definitely things we can do as members of the European Union that I think keep us more safe," she said. A Downing Street spokesman did not comment directly on the recording, but insisted Brexit is in the UK's best interests. "Britain made a clear choice to vote to leave the EU and this Government is determined to make a success of the fresh opportunities it presents," he said. "David Davis made very clear in the House of Commons last week the importance the Government places on financial services across the UK in the negotiation to come, as has the Chancellor in recent weeks. "We want a smooth and orderly exit from the European Union, which would be in the interests of both Britain and the EU." Labour politicians accused May of deceiving the British public over the impact of leaving the EU's single market and called on her to be "honest." Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer tweeted: Andrew Gwynne, shadow minister without portfolio, said: "As if we needed it, this recording is cast-iron evidence of how Theresa May and other senior Tories have been saying one thing in private about the economic impact of Brexit and another in the comfort of Tory conference halls. "It's plain that she recognises what a disaster it would be for Britain to lose access to the single market, so why doesn't she be honest with the British people and say how she plans to retain it?" Comment: Somebody apparently isn't happy about Brexit to have leaked this tape to stir up the pot. | 0 |
. Renowned Harvard Psychologist Says ADHD is Largely a Fraud Viewed by academics as one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, Jerome Kagan r... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/renowned-harvard-psychologist-says-adhd.html Viewed by academics as one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, Jerome Kagan ranked above Carl Jung (the founder of analytical psychology) and Ivan Pavlov (who discovered the Pavlovian reflex) in a 2002 American Psychological Association ranking of the eminent psychologists. He is well-known for his pioneering work in developmental psychology at Harvard University, where he has spent decades documenting how babies and small children grow, and is an exceptional and highly-regarded researcher.So it may be surprising to learn that he believes the diagnosis of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is an invention — and only benefits the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists. Mislabeling Mental Illness “That is the history of humanity: Those in authority believe they’re doing the right thing, and they harm those who have no power,” says Jerome Kagan.In an interview with Spiegel, Kagan addressed the skyrocketing rates of ADHD in America , which he attributes to “fuzzy diagnostic practices.” He illustrated his point with the following example:Say fifty years ago you have a 7-year-old who is bored in school and exhibits disruptive behavior. Back then, he would be labeled as lazy. But today, that same child is said to suffer from ADHD . That’s why we’ve seen such a dramatic increase in the disorder.Every child who is having problems in school is sent to see a pediatrician, who then claims it’s ADHD and prescribes Ritalin . “In fact, 90 percent of these 5.4 million kids don’t have an abnormal dopamine metabolism. The problem is, if a drug is available to doctors, they’ll make the corresponding diagnosis,” he said.“We could get philosophical and ask ourselves: “What does mental illness mean?” If you do interviews with children and adolescents aged 12 to 19, then 40 percent can be categorized as anxious or depressed. “But if you take a closer look and ask how many of them are seriously impaired by this, the number shrinks to 8 percent. Describing every child who is depressed or anxious as being mentally ill is ridiculous. “Adolescents are anxious, that’s normal. They don’t know what college to go to. Their boyfriend or girlfriend just stood them up. Being sad or anxious is just as much a part of life as anger or sexual frustration,” Kagan told Spiegel.What are the implications for the millions of American children who are inaccurately diagnosed as mentally ill? Kagan believes it’s devastating because they think there is something fundamentally wrong with them. He’s not the only psychologist to raise the alarm about this trend, but Kagan and others feel they’re up against “an enormously powerful alliance: pharmaceutical companies that are making billions , and a profession that is self-interested.”Kagan himself suffered from inner restlessness and stuttering as a child, but his mother told him: “There’s nothing wrong with you. Your mind is working faster than your tongue.”He thought at the time: “Gee, that’s great, I’m only stuttering because I’m so smart.” If he had been born in the present era, he most likely would have been classified as mentally ill.ADHD isn’t the only mental illness epidemic among children that worries Kagan, depression is another. In 1987, about one in 400 American teenagers was using an antidepressant. By 2002, the numbers leaped to one in 40. He feels it’s another overused diagnosis, simply because the pills are available. Instead of immediately resorting to pharmaceutical drugs, he thinks doctors should take more time with the child to find out why they aren’t as cheerful, for instance. At the very least, a few tests should be carried out — and an EEG for certain, especially since studies have shown that people who have heightened activity in the right frontal lobe respond poorly to antidepressants.Kagan remembers going into a textbook-type depression after a major research project he was involved with failed. He had insomnia and met all the other clinical criteria for depression. But since he knew what the cause was, he didn’t seek professional help. After six months, the depression was gone. Under normal circumstances, he would have been diagnosed as mentally ill by a psychiatrist and put on medication. By Carolanne Wright / Reference: Spiegel.de Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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Regulators released rules on Thursday morning that aim to restrict how big financial institutions can pay their top executives. The new limits on banker bonuses would make the employees at the biggest banks wait at least four years to receive parts of their annual pay. If the proposals are completed in the coming months, banks would also have to reclaim bonuses from bankers who take risks that lead to big financial losses. The regulators are responding to an uproar of criticism over Wall Street’s pay practices after the biggest American banks had to take government bailout money during the 2008 financial crisis. That public anger has been rekindled during the 2016 presidential campaign season, putting pressure on regulators to tighten their oversight of Wall Street. The new rules on executive pay grew out of the 2010 financial overhaul, but it has taken years to put them into practice, even though President Obama has pushed regulators to complete them. The administration is running out of time to get rules approved before a new president is elected. Rick Metsger, the vice chairman at the National Credit Union Administration — one of six agencies responsible for drafting the rules — said on Thursday that politicians and the public “want senior executives at large financial institutions held accountable if their desire for personal enrichment leads to that results in material losses. ” The structure of executive pay packages before the financial crisis was blamed for encouraging bankers to take unnecessary risks. In some cases, pay was set up in ways that motivated bankers to seek gains even if their actions led to losses over the longer term. The new rules will force many banks to withhold pay for longer than they have in the past, to ensure that top employees can be held accountable for the consequences of their . The proposals leave many financial firms, including large asset managers and hedge funds, shielded from the new restrictions because of the way the regulators have defined which institutions are subject to them. Young Wall Street workers, and potential recruits who might once have aspired to jobs in the industry, are already decamping for less regulated corners of finance and corporate America, including Silicon Valley. For those institutions subject to the rules, the new restrictions are broadly in line with changes that many banks have already been making since the financial crisis. For instance, it is already an industry standard to wait three years to release bonuses. The new rules aim to push that to four years. There has been less consistency in how banks have approached seizing pay from employees if their actions lead to losses. The new proposal makes bankers’ pay vulnerable to clawbacks for seven years after the pay is received, if they are found to have engaged in misconduct or taken actions that led to big losses. Steven Eckhaus, an expert on executive compensation at Cadwalader, Wickersham Taft, said he did not see the new rules “having a big impact except around the margins. ” “This largely codifies the practices that have evolved over the last eight years,” he said. The regulators were supposed to propose the new rules within 90 days of ’s passage. Instead, the regulatory agencies delivered a first draft of the rules in 2011, but that draft was widely panned as being too weak. In the previous draft, the largest banks had to hold back at least 50 percent of all pay for three years. Under the new proposals, the same banks will have to withhold 60 percent of that pay for four years. The new draft also applies the limits to a broader set of “material ” at big banks, not just top executives. Marcus Stanley, the policy director at the advocacy organization Americans for Financial Reform, said the new version was stronger than the 2011 proposal, but did not push the banks to go far enough beyond already accepted practices. He said, for instance, that he had hoped that banks would have to hold back pay for more than four years because big losses on bank investments can often take longer than that to materialize. In Britain, by contrast, banks are now forced to hold back some pay for at least seven years. European countries have generally imposed stronger restrictions on executive compensation since the financial crisis, including some hard caps on salary and bonuses. The new American rules would apply only to compensation — generally bonuses — which varies according to the performance of the bank and the individual executive. Even without the rules, banks have faced steady pressure from regulators and shareholders since the financial crisis to change the way they pay their employees and tie more compensation to a firm’s rather than success. JPMorgan Chase, for instance, recently announced that it was altering the pay package of its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, so that he is compensated primarily with stock that he will receive only if the firm achieves certain levels of future profitability. Mr. Dimon will get the stock after five years, which is longer than the new rules propose. Banks and other financial institutions have generally been cutting pay in recent years because of their lagging performance, and other parts of the legislation have limited their ability to take big risks and earn the big profits that were common before the financial crisis. This week, Goldman Sachs said that the pool of money it had put aside so far this year for employee compensation is 40 percent smaller than it was at the same time last year. The new rules were debated and described for the first time at a meeting on Thursday of the National Credit Union Administration, the first of the six agencies to take up the proposal. The public will have until July to comment on the new rules, and it will likely be months after that before they go into effect. | 1 |
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg closed his commencement speech at Harvard this week by discussing the need to “modernize democracy” and calling for universal basic income in America. [CNBC reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave his Harvard commencement speech yesterday, speaking of the need to “modernize democracy” and floating the idea that many Silicon Valley personalities such as Sam Altman, president of venture capital firm Y Combinator, have pushed for, universal basic income for all American citizens. “Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract,” said Zuckerberg during his speech, “We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas. ” | 1 |
Each week, Nate Cohn, The Upshot’s elections analyst, and Toni Monkovic, an Upshot editor, will discuss the 2016 race and post a lightly edited transcript of their written exchange. The primary season is over. Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee. Yet the question of Bernie Sanders, and just what he will do next — and what he expects — remains unresolved. Toni You recently tweeted: “A fun thought experiment: Imagine Sanders winning but Clinton refusing to endorse unless he adopted her views, etc. ” Sanders will speak to his supporters via videoconference tonight at 8:30 p. m. Eastern from Burlington, Vt. He still hasn’t endorsed her, and he’s still pushing hard for his policies. But what kind of leverage does he have? Nate I think it’s an interesting kind of leverage. The Clinton camp would certainly like his endorsement. On the other hand, the longer he holds off endorsing, the less valuable it becomes and the more he risks marginalizing himself as the conversation moves on to the general election. Toni His goal of opening all primaries so that independents and others can vote — it’s more complicated than he makes it out to be, particularly if the G. O. P. has a lot of closed primaries, right? Nate It’s certainly debatable. Personally, I think that there are very good arguments on either side of the “closed” versus “open” primary debate. Both have advantages and disadvantages. I think the national mix of open and closed primaries reflects that well. That said — and this is somewhat subtle — I think the case for requiring one party to have open primaries everywhere is a little worse than the case for open primaries in the abstract. In states where the G. O. P. has closed primaries, conservative registered Democrats or registered unaffiliated voters who lean toward Republicans will be able to participate only in Democratic primaries. That can make Democratic primaries more conservative, not less. Toni voter registration is another Sanders goal, and it sounds like a laudable one. But the Democratic National Committee can’t wave a magic wand to make it happen. Nate No, the Democrats would probably wave a wand to make it happen if they could. It would help them a lot in the general election. I believe Clinton goes even further, and supports universal automatic registration laws. But voter registration laws are set by state governments, not by the state or national parties. Sanders is barking up the wrong tree. Toni We’ve covered the issue of superdelegates. Let’s get back to the question of leverage. Everyone is wondering about the end game for Sanders. But maybe he’s on the right track. If he can drive a hard bargain at the convention, maybe he can help smooth the path to unity by showing his supporters that he’s won concessions. He may have more credibility with his supporters when he eventually comes around to supporting Clinton. He’s not the typical politician — in many ways. He may never run again (he’ll be 78 in 2020). So why not drive a hard bargain? Nate What’s he asking for? And what could he ask for that he could plausibly get that would have the effect you’re imagining? I think the danger for Sanders is that he loses leverage as the election moves on without him, especially if Clinton leads Trump. Toni His persona has been as a fighter, and he probably feels this is his last shot on this kind of stage. I’m not clear either on how important the specific goals are to him, but it seems important to him not to be seen as rolling over. But speaking of something specific beyond his policy preferences, he would like changes in the leadership of the Democratic National Committee, especially the removal of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The early debate schedule set by the committee has long been a sore point with Sanders and his supporters: There were fewer debates than Sanders wanted — conspicuously fewer than the Republicans had — and most were on weekends, when fewer people would tune in. Nate I think that’s a fair complaint. But my suspicion is that Sanders isn’t withholding an endorsement because of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Toni So then why do you think Sanders is withholding his endorsement? Nate I don’t know! I thought he would have dropped out by now. Maybe we’ll find out tonight. Toni I’d like to follow up on your big project last week: “There Are More White Voters Than People Think. That’s Good News for Trump. ” I’m curious about the reaction to it, whether some people might have misunderstood it. Ann Coulter, for example, who drove quite a few readers to the article among her supporters on the right, said it confirmed what she’s been saying all along. Nate I don’t know what she said. Toni Well, there were a lot of tweets, about 10. Like this: And this: A lot of criticism of Mitt Romney’s strategy, and a feeling that Republicans should focus on the white vote and not the Hispanic vote. Nate I don’t think she’s necessarily misinterpreting it, from what I see here. I do think it’s wrong to assume that Trump can mobilize a large pool of white voters who haven’t voted in any recent election, especially with virtually no field operation to register and mobilize them. But I do think Coulter’s basic point in that link from March — that there’s a lot of room for Trump to gain among white voters in the North, and that the national white vote in 2012 is misleading — is basically right. I doubt the G. O. P. will make big gains among Northern whites by pursuing the sort of messages and policies that Coulter prefers, but that’s a separate question. Toni But you also agree with Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight that your data about the electorate is largely a reason to think current polls are correct. And the current polls show a fairly significant move in Clinton’s direction. Nate Sure. Whether Trump is taking advantage of the theoretical opening for a conservative populist candidate to win among white voters is a very different question from whether such an opening exists. He’s burning way too much support among and nonwhite voters, at least right now. Toni On the question of “missing white voters,” you have suggested that they are more likely to be young white Democrats, people more likely to “feel the Bern” than to vote for Trump. Nate Yes. Toni And the announcement last week that President Obama and Clinton would travel together to Green Bay (a trip postponed because of the terror attack) seemed to dovetail with your conclusions. Whites in Wisconsin are fairly fond of Obama, or at least more fond than people might have thought. Nate Wisconsin was a great state for Obama, and it’s never been a great state for Clinton. He beat her by almost 18 points there in the 2008 Democratic primary, and she lost it to Sanders by 14 points this year. Obama won the state by seven points in 2012, which was much better than John Kerry or Al Gore did. Toni We’re going to try hard not to focus on individual polls — the average of polls is what people should look at. The recent Bloomberg survey showed Clinton ahead by 12, but as you pointed out on Twitter, “Almost exactly four years ago: shows Obama up 13 points over Romney. ” Obama wound up winning by only four points. Still, some of the numbers are scary for Trump: the percentage who say they could never vote for him (55) and the percentage of women who say they could never vote for him (63). Nate Most of the polls right now show a tighter race than Bloomberg does, so I think most of those numbers should be taken with caution. Toni What about recent ratings that show Trump at a staggering 70 percent unfavorable? Should we shrug because it’s too early? Nate Well, this has been his big problem for months. In March and April, the same poll had his unfavorable rating at 67 percent. It’s obviously going to be very difficult for him to win if he can’t change the public’s view. In particular, I think it’s very hard for him so long as a majority of Americans have a “strongly” unfavorable view. The poll hasn’t had it less than 48 percent all year, and it’s 56 percent in this particular survey. Toni The Bloomberg poll numbers show that people trust Trump slightly more on terrorism than Clinton. So that’s one potential way he could improve his numbers. But are you in the camp that believes it’s too early to tell how the issue will play after Orlando? Nate I’m not a big fan of issue questions in analyzing the race, so I don’t think it’s worth spending too much time dwelling on who can best handle the economy or terrorism. I think the biggest indicator I would watch is President Obama’s approval rating. If the attack takes a toll on his numbers, as the San Bernardino and Paris attacks seemed to, then that’s probably a good sign for Trump. Toni NBC News reported that the Clinton side is putting up ads in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada. But not Pennsylvania? Nate Yeah, which is a little strange to me. There are basically two views of Pennsylvania. One is that it’s sort of fool’s gold for the G. O. P. since it’s fairly close but the Democrats have a big party registration advantage and generate huge margins out of Philadelphia. The other view is that it was pretty close in 2012 — closer than Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and basically the same as Colorado — it has trended slightly toward the G. O. P. with respect to the country over the last decade or so, and it doesn’t have very many nonwhite voters. I have a slightly different view, which is that I think Pennsylvania is as good a state as any for Trump, even if it’s not a great one. So, I take the point that it’s a huge long shot. But just about everything is a long shot for Trump at this point, and I’m not convinced it’s harder for him than a state like Colorado or Virginia, which are better educated and more diverse, even if they have less Democratic voting traditions. Toni Trump recently said: “I think I’ve made polling a very important thing. ’Cause I never used to hear about polls. ” He seems so obsessed with polls that I wonder if it will drive him nuts if he stays behind. If he’s trailing into the fall, I could imagine an attempt by his side to say the polls are inaccurate — like the “unskewed polls” movement from many Republicans in 2012. (They insisted that the polls were wrong and that Romney would win). If it comes to that, you and analysts like Nate Silver and others will be asked repeatedly to assess that claim and address the accuracy of polls. I could see that becoming a big part of your life for a few months — sorry. Nate Absolutely. It was pretty annoying in 2012. Toni Are you ready? Nate I’ll make it. In recent weeks, Nate and Toni discussed whether the superdelegate system should survive looked into claims from Sanders supporters that elections were rigged and looked askance at surveys showing Sanders outperforming Clinton in polling against Donald Trump. | 1 |
MOSCOW — A day after the largest antigovernment protests in more than five years, a Moscow court on Monday slapped the opposition leader behind the outburst, Aleksei A. Navalny, with a prison sentence for resisting arrest. At the urging of Mr. Navalny, tens of thousands of Russians — many of them in their teens and 20s — poured into the streets in scores of cities across the country on Sunday to protest endemic corruption among the governing elite, despite a blanket ban against unsanctioned rallies of any size. The police responded by beating protesters and arresting more than 1, 000 in Moscow alone, though by Monday many had been released. As Mr. Navalny was led into the courtroom for a hearing that lasted much of the day, he told reporters that he was “amazed by the number of cities that took part in this and by how many people came out. ” After the judge ordered him jailed, Mr. Navalny was whisked away without being allowed a chance to comment further. In another potentially destabilizing development, Russian truck drivers across the country began organizing their largest concerted protest since December 2015, against a new toll system on national highways. Clusters of transport vehicles were parked on the shoulders of highways near major cities in what looked like preparations for roadblocks. Mr. Navalny, 40, a charismatic opposition figure, has long been caught up in multiple court cases that he calls politically motivated. He has vowed to run against President Vladimir V. Putin for the presidency in 2018, even though a previous conviction, widely viewed as trumped up, makes that technically illegal. The government has usually avoided jailing him, however, apparently fearful of turning him into an even bigger political martyr. The court on Monday also fined him about $350 for organizing an illegal demonstration. The protests provoked surprise and wonder among analysts and activists, many of whom had written off the public as politically apathetic. The high number of young people in the crowds struck many as particularly impressive. “Right now it looks like a major new phenomenon in Russia that there are young people who are active and have agendas,” Maxim Trudolyubov, a columnist, said. “One important factor is that these people all grew up under Putin. They don’t remember any other leader. ” If Mr. Navalny has breathed new life into the opposition movement by successfully getting thousands of protesters onto the streets in what he said were 99 cities, there was no immediate threat to Mr. Putin’s standing. The Russian president’s approval rating reached around 86 percent in the wake of the 2014 annexation of Crimea and has barely budged since. Mr. Putin, as the “good czar,” enjoys a status that the rest of the government falls short of. Mr. Navalny, however, in calling for people to come out to protest corruption, rather than the president, appears to have tapped into a popular sentiment. It remained to be seen if the rallies would spread or die out. After the last protests demanding stronger democracy, which took place in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow beginning in December 2011, the government threw the book at a number of demonstrators. Jail sentences of at least three years effectively chilled the enthusiasm of the predominantly participants. The aftermath of the rallies will show whether there is a political thaw or not, wrote Oleg Kashin, another columnist. If there is a new Bolotnaya case, he said, then it is not a thaw otherwise, it is, even if no substantial policy changes follow. There were no independent numbers available for the turnout for the rallies. The liberal radio station Echo of Moscow estimated that more than 60, 000 people had participated. Analysts cited a number of factors for the surprising strength of the protest: anger over government suppression of peaceful demonstrations some rankling over the dreary economy and the weather, because Sunday was sunny and relatively warm for March. But overwhelmingly, they cited the youthfulness of the crowds, with many presumably participating in their first political protests. “A milestone event occurred in Irkutsk today — a new politically active class was born,” Aleksei Petrov, a longtime election monitor in the Siberian city, wrote on Facebook. “Almost a thousand young people of student age have taken to the streets. ” The young are less likely to watch state television, which endlessly exalts Mr. Putin and government policy. Indeed, all of the channels ignored the rallies. Instead, young Russians tend to turn to independent voices who broadcast their own shows on YouTube. The immediate inspiration for Sunday’s protest was a nearly video compiled by Mr. Navalny and his colleagues and released on March 2. It detailed what they called a web of dubious charitable organizations that funneled bribes from prominent oligarchs to Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, allowing him to maintain a series of luxurious estates, vineyards and yachts in Russia and abroad. It has been viewed more than 13 million times. “I am glad and happy that a new generation grew up in the country that will not accept such attitudes from the government and wants to feel that they are citizens,” Mr. Navalny told reporters in court. “This was news to many yesterday, including me. ” Victor Zadorozhnyi, 26, a real estate broker who was attending his first political rally in Moscow, said: “Have you noticed that only young people are around? Why so?” He predicted, accurately, that none of the events would appear on Channel One, a main government mouthpiece. “Younger people have smarter eyes,” he said. “Elder people, they have rigid brains watching Channel One is a routine for them — they switch it on to see what is Channel One telling us. Everything’s good, Mashka the cat had kittens yesterday. ” For its part, the Kremlin denounced what it called illegal rallies, though the organizers maintained they had permits for 21 of the protests. “The Kremlin respects the civic stance of the people and their right to voice their position,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for Mr. Putin, told reporters. “We can’t express the same respect for those who consciously misinformed people. ” Mr. Peskov accused the opposition of jeopardizing and exploiting “children” by promising them some manner of reward for attending. It was not clear what he was referring to, though Mr. Navalny had offered to help anyone arrested to seek redress and compensation through the European Court of Human Rights. Mr. Peskov defended the actions of the security forces, who often grappled with demonstrators and seemed to cart off some who had not been participating in the protests. “Law enforcement was acting in a totally correct, highly professional and lawful way,” he said. He denied that the Kremlin had ordered a news blackout on channels, even though none of them reported on the rallies. “We don’t shape the editorial policies of TV channels,” Mr. Peskov said. The spokesman said the Kremlin was aware that the protests had not been concentrated in the main cities alone, another phenomenon not seen for years. “The Kremlin is quite sober when analyzing the scale of yesterday’s protests,” he said, adding that it would neither “diminish, nor exaggerate the numbers. ” The fate of all the arrested protesters in Moscow and other cities was not clear. The police put the figure at 500 arrests in Moscow alone, but an independent organization that tracks such detentions put the number at closer to 1, 000. Most were released overnight. | 1 |
Superbugs: Big Pharma to blame for coming death of 700,000 people annually
Sunday, October 30, 2016 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer Tags: superbugs , antibiotics abuse , Big Pharma (NaturalNews) As new guidelines set forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to curb antibiotic overuse and abuse on factory farms slowly come into effect, the drug industry is apparently setting its greedy sights elsewhere – towards countries where restrictions on antibiotic use are looser, or simply where "anything goes."Livestock are the single biggest consumers of antibiotic drugs in the U.S. – not by choice, of course, but because farmers have long been sold a bill of goods by Big Pharma when it comes to using them to bulk up their cattle more quickly and get them to market as fast as possible. It's a common practice that generates a lot of money in the short-term, but a whole lot of problems in the long-term.The use of antibiotics on farms is arguably the biggest contributor to antibiotic resistance among humans, where drugs that used to treat deadly bugs no longer do. The result is the emergence of so-called "superbugs" that are capable of outsmarting even the most potent antibiotics, a phenomenon that's killing people by the hundreds of thousands.Some of the latest reports indicate that the superbug epidemic is claiming the lives of some 700,000 people annually all around the world. And if nothing is done now to stop the drug industry from continuing to poison the well, so to speak, then this number is expected to balloon more than 14-fold to 10 million lives lost by the year 2050.According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are very few countries in the world with any sort of formidable plan in place to address antibiotic resistance. Even with the U.S. somewhat taking the lead with voluntary FDA suggestions on the matter, none of this will stop drug companies from preying on the developing world that has yet to enact any sort of restrictions on antibiotic use."They're international companies," Gail Hansen, a veterinarian and consultant who works with drug companies, governments and nonprofit organizations, told Bloomberg . "What happens in the U.S. does certainly make a difference, but it's not the only market they have." Antibiotic resistance kills 10 times more people than opiate overdoses While it's become common practice for factory animal rearers to exploit antibiotics as a way to fatten their stocks more quickly and supposedly keep them healthy, the use of these drugs for such purposes is disastrous for public health. Comparatively speaking, only 69,000 people die from opiate overdoses globally, which translates to 10 times more people dying from superbugs than from the most deadly pharmaceuticals on the market.Antibiotics are also overused in the realm of human medicine, with some one-third of all prescriptions, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Pew Charitable Trusts, being completely unnecessary. This translates to roughly 47 million prescriptions that aren't even helpful, either because the patients have a viral infection, or don't have an infection at all.The only way anything is going to change is if Big Pharma is barred from selling antibiotics to farmers whose only desire is to rush their animals to market for maximum profits. Doctors must also be reigned in and stopped from indiscriminately handing out antibiotics whenever their patients feel any kind of ailment – and again, these measures must have a global reach."If some of the biggest responsible parties – namely the companies making the products – are still selling the antibiotics in other countries, it just underscores that this has to be a change that happens across the entire world," David Wallinga, a senior health official and physician at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told Bloomberg ."And the companies bear a big responsibility for that approach." Sources for this article include: | 0 |
