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NASHVILLE — “The Bobby Bones Show” is the biggest thing in country radio, on nearly 100 stations five mornings a week, and its ringleader, Mr. Bones, 36, likes to take credit for hastening the breakthroughs of a number of acts. Lately, he’s been shining a light on a trend that he helped cultivate — a resurgence of humor in country music, which has made modest hits of albums that let mainstream and alternative country fans feel as if they’re in on the joke. For one week in February, “Redneck ____” by Wheeler Walker Jr. a provocative creation of the comedian Ben Hoffman, was both the No. 1 comedy album and the No. 9 country album. Granger Smith’s “Remington” arrived a month later, featuring jokey numbers by his outsized alter ego, Earl Dibbles Jr. And Mr. Bones’s own band, the Raging Idiots, a jocular duo that also features his show producer Eddie Garcia, recently released its first album, “The Critics Give It Five Stars,” which not only made its debut atop Billboard’s comedy albums chart but landed at No. 4 on the country chart. Country music has never been devoid of comedy: The Grand Ole Opry once featured the winking, rustic humor of Minnie Pearl, Grandpa Jones and Stringbean the Statler Brothers cultivated the rube alter egos Lester Roadhog Moran the Cadillac Cowboys and Alan Jackson cast the comic Jeff Foxworthy in a music video. But at least from an outside perspective, the flirtatious party jams dominating the format in recent years seemed to repel humor. Now country is generating new, knowing ways of poking fun at itself in song. Mike Dungan, the chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group Nashville, noted that every country songwriting era has had wits like Roger Miller and Tom T. Hall. Brad Paisley has parlayed his drollness into a gig as a host of the Country Music Association Awards and a new one as M. C. for the Wild West Comedy Festival in Nashville. “I think it’s always been there,” Mr. Dungan said. “However, I do believe that in tough times, people want to feel better. I think these types of songs are a really great to what’s going on in your life. ” Mr. Smith, 36, enlarged his audience by capitalizing on the contrast between Granger Smith, a country centrist with a temperate, conversational vocal style, and Earl Dibbles Jr. who packs his bottom lip with tobacco and spins vigorous, nonsensical yarns. The Dibbles persona struck viral gold with a string of YouTube videos. In gentle selections like “Tractor” and “Tailgate Town,” Mr. Smith sentimentalizes sturdy agrarian values. “That’s probably the real Granger, if you will,” he said. The deliberate exaggeration of the Dibbles material is best exemplified by “’Merica,” with its combination of Mötley riffs, banjo rolls and absurd patriotic bluster: “We’re undefeated world war take a cup, raise it up for my Uncle Sam. ” Mr. Bones’s fans have come to expect a similarly affectionate strain of irreverence. Growing up in rural Arkansas, he enjoyed the downhome clowning of Jerry Clower and Ray Stevens, but also liked Adam Sandler’s sophomoric ditties. On the Raging Idiots album, he accentuated his own vocal limitations with guest performances from Carrie Underwood and Mr. Paisley. “I don’t want people to think I’m trying to win best male vocalist at the C. M. A. s,” Mr. Bones said, referring to the Country Music Association Awards. “I can sing just good enough to be funny. ” After spending the first decade of his career in other radio formats and doing comedy on the side, Mr. Bones’s shift to anchoring a Nashville country station generated some skepticism. He and his crew broke with the customary respectful strolls through talking points. “People didn’t want to do the show, because they didn’t know what I would ask,” he said. Occasionally, Mr. Bones would encourage musicians to participate in daft parodies of their hits Florida Georgia Line and Dierks Bentley were among the many acts that obliged. As the show’s ratings surged, Mr. Garcia and Mr. Bones brought their musical act to charity events. “We said if we hit a million bucks, we’d try to do a comedy record,” Mr. Bones said. They raised well past that. Wheeler Walker Jr. who draws an entirely different audience, has an origin story that positions him as a outsider. To hear him tell it, he’s been chewed up and spat out by every label in Nashville, ultimately recording a batch of obscene and Southern rock numbers, the lyrics of each and every one unprintable. “Some of them, this is just me spouting off bad words,” he said, “but sometimes I use my brain a little bit more. ” (The character borrows choice autobiographical details — like hailing from Kentucky — from his creator, Mr. Hoffman, 41, who had a Comedy Central sketch show.) Having Dave Cobb, the Academy of Country Music’s 2016 Producer of the Year, produce “Redneck ____” lent the project weight. Still, it required an unorthodox marketing plan, including partnering with a pornography site to preview the music. Wheeler Walker Jr. who gives interview in character, credited the album’s theatrical bravado to his “ aggression. ” When he recorded it, he said, he was fed up with “my love life, my work life, my family life, and I just let it all out. “A lot of people are having those problems too,” he continued, “and they can listen to my album and it kind of gets it all out of their system. If you’ve got those problems, Florida Georgia Line ain’t gonna help,” he added, referring to the duo who epitomize the “bro country” trend. By far the wittiest critique of bro country came from female voices striving for a mainstream hearing in 2014, when the duo Maddie Tae teasingly inverted bro country tropes with their debut single, “Girl in a Country Song. ” “I think that’s what made the whole song, was the humor,” Maddie Marlow said. “We didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh, they’re just whining.’ We want our point to get across, but also we want people to have fun and relate to it and laugh too. ” These days, cheekiness like Maddie Tae’s — which resurfaced in their singles “Shut Up and Fish” and “Sierra” — is much more common in country than outright comedy is. Luke Bryan is not only country’s most popular entertainer but its biggest target for impersonations by other artists, thanks to his grin and dance moves that play up the silly side of his sex appeal. “He recognizes that as part of what he does, he’s going to draw a little bit of jabbing here and there,” Mr. Dungan said. “Yes, there is a smile to almost everything he does, and I think that’s why he resonates so well. ” The Raging Idiots have a bit called “Fake Luke Bryan,” in which Mr. Garcia apes Mr. Bryan’s unflagging enthusiasm and glottal delivery. But Mr. Bones brushed off the notion that they would have sought the star’s blessing before recording the shtick: “I’ve worked in alternative and pop and sports and . This is by far the nicest, format I’ve been in. ” | 1 |
A federal judge blocked — shortly before it was to take effect — a Mississippi law that would have given special protections to those who opposed marriage. In a ruling, Judge Carlton W. Reeves of Federal District Court said the law created “a vehicle for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. ” By setting aside particular beliefs for protection as opposed to religious convictions in general, the law unconstitutionally “put its thumb on the scale to favor some religious beliefs over others. ” He concluded by issuing a preliminary injunction preventing the law from taking effect. Rob McDuff, a lawyer who argued against the law along with the Mississippi Center for Justice, said in a statement that “the federal court’s decision recognizes that religious freedom can be preserved along with equal rights for all people regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. ” Some of Mississippi’s political leaders, who had staunchly defended the law, pledged to appeal. “The law simply provides religious accommodations granted by many other states and federal law,” Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, said in a statement. “I am disappointed Judge Reeves did not recognize that reality. I look forward to an aggressive appeal. ” But not all the officials who were named defendants in the lawsuits agreed. Jim Hood, the state attorney general, a Democrat, said in a statement he would have to “think long and hard about spending taxpayer money” on an appeal, given the likely costs and the strength of the ruling. He said “the churchgoing public was duped” into believing that the law protected religious freedoms. “I hate to see politicians continue to prey on people who pray, go to church, follow the law and help their fellow man. ” Though state legislatures across the country considered laws this year to explicitly protect those who object to marriage, Mississippi’s law, known as H. B. 1523, was the most definitive one to pass, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group. The measure, which would have taken effect at 12:01 a. m. on Friday, is not a version of a traditional religious freedom act, which gives legal backing to those who argue that a given law infringes on their beliefs. Mississippi already has such a law on the books. Instead, it would create an array of protections specifically for those who believe that marriage is only for couples, that sexual relations are reserved for marriage and that gender identity is determined immutably by anatomy at birth. Under the law, those who act according to these beliefs in foster care, counseling, school administration, facility rentals and wedding services would have been fully shielded from a host of potential government actions involving such things as hiring or firing decisions, fees or the issuing of state contracts. The law would have also allowed court clerks to refuse to grant wedding licenses to couples as long as accommodations were made for the applicants to receive their licenses anyway. Judge Reeves struck down that element in a separate ruling on Monday, saying that while state officials were free to disagree, the Supreme Court ruling on marriage is the law of the land. In a footnote in his ruling on Thursday night — Judge Reeves, who was appointed by President Obama and is the second federal judge in Mississippi — compared Mr. Bryant’s remarks on a state’s “right to ” when it comes to gay marriage to former Gov. Ross Barnett’s 1962 speech before the Legislature in which he invoked states’ rights to oppose the integration of the University of Mississippi. Mississippi’s law was condemned by civil rights activists, business groups and a number of the state’s mayors, particularly along the Gulf Coast. But given its lack of Fortune 500 headquarters and its uncontested conservative political landscape, Mississippi did not face the same broad backlash as North Carolina did after passing a law restricting bathroom access for transgender people. There have been multiple legal challenges with a wide array of plaintiffs: gay and straight, transgender and not. Lawyers in the case, which arose from suits filed by the Mississippi Center for Justice and the Campaign for Southern Equality, argued that the law was motivated by animus toward gay and transgender people and that it unconstitutionally endorsed and provided exclusive protection for “certain narrow religious beliefs. ” Lawyers for the state responded that the law did not affect the rights of gay or transgender people and that it would not favor a particular religious doctrine any more than conscientious objector laws do. “Protection of free conscience and the free exercise of religion are legitimate and compelling governmental interests,” lawyers for the state said in a motion. It is reasonable to protect the convictions outlined in the law, they continued, “even though plaintiffs disagree with those beliefs and find them ‘offensive.’ ” But Judge Reeves countered that there were already laws in Mississippi that protect religious beliefs from government interference. The difference, he said, is that those laws protect all beliefs and not specific ones, which the judge ruled would violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause. “If three specific beliefs are ‘protected by this act,’ it follows that every other religious belief a citizen holds is not protected by the act,” he wrote, saying that Christians who hold different views would “become Christians” in Mississippi. Judge Reeves also said the law would establish “a system by which L. G. B. T. persons and unmarried persons can be subjected to differential treatment based solely on their status. ” | 1 |
Dr. David Duke and Adrian Salbuch : The international impact of a U.S President Trump and U.S. Senator Duke! November 1, 2016 at 12:32 pm
Dr. David Duke and Adrian Salbuch : The international impact of a U.S President Trump and U.S. Senator Duke!
Today Dr. Duke had renown Argentine journalist Adrian Salbuchi as his guest for the hour.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern.
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WASHINGTON — President Trump’s executive order on immigration has prompted a constitutional showdown that could leave a mark on the law for generations and seems likely to end in a landmark Supreme Court decision. A ruling by the court on Mr. Trump’s travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries could help answer some crucial legal questions: How much independent constitutional authority does the president have over immigration, and how much power has Congress given him? The likely answer to both questions: a lot. But other parts of the Constitution may temper or defeat that power. Among them are the due process and equal protection clauses and the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion. Here is a look at the leading arguments in the case. Many trial judges around the country have blocked aspects of Mr. Trump’s executive order. But none have issued an order as broad as the one by Judge James Robart, a federal judge in Seattle, who blocked the key parts of the executive order, which had suspended travel from the seven countries and limited the nation’s refugee program. The case is now before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. That court on Saturday declined to issue an immediate stay of Judge Robart’s order, but it indicated that it would weigh in soon after additional briefs were filed, with the last one due Monday afternoon. After it rules, an appeal to the Supreme Court seems likely. Judge Robart’s brisk ruling contained almost no reasoning. By contrast, Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, of the Federal District Court in Boston, issued a decision on Friday refusing to block the program and discussing the legal arguments in detail. Judge Gorton also sketched out the broader picture. “The rich immigrant history of the United States has long been a source of strength and pride in this country,” Judge Gorton wrote. “Conversely, the public interest in safety and security in this dangerous world is strong as well. ” The balance, he wrote, tipped in favor of Mr. Trump. Article II of the Constitution confers authority on the president, the Supreme Court has said, to conduct foreign affairs and address immigration. In their brief to Judge Robart, lawyers for Washington State, one of the two plaintiffs, along with the State of Minnesota, said there were constitutional checks on these powers. “While courts generally give more latitude to the political branches in the immigration context, this does not mean that the political branches can act with impunity,” the brief said. “Federal courts,” the brief said, “have no more sacred role than protecting marginalized groups against irrational, discriminatory conduct. ” In the Ninth Circuit, the Trump administration said judges were to decide cases involving national security. “Unlike the president,” the administration’s brief said, “courts do not have access to classified information about the threat posed by terrorist organizations operating in particular nations, the efforts of those organizations to infiltrate the United States, or gaps in the vetting process. ” Noah G. Purcell, the solicitor general of Washington State, appeared to concede in court that there were areas in which Mr. Trump was entitled to act. But he asked the court to protect people whose lives had been changed by Mr. Trump’s order in a flash. “The focus of our claim,” he said, “is on people who have been here and have, overnight, lost the right to travel, lost the right to visit their families, lost the right to go perform research, lost the right to go speak at conferences around the world. And also people who had lived here for a long time and happened to be overseas at the time of this order, which came with no warning whatsoever, and suddenly lost the right to return to the United States. ” On Friday, defending Mr. Trump’s executive order in a Seattle courtroom, Michelle Bennett, a Justice Department lawyer, cited Youngstown Sheet Tube Co. v. Sawyer, a 1952 decision in which the Supreme Court rejected President Harry S. Truman’s assertion that he had the authority to seize steel mills during the Korean War. The most famous part of the decision is a concurrence from Justice Robert H. Jackson, which set out a framework for considering clashes between presidential power and congressional authority. The president has the most power when he acts with congressional authorization, Justice Jackson said, and an intermediate amount when Congress is silent. The president’s power is at its “lowest ebb,” Justice Jackson wrote, when Congress has forbidden a particular action. Truman’s actions fell into the third category, Justice Jackson wrote. Ms. Bennett, by contrast, said Mr. Trump’s order was in the first category. “Here we have the president acting pursuant to power that Congress gave him, which means, under the Youngstown steel seizure case, he’s acting at the apex of his power,” she said. A key part of immigration law does give the president broad power. It says, “Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. ” But another part of the law forbids discrimination “because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence,” but only “in the issuance of an immigrant visa. ” The Trump administration argues that the power to bar entry, the subject of the first law, is broader than the limits on issuing visas. Lawyers for Washington State have said that the executive order violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against government establishment of religion because its provisions on the refugee program favor minority religions. “President Trump and his advisers have made clear that the very purpose of this order is to tilt the scales in favor of Christian refugees at the expense of Muslims,” they wrote in their brief to Judge Robart. The Trump administration urged the Ninth Circuit to reject arguments based on religious discrimination, even though Mr. Trump has said he meant to favor Christian refugees. Judicial consideration of the president’s motives, the brief said, would violate the separation of powers. “The more searching inquiry envisioned by the states would create substantial problems, by permitting probing of the president’s subjective motive in issuing the order,” the brief said. The states challenging the order face the initial hurdle of demonstrating that they have suffered the sort of direct and concrete harm that gives them standing to sue. Judge Robart ruled that they did, relying on a decision from the federal appeals court in New Orleans, which said Texas could sue to challenge President Barack Obama’s plan to defer the deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants and allow them to work. “The executive order adversely affects the states’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations and freedom to travel,” Judge Robart wrote. He said the states had been hurt because the order affected their public universities and their tax bases. In its Ninth Circuit brief, the Trump administration called the states’ asserted injuries “attenuated and speculative” and did not address the Texas decision. In court in Seattle on Friday, Ms. Bennett said the government disagreed with the Texas ruling. | 1 |