With a fortune estimated at over $5 billion, Sumner M. Redstone could afford the best estate planning that money could buy. What he ended up with is a mess — no matter the outcome of the welter of lawsuits swirling around Mr. Redstone, the ailing media mogul who turned 93 last Friday. A lawsuit brought by Manuela Herzer, one of Mr. Redstone’s romantic partners, stripped him of whatever dignity he might have hoped to retain by publicly revealing humiliating details about his physical and sexual appetites and his diminishing mental capacity. A medical expert said Mr. Redstone suffers from dementia that’s “toward the severe end of moderate. ” That case was dismissed last month, but the testimony was just the curtain raiser for a far more important showdown now unfolding between Mr. Redstone’s previously estranged daughter, Shari Redstone, and the man who had seemed to be his handpicked heir apparent, Philippe Dauman. The fate of the CBS and Viacom hang in the balance. Mr. Dauman is the chief executive of Viacom, and was — until recently — Mr. Redstone’s longtime confidant and a trustee of the trust that controls 80 percent of National Amusements (his daughter owns the remaining 20 percent). National Amusements in turn owns 80 percent of the voting stock in both CBS and Viacom. Mr. Dauman now finds himself in the seemingly contradictory position of arguing that Mr. Redstone, as his lawsuit asserts, “suffers from profound physical and mental illness,” only months after he said in court papers filed in Ms. Herzer’s case that Mr. Redstone was “engaged and attentive. ” (Mr. Dauman maintains in his lawsuit that Mr. Redstone has deteriorated since then.) Mr. Redstone “now faces a situation where it appears that people around him are competing for control and each has their own objectives,” said Georgiana Slade, head of the trusts and estates group at the law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley McCloy in New York. “It seems that many people with an interest are attempting to influence decisions related to his estate, the trust and Viacom. But the real question should be: What does Mr. Redstone himself want?” While it may be an extreme example of the high stakes and chaos that can result, “the Redstone pattern is happening in epidemic proportions,” said Kerry Peck, an estate planning specialist and managing partner at Peck Ritchey in Chicago and a of the book “Alzheimer’s and the Law. ” “Caregivers in particular, often younger women, are ingratiating themselves into the lives of older men,” Mr. Peck said. “They meet them at places you’d consider safe, like senior centers, churches and synagogues. They start as caregivers, and then they become romantic suitors. We’re seeing these scenarios with stunning frequency. ” As Americans live longer and more families are forced to cope with common issues like dementia, the problem is getting worse. “It’s a huge issue nationally as the elderly population grows and their minds start to falter,” Ms. Slade said. “I’ve seen charities coming after people for multiple gifts: Sometimes these donors don’t remember that they already gave the previous week. Romantic partners, caregivers who take advantage of the elderly — we’re seeing it all. ” Elderly people may be especially susceptible to the influence of people who happen to be around them during their waning days. Ms. Slade and other Milbank lawyers were to the public administrator overseeing the estate of Huguette Clark, the reclusive heiress who died in 2011 at the age of 104. Despite good health, she lived the last 20 years of her life in New York hospitals. She bestowed lavish gifts on various caregivers ($31 million to one nurse) and left the bulk of her $300 million fortune to her nurse and a charitable foundation controlled by her lawyers and accountant, to the exclusion of family members. The family challenged the will in court and Milbank, on behalf of the public administrator, sought to recoup the gifts for the estate. The cases were settled and family members said they hoped to call attention to a growing problem of elder abuse. “This is an issue for lots of people of even modest wealth,” said David M. English, a professor of trusts and estates at the University of Missouri School of Law and former chairman of the American Bar Association’s commission on law and aging. Professor English said the most common approach is the creation of a trust, either revocable (which means it can later be changed) or irrevocable, that anticipates such a problem and defines what the creator of the trust means by incapacity. This could be a much less rigorous standard than is typically applied by courts in the absence of such a definition. “The document should define the meaning of incapacity and, more importantly, indicate who determines incapacity,” Professor English said. Mr. Redstone created such a trust, but it cedes little control to others as long as he remains alive, and it doesn’t specifically define incapacity. According to his lawyers, his trust is irrevocable, but Mr. Redstone is the sole beneficiary as long as he’s alive, and he has the power to remove or add trustees unless he’s “incapacitated. ” “This can occur only if Mr. Redstone is adjudged incompetent by a court, or upon the delivery of a document signed by three doctors stating that, based on medical evidence, he is unable to manage his affairs in a competent manner,” according to a court filing by Mr. Redstone’s lawyers. Who controls the board of his trust is critical, since the National Amusements trust will control Mr. Redstone’s assets, including his dominant stakes in CBS and Viacom, should Mr. Redstone die or be deemed incapacitated. Though long at odds with Ms. Redstone (who is a trustee, as is her son) Mr. Dauman and the other four nonfamily trustees seemed safely in charge as long as they retained Mr. Redstone’s support. But last month, Mr. Redstone abruptly dismissed Mr. Dauman and another longstanding trustee in what Mr. Dauman called “a shameful effort by Shari Redstone to seize control. ” Mr. Dauman and his filed suit in Massachusetts (where Mr. Redstone’s trust was created) to have their dismissal deemed invalid on grounds that Ms. Redstone had isolated her father and was exercising undue influence over him, all claims that Ms. Redstone denies. The trial is scheduled to begin next week. Mr. Redstone’s lawyers filed suit in Los Angeles, seeking a ruling that the trustee changes were valid. Which court would prevail in the event of inconsistent rulings could be the subject of yet another round of litigation. Mr. Redstone’s mental capacity is a central issue in both the California and Massachusetts lawsuits. “In drafting a trust like this, you need very clear standards and protocols for determining capacity,” Ms. Slade said. An elderly client, she added, “will often require the assistance of a lawyer to protect him from himself in his old age. ” She emphasized that different decisions might require different standards for determining capacity. “The real question,” Ms. Slade said, “is does someone have the capacity for the decision at issue? It’s one thing to be deciding what you want for dinner and something very different to decide who should be running a major corporation. ” trusts can make such distinctions. Mr. Redstone “could have avoided many of these problems if he’d created a trust that allowed a majority of trustees to conclude that he didn’t have the capacity to remove trustees,” Mr. Peck said. Trusts often contain such a provision that automatically goes into effect when the creator of the trust reaches a designated age, such as 75 or 80. But sometimes no amount of legal advice can save people from an unwillingness to face their own mortality and cede control while still in full control of their faculties. “There aren’t any sympathetic characters here,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management and author of a book on corporate succession, “The Hero’s Farewell: What Happens When C. E. O.s Retire. ” “Sumner Redstone,” Mr. Sonnenfeld said, “brought this mess on himself. ” | 1 |
HAVANA — It seemed like a new chapter in a long and troubled history. Thousands of Cubans bid farewell to Fidel Castro on Monday, filing into a plaza where he often railed against American imperialism. The same morning, the first regularly scheduled flight from the United States in more than 50 years landed in Havana, a potent example of the newly opened doors between the former rivals. But Donald J. Trump warned on Monday that the push to build ties with Cuba after decades of animosity could quickly be wiped away. “If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the people and the U. S. as a whole, I will terminate deal,” he said on Twitter. Mr. Trump’s message threatened to end one of President Obama’s signature foreign policy initiatives. Mr. Obama’s moves to relax restrictions on commerce, trade and financial transactions with Cuba were never part of a single “deal,” but rather a decision that engagement with the island nation would bring more change than decades of isolation. “Change is going to come to Cuba,” Mr. Obama said shortly after announcing the thaw in December 2014. “It has to. ” Since then, the number of American visitors to Cuba has risen quickly, with hotels in Havana sometimes being booked nearly a year in advance, often with large American tour groups. Billions of dollars in goods from American stores like Walmart and Best Buy, financed on American credit cards, make their way to Cuba every year, experts estimate. Restaurants, cellphones and the internet have changed the rhythms and expectations of Cuban life. But critics have long attacked Mr. Obama, saying he gave too much to the Cubans too soon, without first demanding that they open up their society and usher in an era of political freedom. Now, after two years of presidential directives by Mr. Obama to strengthen ties with Cuba, and millions of dollars in American investments, a question remains: Can the détente be rolled back? Even some Obama administration officials concede that the thaw is highly vulnerable to reversal because much of it has been accomplished through executive action. Mr. Trump could, for example, order the State Department to review its decision last year to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, or suspend diplomatic relations that were resumed last summer with the opening of embassies in Havana and Washington. But Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, argued on Monday that Mr. Trump would have a hard time reversing a policy that had already yielded business deals and benefited the people of both countries. There will soon be 110 daily flights from the United States to Cuba, he noted, not to mention the investments by cruise, tour and hotel operators to prepare for those visits. “Unrolling all of that is much more complicated than just the stroke of a pen,” Mr. Earnest said, adding, “It’s just not as simple as one tweet might make it seem. ” The Cuban government remained uncharacteristically silent on similar threats Mr. Trump made during the campaign, choosing instead to issue a congratulatory note after his election. But when Mr. Trump takes office, and his words become policy, “the Cuban government will have to respond, but hopefully with moderation,” said Ricardo Torres, a professor of economics at the University of Havana. Professor Torres said that there was much to be lost if the concessions were reversed, and that Havana would exercise restraint in its dealings with the Trump administration. But Mr. Trump’s antagonistic posture could embolden those in the Cuban government who have always been suspicious of the Americans and were against the warming relations brokered by President Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother. “There’s no question this is a bad start to things,” Professor Torres said as thousands of students streamed by to bid goodbye to Fidel Castro, adding that Mr. Trump’s “belligerent attitude and animosity gives more reasons for suspicion and confirms the belief that this warming of relations wasn’t real. ” Mr. Trump has placed Mauricio a lobbyist who has been a harsh critic of Mr. Obama’s opening to Cuba, on his transition team for the Treasury Department. Under Mr. Obama, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which handles sanctions, has issued several rounds of regulations to remove impediments for American companies and individuals seeking to do business with Cuba and to travel there. In an opinion piece in The Miami Herald this month, Mr. argued that Mr. Obama’s “new course for Cuba has made a bad situation worse. ” Human rights activists have long complained that the Cuban government simply shifted its strategy regarding political prisoners after Mr. Obama’s détente. No longer are Cuban dissidents jailed for prolonged sentences, activists say. Instead, they are now rounded up for a few hours or a few days, according to the Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission, which logs every detention. There were 9, 125 detentions from January through October this year, the commission said — more than four times as many as in all of 2010. The highest number of arrests, 1, 416, occurred in March, when Mr. Obama made his historic visit to Cuba, becoming the first sitting American president to do so in 88 years. “To be clear, the wants to see freedom in Cuba for Cubans,” said Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump. Still, Elizardo Sánchez, who runs the commission, said Mr. Obama’s more open policy had helped more than it had hurt. “The personal contact that comes from all the travel has a huge impact in terms of fighting propaganda,” he said. “In a closed society, the door can only be opened a bit at a time. It’s going very slowly, but it’s happening. ” Others took Mr. Trump’s words as an assault that threatened to restart the kind of hostilities that the thaw was meant to end. “For a lot of people, it is an open threat to our sovereignty and history,” said Juan Alejandro Triana, also a professor at the University of Havana. “If the government of the threatens these things, we will respond. ” And yet, with the loss of Mr. Castro, Cuba’s response would most likely be muted, and easier for the world to ignore. Without their leader, for many, Mr. Trump’s comments seemed reminiscent of the longstanding policy of confrontation between the two nations. “We don’t have anyone else like him right now,” Randy Calderon, a biology student at Havana University, said of Mr. Castro as he stood in a crowd of thousands paying tribute on university grounds. Inside the law school, where Mr. Castro studied, a small shrine had been set up showing him as a student leader, with posters filled with comments from students, many expressing a desire for Mr. Castro to live forever as the country’s “eternal comandante. ” Even Cubans who challenge the ideology of “Fidelismo” express support for some of the revolution’s achievements, especially universal health care, and they often call for exactly the kind of hybrid of socialism and capitalism that the recent détente with the United States has expanded. Carlos Alzugaray Treto, a former Cuban diplomat, said the urgency to lock those changes into place had only intensified with Mr. Trump’s victory. “That type of bullying won’t work with Cuba,” he said. “Mr. Trump should remember the main reason President Obama changed the policy and made the agreement with Raúl Castro: The previous policy had failed. ” Financially speaking, the biggest and most immediate impact of reversing détente would be in the travel and hospitality sector in Cuba. The surge in American visitors to Cuba since the easing of travel restrictions has been a boon to hotels, transportation and the restaurant scene in Havana. Reversing some of Mr. Obama’s decisions could be legally difficult. Companies like JetBlue, Starwood and Airbnb have invested millions of dollars in time and resources to enter the Cuban market, and did so with the American government’s blessing. “In theory, Donald Trump has the ability to reverse almost everything Obama has done,” said Matthew D. Aho, an adviser on Cuba at the New York office of the Akerman law firm. “In practice, that reversal would be far more complicated from a legal process than most observers realize. ” Niuris Ysabel Higueras Martínez runs Atelier, a popular restaurant in Havana where Michelle Obama dined with her daughters during the president’s trip this year. Ms. Martínez is one of the nearly 500, 000 businesspeople who have entered the work force since the government began loosening employment restrictions in 2008. In 2015, she saw her business increase by 50 percent, she said, the largest rise since she opened in 2010. For the most part, the increase was a result of American visitors, who now make up some 85 percent of her clientele. “It would be a major blow to us,” Ms. Martínez said of Mr. Trump’s threats to reverse the détente. “Still, while we really need the American market, it won’t be the end of the world. We aren’t going to die. ” The debate is unfolding amid a fight among influential who are vying for the ’s ear. On one side are who advocate clamping down on the relationship and insisting on concessions in exchange for any United States engagement. On the other is a growing group that is pressing for further opening. “He’s surrounded by people who are only giving him one point of view — a very straight, approach that says we need to go back to the old approach — and it would be wise for him to be hearing the other side and the benefits of continuing to engage Cuba,” said Carlos Gutierrez, a Republican former commerce secretary who heads the U. S. Chamber of Commerce’s business council on Cuba. “To just get rid of that strikes me as going well overboard. ” After Mr. Castro’s death, he added, Cubans “would feel like when they needed us most, we turned our backs on them. ” | 1 |
Sucker MCs to blame for everything 15-11-16 SUCKER MCs and their lack of dope rhymes are responsible for the state of the world, it has emerged. Researchers at the Institute of Studies found that lame-ass MCs and their wack lyrics are directly to blame for everything from the US election result to global warming. Professor Henry Brubaker said: “If it wasn’t for these so-called rappers ruining it for the rest of us straight up G’s, then Trump would never have gotten into power and Britain would still be part of the EU. “ Toblerones would have stayed the same too. “Bad things happen when fools can’t keep away from microphones.” Sucker MC Nathan Muir said: “I resent the term ‘sucker MC’, preferring to call myself a ‘differently-abled MC’. “ I’m at least better than that bear who raps Ice Ice Baby on that yoghurt advert. Now he is a sucker MC, rapping for big yoghurt companies. “ I can’t imagine anyone is going to next his next album very seriously now that he’s done that.”
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Monday, 14 November 2016 Poor old Kate runs foul of the Trumphole already with libelous version of Hallelujah
It seems Kate McKinnons heart warming redention of Cohens anthem for sanity Hallelujah is the last straw for the Emperor. He has ordered a full congressional investigation into SNL and their libelous so called humour.
Alec Baldwin seems to be the main target, but all Trumphole impersonators are included in the arraignment deposition. He has already sent confederate KKK vigilante force to arrest him but it appears as though he has already fled the country with the Clintons as part of the massive Canadian migration .
Kate McKinnon recently named Americas latest national treasure has already made a deal to move to a much more civilised country with her agents are in discussions with Kim Jong-ill to move to North Korea.
Satire writers everywhere are bracing for the worst with an underground resistance movement located in secret nuclear bunkers being mooted as their 'last stand'. Make Jung in the Jungle's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!) | 0 |
3 Hollywood Films For Blue-Pill Men That Reinforce SJW Values And Concepts 3 Hollywood Films For Blue-Pill Men That Reinforce SJW Values And Concepts Bob Smith
Bob Smith is a man in search of the truth. His favorite quotes are, "We're all fools on this earth, and I can be no different"; "I know it's true, I read it at the LIE-brary"; and "The truth is not misogynistic, it's just the truth". November 16, 2016 Culture
Your old Uncle Bob is mixing things up here—and I think you will see where I’m going with this new angle of mine pretty quickly. I have selected three SJW films to review: one from the 1960s, one from the 1980s, and one of much more recent vintage, from 2015. And what might all three of these insidious Hollywood movies have in common? Why, they outwardly or subliminally program viewers to blindly adopt blue-pill beliefs and behaviors, that’s what…
I feel unsettlingly dirty just writing about these films, but somebody’s gotta do it. So let’s get busy here and expose these three, flat-out, unintentional farces for what they really are. Seize the day. Onward and upward. (Or is that downward…in this case, in terms of these three horrendously blatant SJW films, most definitely downward.) 1. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962 – Gregory Peck, Robert Duvall, Brock Peters, Mary Badham)
This multiple-Oscar-winning film is based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel of the same name, which was written by Harper Lee and published in 1960—and it is that Pulitzer Prize, and those multiple Oscars, that should be your first major clues that the Hollywood elitists were up to no good while crafting this brilliantly clever piece of SJW brainwashing.
This wickedly hypnotic movie cleverly reinforces the statistically bankrupt notion that most white males in the American Deep South are vicious, stupid, ignorantly racist crackers who spend most of their time ruining the lives of innocent blacks—that is, when they aren’t shooting them down like dogs or lynching them outright. The plot centers around a hard-working, stand-up, straight-arrow black man, Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), who is falsely accused of rape by a conniving, white-trash slut named Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox), whose alcoholic father, Bob Ewell (James Anderson), is a racist pig of unfathomably low character.
The town’s SJW lawyer, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), plays white knight and comes rushing to Tom Robinson’s defense—much to the dismay of the local good ole boys—but despite his best efforts to free the poor, wrongly accused black man, Finch cannot hold back the powerful tide of racist anger, which ultimately results in the backwater town’s killer cops shooting poor Tom down in cold blood (a familiar theme, which can be abundantly found in today’s world of dindu-nothin’ black folk, who are perennially and viciously gunned down by racist white cops, on an ever-increasing and frightening basis…yawn, “Gee, never heard this one before.”).
I’m not even going to get into the rest of this mind-numbing film’s plot and story line, because it’s a waste of both my time and yours. But I will mention a few correlative facts here, which you might find just a little bit interesting… The SJW-controlled civil rights movement exploded with a vengeance not long after this film was released. And here’s the red-pill truth of the matter: according to the 1994 annual report on murder by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, most interracial murders in the USA involved black assailants and white victims, with blacks murdering whites at 18 times the rate that whites murder blacks.
These stunning disparities began to emerge in the mid-1960s, when there was a sharp increase in black crime against white people, an upsurge which, not so coincidentally enough, corresponds exactly with the beginning of the modern SJW-crafted civil rights movement. Blacks thus committed 7.5 times more violent interracial crimes than whites, even though the black population was only one-seventh the size of the white population at the time. This is according to the survey, Highlights from 20 Years of Surveying Crime Victims , published in 1993. You’ll have to buy the book if you want to find out the real truth.
These days, Washington’s SJW data-gatherers no longer keep track of such “ bigoted ” statistics…probably because they care about our safety so very, very deeply. Over the years, the cumulative effects have been staggering. Justice Department and FBI statistics indicate that between 1964 and 1994 more than 25 million violent interracial crimes were committed in the USA, overwhelmingly involving black offenders and white victims, and more than 45,000 people were killed in interracial murders—the vast majority of them being black-on-white killings. By comparison, 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War, and 34,000 were killed in the Korean War.
I wonder how many additional people have been killed in America, during the escalation of these deliberately inflamed race wars, since 1995? Unfortunately, we can’t get a look at those statistics, as previously mentioned, because the Puppet Masters no longer keep such records, so far as I can tell—and if they do, they definitely don’t want us to see them.
Be that as it may, the notions set forth in To Kill A Mockingbird are repulsively twisted, morally insidious and patently false. And if that offends anybody out there who might be reading this review, that makes my entire freaking day. Because in the end, all that should matter to any critically thinking person is the truth. And what Hollywood dishes out on a regular basis, is anything but… 2. Gandhi (1982 – Sir Ben Kingsley, Martin Sheen, Candice Bergen, Sir John Gielgud)
Supposedly, as the crafters of history have quite ingeniously led us to believe, Mohandas K. Gandhi (played by Sir Ben Kingsley, in this multiple-Oscar-winning film) utilized the greatest weapon of all in his epic fight against British tyranny on behalf of the Indian people—the incredibly effective method of non-violent resistance.
And in the movie, Gandhi , there is a sequence in the film featuring a large group of non-compliant protesters, as it faces down a group of security forces armed with sticks, outside of a salt factory, the end result being that the protesters get the holy crap beaten out of them.
In reality, that was basically all that happened. There was a public dog-and-pony show, shortly after this supposedly real-life event, which was choreographed by the elitist-owned media. And indeed, in this cleverly constructed movie, actor Martin Sheen can be seen describing the bloody mayhem at the factory over the telephone to his cohorts back in the USA (Sheen plays American Journalist Vince Walker in the film).
And what Sheen’s character witnessed, and put into words, and then passed along to his editor over the phone, was summarily put into print in vast numbers of elitist-owned newspapers, as well as on film, in elitist-owned news reels, and marketed all over the world…which resulted in bringing worldwide focus on the “terrorist acts” of the security workers at the salt factory. This entire episode was allegedly a key element of India’s signature accomplishment of gaining her independence from the British.
Despite the fact that every single major worldwide event that finds its way into the mainstream media’s propaganda conduits, is either a completely staged event (like the Indian protesters getting beaten outside the salt mine, IMHO), or something that meshes well with the elite’s overall master plan, or they will not even put it into print or on film to begin with (90% of the world’s major media companies are owned by just six major players), we are supposed to believe that the elitist-produced film, Gandhi , depicts real-life events that occurred as the direct result of one brave man in a loincloth, who stood up to the ferocious might of the British Empire and brought the entire house down, single-handedly?
Please. You’d have a better chance of talking me into using Tinder.
There is another infamous sequence in the film, wherein a group of Hindi demonstrators is peacefully assembling in protest, within an enclosed, park-like area of the Indian city of Amritsar. The demonstrators are consequently assaulted by British soldiers, who open fire, brutally and randomly, on the assembled sitting ducks, and proceed to gun down hundreds of protesters (this incident allegedly occurred on April 13, 1919, and some estimates put the actual number of demonstrators killed at well over 1000).
And in this single, crucial, very revealing sequence of the film, the sobering truth is once again put on display for all to see—assembling peacefully, going against the grain of the established order, by utilizing peaceful protest and non-compliance within a group setting, is exactly what the elite want the people to do. Because it makes it a whole lot easier to identify them and kill them.
In the film, after the mass slaughter, the soldiers’ commander is dressed down by his higher-ups for taking the law into his own hands, and gunning down the peaceful demonstrators. But that was all done strictly for show. And this is most obviously a case of cinematic cover here, as anyone who can think for themselves can easily infer (who do you think produced Gandhi …uh, that would be an elitist-owned film company, Columbia Pictures—do you really think the elite are going to pass along the bona fide solution to wiping them out…uh, no way; last time I checked, rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide).
The British Empire has a long and bloody history of usurping lands. And the notion that the string-pullers at the very top of the greasy flagpole would be aghast at the actions of the British commander who ordered the slaughter at Amritsar, is comical at best.
What the slaughter at Amritsar actually accomplished (in addition to the mass-murder of a huge swath of ardent protesters) was the following:
With the complicit assistance of the elitist-owned press, the British commander’s actions that day reinforced the suicidal notion that peaceful protest and non-violent resistance were the keys to bringing about significant social change. And throughout history, other choreographed events like the slaughter at Amritsar and the subsequent explosion of moral outrage, fueled by the reports in the elite-owned media, have continued to give rise to the suicidal notion that non-violent resistance actually works.
Which of course it does, but only in isolated, high-profile, choreographed incidents, where the outcome has already been decided beforehand, whenever the Puppet Masters want it to appear that way to the sleeping sheep…the rest of the time, it only results in mass-incarceration, physical assault, political harassment or murder. On a more subtle note, you might have noticed that two of the leading actors in this Oscar-winning film were eventually knighted by the British Empire—namely, Sir Ben Kingsley (knighted in 2001) and Sir John Gielgud (knighted in 1953)…to which I can only say, “I rest my case, Your Honor.” 3) The Gift (2015 – Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, Allison Tolman)
I don’t typically watch modern Hollywood films these days. Mostly because I know what Hollywood is up to, so I normally avoid them in the exact same way that I avoid single mothers with tramp stamps, or chicks with green hair. But I went ahead and checked out this absolute mindfuck of a movie on Showtime the other night, knowing it would probably throw me a wicked, SJW curveball—and sure enough, it didn’t disappoint.
As an aside, I threw this film into the mix, juxtaposed with the previous two Oscar-winners, partly to demonstrate how far the bar has fallen in the Hollywood filmmaking industry, in terms of the standard of quality. They don’t even try to hide the SJW brainwashing madness in their films any longer. At least back in the day, they could mindfuck the sheep in an entertaining and captivating way, while keeping their overall intentions under the radar…but today, as this next film proves? Not so much.
Simon Callem (Jason Bateman) has a “horrifying” secret buried in his “twisted” past, and his wife, Robyn (Rebecca Hall), is clueless about the whole thing (innocent white female vs. evil white male, the usual bullshit here). The couple relocates from Chicago to a suburb of Los Angeles, where they run into Gordon “Gordo” Moseley (Joel Edgerton), a creepy, awkward, socially inept former high school classmate of Simon’s. Gordo starts dropping by the couple’s new house, uninvited and unannounced, and he does so on far too many occasions. Simon thinks Gordon’s behavior is weird (which it is), but his SJW wife thinks Gordo is sweet, shy, and simply misunderstood.
Gordo’s weirdness escalates in typical bore-me-to-death fashion (Hollywood is really great at this audience-wowing technique lately), until Robyn finally discovers her husband’s long-held secret: he bullied poor Gordo back in high school, by inventing a story about him, which centered around a homosexual relationship that Gordo never had. The horrendously unfair story got back to Gordo’s father, and Gordo’s father nearly killed him!
Of course, Simon’s liberal, SJW, brainwashed wife eventually wants her bully-boy husband out of her life forever, shortly after discovering this unforgivable transgression (even though she’s pregnant with their first child, and they were very much in love up to this point; yeah, like that would ever happen in real life).
The SJW bullshit meter spikes so hard in this film, that you’ll be left slack-jawed, stunned and eye-rollingly incredulous, and if you are unfortunate enough to have to sit through this absolutely putrid piece of garbage, be sure to keep a barf-bucket handy (especially for the ending)—because you are definitely going to need it.
Hopefully, it’s getting a whole lot easier for you to spot the bullshit that is being sold, not only in today’s SJW Hollywood films, but in Hollywood films of days gone by (most especially Oscar winners).
The elite are always using the magic of Hollywood for nefarious purposes—namely, to “magically” instill behaviors in its audience members that will get them into trouble, or instill beliefs in them that are totally divorced from reality.
Doing this makes it much easier to divide the movie-going sheep, and thereby conquer them, typically by race, or by historical beliefs, or by sociopolitical beliefs.
So do yourself, and the world, a huge favor, and avoid SJW Hollywood films wherever and whenever you can. The rule is simple: if it’s being made in Hollywood today, it’s a BPO film (blue pill only). And unfortunately, as it pertains to movies that were made all the way back in the early 1960s (if not even further), well, as we have just seen, the same rule applies, in many cases.
By boycotting Hollywood films, you are lessening the degree of brainwashing to which you subject yourself, simply by being alive in the world at the present time. And in this particular case, less is most definitely more . | 0 |
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its score Monday of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) the bill proposed by House Speaker Paul Ryan to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) commonly known as “Obamacare”. [Read the full report here: CBO Score: American Health Care Act (AHCA) by Breitbart News on Scribd, | 1 |
Daughter of Holocaust Survivors Running for Senate Supports 2nd Amendment She also warns Americans to take Islamic threats serious Millie Weaver | Infowars.com - October 26, 2016 Comments
Millie Weaver interviews Beverly Goldstein, Republican candidate for Ohio U.S. Senate Seat District 11.
Mrs. Goldstein, who is a daughter of Holocaust survivors, is a strong proponent of the 2nd Amendment and warns Americans to take Islamic threats serious. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles Download on your mobile device now for free. Today on the Show Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars crew. From the store Featured Videos FEATURED VIDEOS Donald Trump Has Won The 2016 Presidential Election - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . BREAKING: Michael Moore Admits Trump Is Right - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . ILLUSTRATION What are the chances of a US/Russia nuclear exchange? 0% © 2016 Infowars.com is a Free Speech Systems, LLC Company. All rights reserved. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice. 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force | 0 |
By wmw_admin on July 27, 2016 Baxter Dmitry — Your News Wire.com July 25, 2016 From left to right: Hillary Clinton and Evelyn de Rothschild, Bill Clinton and Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Click to enlarge
The Wikileaks classified email dumps have exposed Hillary Clinton for what she really is – a member of the infamous Rothschild family’s inner sanctum, with occultist beliefs.
Lending further credibility to the idea that Presidents are not elected but are selected by a global shadow government, the Wikileaks email dumps expose Hillary Clinton’s close relationship with the infamous Rothschild banking family and hints for a potential Rockefeller-State partnership.
The fact the mainstream media have been exposed colluding with the Clinton campaign cannot come as a surprise, considering she is the Rothschild’s selected candidate.
Lynn Forester de Rothschild wrote an email on April 18, 2010, in which she tells Hillary she would “ love to catch up ” — and “ I remain your loyal adoring pal .” Clinton responds “ let’s make that happen ,” and signs her response, “ Much love, H .”
On September 23, 2010, Clinton emailed Lynn Forester de Rothschild saying, “ I was trying to reach you to tell you and Teddy that I asked Tony Blair to go to Israel as part of our full court press on keeping the Middle East negotiations going … ”
Rothschild responds, thanking Clinton for “ personally reaching out to us ,” and adds, “ You are the best, and we remain your biggest fans .”
A January 9, 2012, email discusses a meeting set to take place at Jacob Rothschild’s “ historic estate, Waddesdon .” OCCULTIST TIES Bohemian Grove gathering. Click to enlarge
Hillary Clinton is so deeply entrenched in the elite New World Order establishment that she even bows down to Moloch, the same occultist god they perform human sacrifice rituals for at the annual Bohemian Grove meetings.
In an email from August 29 2008, a senior government staffer writes to Hillary Clinton, “ With fingers crossed, the old rabbit’s foot out of the box in the attic, I will be sacrificing a chicken in the backyard to Moloch . . . ”
Thanks to the Wikileaks Hillary Clinton Email Archive (containing 30,022 emails, free to search), we now have more concrete proof that Hillary Clinton and other globalist elites have occult ties. Nobody randomly uses Moloch in a conversation. Most people don’t even know what Moloch is. Clinton email. Click to enlarge
But Bohemian Grove, the playground of the world’s most wealthy and powerful men, has been performing sacrifice rituals to Moloch since the 1800s, offering charred human flesh according to some reports.
Given the reputation Bohemian Grove has for deciding the next President of the United States in the year before the election (see former Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan, the Bush dynasty, as well as Hillary’s husband Bill Clinton), it should come as no surprise that Hillary is wriggling her way into their dark, secretive world
The Bohemian Grove club might be infamously male only, but temporary exceptions have been made for women before, and as it is apparent the New World Order has decided it is in their interest to ordain Hillary as the next President then they will bend their rules to let her in.
This explains why the mainstream media – and social media platforms – are working overtime to get Clinton elected. The global elites have spoken and the mainstream media has begun marching to the beat of their drum – supporting their selected candidate, and destroying the chances of anyone they see as a threat to their corrupt, elite club. | 0 |
One night six years ago, on a quiet side street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, I came across a photo album that had been put out with the trash. I lived around the corner, and I was walking home when I saw it sitting beneath a streetlamp on Lincoln Place. It looked handmade, with a wooden cover bound with a shoelace. But it had been tied up with twine, like a bunch of old newspapers, and left atop a pile of recycling. After hesitating a moment, I picked it up and took it home. The pages were fragile, and they cracked when I turned them, as if the album hadn’t been opened in a long time, but the photos were perfectly preserved. They seemed to chronicle the life of a black couple at midcentury: a beautiful woman with a big smile and a man who looked serious, or was maybe just and had served in World War II. As I turned the pages, the scenery changed from country picnics to city streets and crowded dance halls in what appeared to be Harlem, and the couple went from youth to middle age. Looking at the album, I was struck by how joyful the photos were — and by the fact that as fabled as this era was, I had never seen a black family’s own account of that time. I wondered who these neighbors were, and who had thrown the album out. For decades, this part of Crown Heights had been mostly black. When I arrived in the neighborhood, several years before, I was one of the few nonblack residents on the block. The neighborhood was changing, though newcomers were arriving and longtime residents were moving out. I went back to Lincoln Place, hoping to find the album’s owner it had surely been thrown out by mistake. Lincoln Place was the very image of old Brooklyn promoted by real estate agents. On other blocks, the houses were carved up or crumbling. Or they had been torn down and replaced by big buildings with spotlights and signs. But on Lincoln Place, the stately rowhouses were still intact and well loved. The block was preserved in amber. I knocked on doors and left my number, but I never heard from anyone. So I put the album on my bookshelf. A few years later, my landlords got an offer they couldn’t refuse, and my short time in Crown Heights was up. I stumbled upon the album while packing and pulled it off the shelf. Now I really had to reckon with it. Gentrification was transforming the neighborhood — soon there might be no one left who recognized the world in these pictures. And the album was literally falling apart in my hands. If I was ever going to try to get to the bottom of it, this was the time. I decided to uncover its story. I thought it would be simple. But chasing the album would become something of a journey, one that would take me far from Brooklyn to the Jim Crow South, from a remote island in the Pacific to the packed tenements of Harlem, before returning me to Lincoln Place at another moment of great change. Last spring, I began the search. The photos were arranged on black pages with little mounting corners and Scotch tape that had turned yellow with age. There were 167 pictures, and they covered both sides of the pages, as if to save space. But the photos stopped about halfway through the album. The rest of it was blank. I looked behind every photo, but there were only a few clues, handwritten notes like “From your old pal Duke,” “Myself and Sylvia” or “Love to Etta Mae, From Dorothy. ” The name Etta Mae was written on three or four photos, and I began to suspect she was the woman who appeared throughout the album. She had a full figure and elegant hands. She smoked. But I always spotted her by her smile. She was often with the same man. They were embracing, or they were in separate photos on the same page. I guessed that he was her husband on one photo, someone had written, “To my best friend’s hubby. ” Carrying photocopies of a few pictures, I went back to Crown Heights. I had been gone less than two years, but there were all sorts of changes. On Nostrand Avenue, a West Indian market that had carried buckets of salt cod had closed. Where once the only coffee had come in yellow cans of Bustelo, cafes served locally roasted espresso. There was a retro cocktail bar. On Lincoln Place, a sign hung outside one house, and another was under renovation. There was a Pilates studio. There were more young families now, and when I asked them about the album as they swept the sidewalk or sat on their stoops, they apologized: They were new to the block and couldn’t help. One evening, I was close to giving up when a young man in a garden apartment told me to talk to Jimmy, the oldest guy on the block. He pointed to a red house a few doors down. An old man answered the door. Yes, he said, he was Jimmy — James Burton. I showed him the photocopied pictures, and he squinted. “That’s Mrs. Taylor,” he said. “Etta Mae. ” The man in the pictures was her husband, Isaiah Taylor. Everyone called him Ike, Mr. Burton said. The Taylors had lived on Lincoln Place forever. He pointed next door, at a white house with classical molding. When I returned to Lincoln Place a few days later with the whole album, Mr. Burton and his wife, Lenore, were doing a puzzle at a card table. “You say you just found this album on the street?” she asked, laughing. “I wouldn’t touch it. I’m amazed you would touch it. ” “Would you pick it up?” she asked her husband. “Maybe,” he said. They were in their late 80s. Ms. Burton had worked as a bookkeeper, and Mr. Burton had been a chauffeur and a shipping clerk. They had lived on Lincoln Place since the early 1950s, and raised their two daughters there. The Taylors had been their neighbors and close friends, almost like family. “In those days, we knew most everybody, and then they started disappearing and dying and moving away,” Mr. Burton said. “Now I’m lucky if I know 10 people. ” We sat on the couch and opened the album. Pages had torn loose from the binding, and as we passed them between us, black flakes fluttered to the floor. “No, no,” Mr. Burton said, peering at the faces to see if he recognized anyone. “Etta and Ike. That’s all I know is them two. ” Halfway through, we came to a page crowded with small pictures. Mr. Burton paused. “That looks like me,” he said, his voice a little louder. “Your mother, Uncle Fernando — that’s my wedding. ” I was hooked. Now that I had names, I enlisted a researcher at The New York Times, Susan C. Beachy, and she pulled documents for Etta Mae Taylor: census records birth, death and marriage certificates old phone books newspaper clippings. Etta Mae didn’t have children. Her siblings had all died. But she had relatives scattered across the country. The Burtons remembered a niece from North Carolina, and the researcher found someone in Raleigh named Joann Barnes. She was now in her 70s. For months, the only other thing I knew about her was that she didn’t pick up her phone. I didn’t blame her. “Hello,” I would say when I left voice mail messages, “I’m calling about a photo album that may have belonged to your family. ” Even as I said it, I knew it sounded like a scam. I tried her relatives, calling, sending emails and friendly Facebook messages, but always with the same result: silence. The documents, at least, gave me the beginnings of Etta Mae’s story. Etta Mae Barnes was born on July 28, 1918, in Wilson, N. C. which once called itself the world’s greatest tobacco market. When Ms. Taylor was young, it was a boomtown. Thousands of families had migrated to Wilson from the countryside to pick tobacco on farms and hang it in big warehouses downtown. The first pages in the album seemed to be of Wilson several photos had stamps from photographers’ studios there. There were portraits of women in flouncy dresses, babies, a boy with a dog, a group in straw hats in a field. In two portraits placed side by side, a couple posed by a flowering bush, in front of a clapboard house. I wondered if they were Etta Mae’s parents. Etta Mae’s mother, Anna Bell Green Barnes, was born in Virginia and worked as a hanger at a tobacco company, the documents revealed. Her father, James Frank Barnes, was a grocery store clerk. His family went back generations in Wilson County. Etta Mae was one of six. When she was still a child, her oldest brother, Charles, boarded the train that passed through Wilson and became part of what we now call the Great Migration, the exodus of millions of black Southerners from the Jim Crow South. Judging from the album, many of Etta Mae’s relatives had gone north I could tell them apart from their country kin by their suits and furs. Etta Mae left school after seventh grade and went to work as a housekeeper in a private home, according to the 1940 census. That year, 10 other people were living at the Barneses’ including an aunt an adopted daughter Etta Mae’s sister Mildred Mildred’s husband, Jack Artis and their baby, Charles. In 1940, Etta Mae left her crowded home. But she didn’t go north just yet. She went to Suffolk, Va. where, according to her marriage license, she wed Isaiah Taylor on the day after her 22nd birthday. Ike Taylor was three years younger than Etta Mae, and when they married, he had recently graduated from high school and was working as a deliveryman. His father was a cook. His mother worked at a peanut processing plant. Suffolk, like Wilson, was segregated, unofficially divided by the railroad tracks. On one side, a sizable black community had grown, drawn by jobs in the factories of peanut producers like Planters. The Taylors’ wedding announcement in a local paper said, “The couple will reside here. ” But in 1941, the United States entered World War II, and farm work had grown scarce amid an agriculture crisis. Hundreds of thousands of black Southerners rushed to enlist, and Ike was one of them. There were about a dozen photographs from the war in the album, loose snapshots tucked in the back. They showed black soldiers amid spindly trees and what looked like Japanese shrines. Ike was an army truck commander in the 510th Port Battalion and rose to the rank of master sergeant, according to his military records. His unit was stationed on Tinian, an island in the Pacific that the United States captured from the Japanese, where the armed forces built a huge air base. (It was from Tinian that the Enola Gay took off for Hiroshima.) Today, most of the men in Ike’s unit would be approaching 100, if they were alive at all, and I had given up on getting a firsthand account, when I found a videotaped interview with a member of the 510th in the Library of Congress. James W. Taylor (no relation to Ike) died in 2014. In the video, he described their time in the army. The armed forces were still segregated, and there were almost no black combat units until troops thinned at the end of the war black soldiers were instead relegated to labor and service units. Their battalion unloaded ammunition from ships and provided transport. On Tinian, they lived apart from the white soldiers. They slept in tents in a separate camp, ate separately and drank from water tanks that they filled, separately, from a mountain spring. These men may have enlisted in the army to escape Jim Crow, but instead they found themselves on a tropical island in the Pacific that had become a replica of the segregated South. This was where records trailed off. To go any further, I needed a guide. One night in the fall, I found one. I got a Facebook message from someone in Wilson named Craig Barnes Jr. whom I had written to months before. “Sorry, I’m just seeing this now,” he said. “Do you still have that photo?” I replied immediately with a smiley face. “I have the entire album!” Over the phone, Mr. Barnes, 25, said that he was related to Etta Mae, but that he didn’t know much about her the person to talk to was his grandmother, Joann Barnes — the woman in Raleigh who hadn’t taken my calls. He promised to set up a conversation, but weeks went by. When we finally spoke, he had bad news: She wasn’t answering the phone. But that was all I had. So a week later, I boarded a flight for Raleigh, the album in my bag. I met up with a photographer and we drove to the last listed address for Ms. Barnes: a retirement complex in a apartment building surrounded by trees. I was unsure if she even lived there, much less how she would feel about my visit, and as we approached, I felt nervous for the first time. I had come all this way, and though I thought the album was important, maybe I was just intruding. I pressed the buzzer and identified myself over the intercom as a reporter from New York. After a long moment, a woman’s voice crackled through the speaker. “All right,” she said. “I’ll buzz you in, dear. ” As we walked down the hall toward her apartment, Ms. Barnes stepped out from her door, as if she planned to give us only a minute. She had short gray hair and wore a blouse. “Are you a relative of Etta Mae Taylor?” I asked. “Yes, I was her niece,” she said. I explained, quickly, how I had met the Burtons, that they had told me Etta Mae’s name and that I should look for her niece. “O. K.,” she said. “And, well,” I said, “basically, I found this on the street. ” I held out the album. She gave a surprised laugh. I laughed too, with relief. “You know, it kind of makes you leery,” Ms. Barnes said. She had gotten my messages, and her grandson’s, but she was skeptical because she had never seen her aunt’s photo album. She invited us in. Her apartment was small and neat. She had been cleaning, and after she washed her hands, we sat down. She was from Wilson, she said, but she left when she was young and spent nearly 30 years in New York, where she was a visiting nurse. She opened the album. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “These are from way back. ” She spotted her grandparents — Etta Mae’s parents — in front of the clapboard house in Wilson where she, too, had grown up. There, in the yard, they played horseshoes and caught pigeons. She named her aunts and uncles and cousins. “And that’s me,” she said, touching a photo of a little girl. “I always liked this picture. I believe my father made this skirt. He used to make clothes for me when I was small. And I always had those big bows. ” She shook her head and smiled. “Little knock knees,” she said. Wilson was about an hour’s drive east. The downtown was deserted, the brick warehouses the only remnant of the tobacco era. Across the tracks, the house where Etta Mae grew up had been torn down. In the empty lot where it once stood, there was no trace of the family that had become so real to me. A pickup was parked in the overgrown grass. Most of Etta Mae’s family had left Wilson and scattered, but Craig Barnes Jr. was still there. We met up at an Applebee’s off the highway. I thanked him for writing to me and handed him the album. As he turned the pages, I said I had never seen a black family’s photos from this era. He said he hadn’t either. “The lifestyle they’re living looks amazing,” he said. In Etta Mae’s day, the magic of Harlem reached the South through newspapers, relatives’ letters and the radio, and in the 1940s, another wave of Southern migrants moved to New York, drawn by Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington as much as by the promise of factory jobs. “New York was the place to be,” Ms. Barnes said. While Ike was in the Pacific, Etta Mae joined her sister Mildred and her husband, along with her brother Charles, in Harlem, and the sisters found jobs pressing drapes at a factory in the garment district. “They were pressers,” Ms. Barnes said. “That was kind of the going job at the time. ” When the war was over, Ike and Etta Mae were reunited in New York. On weekends, they would go dancing — at small clubs and at the blocklong Savoy Ballroom on Lenox Avenue, where thousands of couples did the jitterbug. From the time she was little, Ms. Barnes would take the train every year to visit the Taylors. “I was a Southern girl I used to go every summer with my grandmother,” she said. “When I would see them dressed up, it was exciting. Like these were some movie stars or something. ” Of her two aunts, Ms. Barnes said, Etta Mae was the serious one. “Mae thought she was the boss. She always thought she was smarter than everybody else. She was always saying, ‘Sister, you shouldn’t do that Sister, you should. ’” But she loved to dance, Ms. Barnes said. “And she could sing, too. ” The photos speak to the glamour of life in Harlem, but they barely hint at its struggles. Housing discrimination largely confined black people to Harlem, and in the 1940s, as more Southern migrants surged into the city, its blocks became some of the most densely populated in the world. Landlords charged high rents and let their buildings fall into ruin. They knew their tenants had nowhere else to go. After riots broke out in 1943, Langston Hughes wrote of Harlemites’ poverty and frustration: “Some of them don’t try anymore. I reckon. ” Etta Mae and her sister lived in a packed tenement on West 116th Street. Their brother Charles, who in the album looks dashing in a dark suit with a pocket square, worked as a deliveryman for a florist, and shared his apartment on 131st Street with his wife and seven lodgers from the South. In the middle of the album was a series of oversize portraits of couples gathered around tables in night clubs. I couldn’t figure out where they were taken until a clue cropped up in an old newspaper: Ike was listed among the members of the Eight Chaps Social Club, a men’s club composed of Suffolkians that was hosting a dance in Harlem. Seven of the Chaps were dead now, but the eighth picked up the phone. “Isaiah Taylor?” Walter Howell, 95, said. Of course he remembered him. “Good buddy of mine. ” He told me the photos were, indeed, from the club’s dances. They look glamorous, but all of the Chaps, Mr. Howell said, had jobs. He had worked in a plant preparing minks and sables. Then he answered a question that hadn’t occurred to me, which was why the Taylors had such a dazzling record of their social life. The reason was that one member of the club, Jesse Williams, was a professional photographer. Craig Steven Wilder, a historian at M. I. T. told me that for Southern migrants far from home, men’s clubs like the Eight Chaps “become their new kinship networks. ” “That informal network is how you access news about where you can move,” Professor Wilder said, “where black people are moving and welcome. ” In 1950, the population of Central Harlem reached its peak, and began to inch their way into other boroughs. The Eight Chaps scattered. Etta Mae and Ike, of course, went to Brooklyn. Crown Heights was predominantly white at the time. And when Etta Mae and Ike moved to Lincoln Place around 1950, renting a room from a black hairdresser named Lucille Stewart, they became some of the first black residents on the block. The Burtons, the neighbors whose wedding photos were in the album, came soon after. “We were about the second blacks on the block,” Lenore Burton said. Ms. Burton’s parents, Clara and Cannon Harper, moved into the white house with the classical molding, with their daughter Jackie. After they got married, the Burtons bought the red house next door. Etta Mae and Ike soon moved into the third floor of the Harpers’ white house, and the two households became like one. Etta Mae’s album captures their communal life: They shared meals, gave each other haircuts, gathered in the kitchen in their bathrobes. Ms. Burton’s sister, Jackie Jones, still lives in the white house that she grew up in and eventually inherited from her parents. On one of my visits to the Burtons’ she appeared, magically, in their living room: Back in the 1950s, they had installed a door between their homes. “All the families were intertwined more or less, though they weren’t blood relations,” Ms. Jones, 89, said. The picture the Burtons painted of the 1950s was a happy one. And it took me a moment to step back and see the obvious: During this time, as black people arrived on Lincoln Place, white families were leaving. Isabel Wilkerson, the author of “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” said the timing was not a coincidence. “Fear led many white residents to flee,” she said. “Neighborhoods began to open up because white people were so fearful that they would sell at a loss. ” It was a sign of what was coming. In the next decades, hundreds of thousands of white families would leave the city, and black families would move into their homes, a phenomenon that came to be known as white flight. In 1950, the Taylors’ census tract was 95 percent white. By 1970, it was 87 percent black. White flight is often associated with the poverty and crime that plagued New York City in the later decades of the 20th century, and conjures images of muggings, abandoned buildings and urban blight. But these photos too were images of the era: People posing beside a 1950s television console, a man at a piano, a sunny picnic. In 1956, the new homeowners formed the Lincoln Civic Block Association, which still exists. “There was a Pokeno circle, a poker circle,” Mr. Burton said. “You’d go from house to house. Nobody had a lock on the door. Our house was never locked. You’d look up, and there’d be cousin . ” The Burtons pointed out a few houses on Lincoln Place where still lived. A neighbor, Marilyn LeGall, 72, grew up visiting her aunt and uncle on Lincoln Place. “You played stickball, you jumped rope,” she said. “Everyone looked after the other. ” That was life on Lincoln Place, said Arthur Bates Jr. 56, who grew up on the block. “It was a real neighborhood, and a black experience no one talks about, because it wasn’t filled with drugs and it wasn’t filled with poverty,” Mr. Bates said. “It was public schools, it was playing ball, it was playing music. ” Now, he added, everyone was discovering brownstone Brooklyn. “It’s been sitting here, like so many aspects of our lives. People say, ‘It’s dripping with original details.’ Who do you think maintained it? Where were you?” Etta Mae and Ike settled down on Lincoln Place after a decade of war and uncertainty and living in cramped quarters in Harlem. Etta Mae kept working in the garment district. She went bargain hunting on Flatbush Avenue for outfits and nice furniture for their apartment. She joined a book club. Ike got dogs — and cars. “A blue Chevy,” Mr. Burton recalled. On the weekends, they would go to their dances, and Mildred came over. They drank cocktails and listened to records. “They were folks,” Ms. Jones said. “You could come and sit and drink and smoke and laugh. They loved to laugh. ” They traveled, driving south to see one of Ike’s sisters in Washington, and to their hometowns. In the 1960s, they went on cruises. New York gave them a good life. And if it was lived in the shadow of white flight, it was a life they never could have had in the South. Ike’s niece, Brenda Oliver, 67, remembered her aunt arriving in Virginia wearing pretty clothes, smelling good. Ms. Oliver’s mother was a maid. “My mom lived in a house with a coal stove. She was so impressed that her siblings had gotten out of the South and made a life for themselves. ” In their later years, Ike and Etta Mae look content. In one photo, they stand beside each other, she in a dress, he in a suit. She is giving him a knowing little smile. His arm is around her shoulder. It is the last photo of the two of them together. On Aug. 5, 1971, Ike died of cancer. He was 50. After he died, Etta Mae stopped keeping the album. That was why half of the pages were blank. Etta Mae stayed on Lincoln Place. She took care of children for working couples, recalled the Burtons’ daughter, Carol Burton, 58. Etta Mae got books in the mail, never putting them on the shelf until they were read. She went to church every Sunday, at Berean Baptist nearby. She took in relatives once or twice, for brief spells, but otherwise lived alone. I found former residents of Lincoln Place. They remembered Etta Mae, but not as the young woman in the album. “She was always an old lady,” Sherrie Tanner Hammonds, 47, said. She grew up on the block with her grandmother, Ms. Stewart, the hairdresser, and now lives in Rochester. “She always had a small dog. She had a little set schedule. She would walk morning and night. ” “Rain or shine,” said Constance P. Jermin, 83, who left Lincoln Place for Georgia in 2002. “She was very deliberate and devoted. And she always greeted everyone. Always with a big smile. ” For a few years, Etta Mae and I shared the block. Our bedroom windows looked out on the same backyards, and every day, she must have walked past my house, though I can’t recall if I ever actually saw her. When she could no longer get around, Ms. Jones, her landlady, took care of her. “She was feisty,” said Ms. Jones, who said she never raised her rent from $200. “She was good until the end. ” The end was swift. In 2010, Etta Mae fell and went to the hospital, and from there, to a nursing home in East New York, Brooklyn. She died there, five long miles from Lincoln Place, on June 4, 2011. She was 92. She is buried next to her husband at Long Island National Cemetery, a veterans’ graveyard in Farmingdale, N. Y. They share a single headstone, their names on either side. Etta Mae’s funeral program ends, “Etta lived a full life. ” It was all in the album: the Great Migration, Harlem at its most chaotic and crowded, the transformation of Brooklyn. For her neighbors on Lincoln Place, Etta Mae’s album brought back happy memories of their first years on the block, but it did not stop the clock from ticking. In October, Lenore Burton died. Her widower, James Burton, plans to stay in their home on Lincoln Place. For Etta Mae’s family, the album helped fill the void left by relatives who moved to the North. They let me hold onto the album until the publication of this article. I had one last question: How did the album end up on the curb? After her aunt died, Joann Barnes came from Raleigh to arrange the funeral in Brooklyn. She hadn’t been to Lincoln Place in years and was surprised by how little her aunt’s home had changed. She had moved into the back rooms and left the rest untouched. Everything was from the 1950s — the kitchen sink and cabinets, the furniture in the living room, which was covered in plastic. In Ike’s old office, there was a record player, hundreds of records, and a shelf with glasses and little stirrers, the remnants of his bar. The closets were stuffed with linens and old clothes. When she went to dry her hands after washing them in the bathroom, the hand towel was so old it split in two. She was tired from the funeral, and overwhelmed. She just wanted to get home. She packed up some wedding dishes for her sister, a few pots and pans. For herself, she took some change from a drawer. “A silver dollar, some old coins,” she said. “That’s just me. I have my memory of her and our trips and what we did together. I’m not a keeper. ” As she got ready to go, Ms. Jones came in. “She asked me if I was coming back,” Ms. Barnes said, “and I said no. ‘Open the doors and let the neighbors come and take what they want. Just open it up. ’” In the weeks afterward, Ms. Jones worked her way through the apartment. She bagged up the clothes. She pulled the records off the shelf. She boxed up Etta Mae’s books. When she found the album, she tied it up with twine. And one evening, before the trucks came to pick up the recycling, she carried it outside with a few boxes and left it on the curb. A few minutes, or a few hours, passed. Then, just as Etta Mae had walked past my house so many times before, I walked by hers, picked up her album and carried it home. | 1 |
TRUMP VICTORY FOR SURE | 0 |
PARIS — passengers were stranded overnight on Thursday in cable cars in the French Alps after helicopters were used to rescue 65 others who had been trapped, officials said. The daring rescue was unfolding at an altitude of nearly 12, 500 feet in the Mont Blanc massif near Chamonix after the cars came to a halt around 2 p. m. between the Aiguille du Midi in France and Pointe Helbronner in Italy. A boy was among those stranded, according to Leclerc, the prefect of who spoke at a news conference. “We had to stop the rescuing operations when the night came because the helicopters can’t do the rescuing operation when it is dark,” Floriane Macian, a spokeswoman for the prefecture, said in a telephone interview. A dozen passengers were evacuated by an Italian rescue team. That part of the operation was not done by helicopter because the cable car was close enough to the ground, according to Mathieu Dechavanne, the chief executive of the company that manages the cable cars. The rescue effort resumed Friday morning. The cars stopped because supporting cables and towing cables crossed in several places. “We managed to uncross the cables in two places by pulling them, but we did not manage to uncross them in the third one,” Mr. Dechavanne said in a phone interview. Mr. Dechavanne said he had called the rescue services at 5 p. m. to start evacuating the passengers. “We had to do it by helicopter and not vertically like we can do it in other places, because the ground underneath is of a glacial type so there is a risk of crevasses and it could lead to accidents,” he said. The Daily Express, a British newspaper, reported that rescuers had harnessed themselves to the cables and climbed along to the cars and dropping down through hatches. Five rescue workers were remaining with some of the passengers, and the temperature was expected to drop to 32 degrees overnight. The passengers were given food and blankets. “They have a survival kit in each of the cable cars with cereals bars, water and survival blankets, and we contacted them by phone to explain everything,” Mr. Dechavanne said. “Only two of the cable cars don’t have rescue workers with them, they have the survival kit. ” The cable cars can usually carry up to 140 people, who often come to enjoy the view on the mountains at this time of the year in Chamonix. The ride takes 30 minutes. A passenger who was evacuated told The Express that he and his family had been trapped for hours. “It was me, my daughter and my son,” Frédéric Maurer, 49, said. “We were two and a half hours in the cab locked under the sun. ” The cable car company said its Aiguille du Midi cable car holds the world record for the highest vertical ascent: 2, 807 meters, or 9, 209 feet. | 1 |