After spending years cultivating an elite roster of Wall Street and corporate clients, Jay Clayton will now be responsible for policing some of those same types of companies. Mr. Clayton, a longtime partner at the law firm Sullivan Cromwell who is President Trump’s pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, has represented big banks like Goldman Sachs and Barclays as well as prominent hedge funds and corporate executives, according to a financial disclosure form made public on Wednesday by the Office of Government Ethics. Some of the clients were listed on Sullivan Cromwell’s website — and Mr. Clayton kept nine others confidential — but the filing reveals a number of previously unadvertised assignments, including work he has done for companies facing intense government scrutiny: Deutsche Bank, UBS and Volkswagen. Other clients represented by Mr. Clayton, whose given name is Walter, include the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, the film studio the Weinstein Company, Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn, and William C. Erbey, former head of the mortgage firm Ocwen. In the hedge fund sector, Mr. Clayton, 50, has represented William A. Ackman’s Pershing Square as well as Paul Tudor Jones. He has also represented Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, a company in which Mr. Ackman is a major investor and which is being investigated by the S. E. C. over potential accounting irregularities. Mr. Clayton, who says he will recuse himself from certain cases involving former clients, has also personally invested in a number of hedge funds and private equity firms through special Sullivan Cromwell investment vehicles, according to the filing. He earned $7. 6 million from Sullivan Cromwell over the past year or so and has investments in portfolios managed by Apollo Global Management, Bain Capital, J. C. Flowers and Perry Partners. His wife, Gretchen, who works at Goldman Sachs, has a number of investments in funds as well as a small amount, described in his filing as being less than $1, 001, with a retirement account once managed by Omega Advisors, a hedge fund now fighting S. E. C. charges. Mr. Clayton’s disclosures offer a rare glimpse into his client list and family wealth — a sum of at least $50 million, his filing shows — and may reinforce a view among consumer groups and Democratic lawmakers that he could have conflicting interests as a Wall Street regulator. Although he is expected to broadly support the agency’s enforcement efforts, he has made statements suggesting that he will probably move to ease at least some of the regulations weighing on Wall Street clients. Some of those clients are well represented in the new administration, perhaps none more than Goldman. The Trump administration has become a virtual magnet for former Goldman executives: Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary Gary D. Cohn, the chairman of the national economic council, and Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, have all worked at Goldman. The addition of Mr. Clayton, who represented Goldman during the 2008 financial crisis, will most likely fuel concerns that the bank has outsize influence in the administration. But one Democrat is scrutinizing more than just Mr. Clayton’s ties to Wall Street. In a previously unreported letter, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada and one of the newest members of the Senate Banking Committee, questioned him on his representation of the Nordic telecommunications company TeliaSonera. The letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, notes that TeliaSonera has had business ties to Russia and Iran. One of the deals Mr. Clayton worked on for TeliaSonera, for example, involved another company controlled by a Russian oligarch. “I am particularly concerned about your involvement with TeliaSonera,” Ms. Cortez Masto writes in the letter, in which she asks that he clarify “the precise nature of your representation. ” A spokesman for Mr. Clayton said, “In both business and litigation, Jay has been on the opposite side of Russia in resolving disputes. ” Mr. Clayton, whose nomination must clear the banking committee and then the full Senate, is expected to be confirmed. A committee hearing is scheduled for March 23. One former colleague said in an article that while “the natural tendency of Democrats will be to criticize this pick as a ‘Wall Street insider,’” in fact “the good guys should have nothing to worry about and the bad guys should be concerned. ” And in a statement, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. the Manhattan district attorney and a Democrat, said, “Jay will be a balanced and thoughtful leader at the S. E. C. with great experience in the agency’s regulatory and enforcement practices. ” Mr. Vance added, “Jay will call it as he sees it, will have no bias in his new role either for business or against it. ” Still, Mr. Clayton’s client list highlights a practical challenge that awaits him. When top corporate lawyers take over the S. E. C. they must recuse themselves from certain matters involving former clients to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. In addition to disclosing his client list and law firm wealth, Mr. Clayton filed an ethics letter providing a broad explanation of how he plans to navigate such potential conflicts. While his recusal plan is in line with other similar nominees, it appears to offer him leeway in handling Wall Street cases. In the letter, he promises not to participate “personally and substantially” in a matter involving a former client for a period of one year “after I last provided service to that client, unless I am first authorized to participate. ” The same restriction, which complies with federal ethics rules, will also apply more broadly to Sullivan Cromwell clients, he writes. In the letter, Mr. Clayton says he would divest himself of his interest in some 175 investment funds and stock holdings that either he or his wife hold. . The challenge of recusals is not unique to Mr. Clayton. His predecessor, Mary Jo White, had been a partner at the law firm Debevoise Plimpton, a relationship that forced her to step away from a number of important cases. If confirmed, Mr. Clayton would be the latest millionaire to join the Trump administration. And his ties to Wall Street underscore how Mr. Trump, despite campaigning against the wealthy global elite, has stocked his administration with Wall Street lawyers and bankers, particularly from Goldman. At the height of the financial crisis, Mr. Clayton advised Goldman on a $5 billion investment by Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, a critical deal for the bank. Mr. Clayton’s wife works as a adviser at Goldman, though she will resign once he is confirmed, the ethics letter says. And Mr. Clayton is just one of many Sullivan Cromwell lawyers who have done work for Goldman. For Democrats, Mr. Clayton’s relationship with TeliaSonera could raise its own concerns. On his Sullivan Cromwell bio, Mr. Clayton has said he represented TeliaSonera in “various transactions. ” Those deals include one in which the company, among other things, combined its ownership interests in MegaFon, a Russian mobile phone operator, with another Russian company, Altimo, that has long been controlled by a Russian billionaire, Mikhail Fridman. It is not unusual for United States law firms to advise corporate clients doing business in Russia, and Mr. Clayton is not thought to have any ties to the Russian companies. Yet, as investigations into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia dominate the early days of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the TeliaSonera deals could provide Democrats with some ammunition. Ms. Cortez Masto, the Nevada Democrat, also points in her letter to TeliaSonera’s ties to Iran, which stem from the company’s stake in Turkcell, a Turkish mobile phone provider. And last year, she notes, the company disclosed that it had received an offer from authorities in the United States and the Netherlands to settle investigations into bribery accusations for $1. 4 billion. That case, which Mr. Clayton did not have a role in, involves potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a crucial component of the S. E. C. ’s enforcement arsenal. Mr. Clayton spoke out against the bribery law in a 2011 report by a New York City Bar Association he led as “unilateral and zealous enforcement of the F. C. P. A” that may “exacerbate the problem of overseas corruption. ” Ms. Cortez Masto also noted in her letter that “four of your clients have been charged with violations of S. E. C. rules in the last five years,” including the giant hedge fund Capital Management. The hedge fund’s African unit pleaded guilty to bribery charges in September, with the firm paying a $413 million fine as part of a deferred prosecution agreement to settle both criminal and civil charges. Mr. Clayton’s wife’s modest investment in the Omega fund could also raise questions. The S. E. C last year filed an insider trading complaint against the hedge fund’s founder, the billionaire investor Leon Cooperman. Omega had managed the investment for Goldman’s retirement plan, and the Wall Street bank pulled its employees’ $300 million from the account in October, several months after the S. E. C. filed its suit. Mr. Cooperman, 73, is fighting the S. E. C. charges, saying that he is “not going to let these people destroy my legacy. ” | 1 |
See the list of 65 presstitutes who colluded with the Clintons to defraud America and steal the election... CALL FOR THEIR ARREST
Tags: presstitutes , Clinton corruption , fake media (NaturalNews) To even call this 2016 president election an "election" is a cruel joke. Democracy is supposed to be about open, fair and free elections, and those elections must be predicated on open, fair and free access to information so that voters can make an informed decision. Yet all we have today is a media that's in the tank for Hillary, a justice system infiltrated by deep state corruption, a voting system rife with leftist fraud, a culture of extremist, violent intimidation of those who oppose Clinton and an Obama regime steeped in such criminality and fraud that it actively encourages illegal aliens to run across the border to America so they can vote.This isn't an election... it's a coordinated leftist coup d'etat .The aim of the coup is to occupy all the positions of power in America with radical leftists, communists and criminal democrat party loyalists. From those positions of power, the strategy is to systematically dismantle the American Constitution, Bill of Rights and Supreme Court while crushing the American middle class with punitive economic policies that keep the masses trapped in poverty (Obamacare, anyone?).It's now abundantly obvious to nearly every thinking person that democracy has been ripped to shreds in America , and the deep state criminal regime in power exists solely to protect and enrich itself at the expense of everyone else.GONE is the idea of representing the interests of the People.GONE is any desire for government to operate with transparency and accountability.GONE is any trust in voters by the powerful elite, who distrust the voters so much that they make sure every election is rigged in advance.GONE is any economic policy rooted in sanity or mathematics. Now, numbers and dollars from Washington are all rooted in mental illness and delusion.GONE is any semblance of the concept that justice is blind and that all laws apply to all the people just the same, no matter how powerful they may be.GONE is any public trust in ANY institution of government, from Congress, to the federal courts, to the regulators like the EPA, to even the FBI.GONE is any notion that the government should defend the nation's borders and control the flow of immigrants into the country for all the obvious reasons.And GONE is any concept of journalistic integrity across the mainstream media, an institution that now holds actual journalism in contempt (i.e. the work of Wikileaks or Project Veritas). Now, the media insists that no one question the government, no transparency is necessary, and government operatives have no obligation to explain any of their actions or cover-ups. Richard Nixon is rolling in his grave... The illusion of democracy Thanks to the complete abandonment of democracy and honest government in America, We the People now wake up each day as slaves living in a totalitarian dictatorship pretending to be a democracy , complete with a pretend press, a pretend judicial system, a pretend legislative branch and even a pretend central bank pumping out pretend currency.We turn on our televisions to watch pretend journalists named "Stephanopoulos" churn out pretend news that pretends Bill and Hillary Clinton are honest, affectionate, trustworthy elders instead of the phony frauds and crooks they've really turned out to be. And then we're blasted with pretend polls that claim the most unpopular woman in America -- Hillary Clinton -- is somehow ahead of Donald Trump by 12 points. Nobody believes the polls anymore... Every time REAL news breaks through the surface, the establishment tells us that's all fake. Wikileaks emails, we're ridiculously told, aren't real (even though they are). Project Veritas videos have been "edited," we're told, as if that somehow negates the very clear words caught on video as they are uttered by Clinton operatives committing serious crimes. The only news that's "real," we're told, is the fabricated fake news planted in the New York Times by the Clinton campaign. A call to arrest and imprison the presstitutes that are defrauding America and destroying democracy In truth, the leftist media is staffed by presstitutes -- media whores who have sold out to the Clintons in exchange for "access" to her bogus news releases (i.e. planted false narratives). As reported by The Free Thought Project , all the following "journalists" are seditious whores who should no doubt be arrested, indicted and prosecuted for engaging in criminal collusion and racketeering with the Clintons:"Progressive Helpers" | 0 |
How to BREAK THE CYCLE of human complacency and servitude New video: How to BREAK THE CYCLE of human complacency and servitude
by Mike Adams , the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) It’s time to break the cycle of complacency and servitude so that we can move humanity forward. We must move past the age of centralized government corruption and control. We must take responsibility for our lives and the repercussions of our actions. It’s time for humanity to end the age of servitude and proclaim our independence from all the systems of manipulation, deceit and control that try to dominate our minds (the media, the government, false science, false social narratives, etc).
In my newest documentary-style video, I reveal how we can all break the cycle of human complacency and servitude by raising our self-awareness about all the ways we are being systematically manipulated or deceived.
From the video: “One of the hardest things in the world is to introduce someone to the real world they’ve never seen. Because they’ve never lived in it. They’ve lived in a fictional construct inside their own head. They’ve been swimming in fictional delusions and belief systems and cultural narratives that simply aren’t true. And yet they think that’s reality.”
Learn how to question your beliefs, question your senses and preempt the social engineering mechanisms that have turned your brain into a puppet of the corrupt establishment.
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MECHANICSBURG, Pa. — Donald J. Trump unabashedly trumpeted his support for warmer relations with Russia at a campaign rally here on Monday night, acidly mocking opponents who say he is too friendly to Vladimir V. Putin, the country’s strongman president. Mr. Trump, who has been under fire from Democrats and some conservative national security leaders for his accommodating stance toward Mr. Putin, cast his supportive remarks as a matter of practical necessity. By aligning itself with Russia, he said, the United States could more easily take on the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. “If we could get Russia to help us get rid of ISIS — if we could actually be friendly with Russia — wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said. Repeating the question moments later, he won loud applause from the crowd: “If we could get along with Russia, wouldn’t that be a good thing, instead of a bad thing?” Noting that Mr. Putin had made laudatory comments about him, Mr. Trump teased political rivals, including Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, who have criticized his friendliness with the Russian leader. “They say, ‘Putin likes Trump,’” Mr. Trump began. He continued the mimicry: “How dare he like Putin? How dare he?” Mr. Trump also reiterated his view that NATO, the security alliance formed as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, was “obsolete. ” Both Mrs. Clinton and her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, have chastised Mr. Trump for praising Mr. Putin, and Mr. Trump has raised concerns among defense experts for repeated comments that appear to signal tolerance of Russia’s aggression in Eastern Europe. In an appearance on “This Week” on ABC News over the weekend, Mr. Trump declined to express disapproval of Russia for its annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014. On the contrary, Mr. Trump suggested that the people there might be happier under Russian rule. And the Republican nominee said in an interview with The New York Times in July that he would not necessarily come to the defense of NATO states in the event of invasion, and would decide based on whether the country in question had paid its dues to the alliance. Mr. Trump also touched off an uproar during the Democratic National Convention last week when he said in a news conference that he hoped Russian hackers would infiltrate Mrs. Clinton’s email. He later said he was being sarcastic. With his appearance in Pennsylvania on Monday, Mr. Trump showed no intention of abandoning his embrace of Mr. Putin and his country. He professed disbelief that political opponents have said he should swear off Mr. Putin. “He said nice things about me,” Mr. Trump said. “Why would I disavow it? Why?” He derided Mrs. Clinton at length and accused her Democratic primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, of having made a “deal with the devil” to support her in the general election. “She’s the devil,” Mr. Trump said of Mrs. Clinton. | 1 |
Janice Crouch, who founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network with her husband, Paul, and preached a “gospel of prosperity” with him on TBN programs, reaching millions of viewers around the world, died on Tuesday. She was 78. Her death was confirmed in a family statement on TBN’s website. The network said she had been hospitalized on May 25 after a stroke, but gave no other details. At her death, the network and members of her family were fighting in court over multiple lawsuits, including one involving an accusation of rape and a and another claiming financial improprieties. Mrs. Crouch was a convivial and colorful presence on the air, typically appearing in a bouffant frosted pink or champagne. Speaking with a singsong lilt, she referred to herself as Mama as she delivered an uplifting version of Scripture that included personal encounters with the divine and linked spirituality to material success. A donation to their church, the Crouches said, would be repaid with divinely ordained riches. Mrs. Crouch and her husband were the longtime hosts of TBN’s talk show “Praise the Lord. ” She was also TBN’s vice president and director of network programming, helping to develop many of its popular shows. The Crouches started their network as a single station, now called 40, in Santa Ana, Calif. in 1973 with the help of the televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who went on to found their own hugely popular televised ministry in South Carolina. In time, Mr. Crouch said, a vision inspired him to invest in satellite distribution, which became the foundation of TBN’s global broadcasting empire. TBN, which calls itself the world’s most watched religious broadcaster, now has programming 24 hours a day, providing Bible study, religious movies and soap operas, and Christian rock videos. Evangelists like Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Robert H. Schuller have appeared on the network. The network says its shows are translated into many languages and appear on more than 80 satellite channels and more than 5, 000 television stations. TBN’s parent company listed $799, 244, 556 in total assets and received $52, 905, 172 in contributions and grants in its tax filings for 2014, the most recent year available. Twice a year, the Crouches held “ ” drives in which they appealed for donations to keep programs like “Praise the Lord” on the air. The Crouches were criticized for using those donations to finance a luxurious lifestyle, including the use of private jets. The family was reported to have multiple homes, among them mansions in Newport Beach, Calif. In 2007, TBN purchased Holy Land Experience, a religious theme park in Orlando, Fla. for $37 million. Mrs. Crouch became Holy Land’s president and creative director and began a major remodeling of the park, renting adjacent rooms in a luxury hotel for nearly two years. One was used to house clothing and her two Maltese dogs, which otherwise occupied a motor home. The family controversies made headlines in 2004, when The Los Angeles Times reported that Mr. Crouch had paid a former employee, Enoch Lonnie Ford, $425, 000 in 1998 after Mr. Ford threatened to sue TBN for unjustly firing him. As part of the settlement, the newspaper said, Mr. Ford agreed not to publicize his claim that he had had a sexual encounter with Mr. Crouch. But Mr. Ford later threatened to publish a manuscript that discussed the matter. Mr. Crouch denied Mr. Ford’s claims, and the case was settled by a private arbitrator. In 2012, The Orange County Register reported that a granddaughter, Carra Crouch, had sued the network that year, alleging that she was raped by a TBN employee in 2006, when she was 13, and that the Crouch family had covered up the assault. The suit contended that when Carra Crouch told her grandmother about the assault, Mrs. Crouch “became furious” and screamed at her granddaughter, saying, “It is your fault. ” That suit has not yet been resolved, according to documents in Orange County Superior Court. In another lawsuit filed around the same time, another granddaughter, Brittany Koper, who was TBN’s finance director, accused the network of misusing donated money. Ms. Koper and her husband, Michael, were fired and accused by the network of stealing $1. 3 million. TBN has since filed multiple suits against the Kopers. Paul Crouch Jr. Mrs. Crouch’s son and Ms. Koper’s father, was forced off TBN’s staff and quit its board because of the acrimony. Janice Wendell Bethany was born in New Brockton, Ala. on March 14, 1938. She grew up in Columbus, Ga. as a pastor’s daughter raised in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination. She graduated from high school and attended Evangel College (now Evangel University) in Springfield, Mo. before she met Paul Crouch in 1956. They married a year later and began to preach. Mr. Crouch also worked in radio and television, and in 1965, they moved to California to pursue their career in religious television. Mr. Crouch died in 2013. Mrs. Crouch is survived by Paul Jr. and another son, Matthew, who is TBN’s chairman a sister, Dorothy Casoria several grandchildren and a . | 1 |
President Donald Trump released his budget blueprint on Thursday, an effort to prioritize safety and security for the American people while dramatically cutting other agencies considered sacred cows by the left. [“To keep Americans safe, we have made tough choices that have been put off for too long,” Trump wrote in a message to Congress. “But we have also made necessary investments that are long overdue. ” The outline increases defense spending by $54 billion and increases funding for immigration enforcement as well as $4. 1 billion investment for his promised wall on the southern border. “We must ensure that our courageous servicemen and women have the tools they need to deter war, and when called upon to fight, do only one thing: Win. ” Trump wrote. The budget includes Trump’s promises to veterans, as the Department of Veterans Affairs gets a 10 percent increase in spending. Trump cut funding for several agencies, including a 28 percent cut in the State Department, mostly because of cuts in foreign aid programs. The EPA also experiences a 31 percent cut, the biggest loser in the budget. The Department of Agriculture gets a 29 percent cut and the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor are also cut by over 20 percent. Although there are over 13 percent cuts in the Department of Education, Trump’s budget proposes $168 million for charter school programs and $250 million for a choice program, according to the Washington Post. The Budget calls for the elimination of funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well as the endowments for the Arts and the Humanities. “We are going to do more with less, and make the Government lean and accountable to the people,” read Trump’s message to Congress. The budget outlines Trump’s spending priorities, but a more detailed document is expected to be released by the White House in May. | 1 |
It Is Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off All Of Our Debt May 21st, 2015
Did you know that if you took every single penny away from everyone in the United States that it still would not be enough to pay off the national debt? Today, the debt of exceeds $145,000 per household, and it is getting worse with each passing year. Many believe that if we paid it off a little bit at a time that we could eventually pay it all off, but as you will see below that isn’t going to work either. It has been projected that “mandatory” federal spending on programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare plus interest on the national debt will exceed total federal revenue by the year 2025. That is before a single dollar is spent on the U.S. military, homeland security, paying federal workers or building any roads and bridges. So no, we aren’t going to be “paying down” our debt any time in the foreseeable future. And of course it isn’t just our 18 trillion dollar national debt that we need to be concerned about. Overall, Americans are a total of 58 trillion dollars in debt. 35 years ago, that number was sitting at just 4.3 trillion dollars. There is no way in the world that all of that debt can ever be repaid. The only thing that we can hope for now is for this debt bubble to last before it finally explodes.