Email Print Guest post by Tom Franklin at American Lookout : FOX News reporter John Roberts was with Trump in Florida yesterday. He reported on the enormous crowds welcoming Trump to St. Augustine and Tampa. For video and pictures of the crowds in St. Augustine, click here . In Tampa, there were 20,000 supporters out for Trump. All this prompted John Roberts to say,
“By looking at the crowd that you see out there, you have to wonder: How could he possibly be behind?” | 0 |
TYLER, Ala. — The hard clay soil in this rural Southern county has twice cursed Dorothy Rudolph. It is good for growing cotton and cucumbers, the crops she worked as a child and hated. And it is bad for burying things — in particular, septic tanks. So Ms. Rudolph, 64, did what many people around here do. She ran a plastic pipe from her toilet under her yard and into the woods behind her house. Paying to put in a septic tank would cost around $6, 000 — a little more than half of her family’s annual income. “It was a whole lot of money,” she said. “It still is. ” Here in Lowndes County, part of a strip of mostly poor, counties that cuts through the rural center of Alabama, less than half of the population is on a municipal sewer line. While that is not a hardship for more affluent communities — about one in five American homes are not on city sewer lines — the legacy of rural poverty has left its imprint here: Many people have failing septic tanks and are too poor to fix them. Others, like Ms. Rudolph, have nothing at all. That is not so uncommon. Nearly half a million households in the United States lack the basic dignity of hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, or a working flush toilet, according to the Census Bureau. The absence has implications for public health in the very population that is the most vulnerable. Crumbling infrastructure has been a theme of this country’s reinvigorated public conversation about race — for instance, a botched fix for old pipes in Flint, Mich. that contaminated the city’s drinking water with lead. But in poor, rural places like Lowndes County, there has never been much infrastructure to begin with. “We didn’t have anything — no running water, no inside bathrooms,” said John Jackson, a former mayor of White Hall, a town of about 800 in Lowndes that is more than 90 percent black and did not have running water until the early 1980s. “Those were things we were struggling for. ” There is no formal count of residents without proper plumbing in Lowndes, but Kevin White, an environmental engineering professor at the University of South Alabama, said that a survey that he did in a neighboring county years ago found that about 35 percent of homes had septic systems that were failing, with raw sewage on the ground. Another 15 percent had nothing. “The bottom line is, I can’t afford a septic system,” said Cheryl Ball, a former cook who had a heart attack several years ago and receives disability payments. She lives in a grassy field on which only three of seven homes have septic tanks. Most banks now require proof that a home has proper sewage disposal before lending, but Ms. Ball paid cash for her mobile home — $4, 000. This area, known as the Black Belt (so called more for its soil, than its demographics) is haunted by its history of white violence toward and a deep, biting poverty. Lowndes is one of the poorest counties in the country, and its rural population, whose trailers and small houses dot the lush green landscape, often cannot afford the thousands of dollars it costs to put in a tank. Municipalities, with low tax bases, cannot afford extensive sewer lines. Ms. Rudolph, a retired seamstress, and her husband, a carpenter, live in a tiny, white clapboard house that he built after he, his parents and his siblings fled their home on land owned by a white man who forbade the family to vote. She remembers, as a young girl in the 1950s, not having electricity. They obtained running water in the early 1990s, she said, and used an outhouse until the . So their white toilet with a fuzzy green cover was a marker of progress. A plastic pipe carries its contents outside and empties into a wooded area not far from the house. There is no visible pooling of sewage, but there are other problems. “The smell gets so bad,” said Ms. Rudolph, sitting on her porch guarding her chicken coop against a marauding fox. When it rains, she wages war with her toilet. One recent downpour brought its contents gurgling up to the rim. “I was sitting there looking at it and got me a plunger,” she said. “It took me some plunging to get it clear. I was scared it was going to come back and go on the floor. Horrible. ” She added, “There’s nothing we can do. ” The problem is prickly for the state. Parrish Pugh, an official with the Alabama Department of Public Health, agrees that money plays a part. “That’s where the rubber hits the road,” he said. But Alabama law forbids the use of “insanitary sewage collection,” and the responsibility for that rests squarely with the homeowner,” Mr. Pugh said. Resisting is not only illegal, but could have health consequences: Raw sewage can taint drinking water and cause health problems. “‘My parents had a pipe that ran into the woods, and that’s good enough for me,’” Mr. Pugh said, explaining a common argument. “But we didn’t know as much about disease back then. People are more educated nowadays. They are more concerned. ” The state health department begs, cajoles, and eventually cites people who have problems and do not fix them. In the early 2000s, the authorities even tried arresting people. That prompted a public outcry and the practice soon stopped, but one person spent a weekend in jail and others were left with criminal records. The department cited about 700 people in the 12 months that ended in March, often because someone complained. The clay soil makes the problem worse. “Rural wastewater is usually managed with a septic tank and a drain field, which slowly infiltrates the wastewater into the ground,” Professor White said. “Well, it won’t go into the ground here. Period. ” He added: “There are some options that may be available, but it’s going to cost thousands of dollars, and most people here can’t afford it. The answer, quite frankly, is not out there yet. ” Experts and advocates have tried to find one. Grants from the state and federal governments to study the problem have come and gone, as have academics wielding surveys. There was even talk of toilets. “It’s like we’re going in circles,” said Perman Hardy, a cook in Tyler who even did a urinalysis for a study of health effects. For years, her sewage backed up every time it rained. In December, she spent all the money she had saved for Christmas presents on a new septic tank. Some change is happening. The town of White Hall recently received funding to connect about 50 homes to sewer lines, the first in its history. Town officials are thrilled: City sewer lines are critical to attract businesses that would bring jobs. But the pace is glacial. Eli Seaborn, 73, a White Hall councilman, said progress would be slow, like the pace of civil rights gains, where legal discrimination is gone but lingers in other forms. Similar patience is required for sewage, he added. “Time is going to be the only thing that solves this problem,” he said. “It took more than 50 years for it to happen. But hopefully, it won’t take more than 50 years to fix it. ” | 1 |
The Chicago Tribune has issued a correction to an article by columnist Heidi Stevens in which she falsely described MILO as a “white nationalist” without providing any evidence to back up her smear. [Stevens, whose article lavished praise on feminist author Roxanne Gay, after Gay decided to pull her book deal from Simon Schuster in protest at the publisher awarding MILO with a $250, 000 book deal for his upcoming book ‘Dangerous. Having described Gay as “feminist champion” who deserves a “standing ovation,” Stevens went on to say that “Gay pulled her upcoming book from Simon Schuster this week because the publisher signed a book deal with Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, the white nationalist who was banned from Twitter for his targeted harassment of actress Leslie Jones. ” However, an editors note at the bottom of the article now states that the “article has been corrected to delete a reference to Yiannopoulos as a white nationalist. ” During his talk at the University of Colorado Springs, MILO outlined why any form of ‘white identity’ is not the answer to the problems of identity politics. “The reality is, if you force everyone to play identity politics, if you insist in pitting whites against blacks, women against men, straights against gays, the reality is you guys are gonna win and the left isn’t going to like it very much. But there’s a better way. Don’t fight identity politics with identity politics,” he said. “White pride, white nationalism, white supremacy isn’t the way to go. The way to go is reminding them and yourselves that you should be aspiring to values and to ideas,” he continued. Other news organisations forced to issue corrections for falsely using the term ‘white nationalist’ include the LA Times, NBC News and USA Today. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
Former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean apparently thinks the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was set up by President George W. Bush after the terrorist attacks. [But Dean is completely off the mark with regard to the FISA Court, which was set up in 1978, during the Carter administration, to oversee surveillance warrant requests against foreign spies inside the United States. In a tweet responding to President Donald Trump’s accusation that the Obama administration his phones during the election, Dean made this observation via Twitter: “@realDonaldTrump For those who may not know, a FISA warrant is issued by a court to catch terrorists. Set up after by Bush” @realDonaldTrump For those who may not know, a FISA warrant is issued by a court to catch terrorists. Set up after by Bush https: . — Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) March 4, 2017, Among the major Democratic presidential contenders in 2004, Dean was the most vociferous against Bush’s Iraq War and domestic legislations enacted as a result of the attacks. His campaign, however, folded quickly after a series of gaffes, including the infamous “Dean Scream” following his finish in the Iowa caucuses. While Dean erred in his timeline of FISA Court’s establishment, the use of the court did spike after and the Obama administration’s use of massive surveillance through FISA warrants was exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013. Follow Samuel Chi on Twitter @ThePlayoffGuru. | 1 |
Home » Headlines » World News » WIKILEAKS Reveals Podesta’s Own Thoughts On Hillary: ‘She’s Acting Like A RETARD – She Smells Like Boiled Cabbage, Urine And FARTS’
Wikileaks is the gift that keeps on giving…
While not quite on the Bombshell level, we thought this email from Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta himself in March of last year deserved its very own thread…
Text of the Podesta email:
People tell me that Hillary is acting ‘like a retard’ since her head injury. Frankly, considering her normal behavior, I’m surprised anyone noticed! (this is a joke!) Have someone talk to her doctor and see if there’s anything he can give her.
Also, I’ve noticed she’s had an ‘odor’ lately. It reminds me of a combination of boiled cabbage, urine and farts. I’m guessing it’s either connected to her fall or simply the fact that she rarely bathes. Outside of encouraging her to take a shower once in a while, I don’t know what to do about this. — any suggestions would be appreciated.
–sent from my iPad– [email protected]
While John wonders whether the literal stench from Hillary is a mixture of urine and farts, we suspect that smell is properly identified as sulfur… This entry was posted in World News and tagged Anthony Weiner laptop , Hillary Clinton , Hillary smells like urine , Podesta Emails , Wikileaks bombshell , Wikileaks latest revelations , Wikileaks past 48 hours . Bookmark the permalink . Post navigation | 0 |
President Donald Trump in his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced a treaty that caps U. S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads, according to a report. [Trump told Putin that the treaty, known as New START, was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, according to a report by Reuters. Unnamed sources said that Trump did not know what the treaty was, and had paused to ask his aides in an aside what it was, according to the report. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Thursday that Trump understood the topic, but had wanted an opinion from an aide. “It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was being said. He wanted an opinion on something,” Spicer said. The treaty requires Russia and the United States to lower the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1, 550 or less by 2018. It also limits deployed and missiles, and bombers. In the phone call, Putin suggested extending New START, which is set to expire in 2021, the sources told Reuters. Trump had criticized the treaty during a 2016 presidential debate, saying Russia had “outsmarted” the U. S. with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Critics view the agreement as requiring deep cuts in the U. S. nuclear arsenal and abandoning missile defense in Europe. Trump had also tweeted, as “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes. ” Supporters of the treaty argue that the end of the treaty could lead to a new arms race. “New START has unquestionably made our country safer, an opinion widely shared by national security experts on both sides of the aisle,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (NH) said in a statement. A mutual agreement can extend the treaty’s provisions for another five years. The original agreement, known as START, was renewed in 2010 by Obama, and went into effect in 2011, according to CNN. It aims to cut the number of nuclear weapons that the U. S. and Russia could deploy by about . It would limit a maximum of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines and bombers, and a total of 1, 500 warheads. | 1 |
فضيحة جنسية تهز أحد أشهر قارئي القرآن وتحرج سلطات إيران
تاريخ النشر: 26.10.2016 | 15:35 GMT | أحد أشهر قارئي القرآن سعيد طوسي والمرشد الأعلى الإيراني علي خامنئي A+ انسخ الرابط http://ar.rt.com/i5gt لا تزال الفضائح الجنسية تلاحق سعيد طوسي، أحد أشهر قارئي القرآن والمقربين من المرشد الأعلى الإيراني علي خامنئي، فالطوسي يواجه في إيران دعاوى تتهمه بالاعتداء الجنسي على طلابه.
وذكرت صحيفة "الغارديان" البريطانية أن 3 رجال اتهموا سعيد طوسي، الحاصل على جائزتين عالميتين في تلاوة القرآن، بالتحرش الجنسي والاغتصاب عندما كانوا في الـ12 من أعمارهم، لكن السلطات القضائية تجاهلت الدعاوى المقدمة ضده، الأمر الذي وضعها في موقف حرج جدا.
وذكر بعض الضحايا، لشبكة التلفزيون الفارسي التابعة لإذاعة "صوت أمريكا"، أن دعاواهم قوبلت بالرفض من قبل النظام القضائي، فيما تناولت صحيفتا "شرق" و"اعتماد" تقارير تؤكد أن طوسي، الذي يبلغ من العمر 46 عاما، قد قام باعتداءات جنسية.
ووصف سعيد طوسي تلك الدعاوى بأنها كاذبة، قائلا إنها تهدف إلى تشويه صورته وصورة المرشد الأعلى الإيراني، علي خامنئي.
وبلغ عدد الأشخاص الذين تحدثوا عن اعتداءات جنسية تعرضوا لها من قبل الطوسي 10 أشخاص، وقال أحدهم إن القارئ المشهور للقرآن اعتدى عليه عندما كان على متن طائرة في طريقه إلى مسابقة قرآنية، موضحا: "لقد تلمس جسدي في الطائرة، وتحرش بي، وعندما كنا في الفندق كان من المقرر حجز غرفتين، بينما قام بحجز غرفة واحدة، متعمدا ذلك".
وقال شخص آخر: "لقد أخذني إلى الحمام بحجة أنه يقوم بتدليكي وهنا فعل فعلته، وكان عمري حينها 12 عاما".
وأضاف أن طوسي كان مرعوبا بعدها وأخذ يتوسل إليه بألا يخبر أحدا.
المصدر: سبوتنيك تعليمات استخدام خدمة التعليقات على صفحات موقع قناة "RT Arabic" (اضغط هنا) العناوين | 0 |
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Gunfire erupted inside an elementary school classroom in San Bernardino, Calif. on Monday, leaving two adults and one student dead in what the authorities said was an apparent . The shooter, whom the police identified as Cedric Anderson, 53, walked into the classroom and without speaking opened fire on his wife, Karen Elaine Smith. Ms. Smith, 53, was the lead teacher in the class of 15 students with special needs, who ranged from first to fourth graders. Two students were standing behind Ms. Smith, though the police did not say whether they had been directly hit by gunfire or wounded with shrapnel. An student, Jonathan Martinez, was airlifted by helicopter from the school, North Park Elementary, to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly after he arrived. A student was also wounded and was in stable condition Monday afternoon. The shooter entered the school through the front office and was checked for his identification, following routine procedures, the police said. There was no sign Mr. Anderson was carrying a weapon. Mr. Anderson and Ms. Smith had been married for several months and had been separated for the last month, the San Bernardino police chief, Jarron Burguan, said in an afternoon news conference. There was no indication of an earlier threat at the school, which does not have metal detectors. While the couple had been estranged, friends and family had not told the police about any previous violence between the couple, Chief Burguan said. Mr. Anderson did have a criminal record, including domestic violence, weapons possession and possibly drug possession, he said. At least six shots were fired from a . 357 caliber revolver, the chief said. “Tragedy again has befallen our city,” said Lt. Mike Madden, a spokesman for the Police Department who was one of the first officers to respond to the terrorist attack in San Bernardino in 2015. The school will be closed for at least two days, said Dale Marsden, the superintendent of the school district. Several counselors were sent to talk with students, he said, including those who were also questioned by investigators about the shooting. Counselors will continue to be available, Mr. Marsden said, urging parents to talk with their children and contact officials if they need help. “Be willing to listen to their story and be willing to listen to their story multiple times,” he said. “Reassure them that the danger that they faced has passed. ” Capt. Ron Maass said officers arrived at the school seven minutes after they received the first call about the shooting, just before 10:30 a. m. Other students at North Park were taken to California State University, San Bernardino for safety. All students had been released to their families by 4:30 p. m. Several parents who went to the high school complained about the confusion over where to reunite with their children and said they had only heard about the shooting from friends who live in the area. One man said he had received a call from his daughter, a sixth grader, before the school notified him. “She was just in a panic, but what kid wouldn’t be in a situation like that?” he said. Arnetta Carpenter, 70, the grandmother of two children at the school — ages 7 and 9 — was in a meeting at the nearby New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, where she is the minister, when a staff member walked in to tell her about the shooting. She ran to the phone to call her son. “He said ‘Mama, I’m here,’” she recalled, relieved. “Children should never have to witness something like this,” she said. “It hasn’t been that long since the other shooting happened in San Bernardino. It really shows how we need to be close to the Lord. ” Lydia Beltran, 56, went to pick up her two grandchildren who attend North Park. Though they appeared to be unharmed, she was worried about the other effects of the shooting. “Mentally, we’ll have to wait and see,” she said. “Hopefully, it didn’t happen in their classroom. We don’t even know. What have we come to?” A Police Department spokeswoman posted a picture on Twitter from the inside of the gymnasium where the students were waiting, saying that they were being taken care of and entertained with glow sticks, checkers and a Disney movie while they waited for their parents. Mayor R. Carey Davis of San Bernardino said he had received a call from the White House and that President Trump offered to help “in any way possible. ” Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education who has supported Mr. Trump’s promise to ban zones around schools, wrote on Twitter asking “everyone to join me in keeping the victims and all those impacted by today’s senseless violence in your prayers. ” North Park Elementary is about 10 miles from the site of the 2015 attack. The city, which is predominantly has seen a significant increase in violent crime in the last year. There were 62 murders in the city in 2016, compared with 44 in 2015, including the 14 victims of the attack. Roughly 500 students, who are predominantly Latino, attend North Park Elementary. | 1 |
VIDEOS Will Barack Obama delay or suspend the election if Hillary is forced out by the new FBI email investigation? An A.I. system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of #Hillary By Michael Snyder - November 3, 2016
Just when it looked like Hillary Clinton was poised to win the 2016 election , the FBI has thrown a gamechanger into the mix. On Friday, FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency has discovered new emails related to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information that they had not previously seen. According to the Associated Press , the newly discovered emails “did not come from her private server”, but instead were found when the FBI started going through electronic devices that belonged to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner. The FBI has been looking into messages of a sexual nature that Weiner had exchanged with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, and that is why they originally seized those electronic devices. According to the Washington Post , the “emails were found on a computer used jointly by both Weiner and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry”, and according to some reports there may be “potentially thousands” of emails on the computer that the FBI did not have access to previously. Even though there are less than two weeks to go until election day, this scandal has the potential to possibly force Clinton out of the race, and if that happens could Barack Obama delay or suspend the election until a replacement candidate can be found?
Let’s take this one step at a time. On Friday, financial markets tanked when reports of these new Clinton emails hit the wires. The following comes from CNN … After recommending earlier this year that the Department of Justice not press charges against the former secretary of state, Comey said in a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen that investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe. “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
At this point, we do not know what is contained in these emails. But without a doubt Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton’s closest confidant, and I have always felt that she was Clinton’s Achilles heel. Journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) is fully convinced that the FBI would have never made this move unless something significant had already been discovered … We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation. So that’s where we are… Is it a certainty that we won’t learn before the election? I’m not sure it’s a certainty we won’t learn before the election. One thing is, it’s possible that Hillary Clinton might want to on her own initiative talk to the FBI and find out what she can, and if she chooses to let the American people know what she thinks or knows is going on. People need to hear from her…
If the FBI has indeed found something explosive, would they actually charge her with a crime right before the election?
It is possible, but we also have to remember that government agencies (including the FBI) tend to move very, very slowly. If there are thousands of emails, it is going to take quite a while to sift through them all. And of course Barack Obama has lots of ways that he could influence, delay or even shut down the investigation.
So those that are counting on this to be the miracle that Donald Trump needs should not count their chickens before they hatch.
But if Hillary Clinton were to be forced out of the race by this FBI investigation, the Democrats would have to decide on a new candidate, and that would take time. The following is from a U.S. News & World Report article that examined what would happen if one of the candidates was forced out of the race for some reason… If Clinton were to fall off the ticket, Democratic National Committee members would gather to vote on a replacement. DNC members acted as superdelegates during this year’s primary and overwhelmingly backed Clinton over boat-rocking socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. DNC spokesman Mark Paustenbach says there currently are 445 committee members – a number that changes over time and is guided by the group’s bylaws, which give membership to specific officeholders and party leaders and hold 200 spots for selection by states, along with an optional 75 slots DNC members can choose to fill. But the party rules for replacing a presidential nominee merely specify that a majority of members must be present at a special meeting called by the committee chairman. The meeting would follow procedures set by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and proxy voting would not be allowed.
It would be extremely challenging to get a majority of the members of the Democratic National Committee together on such short notice. If Clinton were to drop out next week, it would be almost impossible for this to happen before election day.
In such a scenario, Barack Obama may attempt to invoke his emergency powers . Since the election would not be “fair” until the Democrats have a new candidate, he could try to delay or suspend the election. There would be a lot of controversy as to whether this is legal or not, but Barack Obama has not let the U.S. Constitution stop him in the past.
Meanwhile, new poll numbers show that the Trump campaign was already gaining momentum even before this story about the new emails broke. According to a brand new ABC News/Washington Post survey, Donald Trump is now only trailing Hillary Clinton by 4 points after trailing her by as much as 12 points last weekend.
And CNBC is reporting on a highly advanced artificial intelligence system that accurately predicted the outcomes of the presidential primaries and which is now indicating that Trump will be the winner in November… An artificial intelligence system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House. MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions. The AI system was created in 2004, so it has been getting smarter all the time. It had already correctly predicted the results of the Democratic and Republican Primaries.
Without Hillary at the top of the ticket, the odds of a Trump victory would go way, way up.
So if Hillary is forced out of the race by this investigation, Barack Obama and the Democrats will want to delay or suspend the election for as long as possible if they can.
At this point there is probably not a high probability that such a scenario will play out, but in this crazy election year we have already seen that just about anything can happen. | 0 |
TEHRAN — Iran’s president said on Tuesday that he simply would not allow Donald J. Trump to tear up last year’s nuclear agreement and warned of unspecified consequences if he did. “He wants to do many things,” Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said of Mr. Trump in a speech. During the campaign, Mr. Trump called the nuclear agreement “a bad deal” that he promised to “tear up. ” “He wants to undermine the J. C. P. O. A. ,” Mr. Rouhani said, referring to the agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “He wants to tear up the J. C. P. O. A. Will we or our nation allow this?” As Mr. Rouhani posed the question, the audience began chanting, “Death to America. ” In the speech, which was delivered at Tehran University and televised nationally, Mr. Rouhani maintained that “America cannot influence our determination, this nation’s resistance and its struggle. ” He continued: “America is our enemy we have no doubt about this. The Americans want to put as much pressure on us as they can. ” The change in tone by the Iranian president comes as he faces increasing pressure from who argue that the United States is not to be trusted to keep its end of the deal. They say that a recent congressional vote to extend unilateral American sanctions against Iran confirmed their warnings and that the nuclear deal is a failure. For Mr. Rouhani, who until recently seemed set to be elected for a second term in May, the change in fortune is a threat to his political career, analysts say. “Trump is far worse than his predecessor,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, a political analyst. “Rouhani has proven that trusting America is useless and a waste of time, energy and money. He should not be . ” Mr. Rouhani had promised an economic renaissance after the 2015 deal, which led to the lifting of most of the sanctions that had been crippling the Iranian economy in exchange for the mothballing of Iran’s nuclear program. But that has not materialized, thanks to remaining sanctions over Iran’s ballistic missile program and terrorism, as well as lingering fears among Western companies about incurring American penalties for doing business with Iran. During his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Rouhani, apparently trying to fend off the attacks, emphasized that ultimately it was the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had led the negotiations and signed off on the deal. “We took no step in the issue of the nuclear agreement without consulting the supreme leader,” he said. Ayatollah Khamenei has often criticized the deal publicly, but analysts agree that without his specific consent, a compromise with the United States and other global powers would never have been reached. Mr. Trump’s ascent to power has been met by Mr. Rouhani and other Iranian leaders with familiar slogans like “America can’t do a damn thing. ” But the vote last week in Washington to extend sanctions for another decade, which they say violated the nuclear agreement, seemed to strike a nerve. “If the Iran Sanctions Act is carried out, it will be a clear and obvious violation of the agreement and will be met with a very harsh response from us,” Mr. Rouhani said, joining dozens of other clerics, politicians and generals who have made similar threats. He told Iranians not to be “concerned,” saying that a government committee would meet on Wednesday to determine Iran’s reaction to the extension of sanctions, which the Obama administration said did not violate the nuclear agreement. Iranian lawmakers have proposed a boycott of American products, but very few are being sold in the country. Some have even suggested restarting nuclear activities and the enrichment of uranium, though they have little or no say over such matters. Pulling out of the deal is not an option for Iran, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday. “Iran will not be the first to break the agreement,” Bahram Ghasemi, the spokesman, said. “We will never, and in no way will be the first to make the first step forward. ” | 1 |
Trump teaches his supporters how to vote correctly 01.11.2016 The US presidential nominee from the Republican Party Donald Trump called on his supporters to combat possible frauds the day elections take place the following way - to vote twice in case there are doubts that your ballot has been counted. 'You can go to University Center and they'll give you a ballot, a new ballot. They'll void your old ballot and give you a new ballot. And you can go out and make sure it gets in,' Trump claimed while speaking in Colorado. The case is that voters registered in Colorado get their ballots by mail. They also have right to demand a new one or vote in person at a polling station in case their previous ballot was not counted. Before that Trump claimed several times about imperfect election system of the US, which allows vote rigging. Last week the OSCE observers expressed their concern about fair voting while monitoring preparations for future elections, as there is 'a whole range of significant faults'. Head of the German OSCE observers Michael Georg Link stated that '6 million Americans are exempt from the vote'. Pravda.Ru | 0 |
UPDATE: HILLARY CLINTON IS AGAIN UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE FBI. IF SHE IS INDICTED, HER PEOPLE WILL UNDOUBTEDLY LAUNCH A CYBER ATTACK ON THE ELECTIONS AND BLAME THE RUSSIANS. HILLARY HAS TIPPED HER HAND MANY TIMES. IF THIS HAPPENS, YOU MUST HASTEN YOUR PREPARATIONS. IF HILLARY SKATES, AGAIN, WE STILL ONLY HAVE A SHORT WINDOW TO ALL HELL BREAKING LOOSE. PLEASE PREPARE NOW!
The Common Sense Show issued an alert yesterday with regard to the likelihood of widespread violence, regardless of who wins the election. The violence may not be dramatic on November, but I believe that a crescendo will be reached by the holidays. There are literally dozens of troop movements and a number of martial law events taking place as I write these words. The bottom line is, half of the country hates the other half of the country and pressure valve is ready to blow. And if Trump wins, the violence factor will escalate exponentially as evidenced by the firebombed GOP building in North Carolina.
When these events come to fruition, it could potentially paralyze this nation and bring the economy to a standstill. Subsequently, the grocery store shelves could be empty within two days and food riots would likely commence by sundown of the second day. All Americans would instantly be in danger. Local law enforcement would be overwhelmed. What would be your chances of survival? Yesterday, I wrote about the fact that FEMA has conducted research studies on America’s level of preparedness and the news is not good. FEMA concluded that 72% of all Americans are not prepared to survive what is coming In other words, when society begins to fragment, you and your fellow preppers are outnumbered by a 3 to 1 margin.
Are you prepared for 3 out of 4 of your neighbors climbing through your windows in search of life-saving supplies?
The FEMA Preparedness Reports In response to concerns about strengthening the nation’s ability to protect its population and way of life (i.e., security) and ability to adapt and recover from emergencies (i.e., resilience), the President of the United States issued Presidential Policy Directive 8: National Preparedness (PPD-8).
PPD-8 is a directive for the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate a comprehensive campaign to encourage Americans to practice national preparedness. Despite efforts by FEMA and other organizations to educate American citizens on becoming prepared, growth in specific preparedness behaviors has been limited. Government programs to this end are nearly nonexistent.
I have spent the past week illustrating how a coming economic collapse is unavoidable and how the elite have conspired to steal as many of your assets as possible prior to the collapse. This article presents some common sense things one can do which could increase the chances of surviving a major societal meltdown resulting from an economic collapse. If you have any doubts as to what is coming, I strongly encourage you to read what I have written about on this topic over the past several months. Even Ray Charles could see that our economy will not be around much longer in its present form.
It is always best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. For the purposes of this article, it is possible that society will not totally collapse even if the dollar does. However, large segments of societies always collapse when an economic collapse happens. Surviving the worst case scenario is the purpose behind what will be covered here.
We have about 14 days to do the following 14 things: 1. The Creation of a Pseudo-Identity It may be necessary to become invisible in the event you think you believe that your name could be on a (Red) list because roundups will usually occur in dire situations. Therefore, the creation of a pseudo-identity could become very important.
2. It Takes Money to Prepare If you have read the articles at the above links, you should have concluded that it is the height of stupidity to leave your life savings in an institution that is planning to steal from you. You need to divert your cash, other than the ability to pay basic bills, in preparation for what is coming.
Getting your money out of the bank has become an art form and you need to be careful. There is a barrier to your ability to procure some of these life-saving and life-extending supplies. Right now, you do not have full access to your money.
As you move to withdraw the bulk of your money, there are three federal banking laws that you should be cognizant of, namely, Cash Transaction Report (CTR), a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) and structuring.
Cash Transaction Reports Federal law requires that the bank file a report based upon any withdrawal or deposit of $10,000 or more on any single given day.The law was designed to put a damper on money laundering, sophisticated counterfeiting and other federal crimes.
To remain in compliance with the law, financial institutions must obtain personal identification, information about the transaction and the social security number of the person conducting the transaction.
Before proceeding with the planned withdrawal of your money, I would strongly suggest that you read the following federal guidelines as it relates to CTR’s as produced by the The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). All the federal regulations contained in this article are elucidated in this series of federal reports.
Structuring and SAR There will undoubtedly be some geniuses whose math ability will tell them that all they have to do is to withdraw $9,999.99 and the bank and its protector, the federal government will be none the wiser. It is not quite that simple. The bank is required to file a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) which serves to notify the federal government of an individual’s attempt to structure deposits or withdrawals by circumventing the $10,000 reporting requirement.
Structuring transactions to prevent a CTR from being reported can result in imprisonment for not more than five years and/or a fine of up to $250,000. If structuring involves more than $100,000 in a twelve month period or is performed while violating another law of the federal government, the penalty is doubled.
Enforcement Much like the enforcement of our tax laws, the federal government’s enforcement of its banking laws as it relates to CTR’s, SAR’s and subsequent structuring is quite draconian. Civilian asset forfeiture laws come into play. The government can seize your bank accounts while it determines if a crime has been committed. The government can literally seize your assets in perpetuity without an order of the court. Of course, you could try and sue but you will be up against the deep pockets of the federal government and the case could take years. By the time your case is decided, the financial banking crisis that you are so desperately trying to avoid by withdrawing your money, could be over. So, proceed with caution.
Withdrawing Your Money From the Bank The best way to avoid getting your money caught in the bank in the midst of a bank run would be to not let the lion’s share of your money ever cross the bank. The simplest way to accomplish this is to prevent any form of deposit from going automatically into your account, as much as it is possible.
Secondly, you need to begin to pay cash for everything. Let’s say that every 30 days, Bob cashes his check at the bank from his work worth $5,000 net pay. Bob leaves just enough in the bank to be able to conduct normal banking business. Bob walks out of the bank every month with the majority of the cash from his check. Bob should begin to pay cash for as much as he can, such as eating out, paying the electric bill (pay the bill in person), buying groceries, etc. When it becomes necessary to make a “big ticket” purchase, Bob could temporarily leave more in the bank to cover the writing of a check.
You would also be wise to open multiple banking accounts ranging from the big five megabanks to your local credit unions. You could withdraw much smaller amounts until the sum total of your accounts is greatly diminished and is in your possession. To open the accounts, simply write a personal check from your home bank. Of course, in these cases, the bank could hold the check for 15-30 days.
I cannot promise you that if you become the target of federal investigators, that you will not have your every financial move scrutinized and the feds will eventually discover the aggregate patterns of withdrawal. People who I interviewed told me that they believe that the federal government is in the process of getting the banking computers to “talk” to each other in a way that would reveal structuring, but that technology is not yet online.
If you ever become the target of a federal investigation, do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be interviewed by federal officials without an attorney present. In many cases, people go to jail and pay huge fines, not because they have committed a federal crime, but because federal officials state that they have lied or misled them. And if you do not have an attorney present, it is your word versus the federal government. There are other sources besides banks that you can tap into for money which can be used to prepare for what is coming.
4o1K’s, IRA, et al If you were 100% convinced of an imminent crash, you would be foolish not to take your money out. However, the prepayment penalty of 50% is steep if you withdraw your funds before you are 59.5 years old.
If you are retiring soon, take the lump sum option and convert all of these retirement monies to survival supplies and gold which you will need as the world emerges from the crash.
The moral of the story is to become as liquid as possible, from a cash perspective. Getting access to your money is only the first part of being prepared to survive an economic crash.
3. Make a List Buy a good prepper book. Holly Deyo is an excellent source for this information (www.standdeyo.com). In the interim, procure your food, water, guns, ammo and home security adjustments. If you do not have a big dog, consider obtaining a pair. These animals will be your companion, home security system and ally if someone attempts to breach your home with bad intent. Of course, you will have to store dog food as well.
Sit down and construct a list of what you will need after reading a good prepper book.
Make all of you purchases in cash! You do not want to let the wrong people know what you are up to.
4. Rural Vs. Urban We have to live our lives for today and it may not be possible to move to a rural area because of your job. However, one survivalist that I was speaking with estimates that the rate of survival for a country in economic chaos would be 10 times higher for rural residents as opposed to urban residents. Consider buying a place in an isolated area and commuting to work in the interim.
5. Pay Off Your Mortgage and Car Loans If you have a CD, a 401k or any other long-term investment, you might want to consider taking the penalty and executing a withdrawal and apply what’s left of the principal, usually about 50% of the original value, and paying down your major debts.
After an economic collapse, you most likely will not have a job and your retirement and savings will likely be wiped out and confiscated. That is why it would be wise to pay down your debt while you can afford to do so because after the collapse, there will still be foreclosures and repossessions and if you and your family survive, you could be on the street if you cannot pay your bills.
6. Buy Gold and Silver While You Can Afford It Goldman Sachs has been shorting gold. The elite have been hording gold as have the BRICS. These entities are telling you, by action, what medium of exchange is going to be of value following the collapse that is coming.
Storing gold and silver is an economic survival strategy which will pay dividends after the smoke begins to clear in the post-collapse era.
7. Practice Austerity Before Austerity Is Imposed On You It is critical to immediately eliminate all unnecessary expenses. Give yourself some operating capital. You may be able to purchase a bug-out residence in a rural area. You will certainly be able to afford more survival gear.
In order to increase your immediate cash flow, start an at-home business. Start a business which has virtually no upfront and startup costs. Even if you are not able to generate much income, you will create a legal tax evasion strategy in which you can legally deduct many of your present activities and expenses (e.g. mileage, the purchase of any office supply, etc.) including survival gear.
8. Create and Store Your Own Food With regard to storing food, you need to do so immediately. I recommend storing two years worth of food. However, you need to master the art of growing food inside your home. There are plenty of resources which can teach you how to do that. However, you would be wise if you would create a hiding place in which you can store food and water safely in a hidden location . If you are ever robbed, you will not have exhausted your food supplies. You are most likely to be robbed by FEMA or one of their mercenary groups (e.g. Academia) during the beginning of the crisis because food and water will be used as weapons to control you. I am personally aware of FEMA going to selected homeowners to catalogue their reserve food and water supplies. Remember, water is sunlight and temperature sensitive. There are plenty of prepper manuals that you can consult for instructions on how to meet these needs. The time to do these things is yesterday.
The biggest threat to survival is death due to dehydration and starving to death. Contaminated water will also pose a threat. There are plenty of places to purchase large drums and obtain water tablets for water purification purposes. Obtain a pair of water filters in case you have to go mobile to survive.
Finally, learn to grow your own food within your residence. Your garden will likely be raided by humans and hungry animals alike. There are plenty of prepper manuals which can teach you how to accomplish this task.
9. Personal Supplies Of course you will need toothpaste, toiletries, eating utensils, feminine hygiene supplies, etc. For a complete list of personal items see Steve Quayles list on his website .
10. Horde Medicines and Medical Supplies If you or your family has a chronic health condition, it is critical that you have 6 months to a year in medicine. Also, you should research natural alternatives to treatment for health conditions in case you are not able to meet this goal due to the inability to obtain prescriptions. Don’t forget to obtain some pain medication and antibiotics in case of unforeseen emergencies. Make a trip to Mexico and sneak across medication in old pill bottles in order to escape detection by the Border Patrol who will ask you if you obtained medication in Mexico when you come back across the border.
If you can safely ration your existing medication doses, do so and store the excesses. Make sure you also have a first aid kit. Take a First Aid class including CPR at your local fire station.
Some are thinking that this is a lot of work. My response would be, how bad do you want you and your family to survive?
11. Guns and Ammunition Regardless of your moral convictions, ask yourself if you want your family to survive.
Buy your guns off the books from private parties and at gun shows. “Keep guns for show and guns for go”. In other words, have a safe location that you can bury guns so that when gun confiscation begins, you will not be left totally defenseless.
America needs to not only create safe and secure homes, but to create as many Warsaw ghettos as possible (look it up). We need to make ourselves a hard country to conquer and occupy. We cannot stop a treasonous leader from handing off the country to some foreign entity (e.g. the UN). However, occupation of America should be problematic for the blue-helmet wearing Russians, Chinese and other proxy forces training on our soil to occupy us.
It is recommended that you have 3 types of weapons: (1) pistols for close in fighting; (2) shotguns for defense of the entrance to your home; and, (3) a rifle with a scope in order to fight back against long-range snipers that do not want to storm your home because you appear to be prepared. Immediately, obtain weapons instruction for you and your family, firearms training and then practice! Conduct mock raids on your residence so that you can see your vulnerabilities. An armed populace makes a people more feared by an abusive government.
Do not forget about gas masks for each member of your family and make sure to store extras. If you have the means to obtain body armor, do so now, because Congress is preparing to outlaw the private use of body armor.
12. Prepare to Survive in the Raw Elements and Build a Way of Life
It is possible that you can learn to survive in the raw elements without heating and central air conditioning. You may not have lights. Obtain flashlights, many batteries and a hand crank radio.
Make sure you have clothes befitting all weather that you may encounter because a crisis that begins in January, may not be over by August.
Take a weekend and pretend the grid is down. This will allow you to see firsthand what supplies you will need. When should you perform this drill? There is no time like the present.
To people with generators, congratulations on your foresight. However, if you are the only house on the block with lights, how long do you think it will be until you have unwanted visitors with bad intent?
Get in shape, begin to walk, jog or run. The better shape you are in, the better.
Don’t forget about procuring non-electronic forms of entertainment. This should include board games and educational materials for your children. You will want to establish some normalcy for the sake of your children. You are preparing to adopt a new way of life. Make the new life worth living.
I would also recommend that every personal library contain The Constitution of the United States. After the chaos subsides, we will need to rebuild. You will not want to live in a “might makes right” society.
13. For Goodness Sake, Do Not Tell Anyone If your four adjacent neighbors broach the topic of preparedness, gauge the situation and then make an informed decision. If your neighbors are on board with preparing, that will help you form a defensive perimeter and a mutual alliance pact. Otherwise, tell nobody of your preparation plans. Do not tell your friends, family members, and co-workers. Make your preparations in cash or cashier’s checks as much as possible. Limit the paper trail to you. You do not want the government to know that you are prepared because you could be the first one on your block that is visited at 3AM. You and your mate should prepare in stealth. Kids talk and so do their friends.
14. PRAY! Survival is never guaranteed, salvation is! And do not forget one of your most important resources, your Bible. In a post-collapse America, it is likely that a religion will be forced upon the survivors and that religion will not be Christianity.
Conclusion In an upside-down world in which the banks legally own your money, getting your money away from these criminal banks has become an art form. I cannot promise you that you will be able to retrieve all of your assets. However, I can promise you that if you do not act, you will lose everything and you will lack needed supplies to weather what is coming.
I would strongly suggest that you keep your gas tank filled and you have plenty of cash, food and ammunition on hand. It is better to be safe than sorry.
Breaking News: FBI Investigation Reopens The elite may be pulling their support for Hillary. She is, again, under investigation by the FBI. IF her plug is pulled, the violence may come sooner than we anticipated- Get to work America, we do not have long.
DONATE TO THE COMMON SENSE SHOW Don’t wait for the collapse of the dollar because it will be too late.
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Home / News / Denzel Shocks Libs By Backing Trump In Beyond Epic Way, He Just Shredded Obama Denzel Shocks Libs By Backing Trump In Beyond Epic Way, He Just Shredded Obama fisher 2 hours ago News Comments Off on Denzel Shocks Libs By Backing Trump In Beyond Epic Way, He Just Shredded Obama Denzel Shocks Libs By Backing Trump In Beyond Epic Way, He Just Shredded Obama
Two time Academy Award winning actor Denzel Washington has been at the top of Hollywood’s A list since his breakthrough role in the stirring Civil War film Glory .
He’s the type of actor who you can imagine as being down to earth off screen, as he abides by his deep Christian faith and is never caught doing trashy behavior like so many others in liberal Hollywood.
It shouldn’t be a huge surprise to us, then, that Denzel would turn against braindead liberals in Hollywood and support our President-Elect Donald Trump .
Washington praised Trump at the expense of job-destroyer Barack Obama recently, saying, “We need more and more jobs. He’s hired more employees, more people, than anyone I know in the world.”
Washington has stated that he feels a “personal face along with God,” and he is thrilled that the Republican party with its strong Christian values has returned to power in our country. Do you agree with Denzel Washington? | 0 |
Why So-Called Intellectuals Do More Harm Than Good To Society Why So-Called Intellectuals Do More Harm Than Good To Society
André is a young European who left his decaying country in 2012 for greener pastures. He enjoys exploring subterranean places, reading about a host of interconnected topics, and yearns for Tradition. November 11, 2016 Culture
The existence of intellectuals is more ubiquitous today than ever. Many are those who contend for public attention, credibility, and money as a reward for their wits, not to mention the very status of intellectual. Yet the existence of such people is far from self-evident. For centuries, traditional societies barely had anything or anybody that looked like modern intellectuals, and this did not prevent them from lasting hundreds or even thousands of years.
So, as we elaborate projects and ideas for reforming the depraved societies of the Empire of Nothing—a necessary step if we want a lasting victory—an important question must be confronted: do we need at all what has been called “intellectuals” during last centuries? And if we do not, what should we have instead? The origin of modern intellectuals
At the heart of modernity lies a deep crisis. Before it, Western Europe was united by the same Christian faith and a basic agreement on the place of economy—subordinated to guilds and the rights of the average producer.
When modernity reared its philosophical head through René Descartes, a prominent thinker of the seventeenth century, the Old Continent was in a much more problematic state: Christianity had splintered into various opposing faiths whose intellectual opposition was shaking everything to the core. We have been told that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a glorious new flourishing of intelligence. But, in fact, thinkers who actually lived at this time had quite a different impression.
The Irish bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) criticized how the practice of philosophy had become, on his age, synonymous with getting embroiled into “thousand scruples… prejudices and errors of sense,” a situation he attributed to “the wrong use we make of our faculties.” Likewise, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) scolded his contemporaries for being too eager to criticize the “systems” of others for the sake of pushing their own on the scene, that is, a mutual hypercriticism that led to a general lack of certitude about everything:
There is nothing which is not the subject of debate, and in which men of learning are not of contrary opinions. The most trivial question escapes not our controversy, and in the most momentous we are not able to give any certain decision. Disputes are multiplied, as if everything was uncertain; and these disputes are managed with the greatest warmth, as if everything was certain. Amidst all this bustle it is not reason, which carries the prize, but eloquence… From hence in my opinion arises that common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds.
The first precursors were honest in their endeavour to solve the crisis. Descartes, Berkeley, Hume and many others genuinely sought a grand encompassing theory that could resume with all controversies. But soon the very controversy became an institution. A whole market of ideas was growing, in which more and more lettrés started to see an opportunity to make a name, thus earning fame, social standing and sometimes money. Hume could not help himself: soon after criticizing those who fed the crisis by attacking the others’ “systems” while promoting their own, he was doing the same.
Such was the so-called Enlightenment: the further undermining of any spiritual, philosophical or cultural unity by ambitious individuals ready to hustle for notoriety. They would be experts at flattering the powerful, mocking the Catholic church, fiddle fashionable themes and “witty” prose, and more than everything else rationalizing their activity as a “progress.” The very expression “Enlightenment” stems from their willingness to market themselves to the posterity. The intellectuals’ bread and butter
It can be noted that, from the amateur gentlemen of the eighteenth century, generations of scientists have sprang up. Some of these characters were mathematicians, engineers, doctors, or dedicated observers of nature, and they all contributed to improving general human power over matter . But make no mistake: even science needs problems and unknown stuff to justify careers and research, thus following a headlong rush dynamic. At its side, the literary intellectuals need more problems so they can have the opportunity to sell themselves through claiming they want to solve them.
The momentous crisis turned into a crisis structure and the structure turned into a mark of the modern West. Where God ceased to speak, the modern talking head took more and more territory and wrote dozens of books trying to prove he was the embodiment of progress. It doesn’t matter if problems are genuine or artificial. Intellectuals need them like a blacksmith needs iron.
Two typical intellectual characters are Voltaire and Émile Zola. Both were gifted writers, both were charming and witty, both managed to write about matters that were actually relevant to their times, and both have used a trial with political overtones to make a show of themselves. (Not so incidentally, both were French and participated to the furthering of a twisted literary chauvinism.)
Voltaire took advantage of various trials to claim that the defendants were accused because they were Protestants inside a Catholic country. The infamous affaire Calas , from the name of a father who was accused of having murdered his own son, was used by the shrewd philosophe to sending pathetic letters to the upper crust of the society, stirring the public opinion, pressuring magistrates, until the father—who had been convicted and executed after a thorough investigation—was rehabilitated. Two centuries and a half later, young Frenchmen are still taught Voltaire was a champion of truth, justice, and reason, whereas he was more like a playwright who peddled influence.
Zola, more than a century later, did the same. A Jewish-French captain, Alfred Dreyfus , was convicted for high treason after he allegedly communicated secret documents to Prussia. Years later, some new evidence seemed to indicate that Dreyfus was innocent and that another officer had leaked the documents: at this very moment, Zola published an incendiary article, J’accuse , where he spat on the judges and cried about the injustice of the affaire . Eventually, Dreyfus was rehabilitated—and the army, the patriots and the Catholics were shamed through a never-ending media discourse that casted them as villains of the whole story.
Voltaire and Zola played the same role in a narrative of the exact same kind. We are taught about a situation of injustice, where the majority of the population is oppressing an innocent group through an innocent individual and crooked institutions. Fortunately, a heroic talking head rises, miraculously converts the opinion to recognize the poor innocent victim as such, the talking head is crowned as an awesome thinker beyond boundaries whereas some are fairly vilified as “oppressors,” and the poor victim’s rehabilitation is also the victory of reason, justice, and progress.
Thus, the intellectuel in the most typical sense is a highly paradoxical creature who becomes taught in classes after having seemingly rebelled against dominant institutions. Teenagers are led to think that heroic and highly intelligent individuals can turn the tide of unfavourable opinion… provided they follow a mysterious sense of history. There have been a lot more intellectuals than the mere classics, and often those rejected by the official narrative are more interesting than those inside. Who’s gonna pay?
Even if you are gifted with words and language, being a talking head does not pay much. Would anyone be ready to pay you for giving an opinion, no matter how elaborate, on anything? The problem of money is a good starting point to connect the dots: Voltaire was close from wealthy Protestants bankers, one of whom even helped him to obtain a house in Geneva, and Zola was a Rotschild protégé . Both of them contributed to tarnish Catholicism and most of their own people. In other words, they served interests that could pay them—they were sellouts.
Today, some bloggers happen to earn money as independents, especially when they found themselves a niche. Yet independence is scarce. Way too many people would like to live from their wits, and, even more, obtain recognition as intellectuals. More than often, intellectual types turn into teachers, journalists, or even marketers—thus depending upon an institution that pays them.
In North America, the war against whites and masculinity is massively subsidized , whether in the academic or in the media. You won’t easily find a job there if you take a critical stance on cultural Marxism. And in case you wouldn’t be self-hating enough, they are already replacing you with “minority” individuals who are rewarded for spewing wordy venom daily.
Old Marxism was well-aligned with the interests of intellectuals as a class, not as individuals. It handed them an official status and flattered their ego by casting them as the vanguard of “progress.” Keynesianism triumphed for the exact same reason as it justified the creation of a bloated State where model-obsessed nerds enjoy a tremendous power over those who produce actual wealth. Intellectual types historically joined the left because it gave them a status, money, and moral recognition.
But the whole Marxist vocabulary of “progress” and “emancipation” dissimulated what seems glaring today. Namely, that intellectuals were recognized and paid, not because they were enlightened or bright, but because they were an efficient tool of destruction.
The conservative right has often lacked a milieu for intellectual types. The average conservative was reluctant to pay someone he saw as a parasite. Such a lack pushed a number of high IQs to the arms of the left, who made an establishment out of them and paid them to enforce globalism, anti-whiteness, anti-masculinity, pathological altruism, transgender madness, “politically correct” repression and so on. Intellectuals were never paid to say the truth: they were paid as tools who performed a primarily destructive social function.
If we happen to beat cultural Marxism, what shall we do with intellectual types? If we are to dismantle globalism and build healthier societies, we have to think about what we will replace the bobo -leftist establishment. The intellectual mediocrity and spinelessness of the average conservative is no solution. A truly traditional society would likely have initiates, something akin to high priests and knights, in lieu of vacuous and coward talkers. How exactly we go there or how exactly this could look today is another question. Conclusion
The French essayist Alain Soral once famously said, “a journalist is either a whore or without a job.” This is even truer for most intellectuals, sold as they are to a destructive left or (more seldomly) to the inefficient right.
Culture is overrated. What the mainstream refers to under that name is a giant matrix, full of lies, taboos, and the snobbery of talking heads who end up lying to everyone or believing into their own bullshit. No wonder why the shrewd Robert Greene advised to be an “intense realist”: one must cultivate inner intuition and situational awareness not to fall prey to some of the claptrap that constitutes at least eighty per cent of current mainstream “culture.”