It shocks many people to learn that our debt is far larger than the total amount of money in existence. So let’s take a few moments and go through some of the numbers.
When most people think of “money”, they think of coins, paper money and checking accounts. All of those are contained in one of the most basic measures of money known as M1 . The following definition of M1 comes from Investopedia …
A measure of the money supply that includes all physical money, such as coins and currency, as well as demand deposits, checking accounts and Negotiable Order of Withdrawal (NOW) accounts. M1 measures the most liquid components of the money supply, as it contains cash and assets that can quickly be converted to currency.
As you can see from the chart below, M1 has really grown in recent years thanks to rampant quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve. At the moment it is sitting just shy of 3 trillion dollars…
So if you gathered up all coins, all paper currency and all money in everyone’s checking accounts, would that even make much of a dent in our debt?
Nope.
We’ll have to find more “money” to grab.
M2 is a broader definition of money than M1 is, because it includes more things. The following definition of M2 comes from Investopedia …
A measure of money supply that includes cash and checking deposits (M1) as well as near money. “Near money” in M2 includes savings deposits, money market mutual funds and other time deposits, which are less liquid and not as suitable as exchange mediums but can be quickly converted into cash or checking deposits.
As you can see from the chart below, M2 is sitting just short of 12 trillion dollars right now…
That is a lot more “money”, but it still wouldn’t pay off our national debt, much less our total debt of 58 trillion dollars.
So is there anything else that we could grab?
Well, the broadest definition of “money” that is commonly used is M3 . The following definition of M3 comes from Investopedia …
A measure of money supply that includes M2 as well as large time deposits, institutional money market funds, short-term repurchase agreements and other larger liquid assets. The M3 measurement includes assets that are less liquid than other components of the money supply, and are more closely related to the finances of larger financial institutions and corporations than to those of businesses and individuals. These types of assets are referred to as “near, near money.”
The Federal Reserve no longer provides charts for M3, but according to John Williams of shadowstats.com , M3 is currently sitting somewhere in the neighborhood of 17 trillion dollars.
So even with the broadest possible definition of “money”, we simply cannot come up with enough to pay off the debt of , much less the rest of our debts.
That is not good news at all.
Alternatively, could we just start spending less than we bring in and start paying down the national debt a little bit at a time?
Perhaps that may have been true at one time, but now we are really up against a wall. Our rapidly aging population is going to put an enormous amount of stress on our national finances in the years ahead.
According to U.S. Representative Frank Wolf , interest on the national debt plus “mandatory” spending on programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will surpass the total amount of federal revenue by the year 2025. That is before a single penny is spent on homeland security, national defense, paying federal workers, etc.
But even now things are a giant mess. We are told that “deficits are under control”, but that is a massive hoax that is based on accounting gimmicks. During fiscal year 2014, the U.S. national debt increased by more than a trillion dollars . That is not “under control”– that is a raging national crisis.
Many believe that that we could improve the situation by raising taxes. And yes, a little bit more could probably be squeezed out of us, but the impact on government finances would be negligible. Since the end of World War II, the amount of tax revenue taken in by has fluctuated in a range between 15 and 20 percent of GDP no matter what tax rates have been. I believe that it is possible to get up into the low twenties, but that would also be very damaging to our economy and the American public would probably throw a huge temper tantrum.
The real problem, of course, is our out of control spending.
During the past two decades, spending by has grown 63 percent more rapidly than inflation, and “mandatory” spending on programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has actually doubled after you adjust for inflation.
We simply cannot afford to keep spending money like this.
And then there is the matter of interest on the national debt. For the moment, the rest of the world is lending us gigantic mountains of money at ridiculously low interest rates. However, if the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt was just to return to the long-term average, we would be spending more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.
So the best possible environment for “paying down our debt” that we are ever going to see is happening right now. The only place that interest rates on U.S. government debt have to go is up, and our population is going to just keep getting older and more dependent on government programs.
Meanwhile, our overall debt continues to spiral out of control as well. According to CNBC , the total amount of debt that Americans owe has reached a staggering 58.7 trillion dollars…
As the nation entered the 1980s, there was comparatively little debt—just about $4.3 trillion. That was only about 1.5 times the size of gross GDP. Then a funny thing happened.
The gap began to widen during the decade, and then became basically parabolic through the ’90s and into the early part of the 21st century.
Though debt took a brief decline in 2009 as the country limped its way out of the financial crisis, it has climbed again and is now, at $58.7 trillion, 3.3 times the size of GDP and about 13 times what it was in 1980, according to data from the Federal Reserve’s St. Louis branch. (The total debt measure is not to be confused with the $18.2 trillion national debt, which is 102 percent of GDP and is a subset of the total figure.)
As I discussed above, there isn’t enough money in our entire system to even pay off a significant chunk of that debt.
So what happens when the total amount of debt in a society vastly exceeds the total amount of money?
Is there any way out other than collapse?
You can share what you think by posting a comment below… Greece Says That It Will Default On June 5th, And Moody’s Warns Of A ‘Deposit Freeze’ » kfilly
Nope, we are a run away freight train gaining speed before we get to Dead Man’s Curve. This is not going to end well. As usual, this is another great article. MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse
Thank you for the kind words kfilly. SunnyFlaSnotress
You know other countries owe us money too This is a very one-sided, biased article. fortunato
Not my problem and I don’t care how much money our government racks up in debt.
After all what can we the people do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
This problem will never end and the debt will only grow larger and larger. All governments all over the world are the same way. State and local too.
If the majority of people started doing the underhanded things that the elites do I can guarantee you that the scales would tip back in our favor not theirs.
They did a study on the human brain and it showed that the more money a person has the greedier and self centered they became. Google it to read the article. df NJ
You’ve probably heard that power corrupts. I read in a psychology book an idea called the metamorphic effect of power. The idea is whenever someone successfully influences another person it changes the powerholder’s psyche. We the powerholder develops a contempt for the person they perceive they have power over. The greater the power the more contempt. Eventually the powerholder thinks the people under their influence as non-human being insects who can be killed or squashed without any moral consequence. gts58
You’ve just described Obama perfectly! Cannonfodder2010
He described EVERY politician perfectly. Donald Trump would take it to a much higher level. none
Thank God President Obama has been taking his multi-million dollar vacations. At taxpayer expense. It will not cost the taxpayers anything! Since they cannot pay it back. And with all the money that he has and will make from his investments in the stock market. Along with his pension and other investments he should end up doing very well. goldfinger
Not only that but we the people also fund the generous pension and health insurance plan that congress choose for themselves.
Heck even in congress if you get convicted of a crime you never lose your pension or health benefits.
Isn’t American wonderful? Thomas Keith
“It will not cost the taxpayers anything! Since they cannot pay it back.” First, you need an English lesson, since you obviously don’t know the difference between a clause and a sentence. That aside, yes, there will be payment in the form of a deeper, longer depression. _aleph_ Nemnor
fortunato, you stated –“…After all what can we the people do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing…”.
Actually, Governments do as they do, as long as the mass of the people let it be. As long as the people do not have the will and the courage to demand the change they want.
However, people are kept under “control” by using various means to divide and distract them. The major Media Networks and the Educational system are the two main non-violent “arm” the Ruling Class use to “control” the masses. AND, where the non-violent “arm” fail, then the violent “arm” (i.e. the Army and Police) is used accordingly.
So it takes UNITY and a lot of COURAGE for the masses to have the change we want, and we CAN do something, but it begins with having the WILL to do what we wish to do..
Don’t forget the corporate toxic food chain which leads to the mass addiction to pharma mafia given the dis-ease/obesity epidemic that fuels medical costs….everything IS connected to ‘dummy’ down the masses. gts58
Your second paragraph says it all. Thomas Keith
You don’t care how much debt your government racks up? Fool, it’s you and the rest of the citizenry who the world will look to for repayment. The world honors the US’s request for more credit (for no. at least) because of the US government’s ability to tax its peoples. Keeping your head in the sand won’t save you. _aleph_ Catman
This is why the politicians have no plan to do deal with the national debt: it cannot be fixed. They already know what you so well explain. The economies of the world depend on more debt through fractional reserve banking and treasury bond purchases to create more money to pay the interest and keep from sliding into a depression. This will not end with a fiscal policy. There is no brake on this rig. I recently had a dream where I was driving a car on which the brakes did not work. Very frustrating. Well, I have no debt, but perhaps it speaks to the sense of being carried along with little recourse other than to just keep the car in the middle of the road and try not to hit anything or anyone. I think a lot of us feel like that in life: we have no control, we can’t get off the roller coaster, and one way or the other we’re all in this together. Christoph Weise
Politicians are not in the drivers seat. It is certain that 99% of them do not understand money policy and central bank politics. It is the central banks that drive the developments Rukander
Only 4.3 trillion before Ronald Reagan and de printing money. df NJ
When disaster strikes most Americans stick together and help each other. My hope is when the time comes we rise above our petty partisan politics and unite as one people with one country under God.
We the People in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Are we really going to let a small group of sadist European bankers destroy this once great country? Christoph Weise
The path is set by the FED, although agreeably the Bank of Japan (BoJ) was the first to introduce QE. European central bankers look to be followers. df NJ
Japanese sadists are just as bad as the European sadists. sherlock32555
Yep Just look around you and you will answer your own question. The people stood by and let it happen. Their is no self preservation anymore. It was lost years ago when the people knew that the government would take care of us. jsmith
Don’t forget to include the tribal 5th column that owns the country. Mike
Whose the tribal 5th column? jsmith
Are you playing coy or just being ignorant? I’m sure someone will enlighten you. Nemnor
df NJ, a “…small group of sadist European bankers …” (as you put it) are only a symptom of a much wider and more fundamental cause of the issues facing the USA.
The main root cause of the worsening socioeconomic issues in the USA (and the World), is – the Capitalist system itself – which has became decadent, is at a “dead end” and is NOT able to generate long-term recovery by economic means alone .
The world-wide Capitalist system became decadent as it reached a level of general over-production . With over-production, it became harder and harder for the Capitalist to sell their products/services, for even what the Capitalist consider a reasonable profit.
Hence, the reason the Capitalists (irrationally) engage more and more in “Share Repurchase”/”Stock Buyback” (to ARTIFICIALLY raise the value of a company’s stock), and/or invest in “financial bubbles”, “derivatives” and other exotic “financial instruments” ( even lend money to people that are not credit worthy ), and with many of these “investments” having little or not relations to the real economy!!!
There is NO going back to the “good ole days” of the USA, or going back to “real”/”pure”/”free market” Capitalism , because Capitalist USA already passed it’s progressive stage and is now at a “dead end”.
The real solution can only be with a fundamental change away from Capitalism , as no amount of “reforms” could ever fix Capitalist USA. HeyAHuman
This has been an economic system built upon debt since the creation of the Federal Reserve. It would have been easily known beforehand that this would burst and cause chaos. Why has it been allowed for so long? Insane. Bill
Same reason we have an imposter in the White House. We the sheeple do not have the fortunes needed in order to run for an office that would allow us to make a difference. Voting is too manipulated to make a difference.
Robots are the future of sheeple who don’t require daily feeding. Bob332
This country is now officially in the toilet. Will the last person to flush, please turn off the bathroom light. nekksys
Just have the attendant do it as you flip him your last coin… Christoph Weise
We have long passed the point at which repayment of debt could have been possible. Maybe it was never possible. I have heard that there is always more debt in the system than money to repay it. That is the nature of the fractional reserve system. Central banks world wide have decided 2009 not to bother about racking up debt. They are printing money and providing it to financial institutions as needed. We have now two different circulation systems. One is the old system. It comprises of individuals and corporations. The traditional debt limits apply. Bankruptcy and insolvency are possible. Than we have the newly created second circulation system. It comprises of central banks and systematically important lenders. These organisations can not bankrupt or become insolvent. They have escaped from the ordinary circulation system and are eternal. De facto we are faced now with a two class system. This is the departure from market economy. And it is problematic in many aspects. Some of them: (1) The change to our system has never been properly explained and is kept as a secret (2) The political bodies never made a decision on this change (and thus it is illegal and because of its illegality central banks are engaged in criminal activity) (3) Before the law all people should be equal. This principle is violated by the introduction of the principle of eternal economic life and could only be trumped by the introduction of eternal biological life for a limited set of individuals. The question arises if the second circulation system is indeed eternal. There may be limits but I never saw a comprehensive discussion of the topic. I presume it would take a single global currency to avoid a systemic default. But I am not sure. It looks like the can kicking strategy has a very long life. GSOB
“I presume it would take a single global currency to avoid a systemic default. ”
Me too. JailBanksters
Ironically, Every dollar in your Wallet had to be loaned into existence for you to have it, it represents Debt not Wealth and it belongs to the Banking Cartel. You could take that dollar back to the Club FED to extinguish that loan, but you have to pay the Interest on that Dollar. Where do you get the Money from to pay back the Interest on that Dollar, the Club FED of Course. And then you’d have to pay the Interest on that as well. By all definitions of a Ponzi Scheme, the Club FED is a Ponzi Scheme where you pay one debt by creating another debt to infinity. This ensures that nobody can never own more than the Banking Cartel. It’s an absolute brilliant scam, and it’s been going on for 100 years, with one re-invention for Gold-Standard and another time for Credit Cards to overcome the 45 year limit on Fiat Money. Richard
I can’t help wanting to thank you, Michael, for adjusting the manner of your prose in recent posts. They have become a joy to read. You seem to have removed all the cliches and annoying repartee. Maybe nobody else appreciates this but I can only express own, continued appreciation for the “New You”! Thank you.
Didn’t you write this before? nobody
Actually Michael is wrong: it’s perfectly possible to pay off the entire debt in less than 5 years. All they need to do is to cut all welfare and military funds and eliminate all tax discounts. But that will never happen. nekksys
This idea doesn’t account for paying off PERSONAL debt as opposed to GOVERNMENT debt.
And, as someone already pointed out, when the first $11T is paid back, the “money” it represents disappears, therefore a vast amount of the M1 will vanish into thin air leaving only the hard currency which can not be distributed sufficiently throughout the population to effect an further debt payments.
In other words, no matter how you slice it, we’re all pretty much F’d in the A thanks to the recklessness of our government and the banksters. nobody
So a bunch of banks will go under – more power to the big ones, you lose, they win. Actually it won’t disappear since it has never existed to begin with and it will just be created elsewhere. BTW your hard currency has stopped having any power a long time ago, now it’s just a bunch of paper and it’s worth only what the issuing bank says it’s worth. And no, gold by itself isn’t worth anything since it can be taken from you at the whim of the government. nekksys
Hard Currency = Paper and Coin… I wasn’t referencing buying power either. I was referring to the ACTUAL M1.
Please try to keep up. nobody
Actually that’s incorrect: a hard currency is a means of payment (usually a currency but it can also be a commodity) that is well and widely trusted and used for savings. Also called safe-heaven currency. Please use the correct terms from now on. nekksys
Typical… When folks like yourself start losing the debate, you shift and try to muddy the waters. Nice try, though! Considering your previous statement “BTW your hard currency has stopped having any power a long time ago” in light of your most recent redefinition of “hard currency,” I guess that means all commodities in my possession are worthless as well? Last I checked, a pound of iron was still a pound of iron and still possesses the same value.
Again, the M1 was what I was referencing. The M1 is the actual, hard currency in circulation. M1 doesn’t consider commodities as part of the equation.
Please, if you choose to redefine something, make sure you haven’t used the same term previously… And do keep up with the conversation. nobody
No, a pound of iron is an asset, that has it’s own value. No, M1 isn’t a representation of hard currency, it’s just an index detailing the total amount of money in an economy – which includes absolutely everything, even those that exist only as electronic vapour. Please try to keep up, or at least get a basic economy/banking course at your local free college. nekksys
Awww… Look! It can read (a little)… Again, judging by the current value of the M1, there’s no way it includes everything you claim.
Furthermore, you are still forgetting that once debt is repaid, ALL the currency it represents (whether real or “electronic vapour”) vanishes. Once the repayment process is underway, the available currency supply continues to diminish eventually leading to a ZERO currency state WITH remaining debt… nobody
And you know there’s no way because a little birdy told you so, right? Let’s be real, M1 is a government decided value and you will never have a say on it. Wrong again, it doesn’t disappear, it goes into the bank’s accounts as an asset, which is in turn used to create even more money by lending it/investing it at least twice its value. The problem appears when they no longer have legit ways to invest it so they invent things like the derivatives to absorb the surplus of money they have created. Yes you can, you can claim it will be used to make 1000 knives and sell derivatives on that in excess of $1k on it. For everybody that $1 lump of iron will now be worth $1k – and this procedure is entirely legal and legit. We’re not talking about honesty here, remember. alan
Where are those trillion dollar coins they had about two years ago?
Mint a couple hundred of them and we’re good. XSANDIEGOCA
As long as we refuse to return to the Gold Standard, we shall continue to suffer. China understands this implicitly. All they have to do to drop us without firing a shot is to just threaten to tie the Yuan to Gold. Game Over. (BTW, the interest on our debt to China underwrites their entire Defense Budget!) Today the $20 bill is the equivalent to the $5 bill of my youth. Now there is serious talk of replacing the visage of Andrew Jackson, the man who saved America in the War of 1812, on that bill with a Slave. How utterly appropriate. Genada
Andrew Jackson would despise the idea of being on a bank note and especially of the modern day version of the one he destroyed.
Fun fact about Jackson: Only president EVER to retire the national debt. XSANDIEGOCA Dwain Dibley
Back when Andrew Jackson was the president Gold was the money, somewhat hard to come by and it would be reasonable to assume a national debt. Today the money is Fiat, and all they have to do is print it. How can a government that can print the money to pay it’s bills, ever get into debt? And, what is it borrowing and what does it owe? This whole government “debt” thing seems kind of fishy to me….. Tranqual
He killed the central bank and said it was his most important accomplishment. Then the bankers crashed the economy and blamed him. jsmith
You seem to have connected the dots X, however you are probably very young because I’d like to think of the $20.00 bill as the new $1.00 bill. Back in 1963 whe I was 14, I could go to downtown Lost Angeles by bus to the movies, and see 3 matinee flics including milk duds and still have money left over from the 4 silver quarters my mom gave me! And yes, how appropriate that you noticed Andy Jackson being replaced by a slave. Why, Andie’s greatest quote is that he killed the bank and is one of America’s greatest heroes! And to quote Michael’s “The real problem, of course, is our out of control spending” yet we have one of our greatest termites in the form of John McCain and the others who want to increase defense spending because the Russian’s and primarily the Chinese are building up their defense spending, with our money. Insane. I was kind of hoping for a gradual collapse due mainly to money printing and inflation, but I’m afraid things are speeding up as the symptoms of impending crisis are being overlooked and exacerbated by our moronic president and termitic Congress. Either they are puppet fools, or part of the conspiracy to destroy our country. America is kaput! XSANDIEGOCA
Ah, those were the daze! Actually, you are right. In my mind today’s 20 was yesterday’s 5. Anyway, too many “disturbances” in the Force. One good shove will do it, send the boulder crashing down the hill. Pick your scenario. Another terrorist attack. China moving on Taiwan. Iran heaving one into Israel. Then it will be “look out below!” Zenithon
And still if I pull out a $100 bill and try to pay for something, more times than not I get to hear that they won’t take anything larger than a $20. You can’t hardly get lunch or buy a movie ticket for less than $10 bucks and stores still act like that $100 bill is worth something. I could buy more at a grocery store with a $20 bill 25 years ago then I can get today with that c-note. Crazy. Tranqual
Money masters know what they are doing.“Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been determined to be the optimum level for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year, but to all that is left over from previous years.
“At the end of the first year, a dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the second year, the 95 cents is reduced again by 5%, leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20 years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar he saved over those years. By the time he has worked 45 years, the hidden tax will be 90%. The government will take virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime.”
— G. Edward Griffin
“By remaining behind the scenes, they (the Rothschilds) were able to avoid the brunt of public anger which was directed, instead, at the political figures which they largely controlled. This is a technique which has been practiced by financial manipulators ever since, and it is fully utilized by those who operate the Federal Reserve System today.”
– G. Edward Griffin
“[The] abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit…. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holdings illegal, as was done in the case of gold…. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves…. [This] is the shabby secret of the welfare statist’s tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the ‘hidden’ confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.”- Alan Greenspan in an article he wrote in 1966.
And then Greenspan went over to the dark side and worked for the Fed.
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls . . . become ‘profiteers’, who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished not less than the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds . . . all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless.”– From pages 220-233 of The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), by John Maynard Keynes. You probably already know all this. XSANDIEGOCA
I did. I will send this on. States it all in one place. Tranqual
personally I don’t think there’s anything we can do. Ultimately it’s God’s judgment. When Jackson killed the central bank they just crashed the economy. It would take a miracle for most people to even understand the screw job. If any leader came on the scene and tried to kill the Fed the bankers would just constrict the money supply crash the economy. Frankly I believe we are in the end game. Only repentance and revival would give us more time as a nation. Sadly I’m not optimistic about that either. We are already seeing the birthing of the apostate church. Trusting God will take care of the faithful remnant. Not looking forward to the days ahead. I wish Christians would have their eyes opened. We may be able to take part in a great harvest after America goes down. Maybe then people will listen…to the GOOD NEWS!!
We shall have all eternity to celebrate the victories, but we have only the few hours before sunset in which to win them. Amy Carmichael
Agreed. Sadly, we face Gotterdammerung but that may be God’s plan too. XSANDIEGOCA
1971. We went off the Gold Standard. What happened next was utterly predictable. A dollar today is worth a fifth of a 1971 dollar. Nixon was the One! Preparequickly Dwain Dibley
The legal tender dollar is worth exactly the same as it has always been worth, 100 cents. Now, the bankster’s “Credit Dollar” is another matter, it’s only worth 4 cents (excluding Wall Street and shadow banking system generated credit). But because people are too stupid and lazy to discern the difference, they equate the two as being one in the same and are apparently willing to die economically, firmly holding onto that erroneous belief. Tranqual
Nixon was just following orders. The price of being president. They are all sock puppets. Obama, McConnell and Boehner all spooning together are the latest screw job is a perfect example. They are all treasonous traitors willing to sell their souls for a mess of pottage. O is dumb enough to think he’s creating his communist utopia. XSANDIEGOCA
The betrayal on the TPP is truly astonishing! I would like to see a Third Party if only to vent my frustration. As I see it, Hillary wins. I write this with great sadness. Tranqual
voting for an agreement we aren’t allowed to see! Is this America? We will see what congress will do, I’m not holding my breath. Horiboyable .
It seems that the USA is using the Roman Template of self destruction. Over spend on your military and run up large debts. What next? Well Rome turned on its own people for cash which has happened many times in different societies. This leads to less freedoms and economic totalitarianism or they will take you to war to divert the issue. I think by the end of the year the average US citizen will begin to see how your government will treat you. I myself find this whole situation a little funny because I left my country of birth because of economic mismanagement of the state, that used laws to limit my freedom. I immigrated to the UK only to find myself facing the same situation. The UK has debts that they can never pay back and it will be interesting to see how they deal with it here. The honest way is to default. It is a bit sad when you have to keep moving countries just to survive. Genada
Only choices on debts that can not be payed is either to default or to inflate them away.
You can pay off the debt anytime you wish, it doesn’t mean it will be worth anything tho. df NJ
It’s not going to end well. Hank Sullivan
Michael, the kicker is that each dollar that, because the entire currency supply is borrowed into existence, when one of those dollars gets paid back to the original issuer, which is your goal, that dollar ceases to exist. And so once $11 trillion, M2, is paid off to the original issuer, THERE’S NO MORE CURRENCY IN CIRCULATION TO RUN THE ECONOMY. Like the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, the economy would completely run out of fuel. And we would still have $49 trillion left to pay. HedgeHog
Read Modern Money Mechanics, and part of the picture becomes clear, think of it this way, and it becomes crystal; if you and I are talking, and I ask to borrow a dollar, and there is no other money in existence, and you want to charge me 10 cents of interest, if I give you back the dollar to pay off the debt, where am I going to get the 10 cents? because every monetary instrument in circulation has debt attached to it, is the reason why the debt can never be repaid. Put the power to take care of the money supply back in the hands of congress, dissolve the fed, and several other adjustments that need to be made, and we might have a chance of coming out of this relatively unharmed. Maneb
Hyperinflation is the answer. COMPLETLY destroy savers and persioners. Reward the reckless and lazy drug addicted street bums. That’s the way out. That’s what the U.S. HAS been doing. Become Zimbabwe! Obama’s model in well run Africa. His ancestral homeland. Transforming America! Congratulations suckers. Oh, did I mention martial law and tyranny…coming up soon. Just look around. Who cares about the rule of law or the constution? Again, that’s for poor suckers. Catch me if you can. Marx and Alinsky showed the way. nekksys
Wow, that’s relevant… A lot has changed since that article was written in 2011… SunnyFlaSnotress
Thank you for your style of constructive criticism /s While up-to-date numbers are difficult to find, the link DOES point out the blind spot in the article that makes it unbalanced and somewhat irrelevant. It totally ignores the fact that the USA is also owed massive amounts of money. guest
How is it mathematically possible to get so far into debt that it’s mathematically impossible to get out of debt? df NJ
google “fractional reserve banking system”
We just can’t compete with the Federal Reserve’s power to put us into poverty.
“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes it’s laws” — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild folgers22
It’s government. Anything is possible. folgers22
Some of the brightest thinkers on their side actually believe debt is a sign of strength. They think the more debt we run up, the better it is for us. JackNMeovslo
AND THE ANSWER IS …. Democrats~ g13man
they both agreed for each others spending , so they are both culpable ! Thomas Keith
That’s easy. Fool your creditors into thinking you actually can pay back the loans plus interest. _aleph_ folgers22
Anyone heard of Beppe Grillo? He’s a comedian/politician in Italy whose rants against debt and the EU have made him a hero to many Italians. He did a semi-serious bit years ago in which he explained Italy’s debt problems and discussed how to solve them. Here’s some of what he said: If there’s a borrower, there is supposed to be a lender, correct? Who do we owe this money to? TO OURSELVES! Fine, I owe it to myself. I claim it is nothing anymore and we’re square. Go to Hell!” Right? It’s a debt system, this is an awful system!– They issue money, but to whom does it belong? We are the state, so it belongs to us, don’t you agree? If the money belongs to us, then why do they lend it to us? There’s something not adding up, right? Once we used to have gold coins, they were ours. We had some gold and it was ours. Now we have a note that says 1000 Lira. Who does it belong to? On the bill it says “Bank of Italy” and “Payable to the Bearer on Demand.” If I go to the bank to demand that money, they won’t give me anything!– The bank of Italy is a private joint-stock company…we wil never know who they are. They issue money out of thin air and lend it to us. It’s the state that is supposed to issue it. The state should keep money circulation stable, keep prices stable. Yet, our money is issued by a joint-stock company. Money shouldn’t look like that! It shouldn’t say Bank of Italy, it should say Republic of Italy! It shouldn’t be signed by the governor of the Bank of Italy, it should be signed by the President! That would bring satisfaction to us all!–
LOL joe oberr
Simple question. Why does the gov’t have to borrow from a private financial institution, aka “the Fed”, in order to spend more than it takes in in taxes and thereby place this debt’s liability on future generations? Was not the gov’t able to, at least at some points in our history, simply print Treasury notes off the federal printing press and incur no consequential debt? folgers22
I think the book explaining it is called, “The Monster from Jekyll Island.” The banksters 100 years ago met in secret in South Carolina to plan a better system. and their pets in Congress made it a reality. Here we are. JustanOguy
Just to let you know… Jekyll Island is in Georgia. df NJ
Politics are pretty irrelevant at this point. But I thought this was funny:
“I’m still waiting to get trickled on by Reaganomics. It’s been more like a number 2.
Cartels, monopolies, low wages, VOTE REPUBLICAN!” Lord Rainchild of LinkToIt-com
Hi DJ, I really like your posts, and would like to stay in touch with you. I was trying to find that post where you mentioned ‘metamorphic contempt.’ I don’t know any other way to contact you except posting here. I was wondering if you can post to my disqus thread on linktoit-com – so I can dialog with you once in a while. I think tapping your mind would be helpful for the new news portal website that I am working on and also a booklet I am putting together that i intend to entitled What a Joke! – would really like to invite you there to linktoit dot com… + any others who might be reading this. Thank you! folgers22
I’m not sure who has a better deal in this day and age-the prudent man who has no debt, or the debtor who totally throws caution to the wind and goes into hock up to his ears and takes out credit cards on his cat’s name, too. When the house of cards collapses, the prudent man with the bank account full of savings will probably see his money seized to pay for the emergency, while the debtor will probably be bailed out by the government using the prudent man’s money. What a Country! wheel
Ain’t that the truth. Just like all the bailouts from the housing collapse with homeowners and speculators just walking away and leaving the taxpayer to pick up the pieces.
The fact is if we could time it and know exactly when the collapse would happen I would recommend going hog wild on the spending and borrowing and give them all the finger when I declared bankruptcy. Gay Veteran
the banksters gave out loans to people they knew could not pay, we should have let the banksters go bankrupt. we need banks, not any particular bank Nemnor
The ‘banksters’ felt “compelled” to (IRRATIONALLY) “invest” as they do, not so much so because they are greedy or stupid, but rather, it is more so because of the Capitalist system in the USA (and the World) that has became DECADENT .
This decadent Capitalist system is often labeled as –“corporatism”, or “socialism” or “crony capitalism” or “communism” or “fascism” or “welfare(ism)”, etc.. But regardless to the label, for the past 500 years or so, the the economic system in the World firmly remained Capitalism (in it’s ESSENTIAL form) .
The Capitalist system became decadent as it reached a stage of general over-production . With over-production, it became harder and harder for the Capitalist to sell their products/services, for even what the Capitalist consider a reasonable profit.
Hence, the reason the Capitalists (irrationally) engage more and more in “Share Repurchase”/”Stock Buyback” (to ARTIFICIALLY raise the value of a company’s stock), and/or invest in “financial bubbles”, “derivatives” and other exotic “financial instruments” ( even lend money to people that are not credit worthy ), and with many of these “investments” having little or not relations to the real economy !!!
Once one becomes aware that the main root cause of the major socioeconomic issues facing the USA and the World is – Capitalism itself – which had became DECADENT (but labeled as “corporatism”, “socialism”, “fascism”, etc.), and that there is NO “real”/”pure”/”free market” Capitalism to go back to (because Capitalism ALREADY passed it’s progressive stage), then it becomes clear that any REAL/effective solution MUST include a fundamental change away from Capitalism (as no amount of “reforms” can ever fix Capitalism – which is now at a “dead end”). GSOB
How Lovely are Your Dwellings!
For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God Than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in You!