The previous generations could join the cultural Marxist establishment and pretend their destructive, ego-laden works were progress. To our generation, this is impossible. Either we stand up for our very existence, even if we must go against more than two centuries of manipulations and lies, or we resign ourselves to an ignominious death. Before we take the power back, a shared awareness must be stimulated, and this is where we enter in direct conflict with the well-funded anti-white, anti-masculine establishment types, whom we must beat on their own field once and for all. Bonus: 6 quotes about the intellectuels
Some of the problems that modern philosophical thinking puts forward appear void of any importance and meaning. [Modern philosophy] features a range of issues that merely stem from an equivocal stance and the confusion of different viewpoints. These issues only exist because they are poorly framed. They have no fundamental reason to exist. In many cases, defining their statements more precisely may be enough to make them disappear, plain and simple, if [modern] philosophy did not strive to maintain them, because it makes a living out of ambiguity. — René Guénon, Introduction to the study of the Hindu doctrines , chap.8. René Guénon (young)
Philosophers care much more about putting forth problems, no matter how artificial and illusory, than about solving them… They also strive to link their name to a ‘system,’ that is, to a strictly bounded set of theories they would own and consider as their nothing more than their own work. Hence the desire to be original at any price, even if the truth must be sacrificed on the altar of said originality. A philosopher who cares about his repute does better by making up a new mistake than by repeating some truth that has already been expressed by others. —René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World , chap.5. René Guénon (older)
The most evident feature of [modern] critique is the lack of principles and of authenticity. Its greater preoccupation consists in being brilliant, in appearing original… From the point of view of those who embody this ‘intellectuality,’ the catchy line, the dialectical or polemical posturing well noticed by others, have a much greater value than truth. Ideas, when they use them, are nothing but a pretext. What matters is to look intelligent—just as, to the mainstream politician, the ideology of a party is essentially a means for career. The ‘vanity fair,’ the most deleterious subjectivism, often verging on pure and unmitigated narcissism, are essential components of this phenomenon… The ‘critique’ is a scourge of modern culture, an epidemic that was born out of bourgeois society concomitantly with the commodification of culture… In normal, traditional civilizations, one could find creators, artists, and those who would judge the works without intermediaries: the sovereigns, the patrons, and the people. Our times have witnessed the appearance, between the public and the creators, that cultural pimp, that cheeky and presumptuous parasite we call a ‘critique.’ — Julius Evola, The Bow and the Club Baron Giulio Cesare Evola
Show me more venal, more insensitive, more corrupt minds than those of the literate caste! How many of them do you know whose virtue would still be uncorrupted? Who, but them, for over thirty years, kept flooding us with a loosened morale, a disdain for work, a disgust of duty, a disrespect for family, who but the literary? Who dipped into secret funds more shamelessly than they did? Who seduced women, softened the young, excited the nation to more debauchery than they did? Who did abandon cowardly the princes after begging for their favours…? So-called men of letters, always! They run like harlots between the legitimate government and usurpers, between monarchy and republic, between politics and socialism, between atheism and religion. Everything is good to them as long as they can make a profit and be fashionable out of it. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (quoted by the following one) Pierre-Joseph Proudon
Compare, for example, seventeenth century writers with those of the eighteenth. What a difference in tone and gait! The former, under a veneer of servility, have the most noble and proud stance… They do not pretend to reign. They merely stand at their place, recognize the place of a superior power beyond, give themselves completely to their writing task, dismiss the temptation of advertising and demonstrate their professional dedication. On the other hand, look at the Voltaire, Diderot and the like: they open well the era of intellectuals, writing stooges as they are, courtiers of princes they flatter and despise at the same time—something they are forced to do as they want to usurp their power… Their courtier nature reveals in everything they do… The whole eighteenth century, both spiritual and plain on a scoundrel background, is libertine, and already pornographic: such is the start of literary mercantilism; people of letters make money out of their writings, pretend to financial independence, and they write garbage to flatter the opinion of their public. — Édouard Berth, Les méfaits des intellectuels (“the misdeeds of the intellectuals”), Introduction Édouard Berth (disciple of Proudhon)
I have had the same experience with journalists citing each other about my books without the smallest effort to go to my writings—my experience is that most journalists, professional academics, and other in similar phony professions don’t read original sources, but each other, largely because they need to figure out the consensus before making a pronouncement. — Nassim Taleb, Antifragile , chap.23. | 0 |
I have only ever had one mammogram, and that was enough to convince me that I would not be going back. If you want to avoid cancer, live clean, eat clean and think clean. | 0 |
141 Arrested At Protest Of The Dakota Access Pipeline 2 shares by Ike Mclean / October 28, 2016 / SOCIETY /
By late Thursday and early Friday morning police dressed in riot gear with armored vehicles were forced to intervene with activists protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline pipeline would run within a half-mile of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
By midnight authorities arrested 141 protesters during a standoff that lasted more than six-hours on property that sits in the pipeline’s path.
Protesters blockaded roads and bridges by setting fire to bales of hay and construction equipment. Police also said some protesters threw rocks and fire bombs, and one women even fired three shots from at police, but nobody was hit.
More than 200 police officers were called in to stop the protests and were forced to use pepper spray and bean bag guns. Humvees, two helicopters and an airplane were also called in to assist law enforcement.
Authorities said the protesters left the officers with no choice but to intervene.
“We’re trying to avoid confrontation. But they drew the line in the sand today,” Cass County Sheriff Paul D. Laney told reporters Thursday.
The protesters were a group of Native Americans and environmental activists who have camped on the property since Sunday oppose the $3.8 billion pipeline because they say it could adversely impact drinking water and would disturb sacred burial sites.
Pictures from the protest can be seen below:
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Britain’s governing Conservative Party has hired Barack Obama’s former Deputy Chief of Staff to help run its election campaign. [Bloomberg reports that Jim Messina arrived in London on Monday to join the campaign to return Prime Minister Theresa May to power and secure the Conservatives a bigger majority. Mr. Messina was campaign manager for President Obama in 2012, and then served as of Hillary Clinton’s presidential Priorities USA Action. He famously told Democrats in 2009 to “punch back twice as hard” at town hall meetings on Obamacare, and in 2015 was revealed to be earning “tens of millions” as “Silicon Valley’s government fixer” in Washington, D. C. Over in Britain, he also served as an ad hoc advisor for the Britain Stronger In Europe group during last year’s referendum campaign, and before then was a major player on David Cameron’s 2015 General Election team. During the 2015 battle, he was credited with helping the Conservatives target voters who could be persuaded to switch from the Liberal Democrats. In the event, the Liberal Democrats lost 27 of their 57 seats to the Conservatives. In the to the Brexit referendum, he wrote: “Given these challenging economic times, the very last thing we should do is risk the UK and EU economies with this risky [Brexit] move. ” Mr. Messina will many other key figures from the Conservative Party’s 2015 campaign, including political strategist Lynton Crosby, pollster Mark Textor, and digital media specialists Craig Elder and Tom Edmonds. | 1 |
The "Baker" explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the United States military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, on 25 July 1946. (US Department of Defense) | 0 |
17 mins ago 3 Views 0 Comments 0 Likes It's fair to say, Europe's been shocked by Trump's Europe's Trump's RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air | 0 |
According to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections, a full repeal of Obamacare would insure more Americans than Speaker Paul Ryan’s reforms. [The CBO’s analysis on the Republican leadership’s plan to repeal Obamacare predicts it would drop insurance for 14 million people in 2018, while 24 million would lose insurance by 2026. Compared to these figures, the CBO’s research on the 2015 full repeal bill indicated it would insure more Americans than the Ryan plan. Phillip Klein, managing editor of the Washington Examiner, stated that despite the Ryan plan doling out billions of dollars in tax credits, the plan also retains the Obamacare regulations, which might stall any more progress. Klein said: The reason is that the Republican replacement preserves many of Obamacare’s regulations that drive up the cost of insurance. So, in essence, the GOP alternative would be asking people to purchase expensive Obamacare plans, with less financial assistance. In contrast, while full repeal would offer no assistance, because it would get rid of Obamacare’s regulations, it would make insurance cheaper. Based on the relatively similar effects of full repeal and partial repeal under the Ryan plan, Klein argues, “If Republicans are going to get hammered on coverage numbers, they may as well do it for the type of plan that is philosophically coherent and consistent with conservative principles a plan that would actually usher in the kind of choice and competition that Republicans are always claiming they want that could actually have a big upside surprise on coverage if individuals benefit from free market innovation that the CBO cannot model for. ” | 1 |
Intel CEO Bryan Krzanich met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, promising to invest $7 billion into an Arizona factory and creating 3, 000 jobs. [“Intel is very proud of the fact that a majority of our manufacturing is here in the US, and the majority of or research and development is here in the US, while over 80 percent of what we sell is sold outside of the US,” Krzanich said according to the White House press pool. Trump and Krzanich met in the Oval Office and made remarks to the White House reporters after the meeting. Krzanich said that the factory would support about 10, 000 people in the Arizona area, creating a boost to the economy. The factory will produce “nanometer chips” according to Krzanich. Trump said that the new investment was ”a great thing for Arizona. ” “We’re very happy and I can tell you the people of Arizona are very happy,” he said. | 1 |
A toddler was shot in the head when her father took her on a drug deal in South Carolina. [The was left in the back seat of a car while her father, Tyrone Randolph, reportedly bought drugs in Santee Saturday, according to the Associated Press. Randolph reportedly took his daughter to a home on Bonner Avenue so he could purchase illegal narcotics, and then got into a gun battle with the dealer, during which the child was hit in the head by a stray bullet, WCCB reported. Investigators say she was taken to Palmetto Health Richland Hospital in Columbia, where she is now out of intensive care. Randolph is charged with unlawful neglect of a child, a charge that carries a prison sentence of up to ten years. A bond hearing was scheduled for Randolph Sunday morning at the Regional Detention Center, but bond was not set, WIS reported. | 1 |
Back in March 2014, when Jared LeBoff, a producer at Marc Platt Productions, first read the thriller “The Girl on the Train,” it wasn’t yet a sensation, one that to date has sold more than six million copies in the United States alone. Sent to him in digital form by an agent of an unknown author, Paula Hawkins, it was a novel with three untrustworthy female narrators — one of them an unhappy, alcoholic divorcée named Rachel Watson who believes she has witnessed something key to a woman’s disappearance. “It was eerie, creepy and enticing,” Mr. LeBoff said about the twisty, Hitchcockian tone of Ms. Hawkins’s book. “It just added up to a juicy piece of material. ” Mr. Platt and DreamWorks Pictures apparently agreed, and without the headache of a bidding war, they soon optioned the rights. In fact, it wasn’t until the following year, around the time the screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) was turning in her first draft of an adaptation, and Ms. Hawkins’s American publisher, Riverhead Books, was releasing her novel here, that those associated with the screen version of “The Girl on the Train” realized this was more than just an ordinary project. Their source material seemed to be everywhere. “I kept seeing girls on the subway reading the book,” said Ms. Wilson, who made a pastime of surreptitiously photographing people with noses buried in “The Girl on the Train. ” “I sort of started a catalog of girls reading the book, on the subway, in cafes I saw a man reading it in a diner. It sort of confirmed the zeitgeist of something that Paula had captured. ” Within two weeks of hitting shelves and “The Girl on the Train” shot to the top of the New York Times list. In reviews, it was often compared with “Gone Girl,” Gillian Flynn’s suspense phenomenon of 2012, which resulted in a film adaptation grossing roughly $369 million worldwide and earning Rosamund Pike an Oscar nod. While Mr. Platt and DreamWorks didn’t have the same luxury of time as the “Gone Girl” production — an almost journey from print to screen — they had Ms. Wilson’s adaptation as interest in Ms. Hawkins’s book exploded. Tate Taylor, who directed another adaptation, “The Help,” was brought in. By then, everyone was in mode, Mr. Taylor said. “They were like: ‘We’ve got to get this thing made. We’ve got lightning in a bottle here. We’ve got to get it out for fall of 2016.’ So we just amped it up. ” On a trip to London to meet with Emily Blunt, who would be cast as the Rachel, Mr. Taylor also met Ms. Hawkins for what he called “a business talk. She said, ‘What are your intentions?’ and I said, ‘This needs to be really dark and sexy, and it needs to be truthful.’ And she said: ‘I love it! Let’s get a gin and tonic.’ That was the entire thing. ” Another consequence of the book’s meteoric rise was that they now had a audience to worry about. “In the movie world, everyone is looking to break through all the noise with a brand, and a book is such a thing,” Mr. Platt said. “But all of the sudden, you have expectations. What starts to creep into the conversation is how much you veer from the source material and how much you don’t. You ask yourself, ‘How can we make something that really works as a film, but yet still satisfy a very large fan base? ’” No one needs to remind him that when the film opens on Oct. 7, roughly 21 months after its original January 2015 book publication date, it will have to satisfy a fan base that has only continued growing. Having now spent more than 80 weeks and counting on the list, “The Girl on the Train” has hit No. 1 in hardcover and trade paperback and paperback. Riverhead has printed close to 1. 4 million copies of a special movie edition. Given the ubiquity of “The Girl on the Train” billboards, bus shelter posters and book displays in supermarkets, bookstores and airports nationwide, even publishing insiders have trouble pinpointing the exact cause of the exponential increase in sales. That said, every time Universal runs the film’s moody trailer — as it did on Aug. 9, right before Michael Phelps won his 20th Olympic gold medal — Riverhead sees a buying surge. Ms. Hawkins, speaking by phone from London, said she had watched the finished version of the film and spoke about what it was like to see characters she created walking, talking and moving around. “It’s a shocking film in parts, really frightening,” she said. “It’s an odd thing, because I actually know what’s happening, but it felt really fresh to me. ” Her positive response puts her in the position of addressing some readers’ irritation about changes made for the screen. To appeal to the larger American audience, the action, which originally had Rachel peering woozily into other people’s backyards from a commuter train running through suburban London, now puts her on the rail line riding from Westchester County to Manhattan. “What I say to everyone is, ‘There’s no such thing as a 100 percent faithful adaptation of a book to screen,’” Ms. Hawkins said, adding that early on, when it came to selling the film rights, agents asked her, “‘Would you have a massive problem if the location was moved?’ I said, No, because what’s important really is the train, not what exists on the outside. ” Audiences should also not expect to catch a glimpse of the Ms. Hawkins, even though, at one point, she had a cameo in the film. “I was on the set, and Tate persuaded me to be on the train as one of the other passengers,” Ms. Hawkins said with a laugh. “To be very honest with you, I was cut. ” | 1 |
The number of extremist groups active in the United States rose for the second year in a row last year, propelled in part by the mainstreaming of rhetoric by the Trump campaign, particularly on topics like immigration and Islam, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism in the United States. The number of groups grew the most, almost tripling to 101 in 2016 from 34 in 2015, in part because of President Trump’s 2015 proposal to bar Muslims from entering the United States in response to the Syrian refugee crisis and terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif. and Orlando, Fla. There were a total of 917 hate groups operating in the United States in 2016, an increase from 892 in 2015 and 784 in 2014, the center said in its annual report. The number of organized groups, like armed militias, dropped by almost 40 percent, however, to 623 in 2016 from 998 in 2015. That decline was a consequence of the increasingly mainstream presence of policy ideas and conspiracy theories about Islam and immigrants that originated on the political fringe, researchers said. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center, said Mr. Trump’s election had been “absolutely electrifying to the radical right. ” “Trump has many of the issues of the radical right, and that has prevented or at least slowed the growth of these groups,” Mr. Potok said. He added, “The Trump phenomenon has really unleashed hate in this country in a way that is difficult to remember. ” Mr. Trump began his presidential campaign with a series of divisive claims, including a June 2015 speech that referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “criminals. ” That December, he proposed fighting terrorism with a Muslim ban, a sharp departure from past presidents, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who said jihadist groups did not represent all Muslims. Both as a candidate and as president, Mr. Trump has used Twitter and speeches to attack an list of targets that number in the hundreds. He has sometimes posted images and messages of support on Twitter that appeared to be or the work of white nationalists, as have his advisers. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump has consistently rejected the notion that his rhetoric or policy proposals have been divisive or extreme. He has often pointed out that his daughter Ivanka and Jared Kushner, are Orthodox Jews, and when asked about his support among white nationalist groups in an interview with The New York Times last November, he said, “I disavow and condemn” them. The Southern Poverty Law Center said its report tracked only groups that engage in activities in the real world, like passing out leaflets, holding rallies or distributing membership cards. But it warned that such an approach could play down the true reach of extremism because many extremists operate primarily on social media and other online forums. “We make a mighty effort to separate out what is really just some guy with a web page or a web forum or tweeting,” Mr. Potok said in an interview. “They have to do something that happens in the real world as opposed to online. ” He said the drop in groups might also reflect that they have less to offer members in an age when similar rhetoric can be heard at a political rally. “They can find just as much vitriol expressed at a Trump rally and be part of a bigger, more exciting movement,” he said. The rise in the number of groups mirrored the 67 percent surge in hate crimes reported by the F. B. I. in 2015, the last year for which the agency has statistics. There were 257 episodes reported to the police that year, the highest number since 2001, when more than 480 hate crimes were reported in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In the first 10 days after Mr. Trump’s election, the center said, it documented 867 bias incidents, including more than 300 that targeted immigrants or Muslims. Hate crimes across the board appear to have become more common in recent years: In 2015, the F. B. I. said, there were 5, 818 reported bias incidents against racial and religious minorities, gays and transgender people, and others, an increase of 6 percent from the year before. | 1 |
Citing concerns about potential voting irregularities during the most consequential presidential primary in years, the New York City comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, said on Tuesday that his office would audit the city’s Board of Elections in part to determine if tens of thousands of Democratic voters were improperly removed from voter rolls. Mr. Stringer said in a statement that the Board of Elections had confirmed that more than 125, 000 Democratic voters in Brooklyn were dropped between November 2015 and this month. He said the decline occurred “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections. ” “There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site,” Mr. Stringer, a Democrat, said. On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio, also a Democrat, echoed Mr. Stringer, noting that voters and voting rights monitors had reported the “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists. ” “The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed,” the mayor said in a statement. Michael J. Ryan, the executive director of the elections board, said that while approximately 125, 000 were removed from voter rolls in Brooklyn since the fall, some 63, 000 people were added. He said the decline did not “shock my conscience” because there were 800, 000 registered Democrats in Brooklyn, and thousands of people were added and removed from the list every year. There was a “report a couple years ago that said there were people on the lists who didn’t belong there,” Mr. Ryan said on Tuesday. “Now we take people off the list who don’t belong there,” he continued, “and there’s some blowback, criticism that we’ve done it inaccurately. ” The drop in registered Democrats was first reported by WNYC. Other issues also surfaced that blocked New Yorkers from voting. When Karishma Desai, a graduate student, arrived at her polling place around 7:30 a. m. she found it closed, an hour and a half after the polls were scheduled to open. “I was already late to work,” she said, so she left without casting a ballot. Mr. Ryan said the polling site coordinator failed to show up at Ms. Desai’s polling place, the Atlantic Terminal Senior Citizens Center in Brooklyn. Additional staff members were called in, he said, and it was open and functioning smoothly by midmorning. He also said “an army of technicians” was dispatched around the city to address technical problems with some voting machines. He said that the issues on Tuesday were typical for an Election Day, but that the importance of this primary made the spotlight more intense. “We’re not seeing anything that is so wildly out of the ordinary as to cause me to be tremendously concerned that there are widespread problems, because there certainly are not,” Mr. Ryan said. “We understand that the eyes and ears of the world are truly on New York City today, and it’s understandable. ” Ms. Desai, a Democrat, returned to her polling place on Tuesday afternoon and was able to vote. She said she voted for Senator Bernie Sanders. | 1 |
Videos 2 Police Officers Turn In Badges In Support Of Standing Rock Water Protectors Redhawk writes. “You can see it in some of them, that they do not support the police actions,” water protector RedHawk writers. "We must keep reminding them they are welcome to put down their weapons and badge and take a stand against this pipeline as well. Some are waking up.” A protesters is arrested by police near the Dakota Access pipeline at a construction site in North Dakota, Oct. 22, 2016. (Photo: YouTube)
North Dakota water protector Redhawk reported today at Standing Rock that two police officers just turned in their badges to show their support for the water protectors.
“There have been at least 2 reports of police officers turning in their badges acknowledging that this battle is not what they signed up for,” Redhawk writes.
“You can see it in some of them, that they do not support the police actions,” he continues.
“We must keep reminding them they are welcome to put down their weapons and badge and take a stand against this pipeline as well. Some are waking up.”
While most of the police officers at the scene of the DAPL protests have been brutal, violent, and unconstitutionally-militarized, it is clear from this recent act of solidarity that some of their hearts can be turned to the cause of justice.
This recent incident is reminiscent of what happened in Frankfurt , Germany in May of 2012, when police removed their helmets and began marching with the people protesting big banks.
According to the Washington Post , “At least 20,000 people held a major rally of the local Occupy movement inFrankfurt on Saturday to decry austerity measures affecting much of Europe, the dominance of banks, and what they call untamed capitalism .”