Praise to God for a Living Hope
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. | 0 |
On Monday, thousands are remembering the lives lost during the deadliest mass shooting in United States history, the Pulse nightclub massacre, a jihadist attack by an Islamic State sympathizer targeting the Orlando club’s “Latin Night. ”[Omar Mateen opened fire on innocent patrons of the club, killing 49 people and injuring scores of others. Mateen pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State during the shooting before police shot him dead. The media has made little to no mention of the fact that a jihadist, influenced by a radical Islamic ideology, was behind this crime. Instead, most of the stories in the press have painted the incident as a generic form of “hate. ” An article in the New Yorker about the graveyard caretaker who looks after the plots of the victims of the massacre does not mention Mateen. USA Today similarly makes no mention of Mateen’s radical motivations or his allegiance to a group hellbent on spreading an Islamic caliphate throughout the world. CNN ran an article highlighting five people who were either related to the victims of the Pulse massacre or survived the atrocity. CNN also failed to address the radical Islamic ideology behind the attacks. While they did mention the word “terror,” they chose quotes to highlight the views of those who believe in stricter gun laws, and one that blamed the incident squarely on “hate. ” The one person CNN quoted who believes in gun ownership as a form of protection as a result of what she survived said she does not believe in God. “It’s hard to say that I am here because of God because, I’m sorry, I don’t believe that God would take those people the way that they were taken,” Jeannette McCoy told CNN. “There’s nothing proud about being a survivor. Not for me. ” The Washington Post also failed to make any mention of Mateen’s radical influence. As the Washington Free Beacon pointed out, “Despite the Post‘s piece clocking in at over a thousand words, the words ‘terrorism,’ ‘terror,’ ‘ISIS,’ ‘Islam,’ ‘Muslim,’ and ‘ ’ never appeared once. The sole reference to ‘Islamic State’ occurs in a photo caption, and never in the body of the piece. ” Breitbart News previously reported that Mateen said, “I pledge allegiance to [Islamic State leader] Abu Bakr may God protect him, on behalf of the Islamic State,” during a 911 call about his assault. In that same piece, Breitbart News detailed how the media worked to “portray Mr. Mateen as a scorned, mentally ill, repressed homosexual,” but the reports on the incident “reveal one crucial point: Omar Mateen ranted at the police about America’s fight against the Islamic State, mentioning the war and air strikes at least 20 times in total. ” Several other news outlets also failed to mention the keywords that the Washington Free Beacon mentioned their sole reference to Mateen pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. They include a Toronto, news site, CP24 and the Associated Press. However, last year, the AP ran a headine with a quote from Mateen’s imam who said the Pulse massacre “Has Nothing To Do With ISIS” and instead blamed it on mental illness. On Monday, the City of Orlando participated in what they have called “Orlando United Day — A Day of Love and Kindness” to honor the lives lost one year ago today. In addition to a series of events taking place in the city and throughout other cities across North America, an event at Pulse nightclub called “Reflections and Remembrance” began at 11 a. m. At 7 p. m. a memorial event called “Orlando Love: Remembering Our Angels” will take place at Lake Eola Park. The park is located at 512 East Washington Street. Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter. | 1 |
A Imam is in court accused of telling his congregation to support Islamic State and carry out acts of terrorism. [“Influential” preacher Kamran Sabir Hussain faces eight offenses in connection with his work leading a mosque on Tunstall high street in the northern town. He is charged with two counts of addressing the mosque with the intent of “encourage support for a proscribed organisation, namely Islamic State, or to further its activities” the Stoke Sentinel reports. The other six counts relate to “publishing a statement” in the form of giving a sermon to a congregation, in which he “intended or was reckless as to whether members of the public would be, directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate acts of terrorism”. All of the charges relate to a period between the 24th of June and 16th of September 2016. At a brief hearing, the ’s defense lawyer Matt Foot said Mr. Hussain would plead not guilty to the two counts of addressing a meeting at the mosque and six counts publishing statements. Mr. Hussain, of Knightsbridge Way, Tunstall, was remanded in custody and will appear at the Old Bailey on the 17th of March. A is currently being fought in the town, with UKIP looking to snatch the seat from Labour for the first time since the Second World War. During the campaign, it was reported that a Labour party activist claimed UKIP were “enemies of Islam” warning Muslim voters they will go to hell if they fail to vote Labour in the . Navid Hussain said that voting for any party other than Labour would result in the electing of “an and MP” in a text message sent to Muslims in Central. “Will you be able to answer for this in the Grave and on the Final Day? ?? ‘I helped the Enemies of Islam because … ” he wrote in the message, which was circulated via SMS and WhatsApp among the constituency’s Muslim community. | 1 |
The FBI recently decided to reopen their investigation of Hillary Clinton after more emails from her private email server during her time as head of the State Department were leaked.
Senior news editor and writer for NBC Bradd Jaffy , among others, just tweeted the document hours ago, showing the letter to members of Congress and outlining how the FBI is investigating additional emails.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote to 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.”
You can read the full letter here .
The FBI still has yet to assess the importance of the material to see if any classified material was leaked, and if so, how significant it was.
Comey has also been criticized by lawmakers and others who are saying that the investigation has been downplayed and mishandled.
There are also some other strange allegations emerging. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal , Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe sent more than half a million dollars in campaign funds and material support to the wife of an FBI official who was a part of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s personal email server. It was recently revealed that Clinton performed all of her business as Secretary of State from this server, including sharing classified information.
You can read more about that here .
Why Does This Matter? With all the information that has come out recently exposing the truth behind Western politics, it’s shedding light on the fact we are being misled and that there are extreme amounts of corruption in politics. Politicians are being used by big corporations and banks to push elitist agendas.
This is a time for reflection for us all as the external happenings of our world show us what is really going on. As things become more obvious it gives us a chance to see it VERY clearly -it’s happening for a reason. Is it time to discuss taking a different approach to our world? I think so.
This is a great quote that fits perfectly here:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society . Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
– Edward Bernays, The Father of Public Relations, Propaganda , 1928
What Are We Focusing On? Every four years we turn our attention to the presidential race, while the fact remains, as Bernie Sanders told us earlier in the year, that “no matter who is elected to be president, that person will not be able to address the enormous problems facing the working families of our country. They will not be able to succeed because of the power of corporate America, the power of Wall Street, and the power of campaign donors is so great that no president alone can stand up to them.” ( source )
Instead of “standing up to them,” they simply do what they are told. One example would be the transcripts of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs .
Politicians seem to now function as mere frontmen for these corporations, the ones to answer our questions, alleviate our fears, and ultimately, bear the brunt of our anger.
But at the end of the day there is something we must not forget:
“ a power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.” John C. Calhoun ( source )
Shadow Government It’s no longer a secret that the global consolidation of power lies in the hands of very few — a small group of people and the corporations they run, all held together by the world of finance — or that this few controls every aspect of our lives.
Below is a great clip from the Thrive documentary by Foster Gamble, heir to the Proctor Gamble corporation. He was groomed for the establishment, but chose a different path.
These are the ones we need to shed more light on if we are going to turn things around. The power these corporations and banks have is unacceptable, and politics, at the end of the day, although a good tool that can be used to wake up the masses, is a distraction and waste of time.
It takes the power out of our hands, and places it in the hands of others — while we watch what they do with it and hope it benefits us.
Awareness! This is about awareness. Awareness so we can begin having discussions about what to do next and pulling our consciousness away from the illusion that is before. It is becoming more and more obvious so we can let it go.
It’s fitting to leave you with this last quote from Theodore Roosevelt. Combined with all of the evidence, it’s interesting to think about.
“Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.
From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.” ( source )
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Donald Trump’s 2016 TV campaign were far more focused on promised policies than were the ads run by Hillary Clinton’s team, which were far more numerous, negative and narrowly focused on personality claims, says a new report. [“Over 60 percent of ads supporting Clinton were solely about candidate characteristics, while only about 25 percent were focused on policy,” said the report, titled “Political Advertising in 2016: The Presidential Election as Outlier?” “This is a huge difference from Trump’s advertising, over 70 percent of which was focused on policy,” said the report, released March 6. “These strategic differences may have meant that Clinton was more prone to voter backlash and did nothing to overcome the media’s lack of focus on Clinton’s policy knowledge, especially for residents of Michigan and Wisconsin, in particular, who were receiving (and specifically ) messaging from Trump. ” “Clinton’s message was devoid of policy discussions in a way not seen in the previous four presidential contests, “ said the report, which was prepared by the Wesleyan Media Project. The report debunks much of the establishment media’s narrative, which portrayed Trump’s campaign as a chaotic scramble, saying: For all of the talk of the unusual advertising campaign that Trump ran in 2016, his message strategy was more traditionally . Ironically, it was the Clinton campaign that deviated sharply from the conventional playbook when it came to messaging despite following conventional norms in terms of volume, placement and targeting of ads. Indeed, only one in four Clinton campaign ads focused on policy, which is by far the lowest percentage we have seen since data from Kantar have been available. The media narrative also ignored Clinton’s far greater expenditure on TV advertising. In prior presidential campaigns, coverage by the establishment media has often bemoaned the scale and negativity of the campaign advertising, but according to the report: Hillary Clinton’s campaign (alone and with her allies) spent vastly more on campaign advertising than did Donald Trump’s. And yet Trump won the election … The Clinton campaign aired just under 200, 000 ads at an estimated cost of just under $120 million during the last 9 weeks of the campaign, dwarfing the Trump campaign’s 76, 000 ads at a cost of $66 million. Clinton’s advantage becomes even more stark when one adds in the almost 50, 000 spots aired by Priorities USA Action, a super PAC. There was some outside group spending on behalf of Trump, including the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, which aired about 10, 000 ads on broadcast during the general election period … Clinton’s campaign also bought almost 300, 000 ads on local broadcast and national cable outlets, plus almost 700, 000 ads on local cable channels. In contrast, Trump’s campaign funded less than 100, 000 ads in both categories combined. So Clinton’s campaign and her allies ran at least 1. 25 million TV ads, compared to Trump’s score of 186, 000 ads. Overall, said the report: There was a huge imbalance in advertising at the presidential level in 2016, with Clinton and her allies pummeling Trump and his allies in almost every media market in the country. advertising dominated on local broadcast, national cable and even local cable television. Decades of research (e. g. Zaller 1992) suggests that in the face of such imbalanced message flows, the advantaged candidate should benefit at the polls. And yet in spite of those advantages, Hillary Clinton lost many of the states that saw the most political advertising. However, Trump media strategy put more attention on Wisconsin, which Clinton’s team almost entirely ignored until the last two weeks. The report includes a map showing how Clinton’s TV ads were far more numerous in nearly all media markets than were Trump’s ads. Trump’s use of Twitter may have canceled out Clinton’s huge advantage in campaign funds, the report said, saying “perhaps the intense media coverage in 2016 was driven less by the messages of political advertising as it has been in the past and more by Donald Trump’s Twitter account. ” Read the entire report here. | 1 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 by Frank Face Published on Oct 27, 2016 by Activist-News Does Wikileaks work in the interests of humanity or the illegal state of Israel? Decide for yourself, in this tell-all about Julian Assange. A special thanks to Jonathan Azaziah, who originally wrote the text for ‘Mark Of Zion: Wikileaks Is Zionist Posion’, written 6 years ago and perhaps more appropriate now then ever before. A special Thanks to Snordster, who tried to get this message out to youtubers and got himself banned a couple of times. Almost all the Audio and the entirety of the Narration is done so by Snordster.
An Entire Transcript of Johnathan Azaziah’s work: | 0 |
If you signed up for Obamacare, you’ve been screwed.
If you didn’t sign up and opted to pay the penalties , you’ve been screwed.
If you didn’t sign up, didn’t pay penalties, and stuck with your original insurance company, you’ve been screwed.
If you didn’t sign up, didn’t pay penalties, and paid cash for medical care, you’ve been screwed.
Every person in America has been affected, regardless of what you did or did not do.
That’s because the Affordable Care Act irrevocably ruined our access to medical care at an affordable price in this country. In the mere span of 4 years, the prices have skyrocketed and many families have to pay more in monthly premiums than they pay on their mortgages. Meanwhile, medical costs have been driven up to astronomical prices, making it nearly impossible to pay out-of-pocket for care.
And these premiums? They are for the crappiest coverage you can imagine. Some families pay $1500-2000 a month for 60% coverage after they pay the $5000 deductible. That’s nearly $20,000 per year before Obamacare pays for a penny of their costs.
And now…now that insurance companies have gone belly up when they were forced to become a part of the “exchange,” medical costs are skyrocketing, doctors won’t see patients who aren’t “covered,” employers stopped offering insurance as a benefit, and people lost their jobs due to Obamacare costs…
The whole thing is failing. Even President Obama has admitted it . And now we have proof that it was planned that way.
But that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it is that this program was designed to fail and steer us into single payer healthcare, where a government entity can decide what procedures will or will not be covered. They’ll decide who is deserving of cancer treatment and who is not. They’ll mandate things like flu shots and childhood vaccines.
One of the recent Wikileaks shows that Hillary Clinton knew this and was complicit.
Melissa Dykes of The Daily Sheeple wrote :
In an email thread dated September 26, 2015 between Hillary and her senior policy adviser Ann O’Leary titled “Memo on Cadillac Tax for HRC,” Hillary wrote, “Given the politics now w bipartisan support including Schumer, I’ll support repeal w ‘sense of the Senate’ that revenues would have to be found. I’d be open to a range of options to do that. But we have to be careful that the R version passes which begins the unraveling of the ACA .”
“Which begins the unraveling of the Affordable Care Act.”
A Democrat supporting Republican legislation to destroy Obamacare on purpose. How many millions have they raked in on this deal and bilked the American people for in Obamacare penalties because they can’t afford the “affordable” health care? And the American people will look at this like a “victory” when it does unravel, even though it has been the plan all along.
Hillary Clinton, that savior of woman and children, knew that this would fail . She is supporting the legislation to destroy it, leaving everyone in America at the mercy of the horrible replacement that she will dream up to redistribute wealth and deal the death blow to the already-struggling middle class.
Mark my words, as bad as this disaster is, it is only going to get worse. Watch this video for the full story.
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Q. Some of us like our older phones and want to keep them. I know for many just getting a new battery will be enough, so what resources are available for those of us who want to keep our older iPhones, Android phones and other gear going for as long as possible? A. If your older smartphone has aged out of getting the latest operating system software from its maker, you can still find sites selling replacement parts and online tutorials to help you maintain the hardware. However, if the phone is your sole means of communication and cracking it open to upgrade or fix it makes you nervous, consider finding a local repair shop or service with a fast turnaround to handle the job. If you feel up to the tasks yourself, iFixit is one good site to visit first. Since it began in 2003, iFixit has grown into a large resource hub that provides free illustrated tutorials for all kinds of gadget repairs along with discussion forums and a store for buying tools and replacement parts for many devices. The iFixit store sells replacement batteries and other parts for just about every iPhone model ever released, and parts for different Android phones made by HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, and other manufacturers. Parts and guides for some Windows Phone models are also available. Although you may just get brief installation instructions, the web has plenty of other sites selling smartphone replacement parts like front and rear cameras, speakers, iPhone Home buttons and more. Repair Universe and Global Direct Parts are two such sites. Amazon also sells smartphone parts and repair kits. Operating system upgrades also bring security updates. If your phone has reached the end of its upgrade life and you are worried about vulnerabilities, check your app store for a compatible security app. | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Last year was Earth’s hottest year on record. And it’s the third consecutive year that we’ve hit new highs, another first in recorded history. Many experts believe temperatures are heading to levels that will pose a profound threat to the natural world and human civilization. Here’s a close look at the data NASA used to build its analysis. And you can see how much warmer your city was last year here. _____ 2. President Obama held the last news conference of his term. He said he was looking forward to spending quiet time with his family, writing and celebrating his 25th anniversary with Michelle. But he also said that he would speak out whenever he felt America’s “core values” were threatened, listing as examples “systematic discrimination being ratified,” voting obstacles, “institutional efforts to silence dissent or the press,” and efforts to round up and deport children who grew up in the U. S. _____ 3. As for the transition, Donald Trump’s national security team is off to a rocky start, leaving uncertainty on urgent foreign policy issues. His team has barely engaged with the National Security Council below the most senior levels, in part because of a delay in appointing senior staff members and a dearth of people with security clearances. Above, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, “passed the baton” to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn at an event in Washington. _____ 4. At Senate hearings for Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks, the nominee for health and human services secretary, Tom Price, insisted that Americans would not suddenly lose their health insurance. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, above, Mr. Trump’s choice for U. N. ambassador, said she rejected a registry for Muslims. Scott Pruitt, the pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, took a swipe at the Obama administration’s reach, saying his first goal would be a return to “common sense and lawful regulations. ” Wilbur Ross, who is up for commerce secretary, acknowledged employing an household worker who might have been undocumented. _____ 5. We’re a road trip with Trump supporters heading to the inauguration. “He showed that you can stand up for yourself,” said a Massachusetts woman driving down with a cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump in the back seat (above). We’ve pulled together a schedule of events to guide you through the week. The women’s protest march takes place on Saturday, but divisions over abortion rights are straining hopes for a united front. _____ 6. Former President George Bush and his wife, Barbara Bush, were both admitted to a Houston hospital, but doctors expect them to return home by the weekend. Mr. Bush, 92, who has pneumonia, was in stable condition after a procedure to clear his airway. Mrs. Bush was being monitored for “fatigue and coughing,” a hospital spokesman said. _____ 7. The heads of state, billionaire hedge fund managers and technology executives gathered in the Swiss Alps for the World Economic Forum are ready to fight inequality. Sort of. After populist fury propelled upset votes in Britain and the U. S. many of the talks at the annual forum are focusing on making globalization a more lucrative proposition for the masses. But the rhetoric goes only so far. Redistributing wealth and bolstering workers’ bargaining power are not up for discussion. _____ 8. A big health announcement at the World Economic Forum: A new coalition has raised $500 million to fundamentally change the way pandemics are handled. “We’ll have to make sure we do better than we did against Ebola,” said Bill Gates, whose foundation is a main donor. Others are the governments of Japan and Norway, and Britain’s Wellcome Trust. The goal is to develop and stockpile vaccines against three known viral threats and to help create the technology to brew vaccines quickly when needed. _____ 9. Health news on a more individual scale: Contrary to many people’s fears, a new study found that running may actually be good for knees. A session of running changes the interior of the knee, it suggests, reducing inflammation and lessening levels of a marker of arthritis. _____ 10. Finally, a gentle blow against throwaway culture. Repair cafes, which started in Amsterdam and are spreading across the U. S. bring together broken items and volunteers who can fix them. Or at least try. The only guarantee is an interesting experience. “It’s not just about fixing things,” one participant said. “It’s about the community, also. ” _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Here are the top 10 comments of the week on our digital platforms, as selected by our readers and the journalists who moderate nearly every comment. 1. “ ‘And when you’re a star they let you do it,’ Mr. Trump says. ‘You can do anything.’ ” Pay no taxes. Insult whomever you wish. Shoot an immigrant on Fifth Avenue. Fire the losers who support you. — SBMD in Florida, reacting to an article about a tape that captures Donald J. Trump speaking in vulgar terms about groping women. 2. A private conversation which reflects his public behavior. The man has no discretion. Other presidents may have been equally interested in scoring with women but they had the grace not to demean them in public. Obviously, marital vows mean nothing to him, which raises the question what vows will he keep, i. e. [to] uphold the Constitution and fulfill the duties of office of the presidency, so help me God? — Angela Mogin in San Mateo, Calif. 3. Trump paid exactly what was required of him by law, so what’s the issue? Should he have offered to pay more than what was owed? How many people on here can say that come tax time they wish to pay over and above what they owe? — Tom Langlais on The Times’s Facebook page, responding to our reporting about Mr. Trump’s 1995 taxes, which showed a $916 million loss, enough to enable Mr. Trump to avoid paying federal income tax for up to 18 years. This comment received more than 700 likes. 4. It is nobody’s obligation to pay more tax than the law demands. If Donald Trump could order his affairs in such a way that his income tax responsibility was ZERO for any particular year, or series of years, that’s fine with me. But whether or not Donald Trump pays taxes is NOT the issue. The issue is whether or not the tax system is fair. If the law is such that Donald Trump could have the kind of money he has and actually owe no federal income tax, then the law needs to be changed drastically. So ask yourself: Which party, and which candidate, do you think is sincerely interested in changing the income tax laws to make them fairer for the vast majority of us, rather than something to be manipulated by the wealthy? — Boneisha in Atlanta. 5. Mr. Kaine brilliantly phrased the only question worth asking when he repeatedly grilled Mr. Pence, “Why don’t you trust women to make this choice?” I was (surprisingly) moved to tears to hear a man say these words with so much force and conviction. In my 45 years I have never heard a politician stick his neck out for women’s rights like he did. — Alibumbayay in Washington, reacting to an essay by Katha Pollitt about the debate and the candidates’ views on abortion and women’s rights. This comment received more than 1, 700 reader recommendations. 6. It was so refreshing to hear Mike Pence speak about his position and not apologize for his beliefs. Some may not see this as the most important factor for voting for a presidential candidate but many of us still feel it is necessary to discuss abortion and the threat to innocent human life. To me it is very important and I want my president to respect and value life. I wish the Democrats cared about abortion and the destruction it causes as much as they do about other political issues such as free education and health care. — KMW in New York. This comment received more than 40 reader responses. 7. Far from being a distraction from “real issues,” I think looking at the candidates’ marriage histories tells us a lot about how they may govern as president. My takeaway is that Hillary sees all that is good inside a flawed relationship, and instead of abandoning it when unpleasant truths emerge, she confronts the problem, and works to figure out how to save what’s good and change the bad. That’s exactly her approach to governing. Trump, in contrast, appears to view marriage like car ownership. He loves to show it off, and really enjoys the ride, but upgrades to a newer model every six years or so. That same mentality is evident in his policy prescriptions for international treaties, trade agreements, and public policy. Once something stops being 100% favorable to him, it’s time to replace it with something brand new, without any real analysis or thought to consequences. I think any voter, regardless of party, who has survived and flourished in a relationship will clearly recognize how meaningful the wisdom and tolerance, and empathy, and capacity for compromise that marriage engenders is perhaps the most telling qualification for serving as president. — DavidH in Brooklyn, responding to an article about Hillary Clinton’s reactions to Bill Clinton’s affairs during their political careers. This comment received more than 700 reader recommendations. 8. I really hope that common ground can be found. A telescope is no power plant and while it certainly has environmental impacts, those impacts can be reduced to a minimum, when given a little attention and foresight. I believe the protests against this particular telescope, and the telescopes in general, are more of a symptom of how the native [Hawaiians] feel about their general treatment and how little they have been involved in processes affecting their cultural and historical backgrounds. This is a possibility for them to shine some light on their situation and get media attention. If both sides are a solution can surely be found. — Pierre Markuse in Germany, reacting to an article about a clash between astronomers and native Hawaiians over a proposed telescope, which would be the biggest and most expensive of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere. 9. My mom, when she feels she has been served well, loves to ask for the manager. She then compliments like crazy, whoever it was that was kind to her. Whether it’s the porter in her building, a waiter, a store clerk or a receptionist, she is sure to inform their boss. “People are so fast to complain,” she likes to say, “but it’s so easy to take the time to be thankful. ” Mr. DeMarco’s letter reminds me of my mom. No matter the circumstance, acknowledge and appreciate a job well done. — Forbes in New York, reacting to an article about a letter sent to the hospital staff by a man after his wife died following an asthma attack, thanking them for caring for her, their families and himself. 10. A man goes for a walk and finds a bottle on a beach. When he pops the cork a genie appears and says, “I shall grant you one wish. ” The man says, “I want to see peace in the Middle East. ” He then hands the genie a map of the Middle East. The genie studies the map for a while and finally says, “What you wish for is impossible. So I shall grant you another wish. ” The man says, “I’ve always wanted to see the Cubs in a World Series. ” The genie replies, “Let me see that map again. ” — Marianne in Edmonds, Wash. reacting to an article about whether the Chicago Cubs might win a World Series title for the first time since 1908. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — In the final weeks of the Obama administration, the Justice Department won the first case involving a transgender victim and sued two cities for blocking mosques from opening. Prosecutors settled charges with two banks, then sued a third. They filed legal briefs on behalf of New York teenagers being held in solitary confinement, and accused Louisiana of forcing mentally ill patients into nursing homes. And then, with days remaining, prosecutors announced a deal to overhaul Baltimore’s Police Department and accused Chicago of unconstitutional police abuses. The moves capped a historic and sometimes controversial span in which the Justice Department pushed the frontiers of civil rights laws, inserting itself into private lawsuits and siding with transgender students, juvenile prisoners, the homeless, the blind, and people who videotape police officers. On issues of gay rights, policing, criminal justice, voting and more, government lawyers argued for a broad interpretation of civil rights laws, a view that they consistently said would put them on the right side of history. Few areas of federal policy are likely to change so definitively. Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, opposes not only the Justice Department’s specific policies on civil rights but its entire approach. While liberal Democrats have criticized Mr. Sessions’s views on specific issues like gay marriage and voting, the larger difference is how differently the Trump administration will view the government’s role in those areas. Vanita Gupta, the head of the civil rights division and the face of the Obama administration’s efforts over the past two years, has spoken about the power “to bend the arc of history itself — not merely by serving your clients, but by harnessing the law as a force for positive change. ” “The project of civil rights has always demanded creativity,” she said in an interview. “It requires being bold. Often that means going against the grain of popular thinking. Or it requires going to the more expansive reading of the law to ensure we are actually ensuring equal protection for everyone. ” Mr. Sessions, a former federal prosecutor, has spoken harshly about lawyers and judges who try to push the law in certain directions — “a postmodern philosophy that elevates outcomes over law,” he has called it. Congress makes laws, he has said, and he was outraged when Eric H. Holder Jr. the former attorney general, refused to defend a law banning gay marriage and told his state counterparts that they could ethically do the same regarding state bans. “It was shameful and disgraceful and an abandonment of the rule of law,” Mr. Sessions said in 2015. “I’m not happy about what’s happened to my Department of Justice. ” At this confirmation hearing, Mr. Sessions harkened to the era of segregation in arguing that there was no need for the federal government to become involved in prosecuting crimes against women or gay people that were already being prosecuted locally. “I am not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination. I just don’t see it,” Mr. Sessions said, denying that he was or . The Obama administration saw its mandate much more broadly. One of the clearest examples of this philosophy came last year, when Ms. Gupta wrote a letter to every public school district in the country and told them to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that matched their gender identity. The policy touched off a furious debate and became a touchstone for conservatives who saw the Obama administration as out of touch and making its own laws. Courts have not settled the question of whether the federal laws apply in matters of gender identity. But Justice Department lawyers, who were fielding questions from school officials, interpreted those protections broadly. Congress created the civil rights division as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and its mission and leadership have been the subject of frequent debate. President Reagan’s civil rights chief, William Bradford Reynolds, faced criticism from advocacy groups who said he refused to enforce civil rights laws. President Clinton’s choice to lead the division, Bill Lann Lee, served his tenure in an acting capacity after the Senate refused to confirm him, largely over his support for affirmative action. One of Mr. Obama’s nominees, Debo P. Adegbile, was rejected by the Senate over his prior representation of a man convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer. In response, Mr. Obama never nominated Ms. Gupta to the post. Like Mr. Lee, she has served her tenure in an acting capacity. She started work amid unrest in Ferguson, Mo. where angry and sometimes violent demonstrators protested the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the way police officers treated African Americans. “History simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson,” Mr. Holder said at the time as he cast the Justice Department as a voice for those who have felt abused and ignored for years. The Justice Department ultimately cleared the officer involved in the shooting but sued the city, accusing its officers of longstanding abuses of force in encounters with black residents. Ferguson was the most target of the department’s campaign to use civil rights laws to force changes in police policy. Congress gave the Justice Department that authority in 1994 after the police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, but no administration has used that power nearly as aggressively. The Obama administration has opened two dozen such investigations and sued cities to make policing changes. Police groups have criticized the administration’s approach. James O. Pasco Jr. executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said officers were particularly concerned with the administration’s early talk. Tom Perez, Mr. Obama’s first civil rights chief, declared his division was “once again open for business,” and promised more investigations into police departments. “During his entire tenure there, we were never reached out to once. Not once,” Mr. Pasco said. “He went out of his way to make police officers the villains. ” Mr. Pasco has said collaboration with officers has since improved and spoke glowingly of Ms. Gupta. But many officers still say the Justice Department has portrayed them unfairly, and Mr. Sessions shares that belief. “These lawsuits undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing their work consistent with fidelity to law and fairness,” Mr. Sessions said at his confirmation hearing. He said civil rights lawsuits hurt morale and changed the way citizens viewed the police. “And we need to be careful before we do that. ” In 2015, Mr. Sessions sharply questioned Ms. Gupta about her views on policing and her A. C. L. U. advocacy. “You come from a background that indicates an aggressiveness in these areas,” he said. Ms. Gupta said such questions reflect a double standard. “I don’t think the same comment gets made of criminal prosecutors who’ve obtained a lot of convictions,” she said in an interview, “that they’re too aggressive to do their jobs effectively. ” She added, “I was an aggressive civil rights chief, and I’m proud of that. ” Ms. Gupta will leave government with the administration but a team of career lawyers remains. Many view Mr. Sessions’ nomination warily, but senior officials have urged an open mind. Ms. Gupta said she hopes her successor will have one, too. “This is not abstract work done for its own sake,” she said. “It is fundamentally about the people whose rights we protect. ” | 1 |
‘Though it appears as if rumors of capitalism’s imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated,’ writes Johnson, ‘there is good reason to believe that its remarkable ability to adapt and evolve in the face of frequent (self-induced) shocks has reached a breaking point.’ In 1946, George Orwell pondered the fragility of the capitalist order.
Reviewing the work of the influential theorist James Burnham, Orwell presaged several concepts that would later form the groundwork for his best-known novel, 1984.
“Not only is the best of capitalism behind us, but the worst of it may lie just ahead.”
In his book The Managerial Revolution , Burnham envisioned, as Orwell put it , “a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production.”
“The real question,” Orwell adds, “is not whether the people who wipe their boots on us during the next fifty years are to be called managers, bureaucrats, or politicians: the question is whether capitalism, now obviously doomed, is to give way to oligarchy or to true democracy.”
While Orwell was wary of Burnham’s worldview and of his more specific predictions, he agreed that the relationship between capitalism and democracy has always been, and always will be, a precarious one.
“For quite fifty years past,” Orwell noted, “the general drift has almost certainly been towards oligarchy.”
Pointing to the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the few and acknowledging “the weakness of the proletariat against the centralised state,” Orwell was far from optimistic about the future — but he was quite certain that the economic status quo would eventually give way.
Recent events, and the material circumstances of much of the world’s population, have prompted serious examinations of the same questions Orwell was considering seven decades ago. And though it appears as if rumors of capitalism’s imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated, there is good reason to believe that its remarkable ability to adapt and evolve in the face of frequent (self-induced) shocks has reached a breaking point.
Widespread discontent over stagnant incomes and the uneven prosperity brought about by neoliberal globalization has, in 2016, come to a head in striking fashion; Donald Trump, Brexit, and the rise of far-right parties in Europe have many questioning previously sacred assumptions.
“Is the marriage between liberal democracy and global capitalism an enduring one?” asked Martin Wolf, a formidable commentator in one of the world’s leading business papers, the Financial Times .
This was no rhetorical softball; Wolf is genuinely concerned that the winners of globalization have grown complacent, that they have “taken for granted” a couple that was only tenuously compatible to begin with. He also worries, rightly, that they have downplayed the concerns of the “losers.”
Wolf concludes that “if the legitimacy of our democratic political systems is to be maintained, economic policy must be orientated towards promoting the interests of the many not the few; in the first place would be the citizenry, to whom the politicians are accountable.”
Not all members of the commentariat share Wolf’s willingness to engage with these cherished assumptions, however. Indeed, many analysts have reserved their ire not for failing institutions or policies but for the public, reviving Walter Lippmann’s characterization of the masses as a “bewildered herd” that, if left to its own devices, is sure to usher in a regime of chaos.
“It’s time,” declared Foreign Policy ‘s James Traub, channeling the sentiments of Josh Barro, “for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses.”
Apologists like Traub and Barro — just two among many — speak and write as if the leash previously restraining the “herd” has been loosened, and that the resulting freedom has laid bare what elitists have long believed to be the case: To use Barro’s infamous words , “Elites are usually elite for good reason, and tend to have better judgment than the average person.” They point to the rise of Donald Trump as evidence of an intolerable democratic surplus — evidence, in short, of what the masses will do if granted a loud enough voice.
Aside from being conveniently self-serving, this narrative is also false.
Far from loosening the leash, elites have consolidated power to an unprecedented extent , and they have used their influence to undercut democratic movements and hijack public institutions. The resulting concentration of wealth and political power is jarring, and it puts the lie to the farcical notion that elites are a persecuted minority.
But, in the midst of these anti-democratic diatribes, fascinating and important critiques of a rather different nature have emerged.
“Far from loosening the leash, elites have consolidated power to an unprecedented extent , and they have used their influence to undercut democratic movements and hijack public institutions.”
Instead of urging us to align Against Democracy , to use the name of a recent book by the libertarian political philosopher Jason Brennan, many are arguing that it is capitalism, and not the excesses of the democratic process, that has provided figures like Trump a launching pad.
In his book Postcapitalism , Paul Mason argues that the rapid emergence of information technology has corroded the boundaries of the market; “capitalism,” he insists, “has reached the limits of its capacity to adapt.” And its attempts to reach beyond these limits have fostered an economic environment defined by instability, crippling austerity for the many, and rapid accumulation of wealth for the few.
According to Oxfam, the global 1 percent now owns as much wealth as the bottom 99 percent. CEO pay has continued to soar. And though post-crisis reforms have carried soaring promises of stability, the financial sector is still far too large , and many of the banks harmed by the crash they created are back and nearly as powerful as ever . | 0 |
Drones de EE.UU. abaten a un líder de Al Qaeda en Afganistán Publicado: 27 oct 2016 00:15 GMT
En el ataque aéreo murieron al menos 15 insurgentes más. Josh Smith Reuters Síguenos en Facebook
Uno de los líderes de la organización terrorista Al Qaeda en Afganistán ha muerto en un ataque aéreo llevado a cabo con drones estadounidenses, informa la AFP citando a altos mandos militares norteamericanos.
La incursión se llevó a cabo en la provincia de Kunar y tuvo como objetivo a Faruk al-Qatani, el emir de Al Qaeda en el noreste de Afganistán, y su ayudante Bilal al-Mutaybi.