Yesterday, Barack Obama announced that the White House is considering “re-routing” the pipeline to honor the 1851 Indian Treaty that guarantees the land in question to the Standing Rock Nation. Be Sociable, Share! | 0 |
In the fall of 2012, Shane Tusup was asked to become more involved in Katinka Hosszu’s swimming career. That request came from his girlfriend, Katinka Hosszu, who suggested that he coach her. Deep down, he said, he knew it could work, but he also knew that someday they might come to regret it. With no blueprint to follow, they married and forged a professional coupling that has produced six world championship medals, including four golds two female swimmer of the year awards and a world record. Along the way, their relationship has become a cause célèbre on the pool deck. Many sports, most prominently tennis, have featured contentious relationships between coaches and athletes. Those typically involved fathers overseeing the careers of their children. Less often is the volatile coach the athlete’s husband. Jessica Hardy, an Olympic medalist who used to train with Hosszu in Los Angeles and wrote about being subjected to verbal and emotional abuse as a child, said, “I’ve seen a lot of inappropriate and . K. behavior in Shane. ” She added: “I’ve seen coaches exhibit that kind of behavior in training, but this is another level. It’s scary. ” Hosszu and Tusup acknowledge that their arrangement is complicated but insist it is not unhealthy. They say they are able to separate their relationship as athlete and coach from that of wife and husband. Hosszu, 27, is scheduled to race in five individual events at the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, more than Michael Phelps. She is competing in her fourth Olympics, the same as Ryan Lochte. She is ranked No. 1 this year in two Olympic events, as many as Katie Ledecky. Unlike Phelps, Lochte or Ledecky, Hosszu has never won an Olympic medal. Four years ago, the pressure to produce her first podium finish for her native Hungary, whose obsession with water crests every Olympic summer, crushed Hosszu. She finished fourth in the individual medley, the event she had expected to win, as well as eighth in the individual medley and ninth in the butterfly. “In London, I was so scared of what’s going to happen if I lose,” Hosszu said. “It was awful, really. I just felt like: ‘This is my time I need to show it. It’s now or never.’ I put this pressure on myself. ” After the London Games, she retreated to Hungary before returning briefly to the University of Southern California, where she had trained in the leadup to the Olympics. Over the next several months, she buried her old self and hatched the competitor who became known as the Iron Lady. With input from the United Tusup, Hosszu increased the degree of difficulty of her competitive programs. Her reasoning was that the more events she swam in a day, the less pressure she would put on herself to be the best in any of them. Tusup’s logic was that Hosszu, a newly minted professional, could double or triple her earning power by stacking her competitive program. His idea, which defied convention, was to train less and race more. Three months after the London Olympics, Hosszu unveiled her program at a World Cup meet, held in a course in Beijing. She entered the and individual medleys the 200 backstroke the 200 butterfly and the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles. She graced the podium five times, prompting members of the Chinese news media to ask her if she were made of iron. “The Iron Lady” became a headline, Hosszu’s nickname and, in time, her alter ego. When the diffident Hosszu dons her swimsuit and stuffs her schoolteacher’s hair bun into a latex racing cap, she turns into a superhero with reserves of stamina and confidence. The swimmer who felt overwhelmed by the pressure to succeed in London has since become the first athlete to surpass $1 million in World Cup series prize money for individual races and overall finishes and averaged more than 100 races a year. She has accomplished all of this with her husband overseeing all the aspects of her preparation, to the unease of some in the tightknit swimming community. Tusup is more temperamental than Hosszu, and his eruptions on the pool deck have elicited stares, complaints and calls for his removal. “I always say if you find a coach who can make you a step or two better, or if what we’re doing is not working and you think there’s something you need to change, you need to tell me because then I’ll step back, that coach will step in, and we’ll be happy,” Tusup said, adding, “She has that offer to this day. ” A swimmer going into the Olympics with a spouse as a coach is rare. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, Michelle Smith of Ireland won three gold medals while coached by her husband, a former discus thrower. But she had ascended to the top of international competition at a relatively late age and after a mediocre career. Two years later, she was barred from swimming when it was determined she had manipulated a drug test by spiking her urine sample with alcohol. Hosszu was already a world champion when Tusup, a backstroker at his peak, took over her training. Under his tutelage she has become, in her words, “a athlete. ” Tusup and Hosszu are like pool water and chlorine: You are not likely to find one without the other. Over a period in late November in Budapest, the only time they were apart was to change clothes or use the bathroom. They never exchanged a cross word, and they never appeared to wilt, perhaps because of the four espresso shots over ice that serve as their daily . Hosszu described the act as “definitely difficult” but also rewarding. “He’s pretty hard as a coach,” she said, “but at home he’s supersweet and loving and really funny. So we can laugh a lot. ” They met as freshmen at U. S. C. where Tusup majored in human performance and competed for the men’s swim team. Hosszu was a psychology major who struggled with English when she arrived but had been a women’s swim team captain by the time she left, degree in hand. Asked what attracted them to each other, Hosszu said with a laugh: “We’re weird we’re different we’re not normal. We’re ourselves. ” Tusup, 28, has a weekend bodybuilder’s physique and several tattoos, including one of his wife’s time. His manner can be brusque. His emotions are on a tripwire, causing some people to keep their distance. Hosszu described him as impatient and said that when he made refinements in her strokes, especially her backstroke, “he expects me to get it perfect right away. ” She added, “That’s why I’ve improved so much. ” Adopting a faster stroke tempo, Hosszu has dropped her backstroke times significantly. In 2012, she was not among the swimmers in the 100 or the 200. Four years later, she is an Olympic medal contender in both events. “Shane helped me find my technique,” Hosszu said, adding: “He told me I’m really so good at backstroke. At the time I didn’t think it. ” Until recently, her lagged behind her talent. She has a nature and a personality wired to connect with others. Her long day in November ended with a book signing in a Budapest mall that ran well over schedule because she spent three, four and, in a few cases, five minutes in conversation with the people in line, some of whom had waited two hours to meet her. When Hosszu and Tusup married in 2013, it was as if their strengths became one. Hosszu had a herculean work ethic but no grandiose goals. Tusup is a big thinker who has schooled Hosszu in the A B C’s of the American dream: Ambition, Branding, Confidence. “Since I started working with Shane, I have a lot more confidence,” Hosszu said. “It’s crazy to think I still need Shane telling me: ‘Yes, you are great. Yes, you can do that. ’” Hosszu is trying to pass on what she has learned from Tusup to her fellow Hungarians. During that November visit, Hosszu competed in every women’s event at the Hungarian nationals. Behind the scenes, she was pushing for improved training conditions, traveling opportunities and support staff for other national team members in a sport that has supplied Hungary with 66 Olympic medals, its total, behind fencing and canoeing. The disagreement bubbled to the surface, making headlines in Hungary three months later when Hosszu rejected the federation’s training stipend, which amounted to roughly $40, 000. Hosszu said she did not need the money and would rather see it funneled to her compatriots struggling to cover their costs. The fraying of Hosszu’s bonds with her national federation strengthened her alliance with Tusup, who has passed his tendency for on to his wife. Dorina Szekeres, a 2012 Hungarian Olympian who is employed by the couple’s management agency, sat in the bleachers watching Hosszu train in Budapest as Tusup paced up and down the pool deck, observing her strokes and offering refinements in her technique. Szekeres, who swam at Indiana University, said swimmers from the United States had a different from the Hungarians: The Americans are encouraged to chase rainbows while in Hungary, where expectations are carefully managed, dreams are contained to black and white. “We have the drive, but we didn’t have the confidence,” Szekeres said. “That’s what we learned in the U. S. that anything is possible. If you’re not in an environment telling you you’re good, how will you know how good you can be? Katinka never saw the potential she has. My old coach is asking me how she is training, what she’s doing in the weight room. It’s no magic. She’s getting the work done. She’s pushing herself every day. ” Tending tidy gardens of pruned dreams was a lament of Hosszu’s father, Istvan, a professional basketball player who said he had earned the nickname Sniper because of his shooting prowess. In a conversation over coffee during his daughter’s book signing, he said he realized toward the end of his career that he could have achieved more if he had set loftier goals. “The dream was not big enough,” he said in Hungarian, with Szekeres translating. Hosszu often posts photos of herself posing with weights to her social media accounts, including one shot of her kneeling on one leg on the bottom of a pool while executing a biceps curl with a dumbbell. Sometimes she will drive home her point by including her mantra, “Hard work always pays off. ” She credits her embrace of weight training, coupled with the elimination of fast food and sugary products from her diet, for her leaner, more sculpted physique in the years since London. “Each time I’m pushing myself more and more and pushing the limits,” Hosszu said. Dave Salo, who coached Hosszu at U. S. C. until shortly after the 2012 Olympics, said she was one of the hardest workers he had ever seen. The exception was in the weight room, where he described her as soft. Since she started working with her husband, that has changed. On the Monday after the Hungarian nationals, Hosszu spent nearly 90 minutes at a health club going through her paces in a circuit workout alongside mothers and retirees toiling on treadmills, elliptical machines and stationary bikes. Tusup and Szekeres were also there, engrossed in their own workouts. Wearing an device that resembled a gas mask, Hosszu completed multiple sets of a variety of exercises, including jumping rope, abdominal crunches while holding aloft a weight, leg and arm presses, and . Hardy, a 2012 United States Olympian who trained with Hosszu at U. S. C. in the leadup to the London Games, marveled at her transformation. “The first practice after the London Olympics, less than three weeks after the Olympics, she came back, and she had been training with Shane already, and I saw a different Katinka,” Hardy said. “More fit and more in shape. ” Hardy added, “She worked hard before, but she wasn’t as motivated as she is now. ” Tusup was the catalyst. He saw Hosszu as the Iron Lady before she did. “She was insecure about the nickname,” Tusup said. “She was saying: ‘Am I really the Iron Lady? Am I really going to be able to live up to that image? ’” If Hosszu entertained doubt, Tusup envisioned dollar signs. There is money to be made for professional swimmers in the World Cup series of meets in Europe and Asia and the Grand Prix series in the United States. The events offer cash prizes for the top three finishers in each event and bonuses, totaling more than $100, 000, to the top finishers over all. Tusup saw an opportunity for them to travel the world, as they desired, while maximizing Hosszu’s earning potential. She has demonstrated that it is possible to race one’s way to fitness rather than train months on end between meets. Salo said he was happy to see “a leaner and meaner” Hosszu swimming “the way people always thought she was capable. ” Still, he worries. “I think the biggest issue with her is her husband,” he said. “I think you have to look at her motivation. Is it fear or confidence that is driving her?” At December’s Duel in the Pool, a meet in Indianapolis between swimmers from the United States and Europe, the American Josh Prenot posted to his Twitter account an video of Tusup throwing an object to the ground and kicking the banner board that ran the length of the pool after Hosszu’s loss to Missy Franklin in the 200 freestyle. In Arizona in April, at a Grand Prix meet held by her swimwear sponsor, Arena, Hosszu had a rare bad day at the office, finishing fifth in the 200 individual medley and the 200 backstroke (both won by the American Maya DiRado, whom she will face in Rio). After the backstroke, Hosszu avoided making eye contact with Tusup, who upbraided her while swimmers from other teams stared. Tusup continued his critique in the area, where two people said they overheard him suggesting to Hosszu that she stay in the water and drown. The night ended with Tusup kissing Hosszu on the forehead and pulling her close in a long embrace on the deck. Hardy, who also raced in Arizona, said she had not talked with Hosszu since a 2013 meet at which Tusup told Hardy not to speak to Hosszu. “He said I was distracting her,” Hardy, who was once a close friend of Hosszu’s, said, adding: “She seems happy with the dynamic. I have empathy, but I don’t think she needs or wants anybody’s assistance. ” Hosszu described her relationship with Tusup as “pretty complicated. ” “I’m definitely more the one who’s ” she said. “Because he’s so emotional and he really wants us to get the goals we set for ourselves, that’s probably why he’s able to be that way. ” Hosszu added: “We always try to push each other, I think, and we really try to — I’m trying to think how to say this — ignore everything else for the goals. So if we get in a fight, we know why or try to figure out why, so if he says something during practice and I know he’s speaking as a coach, I won’t be offended. I probably would be offended if he would talk to me like that as a husband. ” Tusup defended his behavior, saying he was not a bully. “That’s what it appears a lot of times,” he said. “I get a bad rep in the U. S. because these parents in the stands, they’re going, ‘He’s such a jerk he yells at her when she doesn’t swim fast.’ No, the hard part of swimming is that there’s a lot of times you just settle for O. K. and we agreed that the goal was never to settle for O. K. that we’re going to keep pushing, even if we don’t get it, to be great, to be amazing, to be legendary. ” Yes, Tusup is tough, Hosszu’s father said, but so was her first coach, her grandfather, under whom she swam until she was 13. He once hurled one of his sandals in his granddaughter’s direction during a workout, Istvan Hosszu said. He added that he would speed through the streets to deliver her to practice on time if they were running late so as not to become the target of her coach’s wrath. “She was his only athlete,” he said, adding, “He was the grandparent, but not at the pool. ” So it is with Tusup. He is the husband, but not at the pool. “They’re in love it’s working why not?” her father said. As in 2012, Hosszu arrives at the Games expecting to win a gold medal. If that does not happen, she will be fine, she insists. “Shane is always reminding me, ‘You lost the one that you thought you could not survive without, and you’re thriving,’” Hosszu said, referring to the 400 individual medley in London. “Why would you ever worry about anything?” | 1 |
BREAKING BOMBSHELL : Multiple Reports Tie Clinton’s Podesta Brothers to Child Abduction Case of Madeline McCann BREAKING BOMBSHELL : Multiple Reports Tie Clinton’s Podesta Brothers to Child Abduction Case of Madeline McCann Breaking News By TruthFeedNews November 7, 2016
HOLY SMOKES…. Before you read this, please take a deep breath and sit down as this information is chilling. To proceed with the appropriate caution, this story is developing and there is not yet confirmation yet that these reports are 100% accurate and will yield a conviction but take a look at the circumstantial evidence and decide for yourself.
Cassandra Fairbanks of WeareChange.org reports
On Sunday evening, side-by-side images of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and his brother Tony next to police sketches of potential suspects in a 2007 kidnapping of a three-year-old girl took over the internet. I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist…
BUT
— Leah the Boss (@LeahRBoss) November 7, 2016
The resemblance is striking, and Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter rapidly took up the case. We found your pedophile suspects @metpoliceuk . You're welcome. #DNCLeak2 pic.twitter.com/H8kF1jWGUN
— VOTE TRUMP! 🇺🇸 (@JaredWyand) November 7, 2016
Madeleine Beth McCann should have celebrated her 13th birthday with her family in England this year, but she vanished from her bed during a family vacation to Portugal in 2003. The case gripped the entire world, becoming one of the most high profile missing persons cases in history. Coverage of her kidnapping was comparable to the press interest in the death of Princess Diana.
The circumstantial evidence goes far beyond the striking resemblance.
John Podesta’s first email on Wikileaks is dated May 4th 2007.
Per Wikipedia Madeline disappeared May 3rd 2007.
Did John Podesta WIPE HIS EMAILS the day after Madeline disappeared to destroy evidence?
The abduction occurred in Portugal, where Wikileaks emails show was a destination Podesta traveled to.
In addition, extensive evidence points to the Podesta Brothers having close connections to those involved with potential crimes or at least bizarre rituals involving underaged children.
Watch this video:
The Clinton foundation has long standing ties to convicted Haiti Child Trafficker Laura Silsby.
We also know for a fact John Podesta, Hillary’s Campaign Chair, has close family ties to convicted serial child molester Denny Hastert .
In the email below, Podesta’s brother mentions Denny, saying he’s remained “CLOSE” to him.
Denny Hastert was a wrestling coach who was referred to by his sentencing judge as a “serial child molester.”
These are the people who the Hillary campaign, and their family members call friends and keep in “close touch with.”
It’s disgusting.
Recently former Navy Seal Erik Prince told Breitbart News that according to one of his “well-placed sources” in the New York Police Department, “The NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making” in the Anthony Weiner investigation, but received “huge pushback” from the Justice Department.
Prince claimed he had insider knowledge of the investigation that could help explain why FBI Director James Comey had to announce he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server last week.
“Because of Weinergate and the sexting scandal, the NYPD started investigating it. Through a subpoena, through a warrant, they searched his laptop, and sure enough, found those 650,000 emails. They found way more stuff than just more information pertaining to the inappropriate sexting the guy was doing,” Prince claimed.
“They found State Department emails. They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times,” he said.
“The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing with timely indictments,’” Prince explained.
“I believe – I know, and this is from a very well-placed source of mine at 1PP, One Police Plaza in New York – the NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation, and they’ve gotten huge pushback, to the point of coercion, from the Justice Department, with the Justice Department threatening to charge someone that had been unrelated in the accidental heart attack death of Eric Garner almost two years ago. That’s the level of pushback the Obama Justice Department is doing against actually seeking justice in the email and other related criminal matters,” Prince said.
Erik’s claim parallels what Steve Pieczenik states about the Clinton Pedophilia Connection.
Were the Podestas involved with the abduction of Madeline Mccann? We do not know for sure yet.
One thing is for certain. The mainstream media will try to hide this bombshell information and do everything they can to protect their Globalist puppet Hillary Clinton.
They will also likely call this a “vast right wing conspiracy.”
But just remember, this started as a “vast right wing conspiracy” as well.
EDITOR’S UPDATE : #MadelineMcCann is trending on twitter. The people want to know the TRUTH!
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Hillary Clinton claimed the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday night after decisive victories in the California, New Jersey and New Mexico primaries, and she quickly appealed to supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to unite with her against Donald J. Trump. The Associated Press reported early Wednesday that Mrs. Clinton had won California, but Mr. Sanders gave no indication that he would yield, insisting earlier that he would continue his campaign and barely acknowledging her achievement. With the Democratic race nearing a close, Mrs. Clinton savored the biggest night of her extraordinary journey from lawyer, wife and first lady to senator, secretary of state and, now, the first woman to win a major party’s nomination. At a rally in Brooklyn, she took the stage with her hands clasped over her heart in gratitude, then threw open her arms in joy and savored a long moment as a jubilant crowd waved American flags and chanted “Hillary. ” Reaching for history, Mrs. Clinton pledged to build on the achievements of pioneers like the leaders at Seneca Falls, N. Y. who began the fight for women’s rights in America. “Tonight caps an amazing journey — a long, long journey,” she said, nearly a century after women won the right to vote nationwide. “We all owe so much to those who came before, and tonight belongs to all of you. ” As six states voted on Tuesday, Mr. Sanders’s political lifeline frayed with each loss. He was left hoping for a victory in the California primary, to justify staying in the race and lobbying Democratic officials to support him in a contested convention next month. In a speech in Santa Monica, Calif. late Tuesday night that felt much like a valedictory, Mr. Sanders told supporters he was determined to stop Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, from winning the presidency. Yet he spoke of their cause as much larger than his candidacy. “You all know that it is more than Bernie — it is all of us together,” he said. He vowed to “fight hard to win” the final primary, in the District of Columbia next week, and to continue “our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice” at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. But he also recognized cold political reality. “I am pretty good in arithmetic, and I know that the fight in front of us is a very, very steep fight,” he said. “But we will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate we can get. ” While Mr. Sanders noticeably ignored Mrs. Clinton’s triumph, only crediting “her victories tonight,” she lavished praise on him earlier at her Brooklyn rally. She said their “vigorous debate” had been “very good for the Democratic Party and America. ” Mr. Sanders won the North Dakota caucuses and the Montana primary, while Mrs. Clinton won the South Dakota primary. Republicans also voted in several states. Though Mr. Sanders made plans to lay off much of his campaign staff, he appeared reluctant to let go completely after months of political warfare against a Clinton machine that he holds in thinly veiled contempt. President Obama plans to meet with Mr. Sanders at the White House on Thursday at the candidate’s request, an administration spokesman said, adding that Mr. Obama had called both Democratic candidates Tuesday night to congratulate them on “running inspiring campaigns. ” As Mrs. Clinton sought to turn her attention to the general election, Mr. Trump, who had a weekslong head start, was busy reckoning with problems of his own making. His criticism of a federal judge, Gonzalo P. Curiel, for the judge’s Mexican heritage continued to inflict damage on his campaign, as the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, called Mr. Trump’s remarks racist and other Republicans piled on. One Republican senator rescinded his support. Mr. Trump, speaking in Briarcliff Manor, N. Y. pledged to make Republicans “proud of our party and our movement,” though he did not try to defuse the controversy. Instead, reading carefully from a teleprompter, he mounted a lengthy attack on Mrs. Clinton’s record, saying she had “turned the State Department into her private hedge fund. ” And he teased a speech, “on probably Monday of next week,” that he said would delve into “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. ” Mr. Trump explicitly reached out to Sanders supporters, who he said had been “left out in the cold by a rigged system. ” “We can’t solve our problems by counting on the politicians who created our problems,” he said. “The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form for themselves. ” Mrs. Clinton returned fire at Mr. Trump in her remarks, charging that he “wants to win by stoking fear and rubbing salt into wounds. ” Yet she avoided the sort of slashing attacks and ridicule that she used to great effect in her indictment of Mr. Trump and his temperament last week. Scarcely raising her voice on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton again looked to the example of an influential woman, this time tenderly invoking her mother. “She told me to never back down from a bully, which it turns out was pretty good advice,” she said. Although Tuesday had promised to be a watershed moment in the nation’s political history, it proved anticlimactic after The A. P. reported Monday night that Mrs. Clinton had secured enough delegates to clinch the party’s nomination. But she stuck to her plan to use her rally, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to celebrate her achievement with some of the same New York Democrats who helped her win a Senate seat in 2000, beginning her career in elected office. The unexpected news on Monday set off conversations within the two campaigns, with Clinton representatives preparing to make overtures to the Sanders camp as early as Wednesday. Sanders advisers were on edge over the declaration that Mrs. Clinton had locked up the nomination, worried that it would depress voter turnout in California. And Mr. Sanders told NBC on Tuesday evening that he was “upset” and “disappointed” that The A. P. had made its call based on a survey of superdelegates, party officials who can shift their allegiances as late as the convention. Mr. Sanders said that his aides were “on the phone right now” with superdelegates, including those supporting Mrs. Clinton. “Defying history is what this campaign has been about,” he said of his bid, which was initially seen as a long shot. “I am going to be meeting with our supporters to figure out the best way forward so that we have a government which represents all of us, and not just the 1 percent. ” His campaign also emailed supporters late Tuesday asking them to commit to vote for him in the final Democratic primary, in the District of Columbia next Tuesday, suggesting that Mr. Sanders was not calling it quits just yet. Still, he planned to let go a large number of workers on Wednesday, according to current and former aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Part of Mr. Sanders’s challenge is that his justifications for continuing his campaign are increasingly thin. Mrs. Clinton has now won a majority of the 4, 051 pledged delegates at stake in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, crossing what Mr. Sanders had long held up as a critical threshold. She also has support from 571 superdelegates to Mr. Sanders’s 48 only about 100 uncommitted superdelegates remain. The campaign managers for Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have been speaking recently, including early on Tuesday, about the future of the race and about policy priorities for the party’s convention platform in July, according to two Democrats close to the candidates. So far, the discussions have not included the possibility that Mr. Sanders will concede to Mrs. Clinton or endorse her, the Democrats said, but the groundwork has been laid for an eventual conversation or meeting. Several advisers to Mr. Sanders said Tuesday that he had not been inviting opinions or holding meetings about whether to withdraw from the race, nor had he sketched out a speech announcing the suspension of his campaign. They said he had been wholly focused on winning the California primary in hopes that a victory in such a politically important state would help him lobby superdelegates to shift their support. “Moving a lot of superdelegates into our column will require a big campaign of persuasion, a nationwide logistical effort, but we believe we have a strong case to make to them — especially if we do very well in Tuesday’s primaries,” said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders. Other campaign advisers said they expected Mr. Sanders to consider his options during his flight from California to Vermont on Wednesday. One recalled that Mrs. Clinton did much the same when she found herself in a similar situation eight years ago. The day after Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination in June 2008, Mrs. Clinton huddled with her advisers and debated whether to hold on to her delegates and try to force a contested convention. She decided to endorse Mr. Obama instead. The two had a tense but productive meeting that Thursday night, and two days later she delivered a speech thanking her supporters and urging them to unite around the party’s presumptive nominee. The resistance of many of Mr. Sanders’s supporters to Mrs. Clinton is likely to soften once Mr. Sanders leaves the race, and especially if he endorses her. But Clinton advisers and allies say they will need his help to bring around the many younger voters and liberals who prefer him. If Mrs. Clinton is beginning the general election with many Sanders supporters incensed at her, Mr. Trump is in the midst of his own crisis. He is forcing Republicans to confront a painful choice: Embrace his brand of racial politics, one that could taint the party’s image well beyond this election, or abandon their presumptive nominee and hand the White House to the Democrats for another four years. But Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, pointing both to the threat from Mr. Trump and to her chance at making history, predicted that she would have an easier time bringing her party together than Mr. Trump would his. “I think that will sink in over the next few weeks and months and will go a long way to helping unite the party,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said. “I was on the bike this morning and saw on TV that Monday night, Hillary had won the nomination, and I got . From a perspective, it’s an amazing accomplishment. ” | 1 |
ABD’de reform mu olacak yoksa parçalanacak mı? yazan Thierry Meyssan ABD’deki başkanlık seçimi kampanyasını gözlemleyen Thierry Meyssan, eski ve ağır uygarlık çatışmasının yeniden hortlamasını analiz ediyor. Hillary Clinton bu seçimlerde programların değil ama « Amerikalıların kim olduğunu » bilme konusunun öne çıktığını açıkladı. Cumhuriyetçilerin önde gelenlerinin Donald Trump’a verdiği desteği geri çekmesi siyasi sorunlardan daha çok kişisel tutumu yüzünden. Yazarımıza göre ABD, bugüne kadar farklı ufuklardan gelen ve özel bir cemaatin ideolojisine boyun eğmeyi kabul eden göçmenlerden oluşuyordu. Bugün, ülkenin bizzat kendisini parçalama tehlikesi riskiyle çatlamakta olan bu modeldir.
Voltaire İletişim Ağı | Şam (Suriye) | 26 Ekim 2016 français Español italiano русский English Deutsch Português ελληνικά عربي Milenarist (yani dünyanın sonunun yaklaştığına inanan) seçmenlerin %73’ü Donald Trump’u beğenmiyor. %68’i demokratların adayı Hillary Clinton’un orta sınıfların haklarını daha iyi koruyacağını; %64’ü dış politika, %61’i ise ekonomi alanında rakibinden daha iyi olduğunu düşünüyor. Geçtiğimiz ABD seçim kampanyası yılı sırasında, retorik derinden değişti ve iki kamp arasında beklenmedik bir bölünme ortaya çıktı. Adaylar başta sadece siyasi konular (servet dağılımı ya da ulusal güvenlik gibi) üzerine konuşsalar da, bugün artık özellikle seks ve paradan bahsediyorlar.
Cumhuriyetçi Partiyi –ki partinin başlıca liderleri adaylarından desteklerini çektiler- sabrını çatlatan ve siyasetin satranç tahtasını yeniden şekillendiren siyasi sorunlar değil, çok eski bir uygarlık bölünmesini hortlatan bu söylemdir. Bayan Clinton bir yandan siyaseten doğru olma çabası içerisindeyken, diğeri, yani « Donald » eski « First Lady »nin ikiyüzlülüğünü ortaya seriyor.
Hillary Clinton, kocasıyla yattıklarını itiraf eden kadınları hedef almaktan ve lekelemekten çekinmemesine rağmen, bir yandan kadın-erkek eşitliğini savunurken, kendini kişisel nitelikleriyle değil ama eski bir Başkanın eşi olarak sunarken, kadın cinsiyetine karşı duygularını gizlemediği için Donald Trump’u kadın düşmanlığıyla suçluyor. Diğer yandan Donald Trump Devletin özelleştirilmesi sürecini ve Dışişleri Bakanlığından randevu elde edebilmeleri için Clinton Vakfı aracılığıyla yabancı şahsiyetlerden para sızdırılmasını; ObamaCare’in kuruluşunun yurttaşların değil ama sağlık sigortalarının yararına hizmet ettiğini teşhir ediyor ve işi seçim sisteminin doğruluğunu tartışmaya kadar götürüyor.
Donald Trump’un kendini ifade etme tarzının ırkçılığı yüreklendirdiğinin tamamen farkındayım ama Clinton yanlısı medyaların çıkarttığı patırtıya rağmen bunun seçim tartışmasının merkezinde olduğunu hiçbir şekilde düşünmüyorum.
Lewinsky olayı sırasında, Başkan Bill Clinton’un ulustan özür dilemesi ve selameti için rahipleri bir araya getirmesi önemlidir. Oysa bir ses kaydı aracılığıyla benzer olgularla suçlanan Donald Trump, din adamları sınıfından yardım dilenmeden sadece hedef aldığı kişilerden özür dilemekle yetinmiştir.
Bugünkü bölünme, ABD’de Presbiteryenler, Vaftizciler ve Metodistler tarafından temsil edilen Kalvinistlere karşı Katolik, Ortodoks ve Luther’cilerin değerlerinin isyanını yeniden gündeme getirmektedir.
Her ne kadar iki aday da püriten gelenek içerisinde eğitilmiş olsalar da (Clinton Metodist ve Trump Presbiteryen), Bayan Clinton Babasının ölümüyle birlikte dinine geri döndü ve bugün silahlı kuvvetler genelkurmayının The Family adı verilen ayin gruplarına katılıyor. Trump’a gelince daha içsel bir tinsellik uyguluyor ve o kadar sık tapınaklara gitmiyor.
Tabi ki, kimse yetiştirildiği şemalar içerisinde kapalı kalmıyor. Ama düşünmeden hareket ettiğimizde, haberimiz olmadan bunları üretiveriyoruz. Herkesin dini çevresi sorunu dolayısıyla önemli olabilir.
Neler olduğunu daha iyi anlayabilmemiz için XVIInci yüzyıl İngiltere’sine geri dönmemiz gerekiyor. Oliver Cromwell, yaptığı askeri darbe ile Kral I.Charles’ı devirir. Bir Cumhuriyet kuracağı, ülkenin ruhunu arındıracağı iddiasında bulundu ve eski hükümdarın kellesini uçurdu. Kalvin’in düşüncelerinden esinlenen sekter bir rejim kurdu, Papa’ya bağlı İrlandalıları kitlesel olarak katletti ve püriten yaşam tarzını dayattı. Aynı zamanda Siyonizm’i de tasarladı: Yahudileri İngiltere’ye geri çağırdı ve Filistin’de bir Yahudi Devletinin kurulmasını talep eden dünyanın ilk Devlet başkanı oldu. Bu kanlı serüven, « Britanya’nın ilk iç savaşı » adıyla anılıyor.
Monarşinin yeniden kurulmasından sonra, Cromwell’in Püritenleri İngiltere’den kaçarlar. Hollanda’ya yerleşirler ve aralarından bazıları Mayflower gemisiyle Amerika’ya giderken (« Pilgrimler »), bazıları güney Afrika’da Afrikaneer topluluğunu kurarlar. XVIIInci yüzyıldaki ABD Bağımsızlık Savaşı sırasında, Kalvinistlerin Britanya monarşisine karşı mücadelesine yeniden tanık oluruz. Bu mücadele, Britanya tarihi güncel el yazmalarında « İkinci İç Savaş » olarak tanımlanır.
XIXncu yüzyıldaki İç Savaş, Güney Devletleriyle (genelde Katolik kolonların yaşadığı) Kuzeydekileri (daha çok Protestan kolonların yaşadığı) karşı karşıya geldi. Galip gelenlerin yazdığı tarih bu çatışmayı köleliğe karşı özgürlük kavgası olarak sunuyor ki bu propagandadan başka bir şey değildir (Güney Devletleri, Britanya monarşisiyle bir ittifak anlaşmasına vardıklarında köleliği kaldırmışlardır). Dolayısıyla da, Püritenlerle İngiliz tahtının çatışması yeniden karşımıza çıkar ki bazı tarihçiler bu yüzden burada bir « Üçüncü Britanya İç Savaşından » söz ederler.
XXinci yüzyıl sırasında, Başbakan David Llyod George’un « konformist olmayan Hıristiyanlarıyla » Birleşik Krallıkta yeniden ortaya çıkmasını saymazsak, Britanya uygarlığının bu iç çatışması bitmiş gibidir. Bunlar İrlanda’yı bölerler ve Filistin’de « Yahudi ulusal yurdunu » yaratmaya girişirler.
Ne olursa olsun, Richard Nixon’un danışmanlarından biri olan Kevin Philips, bu iç savaşlarla ilgili geniş kapsamlı bir tez hazırlar, sorunların hiçbirinin çözülmediği tespitinde bulunur ve bir dördüncü çatışmanın duyurusunu yapar [ 1 ].
40 yıldan beri kitlesel olarak Cumhuriyetçilere oy veren Kalvinist Kilisesinin müritleri, artık Demokratları destekliyor.
Bayan Clinton’un ABD’nin yeni Başkanı olacağından ya da Bay Trump seçildiğinde, hızlı bir şekilde ortadan kaldırılacağından şüphe etmiyorum. Ama birkaç ay içerisinde, geridöndürülemez bir demografik gelişim temelinde seçmenler topluluğunun yeniden şekillenişine tanık oluyoruz. Halkın dörtte birinden fazlasını bir araya getiren Püriten kökenli Kiliseler, Demokratların kampına doğru kayıyor. Modelleri tarihsel bir kaza gibi görünüyor. Güney Afrika’da ortadan kalktı ve ne ABD’de, ne de İsrail’de daha çok hayatta kalması mümkün değil.
Başkanlık seçiminin ötesinde, ABD toplumu hızla gelişmek ya da yeniden parçalanmak durumundadır. Gençliğin Püriten vaizlerin nüfuzunu kitlesel olarak reddettiği bir ülkede, eşitlik sorununu başka yöne kaydırmak artık mümkün değildir. Püritenler tüm insanların eşit olduğu ama eşdeğer olmadığı bir toplum öngörüyorlar. Lord Cromwell İngilizler için bir cumhuriyet istiyordu, ama ancak Papa yanlısı İrlandalıları katlettikten sonra. Böylece bugün ABD’de bütün yurttaşlar kanun önünde eşittir, ama aynı yasal metinlerden hareketle, mahkemeler aynı cinayet ya da suçlarla ilgili beyazlar için hafifletici nedenler bulurken sistematik olarak siyahları mahkum etmektedir. Ve eyaletlerin çoğunda, hız ihlali için dahi olsa ceza alınması durumunda, oy kullanma hakkı kaldırılıyor. Bunun sonucunda, beyaz ve siyahlar eşittirler, ama bazı eyaletlerde, siyahi insanların birçoğunun aynı şekilde oy kullanma hakkı elinden alınmıştır. Bu düşüncenin paradigması, dış politikada, Filistin’de « iki Devletli çözümdür »; eşit, ama özellikle eşdeğer olmayan.
Rahip Carter, Reagan, Bush (Sr. ve Jr.’in her ikisi de Pilgrimlerin torunlarıdırlar), Clinton ve Obama yönetimlerini, kendi ülkelerinin ideallerine aykırı bir biçimde Vahhabiliği ve bugün de IŞİD’i desteklemeye Püriten düşüncesi itmiştir.
Geçmişte Pilgrimler, Plymouth ve Boston’de ABD’nin ortak hafızasında idealleştirilen topluluklar oluşturdular. Oysa tarihçiler biçimseldirler, « Yeni İsrail »’i oluşturduklarını söylüyorlardı ve « Musa’nın Yasasını » seçerler. Tapınaklarına Haç değil ama Yasanın Masalarını yerleştirirler. Zaten Hıristiyan olmalarına rağmen, Yahudi yazmalarına İncil’den daha çok önem veriyorlardı. Kadınlarını başlarını örtmeye zorladılar ve bedensel cezaları yeniden gündeme getirdiler.
Thierry Meyssan Çeviri
Osman Soysal | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s choice for White House budget director failed to pay more than $15, 000 in payroll taxes for a household employee, he admitted in a statement to the Senate Budget Committee, the sort of tax compliance issue that has derailed cabinet nominees in the past. In a questionnaire provided to the committee, Representative Mick Mulvaney, a conservative from South Carolina and vocal proponent of fiscal restraint noted, “I have come to learn during the confirmation review process that I failed to pay FICA and federal and state unemployment taxes on a household employee for the years . ” Mr. Mulvaney said he had subsequently paid more than $15, 000 in taxes and awaits the state tax bill, as well as penalties and interests. His confirmation hearing before the committee is scheduled for Jan. 24. The employee was a babysitter hired when Mr. Mulvaney and his wife had triplets in 2000. Attempts to reach Mr. Mulvaney’s office for comment were not successful. A spokesman for the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, said he would have no immediate comment. Mr. Mulvaney will almost certainly be asked about the issue at his hearing, and Republicans on the committee are most likely aware of its existence. The situation is similar to that of former Senator Tom Daschle, who in 2009 was forced to withdraw his nomination as President Obama’s choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department. During Mr. Daschle’s confirmation process, it was revealed that he had paid roughly $140, 000 in back taxes related to a car and driver provided to him by a former employer, and to some consulting income. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who is now the Republican in the Senate, said at the time that he would not support Mr. Daschle’s nomination, calling his tax issue “a little too much to swallow. ” Mr. Daschle’s withdrawal came two weeks after Timothy F. Geithner, Mr. Obama’s first Treasury secretary, was nearly knocked out with his announcement that he had failed to pay $25, 000 in payroll taxes while working at the International Monetary Fund. In a statement, John Czwartacki, a spokesman for the Trump transition team, said: “Nobody is more qualified and more prepared to rein in Washington spending and fight for taxpayers than Mick Mulvaney. Congressman Mulvaney raised the issue surrounding the care of his premature triplets immediately upon being tapped for this position, and has taken the appropriate measures. The administration fully stands behind Representative Mulvaney. ” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a statement: “Senator Tom Daschle did the same thing and Republicans insisted that that disqualified him from becoming H. H. S. secretary. We say to our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If Tom Daschle couldn’t become a cabinet member for not paying taxes for a household employee, the same standard ought to apply to Mick Mulvaney. ” Two potential attorneys general under President Bill Clinton — Zoe E. Baird and Kimba Wood — lost their chances to become the first women to hold that office their nominations were pulled after revelations of nanny issues. The revelation of Mr. Mulvaney’s tax issue will test the Senate, which has greeted tax issues of past nominees with bipartisan denunciations. The process of confirming Mr. Trump’s nominees has quickly been somewhat stymied because of a slow vetting process. Several hearings were delayed because the nominees had not been cleared by the agency charged with unraveling potential conflicts of interest. Nominees undergo a rigorous screening by the F. B. I. and must clear the Office of Government Ethics to unravel any potential conflicts of interest that could present future legal problems. What is more, many committees have their own screening process. | 1 |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Back in his days as a test pilot at Air Force Base in Ohio, Gus Grissom had a message for his wife, Betty. “If I die, have a party,” he said. Betty Grissom never did have that party. But on Friday, as for the past 25 years, there was a solemn observance at the memorial for her husband and two crewmates who were killed in the Apollo 1 disaster. Mr. Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White died in a flash fire that engulfed their capsule atop a Saturn 1B rocket during a routine training operation on Jan. 27, 1967. Mr. Grissom was 40. Ms. Grissom, 89, was at the memorial again on Friday, wearing a denim jacket with a large Apollo 1 patch in patriotic colors. She joined old friends, family members, and NASA officials and veterans, among them Charlie Duke, who took part in the Apollo 16 moon landing. With the recent deaths of the astronauts John Glenn and Eugene A. Cernan and the sea changes in Washington, the gathering felt like a memorial for an era as well as for three men. At the ceremony, candles were lit for the dead astronauts by members of their families, including Cody Grissom, 22, a pilot, who is completing his last year at his grandfather’s alma mater, Purdue University. Representatives from the Navy, the Air Force and NASA spoke, and a Navy bugler performed taps after the sun went down. “It is important that Challenger and Columbia are remembered, and that Apollo 1 is remembered,” said the Kennedy Space Center director, Robert D. Cabana. “And that we take those steps that create an environment where everyone has a voice, that we really work to ensure the success and the safety of the crew as we continue to explore and move beyond our planet. ” Ms. Grissom said this year’s ceremony was probably her last. It coincided with a NASA tribute exhibit about Apollo 1 at the Kennedy Space Center, which she, like many, thought was long overdue. “I thought this is probably a good time to call it quits with them finally getting a memorial of some kind,” she said. This year’s event drew around 150 people, one of the largest crowds ever for a memorial that few people knew of unless they were related to an astronaut or were a space fan. “We need heroes today, and these were heroes,” said one such fan, Robert Pearlman, an American space historian. People from all over the world traveled to the memorial, among them Masato Maruyama, 65, who has come for the past 10 years from Tokyo. He brought a big bottle of sake to share with the family and friends. Mr. Maruyama said Mr. Grissom reminded him of his father, who was in the Japanese Navy. He remembers just where he was when the fire occurred. “It’s not the distance — it’s in here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “I’m just one of hundreds of thousands. Apollo counted a lot not just for Americans, but human beings. ” Although the launch platform is crumbling like a concrete Greek ruin, and stenciled with an eerie “Abandon in Place,” the site was decorated with three floral wreaths brought by the Grissom family. A bagpiper stood ready and Ms. Grissom sat front and center. She was treated as the event’s grande dame as people lined up to speak with her. “I want you to know it is such an honor,” said Shirley Brown, whose shop provided the wreaths. “The first time you walked in my shop and said, ‘I’m Betty Grissom,’ I thought Queen Elizabeth had walked in. You never went down, you fought all the way. ” “I never quit,” Ms. Grissom agreed, in the kind of taciturn response her astronaut husband might have offered. Many years after the accident, two space buffs, Bob Castro and Mark Pinchell, started going out to the site of the fire, which is on Air Force property, in their own private tribute. One year, they bumped into each other, and came up with the idea of doing something bigger. “Just two space geeks who were going to Pad 34 and doing their own separate ceremonies,” said Mark Grissom, 63, who was 13 when his father died. “They met at the pad and decided to invite the families. ” The Grissoms were the first astronaut family to become involved. Early on, car headlights provided the only illumination. While other astronauts and families have been absent over the years, this year Roger Chaffee’s wife, Martha, and her daughter, Sheryl, attended, along with Ed White’s daughter Bonnie. “This is the families’ memorial,” said Sonny Witt, the 45th Space Wing director of operations for Division 1 at Patrick Air Force Base, who helps provide the access. “Not the Air Force and not NASA. They are the ones that lost the husbands and brothers and fathers. Mistakes were made, and they paid the price. ” When the three Apollo 1 astronauts were trapped in their burning capsule on Pad 34, a cry for help, believed to be from Mr. Chaffee, a rookie astronaut, came over the communications system: “Hey, we’re burning up. ” Mr. White tried opening the hatch, but caught within the highly combustible pure oxygen atmosphere, the crew suffocated. “I don’t want any of this forgotten,” Ms. Grissom said. “Gus Grissom was a human being. ” Mr. Grissom, often seen as an underdog, was a favorite astronaut of many Americans. He infamously “screwed the pooch” — as Tom Wolfe put it in “The Right Stuff” — when the hatch blew on his Mercury capsule, causing it to sink it in the Atlantic upon splashdown. Mr. Grissom was initially blamed, and the sunken capsule cost the astronaut couple a visit to the Kennedy White House. In the end, he was cleared of responsibility. Ms. Grissom, who lives in Houston by herself, and Mr. Grissom were high school sweethearts in Mitchell, Ind. Her life always revolved around him. She worked as a telephone operator for Indiana Bell, putting her husband through college at Purdue, where he studied mechanical engineering on the G. I. Bill. He was selected as an astronaut after flying an Sabre on over a hundred combat missions in Korea. Death was always on the horizon for the wives. The program lost seven astronauts on the path to the moon, largely as a result of crashes of the the supersonic jet trainer airplanes the astronauts flew back and forth from where they lived in Houston and Cape Canaveral. When the news of the Apollo 1 accident came to her, delivered by a NASA doctor when she was at a friend’s home for a weekly poker night, Ms. Grissom told her friend that she had “already died 100, 000 deaths” living with her husband. Martha Chaffee, the youngest space widow, slept with the flag that hung over her husband’s coffin at Arlington. Pat White killed herself years later, a weekend before she and some of the other wives had a reunion planned, her friends said. The space widows felt rejected after their husbands died, while still living in the closely knit community of astronaut families in the “space burbs” by the Manned Spacecraft Center (later the Johnson Space Center) in Houston, nicknamed “Togethersville” because of its exclusivity. In the late ’60s, Ms. Grissom became a black sheep among the astronaut community. She was the first of the widows to sue NASA’s largest contractor, North American Rockwell, over the construction of the capsule, and she inspired Ms. Chaffee and Ms. White to do the same. Ms. Grissom eventually settled for $350, 000. On Friday, as Ms. Grissom was helped off the old launching pad, professional and amateur stargazers pointed out the International Space Station passing in the sky above, along with Venus and a shooting star. Back in the car and about to be driven to a celebratory dinner for friends and family at a hotel in nearby Cocoa Beach, she turned to her son and said, “The stars are out tonight. ” Earlier, she spoke of how her husband’s sacrifice helped pave the way for the missions to come like the Apollo 11 moonwalk her husband never got to see. Still, she said, “I’m pretty sure he got to the moon before they did. ” She added: “Of course he didn’t make it, but in spirit I think he was already there. ” | 1 |
Actually: The Big Bang didn’t happen at a place it happened at a time. “Where did the Big Bang happen?” I am often asked, as if the expansion of the universe was like a hand grenade going off and the solar system and our Milky Way galaxy were shards sent flying. The universe didn’t start at a place, it started at a time, namely 13. 8 billion years ago, according to the best cosmological data. It’s been expanding ever since — not into space because the universe by definition fills all space already, so much as into time, which as far as we know is . It is true that everything we can see now, out to 13. 8 billion years of time, was once the size of a grapefruit, buzzing with hideous energies, but that grapefruit was already part of an infinite ensemble with no edge, except one made up of time. When we look out, we look into the past, the farther we look, the more deeply into the past we see. At the center is the present. Alas there is no direction in which we can look to see the future — except perhaps into our own hearts and dreams. All we know is right now. So where is the center of the universe? Right here. Yes, you are the center of the universe. When Albert Einstein married space and time in his theory of relativity back in 1905, he taught us that our eyes are time machines. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit, and so all information comes to us, to the present, from the past. And so Einstein’s relativity teaches us that the center of the universe is everywhere and nowhere. It is the present, surrounded by concentric shells of the past. History racing at you at 186, 282 miles per second, the speed of light, the speed of all information. Your eyes are the cockpit of a time machine, filmy wet orbs looking in the only direction any of us can ever look: backward. Everything we see or feel or hear — now that gravitational waves have been discovered — took some time to get here, and so comes to our senses from the past. The moon, hovering over the horizon, is an image of light that left its cratered surface traveling at the speed of light a second and a half ago. The sun that burns your skin is eight minutes and nineteen seconds in the past. The Jupiter we see, glowering orange at the zenith these nights, is about 414 million miles out there as of this writing, or 37 minutes away in the past. The light from the center of the Milky Way, hiding behind the thick star clouds and dust lanes of Sagittarius, takes 26, 000 years to get here. While it was on the way the first primitive ice age villages grew into skyscrapered metropolises. Your lover, brushing your lashes with his or her breath, is a nanosecond gone. This is more than poetry. Mathematically, in Einsteinian terms, all the information and history available at any one place in the universe is known as a light cone. Everybody has one and everybody’s is slightly different, which means in effect that everyone’s universe is a little different. There will always be some piece of information that has reached your lover but not yet you, let alone E. T. over in the next galaxy. It gives a new definition to being alone with your thoughts. As T. S. Eliot put it: As a result every spot in the universe is unique. There will always be a piece of it you haven’t seen yet and a piece that you have seen but that nobody else has. There is no place to stand if you want to claim universal knowledge. We all need each other in order to overlap our knowledge. We don’t have to stay in our prisons. Working together and sharing, we can know everything. Or as Bob Dylan once put it, “I’ll let you be in my dreams, if I can be in yours. ” | 1 |
The 72nd anniversary of the end of the European War — well known as ‘VE Day’ in Britain and the United States — passed mostly unnoticed today, but saw solemn commemorations in France where Macron joined outgoing premier Hollande in a wreath laying ceremony. [The official end of fighting in Europe brought to an end one of the major theatres of combat in the Second World War, and was followed by a cessation of hostilities in the Pacific with VJ day some three months later. One of the most monumentally destructive wars in human history, the Second World War was born out of an unbalanced War settlement which left Europe vulnerable to disruption. In the wake of the war, the nations of Western Europe united with the United States and others to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, which faced off against former ally Soviet Russia in the Cold War, and brought a generation of stability, peace, and growth to Europe. The signing of the unconditional surrender by Germany on May 8th 1945 was met with celebration in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and elsewhere. | 1 |
Tuesday’s Department of Justice budget proposal asks Congress for $1. 8 million to “meet litigation, acquisition, and appraisal demands during the construction along the border between Mexico and the United States. ”[The money will be used to devote 20 new staff members, including 12 attorneys, to the Environmental and Natural Resources Division’s Land Acquisition Section (LAS). This small section of the DOJ handles litigation that arises when the federal government uses its “eminent domain” power to seize land for public projects. The new money and staff is be devoted to the southern border, where according to an overview released by the Department, just two LAS attorneys are currently working with a budget of only $329, 000. The proposal represents a increase in attorneys and a increase in funding for LAS assistance with construction along the border. No “wall” is mentioned in the budget proposal, and DOJ officials were reluctant to confirm that the massive scaling up at LAS was specifically linked to the wall. “We do not have border wall money in the Department of Justice budget,” Assistant Attorney General Lee Lofthus, head of DOJ’s Justice Management Division, assured reporters at a press conference announcing the proposal. Wall construction and the decision to purchase of the land necessary for it is not typically seen as a part of the DOJ’s mission. Tuesday’s budget proposals for border security and the Department of Homeland Security do, in fact, ask Congress for billions of dollars in funding increases. Up to $1. 6 billion is claimed to be devoted to “a physical wall” along the southern border. A Department of Justice press official confirmed that decisions as to which land to acquire for border security purposes would most likely be made at DHS. Defense of federal land acquisition, on the other hand, is squarely the Department of Justice’s responsibility. The LAS handles the wide variety of lawsuits and legal complications that can arise when the government purchases and condemns land for any major federal project. By all estimations, any border wall would have significant land use implications. Asked by Breitbart News if there was any specific issue compelling the department to request the addition of ten new LAS lawyers on the southern border, Assistant Attorney General Lofthus said that there was not, and made clear it was a precautionary measure based on the possibility of any number of challenges — eminent domain, environmental, etc. — that could have been made to the administration’s efforts on border security. Other immigration enforcement requests for DOJ included $75 million to fund the 75 new immigration judges and their nearly 400 staff attorneys and support staff previously announced to deal with the massive backlog of pending removal cases. This will represent a nearly 25% increasing in federal immigration judges at the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The first of this new wave of immigration judges was sworn in earlier this month. For the nation’s criminal courts, the DOJ is asking for $7. 2 to deploy 70 new assistant United States attorneys to handle exclusively immigration cases. New guidelines issued by Attorney General Jeff Sessions mandate far lower thresholds for referral for felony prosecution for illegal and harboring of illegal aliens than under previous administrations. Along with the rest of the Trump administration’s budget proposal, it now lies in the hands of Congress to approve the Department of Justice’s requests for immigration enforcement. The current continuing funding resolution expires in September. | 1 |
LANGUAGE WARNING] Following the AFC Divisional victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown celebrated by streaming on Facebook Live the postgame locker room atmosphere as Head Coach Mike Tomlin addressed the team. Brown, who was away from Tomlin celebrating with a few teammates, picked up his coach calling their next opponent, the New England Patriots, “a**holes. ” “When you get to this point in the journey, man, not a lot needs to be said. Let’s say very little moving forward. Let’s start our preparations. We just spotted these a**holes a day and a half. They played yesterday. Our game got moved to tonight. We’re going to touch down at 4 o’clock in the f***ing morning. So be it. We’ll be ready for their a**. But you ain’t got to tell them we’re coming,” Tomlin told the guys. Another voice then told players to “keep cool on social media” leading up to the AFC Championship as Brown did the opposite. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump issued an ultimatum on Thursday to recalcitrant Republicans to fall in line behind a broad health insurance overhaul or see their opportunity to repeal the Affordable Care Act vanish, demanding a Friday vote on a bill that appeared to lack a majority to pass. The demand, issued by his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, in an evening meeting with House Republicans, came after a marathon day of negotiating at the White House and in the Capitol in which Mr. Trump — who has boasted of his prowess — fell short of selling members of his own party on the health plan. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan emerged from the session and announced curtly that Mr. Trump would get his wish for a vote on Friday. Mr. Ryan refused to answer reporters’ questions about whether he expected the measure to pass. Although the House Republicans’ meeting became a cheerleading session for the bill, their leaders braced for a showdown on the floor, knowing they were likely to be at least a handful of votes short of a majority for the health insurance bill and would need to muscle their colleagues to the last to prevail. Some conservatives were still concerned that the bill was too costly and did not do enough to roll back federal health insurance mandates. Moderates and others, meanwhile, were grappling with worries of their states’ governors and fretted that the loss of benefits would be too much for their constituents to bear. Mr. Ryan had earlier postponed the initial House vote that was scheduled for Thursday to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Affordable Care Act’s signing. Mr. Trump confronted the possibility of a humiliating loss on the first significant legislative push of his presidency. At a White House meeting with members of the Freedom Caucus earlier on Thursday, Mr. Trump had agreed to the conservatives’ demands to strip federal health insurance requirements for basic benefits such as maternity care, emergency services, mental health and wellness visits from the bill. But that was not enough to placate the faction, part of the reason that Thursday’s vote was placed on hold. As House leaders struggled to negotiate with holdouts in the hopes of rescheduling the vote, Mr. Trump sent senior officials to the Capitol with a blunt message: He would agree to no additional changes, and Republicans must either support the bill or resign themselves to leaving President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement in place. “We have a great bill, and I think we have a good chance, but it’s only politics,” Mr. Trump said earlier Thursday, as it was becoming clear that his negotiating efforts had failed to persuade enough members of his party to back the plan — which was years in the making — to repeal and replace the health law. Privately, White House officials conceded that competing Republican factions were each demanding changes that could doom the effort, placing the measure in peril and Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding at a legislative deal in jeopardy. With some of its demands in place, the Freedom Caucus ratcheted up its requests, insisting on a repeal of all regulatory mandates in the Affordable Care Act, including the prohibition on excluding coverage for medical conditions and lifetime coverage caps. Mr. Trump, who has touted his negotiating skills and invited the label “the closer” as the vote approached, was receiving a painful reality check about the difficulty of governing, even with his own party in power on Capitol Hill. “Guys, we’ve got one shot here,” he told members of the Freedom Caucus at a meeting in the Cabinet Room, according to a person present in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. “This is it — we’re voting now. ” “The choice is yes or no,” Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas and a member of the Freedom Caucus, said on Thursday night. “I’m not going to vote no to keep Obamacare. That’d be a stupid damn vote. ” Others were unconvinced. Having secured Mr. Trump’s acquiescence to eliminate the requirement that insurers offer “essential health benefits,” members of the Freedom Caucus pressed their advantage. While they did not specify precisely which regulations they wanted to eliminate, the section they wanted to gut requires coverage for health conditions, allows individuals to remain on their parents’ health care plans up to age 26, bars insurers from setting different rates for men and women, prohibits annual or lifetime limits on benefits, and requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premium revenue on medical care. “We’re committed to stay here until we get it done,” said Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Freedom Caucus. “So whether the vote is tonight, tomorrow or five days from here, the president will get a victory. ” He said 30 to 40 Republicans planned to vote “no” House leaders can afford to lose only 22 in order to pass the bill. But for every concession Mr. Trump made to appease critics on the right, he lost potential supporters in the middle, including members of the centrist Tuesday Group who had balked at the bill’s Medicaid cuts and slashed insurance benefits. Moderate Republicans in that group went to the White House on Thursday but emerged unmoved in their opposition. “There’s a little bit of a balancing act,” conceded Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. Representative Leonard Lance, Republican of New Jersey, said he still opposed the bill because he did not believe it would give people “complete and affordable access” to health insurance. At the same time, a new estimate of the bill’s cost and its impact on health coverage further soured the picture for wavering lawmakers. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday issued a report on the revised version of the health care bill showing that it would cost more than the original version but would not cover more people. The report said the bill, like the original version, would result in 24 million fewer Americans having health insurance in 2026 than under current law. But recent changes to the bill, made through a series of amendments introduced on Monday, would cut its deficit savings in half. Instead of reducing the deficit by $337 billion, the new version of the bill would save only $150 billion over the decade. The budget office did not consider the effects of various additional changes that remain under negotiation, including eliminating benefit requirements and other health insurance regulations. A Quinnipiac University national poll found that voters disapproved of the Republican plan by lopsided margins, with 56 percent opposed, 17 percent supportive and 26 percent undecided. The measure did not even draw support among a majority of Republicans 41 percent approved, while 24 percent were opposed. President Trump appealed to supporters to weigh in, assuring them in a video on Twitter, “Go with our plan. It’s going to be terrific. ” The chaotic process that unfolded on Thursday exposed Republicans to criticism that they were moving recklessly in a desperate bid to get their plan passed. Representative Raúl Labrador, Republican of Idaho and a Freedom Caucus member, said the party’s leaders had tried to ram through the measure over their members’ objections. He panned what he described as a “brute force” strategy that resembled the approach of former Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. “It’s better to get it right than to get it fast,” Mr. Labrador said. It was not clear that the changes that Mr. Trump has agreed to and those being demanded could survive. Under the strict budget rules being used to advance the bill, changes to the Affordable Care Act must affect federal spending or revenues. Regulatory measures that affect private health policies, not government programs like Medicaid, are highly likely to be challenged by Senate Democrats. If the Senate parliamentarian rules in the Democrats’ favor, those changes in the House would be stripped from the bill. The emerging power of the Freedom Caucus, a group that has been historically marginalized in policy making but a thorn in the side of leadership, is one of the surprises of the rushed health care debate. The group has been empowered by the addition of Mr. Mulvaney to the senior White House staff, and Mr. Trump’s disengagement from policy details, coupled with his intense desire to score a win after a rocky start to his presidency. Mr. Obama stepped into the fray on Thursday with a lengthy defense of his law on the seventh anniversary of its signing, and a call for bipartisan improvements. “I’ve always said we should build on this law, just as Americans of both parties worked to improve Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over the years,” he wrote in a mass email to followers. “So if Republicans are serious about lowering costs while expanding coverage to those who need it, and if they’re prepared to work with Democrats and objective evaluators in finding solutions that accomplish those goals — that’s something we all should welcome. ” The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to provide “essential health benefits” in 10 broad categories, including maternity care, mental health care, addiction treatment, preventive services, emergency services and rehabilitative services. Mr. Spicer defended the removal of the “essential health benefits” regulations, saying that it would accomplish Mr. Trump’s stated goal of reducing health care costs. “Part of the reason that premiums have spiked out of control is because under Obamacare there were these mandated services that had to be included,” Mr. Spicer said. Family planning groups and advocates for women’s rights criticized Republican plans to roll back these requirements. “Paul Ryan and his House members are willing to sell out the moms of America to pass this bill,” said Dawn Laguens, an executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Conservatives say the mandates, as interpreted in rules issued by the Obama administration, add to the costs of health insurance and make it difficult for insurers to offer options to meet consumers’ needs. Democrats say that the purpose of insurance is to share risk, and that without federal requirements, insurers would once again offer policies. Before the Affordable Care Act took effect, maternity coverage was frequently offered as an optional benefit, or rider, for a hefty additional premium. | 1 |
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