En el momento del bombardeo, Qatani y su ayudante se encontraban en dos edificios separados a unos pocos cientos de metros de distancia y fueron atacados simultáneamente por varios aviones no tripulados. Por su parte, las autoridades afganas han señalado que en el ataque también murieron al menos otros 15 insurgentes. | 0 |
TORONTO — One frigid day in February, Kerry McLorg drove to an airport hotel here to pick up a family of Syrian refugees. She was cautious by nature, with a job poring over insurance data, but she had never even spoken to the people who were about to move into her basement. “I don’t know if they even know we exist,” she said. At the hotel, Abdullah Mohammad’s room phone rang, and an interpreter told him to go downstairs. His children’s only belongings were in pink plastic bags, and the family’s documents lay in a white paper bag printed with a Canadian flag. His sponsors had come, he was told. He had no idea what that meant. Across Canada, ordinary citizens, distressed by news reports of drowning children and the shunning of desperate migrants, are intervening in one of the world’s most pressing problems. Their country allows them a rare power and responsibility: They can band together in small groups and personally resettle — essentially adopt — a refugee family. In Toronto alone, hockey moms, friends, book club members, poker buddies and lawyers have formed circles to take in Syrian families. The Canadian government says sponsors officially number in the thousands, but the groups have many more extended members. When Ms. McLorg walked into the hotel lobby to meet Mr. Mohammad and his wife, Eman, she had a letter to explain how sponsorship worked: For one year, Ms. McLorg and her group would provide financial and practical support, from subsidizing food and rent to supplying clothes to helping them learn English and find work. She and her partners had already raised more than 40, 000 Canadian dollars (about $30, 700) selected an apartment, talked to the local school and found a nearby mosque. Ms. McLorg, the mother of two teenagers, made her way through the crowded lobby, a kind of purgatory for newly arrived Syrians. Another member of the group clutched a welcome sign she had written in Arabic but then realized she could not tell if the words faced up or down. When the Mohammads appeared, Ms. McLorg asked their permission to shake hands and took in the people standing before her, no longer just names on a form. Mr. Mohammad looked older than his 35 years. His wife was unreadable, wearing a flowing niqab that obscured her face except for a narrow slot for her eyes. Their four children, all under 10, wore donated parkas with the tags still on. For the Mohammads, who had been in Canada less than 48 hours, the signals were even harder to read. In Syria, Abdullah had worked in his family’s grocery stores and Eman had been a nurse, but after three years of barely hanging on in Jordan, they were not used to being wanted or welcomed. “You mean we’re leaving the hotel?” Abdullah asked. To himself, he was wondering, “What do these people want in return?” Much of the world is reacting to the refugee crisis — 21 million displaced from their countries, nearly five million of them Syrian — with hesitation or hostility. Greece shipped desperate migrants back to Turkey Denmark confiscated their valuables and even Germany, which has accepted more than half a million refugees, is struggling with growing resistance to them. Broader anxiety about immigration and borders helped motivate Britons to take the extraordinary step last week of voting to leave the European Union. In the United States, even before the Orlando massacre spawned new dread about “lone wolf” terrorism, a majority of American governors said they wanted to block Syrian refugees because some could be dangerous. Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has called for temporary bans on all Muslims from entering the country and recently warned that Syrian refugees would cause “big problems in the future. ” The Obama administration promised to take in 10, 000 Syrians by Sept. 30 but has so far admitted about half that many. Just across the border, however, the Canadian government can barely keep up with the demand to welcome them. Many volunteers felt called to action by the photograph of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose body washed up last fall on a Turkish beach. He had only a slight connection to Canada — his aunt lived near Vancouver — but his death caused recrimination so strong it helped elect an idealistic, prime minister, Justin Trudeau. The Toronto Star greeted the first planeload by splashing “Welcome to Canada” in English and Arabic across its front page. Eager sponsors toured local Middle Eastern supermarkets to learn what to buy and cook and used a hotline for instant Arabic translation. Impatient sponsors — “an angry mob of ” The Star called them — have been seeking more families. The new government committed to taking in 25, 000 Syrian refugees and then raised the total by tens of thousands. “I can’t provide refugees fast enough for all the Canadians who want to sponsor them,” John McCallum, the country’s immigration minister, said in an interview. In the ideal version of private sponsorship, the groups become concierges and surrogate family members who help integrate the outsiders, called “New Canadians. ” The hope is that the Syrians will form bonds with those unlike them, from openly gay sponsors to business owners who will help them find jobs to lifelong residents who will take them skating and canoeing. Ms. McLorg’s group of neighbors and friends includes doctors, economists, a lawyer, an artist, teachers and a bookkeeper. Advocates for sponsorship believe that private citizens can achieve more than the government alone, raising the number of refugees admitted, guiding newcomers more effectively and potentially helping solve the puzzle of how best to resettle Muslims in Western countries. Some advocates even talk about extending the Canadian system across the globe. (Slightly fewer than half of the Syrian refugees who recently arrived in Canada have private sponsors, including some deemed particularly vulnerable who get additional public funds. The rest are resettled by the government.) The fear is that all of this effort could end badly, with the Canadians looking naïve in more ways than one. The Syrians are screened, and many sponsors and refugees take offense at the notion that they could be dangerous, saying they are often victims of terrorism themselves. But American officials point out that it is very difficult to track activity in the chaotic, multifaceted Syrian war. Several Islamic State members involved in the 2015 Paris attacks arrived on Europe’s shores from Syria posing as refugees. Some of the refugees in Canada have and backgrounds, including a businessman who started a Canadian version of his medical marketing company within a month after arriving. But many more face steep paths to integration, with no money of their own, uncertain employment prospects and huge cultural gaps. Some had never heard of Canada until shortly before coming here, and a significant number are illiterate in Arabic, which makes learning English — or reading a street sign or sending an email in any language — a titanic task. No one knows how refugees will navigate the currents of longing, trauma, dependence or resentment they may feel. And volunteers cannot fully anticipate what they may confront — clashing expectations of whether Syrian women should work, tensions over how money is spent, families that are still dependent when the year is up, disagreements within sponsor groups. Still, by only eight weeks after their first encounter with Ms. McLorg, the Mohammads had a downtown apartment with a pristine kitchen, bikes for the children to zip around the courtyard, and a Canadian flag taped to their window. The sponsors knew the children’s shoe sizes Abdullah and Eman still had keys to Ms. McLorg’s house. He studied the neighborhood’s supermarkets, and his wife took a counseling course so she could help others who had experienced dislocation and loss. When the male sponsors visited, she sat at the dining room table with them instead of eating in the kitchen — as she would have done back home — as long as her husband was around, too. Mr. Mohammad searched for the right words to describe what the sponsors had done for him. “It’s like I’ve been on fire, and now I’m safe in the water,” he said. But he and other new arrivals were beginning to confront fresh questions: How were they supposed to work with these enthusiastic strangers? What would it mean to reinvent their lives under their watch? As sponsors sign the paperwork that commits them, no one really explains the potential range of their unofficial duties: showing a newcomer to spit in a dentist’s sink by miming the motions, rushing over late at night to calm a family terrified by a garage door blown open by the wind, or using Google Translate to tell children who lived through war and exile that they are supposed to wear pink at school for day. One April morning, Liz Stark, the grandmother in chief of another sponsor group, could not find Mouhamad Ahmed, the father in the family. She tried his phone and waited in vain outside their new apartment. This was a problem: Wissam, his wife, was in labor with their fifth child. The pregnancy had been anxious because the couple had lost even more than their old life in Syria, where Mr. Ahmed used to farm wheat, cotton and cumin. They had spent years in a refugee camp in Lebanon, their three children never attending school because tuition was too expensive. Ms. Ahmed became pregnant there with their fourth child, but labor was troubled and the girl lived only six hours. They named her Amira, which means princess. “I was thinking maybe the same thing will happen to me here as well,” Ms. Ahmed said. As Ms. Stark hunted for Mr. Ahmed, Peggy Karas, another sponsor, stayed at the hospital massaging Ms. Ahmed’s hand during contractions. Like other such pairs, the two women had come together through opaque, bureaucratic machinery. A United Nations agency referred Ms. Ahmed and her family to Canadian officials who interviewed and screened them, then passed their file to a new nonprofit dedicated to matching Syrians with private sponsors, who had 24 hours to say yes or no based on the barest of details. Ms. Stark and many of her were retired teachers, bossy and doting, and they had become hellbent on bringing this new child into the world safely. They had introduced Ms. Ahmed to the vitamins she would take, the machines that would monitor her, the hospital ward where she would deliver. The older women had repeated the doctors’ reassurances that all would go smoothly this time. They had helped her pick out tiny outfits and baby gear, but she was too superstitious to take them home, so they formed a small mountain in a sponsor’s living room. Ms. Stark had recruited another newly arrived Syrian refugee to serve as an interpreter during labor. When she finally found Mr. Ahmed, who had been playing soccer, unaware of what was happening, she ushered him to the hospital room, where he took over holding his wife’s hand. Suddenly a medical team rushed her away, saying the umbilical cord was in a dangerous position and she needed an emergency cesarean section. Ms. Ahmed, terrified, asked her husband to take care of their children if she did not survive. As Mr. Ahmed collapsed, sobbing, the sponsors asked his permission to pray. When a nurse finally appeared to say the newborn was healthy, whisked off to intensive care for observation, Ms. Ahmed said she would not believe it until she held the baby, but Mr. Ahmed was jubilant. He called his father in Syria and let him choose a name: Julia, the family’s first Canadian citizen. Once the infant was home, she went from being the Ahmed family member the sponsors worried about most to the one they fretted about least. She would grow up hearing English, going to Canadian preschool and beyond. For her siblings — twins, a boy and a girl, and an brother — the sponsors found a program for children who had never been to school. Their father, who had gone through only second grade, worked on learning enough English to find a job. Ms. Ahmed worried about her children. “What if my kids don’t adjust, don’t settle in school very well?” she asked. Everyone was on a deadline: After one year, the sponsors’ obligation ends, and the families are expected to become . Toronto rents are high, and the Ahmeds may not be able to stay in the relatively inexpensive apartment the sponsors found for them — the monthly rent is 1, 400 Canadian dollars, or about $1, 100 — even if Mr. Ahmed finds a job. Ms. Stark was optimistic because she had lived through other versions of this story. Almost four decades ago, as a young geography teacher, she joined in the first mass wave of Canadian private sponsorship, in which citizens resettled tens of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Hmong. She helped sponsor three Vietnamese brothers and a Cambodian family, later attending their weddings, celebrating the births of their children and watching them find their places in Toronto, a city so diverse that half the population is . Now some former Southeast Asian refugees are completing the cycle by sponsoring Syrians. Like many sponsors, Ms. Stark believes that her country is especially suited to resettling refugees, with its vast size, strong social welfare system, and a government that emphasizes multiculturalism. Canada has not endured acts of terrorism like the Sept. 11 hijackings or the Paris attacks, or even an assault on the scale of the Orlando nightclub killings. And with only one land border, little illegal immigration and a tenth of the population of the United States, Canada is hungry for migrants. Officials around the country have clamored to bring Syrian refugees to their provinces. “We are an accident of geography and history,” said Ratna Omidvar, who Lifeline Syria, a group that matches Syrians with sponsors. Opposition to the influx has been relatively muted. The Conservative Party argues that the country is taking in more refugees than it can provide for, but supports accepting Syrians. Some Canadians complain that the country should take care of its own first, and new chapters of the Soldiers of Odin, a European group, have cropped up in recent months. A few incidents targeting Syrians — graffiti reading “Syrians go home and die” at a Calgary school, a pepper spray attack at an event welcoming refugees — drew widespread condemnation. One May evening, three weeks after Julia’s birth, Ms. Stark stopped by the Ahmeds’ apartment with a plastic table for the balcony and cradled the baby. She had a new grandchild, but she had spent more time with Julia. The retirees were planning a party to welcome her the Syrian way, by feasting on a newly slaughtered lamb on her 40th day. Meanwhile, Mr. Ahmed had adopted a new custom: He sometimes brought his wife breakfast in bed and got the children ready. “When I came here, I saw men just doing everything that women do in Syria,” he said. “And I thought, yeah, of course, I will do the same. ” That night, Ms. Ahmed handed Ms. Stark a form from the twins’ school, unsure what it was about. “What? You’re going to the Blue Jays game?” she crowed to the boy, Majed, who grinned back under his dark curls. Then she turned to his parents. “This costs money, but your sponsors will pay for it because this is important. ” The Ahmeds were so frugal that their benefactors sometimes worried whether they were buying enough to eat. Ms. Ahmed said they wanted to purchase no more than the family needed. “The sponsors worked for the money they are giving us, and we’re not just going to throw it in the garbage,” she explained later. Before leaving, Ms. Stark explained the proper Tylenol dosage for the couple’s daughter, Zahiya, who had a fever. She and her twin now spent their school bus rides exchanging language lessons with a pair of Chinese brothers, pointing to objects and naming them. One day when their parents tried to bring them home after a dentist appointment, the Syrian children refused, insisting on returning to school for the time remaining. English words were starting to emerge from the older children’s mouths, but the sponsors and the adult refugees could barely understand one another without help, often relying on mimed gestures or balky translation apps. Even when the groups use interpreters, they often get stuck in roundelays of Canadian and Syrian courtesy, so reluctant to impose that they do not say what they mean. Ms. Ahmed, who had a education and was not attending English classes because she was home with a newborn, said that not being able to communicate was painful. “Sometimes I feel like I am losing my mind,” she said, because she felt so close to the sponsors but could not even tell them little things about the baby. Still, some groups faced greater challenges. Some Syrians have backed out before traveling to Canada, intimidated by the geographic and cultural leap. Sam Nammoura, a refugee advocate in Calgary, said he was tracking dozens of cases in which sponsored friends and relatives and then left them destitute. Other pairings have turned out to be mismatches of expectations one formerly Syrian family expressed disappointment that its apartment was a and lacked a washing machine. Others were shocked to discover that their sponsors were posting Facebook messages and blog entries about them that strangers could read. Even when sponsors and refugees become enmeshed in one another’s lives, they do not fully know one another. Not every family is open about its history, and many sponsors would like to know the worst but do not want to ask. (The Ahmeds and the Mohammads asked not to be identified by their full surnames, and were reluctant to publicly share details of their experiences in Syria because they feared reprisals against relatives still there. Most of the refugees in this article left Syria around 2013, during fighting between the Assad regime and rebels.) The sponsors do not share everything about themselves, either. Emma Waverman, the leader of another cluster, was telling her about the stirring bar mitzvah speech her son had written about the Syrians they were aiding when another woman stopped her. “Do they know we’re Jewish?” she asked. Few issues are as delicate as how hard the sponsors should push and when the refugees can say no. Should the Syrians live close to downtown sponsors or in neighborhoods with more Middle Easterners — and is it right for sponsors to decide without consulting them? The Canadians raise tens of thousands of dollars for each newcomer family who controls how it is spent? Some worry that sponsors are overpowering the refugees with the force of their enthusiasm. Kamal a journalism professor at Ryerson University who is originally from Yemen, said he had noticed a patronizing tone, as when some sponsors highlighted their volunteering on social media. “The white savior narrative comes into play,” he said. When Muaz and Sawsan Ballani and their son arrived here in February, they seemed so disoriented and alone that their sponsors became especially eager to nurture them. Mr. Ballani, 26, had once worked in his father’s clothing store, which was run out of their home. Now he introduced himself to his sponsors by showing them a picture of his oldest brother: not a smiling snapshot, but an image of the young man lying dead back home, blood streaming from his body. (Mr. Ballani believed that his brother had been caught in fighting between the regime and the opposition, but in the chaos of the conflict, he said, he could not learn more.) Sawsan wed Muaz when she was 16 in an arranged marriage, rushed because of bombings and failing electricity a month later, they fled. Now 20, she had not seen her family since. The couple had been languishing in Jordan, sleeping in a house crammed with too many people, not enough beds or blankets, and ants that crawled over their son, named Abdulrahman, after Mr. Ballani’s dead brother, and nicknamed Aboudi. One of Mr. Ballani’s brothers was still stuck in the house in Jordan, he said, and his brother’s widow was living in a park in Syria with her three children, foraging for food. “If we hadn’t come here, we would have died,” he said. The family’s sponsors started as mostly strangers to one another — a few former colleagues, a friend of a friend. Helga Breier, a market research consultant and one of the organizers, was drawn into sponsorship last summer, when she felt haunted during her Mediterranean vacation by the suffering across the water. The Ballanis became their galvanizing cause. Together they found a bright apartment near their homes and countered the bareness — the family had few belongings — with cheery posters and tags labeling everything in English: lamp, cupboard, wall, door. The couple spoke almost no English, so to teach Mr. Ballani to get where he needed to go, the sponsors helped him photograph the route. When Aboudi threw tantrums in day care, they sat with him so his mother could stay in language class. The couple cooked elaborate Middle Eastern meals for the sponsors and mostly welcomed their interventions. Mr. Ballani donned a Toronto Maple Leafs hat that he wore day after day, and his wife gamely hopped on a toboggan. Sometimes the sponsors barely hid their views of how the Ballanis should adjust. At a spring potluck dinner, Ms. Ballani described how she had recently traveled by subway on her own, a trip she could not have imagined taking just a few weeks before. The sponsors around the table, firm feminists, asked what else she might like to do herself. She turned to her husband. “I’m going to ask you an honest question,” she said. “Would you let me work here?” As they waited for the answer, the Canadian women held their breath. “Yes, but I wouldn’t have let you work back” in Jordan, he said, adding that even women who behaved traditionally there were often harassed and that those who appeared too independent faced worse. Ms. Ballani pressed forward: She wanted to attend university and have a career of her own, she said, a daunting set of goals for a woman with only a education. The Canadians beamed two each other. At the same time, the sponsors worried that they were becoming helicopter parents, as Ms. Breier put it. When the Syrians skipped English lessons (Aboudi sometimes kept them awake at night) or missed an appointment for donated dental services (a misunderstanding) the sponsors agonized over what to say, debating on the messaging app Slack. Should they show up every morning at the Ballanis’ apartment to make sure they got to class? Aboudi did not nap regularly and seemed to consume a lot of sugar — he drank soda, sometimes for breakfast — so should they offer advice? Mr. Nammoura, the refugee advocate in Calgary, said he saw a pattern among the cases. The Canadians, who feel responsible for the refugees’ success, want to give them as much help and direction as possible. But many Syrians, finally safe after years of war and flight, want to exhale before launching into language regimens and job searches, and sometimes feel that sponsors are meddling. When the Ballani sponsors sought advice from an Arab community center caseworker and an older Syrian mother, they were told to be harsher — to threaten fines or loss of sponsorship if the couple did not accept their guidance. Instead, the sponsors tried to strike a balance, being insistent on issues like health and education but easing off in other areas. A few weeks before Ramadan, the Ballanis raised the prospect of missing school during the month of long fasts. “It’s really hard because we have to fast 16 or 18 hours,” Muaz Ballani told the sponsors. Ms. Breier and her partners dismissed the idea, saying they feared that the couple would lose their slots if they missed too many classes. The Ballanis quickly relented. It was not clear how much freedom they felt to express disagreement to outsiders they seemed reluctant to acknowledge anything but gratitude. That morning, Ms. Ballani said she and her husband never had different opinions from the sponsors. “We’ve never felt like they were telling us what to do,” she added. Another weekend, the extended group gathered for a picnic, the first birthday party anyone had thrown for Mr. Ballani. He was deeply moved by the gesture. “A human life has value here,” he had said in an interview. “You can feel it everywhere. ” But the conversation at the party turned to his relatives in Syria, and he seemed distant as the Canadians presented his cake. Like many of the newcomers, he regularly receives calls and texts from family members, some in harrowing straits, as news reports describe starvation back home and mass drownings in the Mediterranean. “I am really thankful to them I don’t want them to misunderstand,” he said later about the sponsors. “It’s like I’m two people at the same time, one happy and one unhappy,” because of his family’s continued suffering. The sponsors had been working on that, too, helping match Mr. Ballani’s brother in Jordan with another Toronto sponsor group and laboring over the paperwork. By late spring they had news: His relatives could arrive by year’s end. Mr. Ballani, overjoyed, started planning what he would show his relatives in the city that had taken him in. This time, he would be the guide. “Now it’s my turn to help,” he said. Three months after the Mohammads’ awkward first meeting with Kerry McLorg and the other sponsors at the airport hotel, they had clicked into a productive rhythm, settling into Canada faster than anyone had expected. They went on a picnic to Niagara Falls and danced around a maypole at a spring festival. The girls won honors. Bayan, the eldest, who had whipped past the boys she raced on Jordanian streets, was now beating runners from schools across the city. When the sponsors came to give informal language lessons, Ahmad, the liked to try new phrases in English, such as “Good job!” Still, there was some culture shock. When Abdullah Mohammad took the children to a community pool, he encountered a woman in a string bikini. “I ran away,” he said later. “I’ve never seen that before in my life. ” Ms. McLorg, measured and methodical, had organized the sponsor group, but the most energetic member was an artist named Susan Stewart, with a seemingly endless list of activities for the family and long email exchanges with the children’s teachers. During her turn to give English lessons, she brought flashcards down to the courtyard, telling the children to alternate between loops on their bicycles and new words. She was sweetly relentless, which was partly why the family had made so much progress, the other sponsors said. When Mr. Mohammad voiced interest in working, Ms. Stewart became consumed with helping him find a job. Of all the tests for the family — and, by extension, the sponsors — this was perhaps the most crucial. So Ms. Stewart found an settlement counselor to advise Mr. Mohammad and drove him to a job fair for refugees, where they struck up a conversation with a Syrian supermarket owner. After he invited Mr. Mohammad for an interview, Ms. Stewart fashioned a résumé from a questionnaire she had helped him fill out. “I am keen to learn all aspects of the trade from stocking and organizing shelves to marketing strategies and Canadian shopping habits,” she wrote. Describing his work experience — doing odd jobs during his three years in Jordan — she wrote, “As a refugee I had to be resourceful and find work wherever I could. ” Even though the interview would be in Arabic, she drilled him in English phrases like “I can stock shelves. ” “Ten more times!” she told him as they drove to the interview. When he was offered the position, the sponsors were thrilled. But a few days later, he called the Canadians to say he would turn it down. He struggled with taking money from the sponsors — back home, others had come to his family for help, and it was “really hard to be on the receiving end,” he said. But he wanted to consider options, such as becoming a mechanic. In Syria or Jordan, he had never had freedom to choose his work. “It’s always what you have to do to earn a living rather than what you really want to do,” he said later. And he did not want to take a job until he improved his English, he said, because he did not want any more favors or charity. At the supermarket, unable to answer basic questions from customers, “I would be a burden to my employer,” he added. He had been annoyed at Ms. Stewart for pressing so hard, he said later, but mostly he was embarrassed to pass on the job after she had done so much. But Ms. McLorg saw a plus side: Mr. Mohammad was starting to navigate his own path in Canada, and the relationship between the sponsors and the family, so lopsided at the start, was beginning to balance out. “Our job was to help them come into Canada and show them the options that are here,” she said. In at the end of a routine meeting with the sponsors and the Mohammads, she shared news of her own: She had breast cancer. Now that she was facing surgery, she was the one who was vulnerable, and the Syrians were the ones who were checking on her. They brought flowers and chocolates the other sponsors, now practiced in the logistics of caring, offered meal deliveries and other assistance. “I had no intention of building my own support group, but I have one now,” Ms. McLorg said. Bayan and Batoul, the two oldest Mohammad children, made cards using the same set of watercolors the sponsors had used to make greeting signs that first day at the airport hotel. The morning after Ms. McLorg’s operation, when she made her way down to her living room, the cards were the first things she saw. | 1 |
Female Veterans Release Anti-Trump Ad “The problem with Blue Falcons, like Donald Trump, is they get you killed.” | October 28, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! Donald Trump likes to boast about the endorsement he’s received from military personnel, but he’ll have to work a lot harder to win over those who serve if he is elected as the next Commander-in-Chief. As was recently reported, 55 generals denounced the Republican Presidential candidate in a historic rebuke last week. And now, a group of female veterans with the Common Defense PAC have released a compelling new ad called “Blue Falcon”.
The Common Defense PAC defines itself as “a diverse group of male and female veterans” who represent the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Army Reserves, and Air National Guard. In the ad below, women from various branches of the military explain their aspirations for serving, as well as their disgust with the business tycoon who is running for President. Said veteran Wendy Barranco: “As a migrant, I wanted to give something back to this country that had given me and my family so much. So I became an Army combat medic. When you’re fighting to save a fellow soldier’s life, things get real very quickly. You have to trust your team.”
It’s made clear, however, that Donald Trump is not the guy you’d want on your team. Barranco continued: “Guys like Donald Trump? We call them Blue Falcons.”
In case you’re not familiar with the term, it’s a derogatory euphemism for “buddy-fucker.” The women also explain that a Blue Falcon is the type of person who will step on their teammate to get ahead .
From his declaration that it should be “expected” for rape to take place in the military to his inappropriate and abrasive comments toward women, minorities, and disabled individuals, he is not the best candidate for President, the veterans assert. This work by Planet Free Will is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. | 0 |
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Have you ever noticed how Washington always has a plan to solve everybody’s problem – except their own?
For the federal government, it’s always easy and tempting to look at problems – real or imagined – outside of the beltway and solve them from afar.
You will recall, of course, how former Attorney General Eric Holder was going to stop police shootings all over America with sensitivity training, the power and force of the federal government and investigations, investigations and more investigations.
Now Loretta Lynch, his successor, also known as Hillary Clinton’s guardian angel, is set to turn police shootings throughout America into big business and more power for Washington.
Her latest pet project is assembling a national database on “interactions between law enforcement and civilians,” she reported this month.
“Accurate and comprehensive data on the use of force by law enforcement is essential to an informed and productive discussion about community-police relations,” Lynch said. “In the days ahead, the Department of Justice will continue to work alongside our local, state, tribal and federal partners to ensure that we put in place a system to collect data that is comprehensive, useful, and responsive to the needs of the communities we serve.”
The irony here is thick, indeed.
One of Lynch’s goals, she says, is to get law enforcement agencies to report more thoroughly about people who died during an interaction with them.
Meanwhile, Lynch presides over the most egregious cover-up of the most outrageous police shooting case I have ever seen in my life – namely the killing of Miriam Carey, a young black mother with baby in tow, who was gunned down by Washington cops and Secret Service agents for a wrong turn in the nation’s capital.
Lynch wants reports?
So does WND, which has been pursuing the information through Freedom of Information Act requests and finally, after being stonewalled for years, a lawsuit.
So does the public and the family of Miriam Carey. Unfortunately, Lynch is holding back on a few things: Missing Evidence The 92-page memo with findings, analysis of evidence and conclusions in the Carey shooting investigation. This would show the evidence and reasoning that led the Department of Justice to decline to file criminal charges against officers. Why they considered this a justifiable homicide – or whether they should have, based on the evidence. Why officers used deadly force. Whether officers followed or violated the policy of their agencies. Video of shooting at Capitol Police guard post at intersection of Constitution Ave., Maryland Ave. and 2nd Street. Only stills have been released. Video would show more clearly if officer’s life actually was in danger, as DOJ claimed, when he fired fatal shot to Carey’s head. Not one of the five witnesses at the scene said Carey was driving at the officer, as the DOJ claimed. Police statements The police report said four officers fired shots at Carey, two from the Capitol Police and two from the Secret Service. Not one statement from those officers was in the report. Their names were also redacted. Redacted information An attorney in the Washington, D.C., mayor’s office said the only redactions were names, in order to protect privacy. It turned out much more was redacted than names. The report was riddled with blacked-out sections and missing information. 12 pages in the report were entirely blacked out. 15 pages were mostly blacked out. 22 pages were partially blacked out. Some of the blacked-out pages just included a heading marked “Evidence.” Some just had a date. Witness statements An astonishing 38 witness accounts are missing from the police report. The police report stated: “There were seventy-two (72) witnesses interviewed regarding this incident and their statements were captured by audio and/or video recordings. Copies of the aforementioned recordings were turned over to the USAO for review. Copies of the aforementioned audio and video recordings are stored in the main case file at the Technical Support Unit (TSU) located at the IAD.” Of those 72 witness statements, only 34 were in the materials provided to WND, leaving 38 missing. Statement transcripts None of the actual transcripts of interviews in the witnesses’ own words were provided, just paraphrased versions in what the former NYPD officer Sanders described as “cop talk.” White House guard post video Stills were released but not the video. It would show whether anyone was manning the post when Carey drove up; whether she tried to drive around the off-duty guard who dragged a gate in front of her; and whether she sped off, or left at a normal speed, as a witness said. Police radio recordings No recordings or transcripts of radio transmissions during the pursuit and shooting of Carey were provided in the FOIA material. Also not provided were transcripts of computer transmissions (instant messaging) between squad cars and police headquarters. Ballistics and forensics reports The Justice Department Washington Metro Police Department responses to FOIA requests did not include a ballistics or a forensics report.
I could go on and on. For people who want facts and reports, the U.S. Justice Department under both Holder and Lynch have a strong propensity for not willingly releasing the facts and reports to the public or the press.
We’ve been at this for a long time – years. Yet the stonewall and cover-up of a horrendous, unjustifiable, outrageous police shooting right in their own jurisdiction and backyard continues.
Do we really expect Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch to find justice for police shooting victims outside of their own jurisdiction with a track record like that?
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Tuesday night on CNN, host Don Lemon said there was an “effort to tar and feather” President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice over reports she unmasked members of Donald Trump’s transition team. Lemon said, “So far, we’ve seen no evidence that she’s done anything improper and it seems like an effort to tar and feather her to try to make a lie the truth, the original tweet by the president. ” Former Obama administration green jobs czar Van Jones agreed that Susan Rice was “being tarred, feathered, and burned alive for doing her job in a good way. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Posted 10/31/2016 10:54 am by PatriotRising with 0 comments
This last Friday it became public record that FBI Director James Comey reopened the Hillary Clinton email server investigation after repeatedly testifying before Congress and the world up to last July that he’d closed the case , after in his words not finding sufficient evidence of “any criminal wrongdoing ” to indict her in spite of her four years as Secretary of State egregiously breaching our national security , committing obstruction of justice and willful tampering with evidence, deleting 30,000 emails after receiving a court subpoena constituting destruction of evidence, not to mention repeatedly engaging in perjury before Congress and the FBI.
But obviously, a federal investigation still in process in late June never stopped serial rapist-crime boss Bill Clinton’s illegal ambush at the Phoenix airport of Comey’s boss US Attorney General Loretta Lynch “clearing” the way for Hillary to proceed without consequence to be anointed as the next US figurehead puppet president by the ruling elite. Because it’s so blatantly obvious to the entire world that Hillary is guilty as sin, Comey’s whitewash didn’t go over well with either Americans or longtime FBI agents who reacted angrily to Comey’s over-the-top corruption. Subsequently, in recent months Comey has had a virtual mutiny on his hands as in the FBI boss has lost all credibility, respect, and moral authority.
A former federal attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova spelled it all out in a WMAL radio interview last Friday just hours after the news was released that Comey had sent a letter informing Congress that the case is being reopened. DiGenova said that with an open revolt brewing inside the FBI, Comey was forced to go public on Friday with reopening the investigation. The former DC attorney added that the FBI investigators discovered more emails on a phone confiscated from the former New York Congressman and separated husband Anthony Weiner that also included his wife and longtime Hillary’s right-hand woman Huma Abedin’s communications that allegedly bear pertinent relevance to the Hillary case. Funny how things have a karmic way of coming full circle – the Clintons first introduced Weiner and Abedin 15 years ago and they married a half dozen years ago.
In a separate FBI investigation involving Weiner’s alleged sexting messages with a 15-year old minor , the phone in question was handed over to the FBI. The investigating teams of both the Weiner and Hillary cases compared notes and apparently additional emails not already issued by WikiLeaks or already in FBI possession recently came to light on Weiner’s phone . The legions of rank and file FBI agents were already fuming over Comey’s complete ethical and legal lapses in his choice not to indict Hillary. Joe diGenova believes that FBI personnel forced Comey’s hand to reopen the investigation after giving him the ultimatum that if he failed to do so, the FBI defiantly would. According to diGenova, this latest plot twist only proves that:
The original investigation was not thorough, and that it was an incompetent investigation.
Otherwise, had a real investigation been conducted, that Weiner phone used by both Anthony and Huma would have been picked up by the FBI and its contents thoroughly scrutinized long before now.
In addition to stating the obvious, that the higher-up feds had already made the decision to not consequence Hillary for her crimes, speculating on why that phone was not already submitted to the FBI as evidence, the former DC attorney concluded:
There could be one explanation: Huma Abedin may have denied that any other phone existed, and if she did, she committed a felony. She lied to the FBI just like General Cartwright , and if she did, she’s dead meat, and Comey knows it, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Finally, diGenova dropped one more bombshell in Friday’s interview. An inside source has revealed to him that the laptops belonging to key Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, both wrongly granted immunity , were not destroyed after all as previously reported, but have been secretly kept intact by investigating FBI agents refusing to destroy incriminating evidence as part of the in-house whitewash. Additionally like their boss, Hillary’s aides also sent classified material using private servers. On top of that, longtime aide Cheryl Mills on multiple occasions has perjured herself lying under oath for the Clinton crime family, tasked with “cleaning up” (aka covering up) their countless scandals over the past several decades. Indeed the whole Clinton entourage not already “mysteriously” winding up in the growing Clinton dead pool are all unindicted criminals protected by the corrosively corrupt DC cronyism where backroom deals (a la Bill’s airport ambush) are brokered based on whatever dirt’s been gathered and used as bargaining blackmail chips against all parties involved. That’s how the Washington crowd stays immune from any and all accountability as well as stays alive. Violate that crime syndicate code of conduct and you lose your life as more recent victims earlier this year have.
In a “leaked” memo to his FBI that surfaced on Fox Friday night, Comey outlined his reasons for reopening the case in light of the new information the director believes would have ultimately been leaked to Congress and the public anyway. So in full damage control/CYA mode, the beleaguered director now going public really had no choice in the matter. His underlings were chomping at the bit to both out and oust him. In an obvious attempt to weakly claim some moral high ground, Comey wrote in his memo:
I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.
Though his leadership and character are perceived by the vast majority of both FBI personnel as well as American citizens to presently lay in ruin as a pathetically shameful stain and humiliating joke on both the FBI organization and Washington in general, James Comey appears to be feebly attempting to save his own career and reputation for appearing now to “come clean.” But make no mistake, his moral turpitude displayed throughout this Hillary debacle from early 2015 to now has over-exposed him as a total lackey and fraud, so at this late stage of the game, redemption is not even an option. But the criminal misconduct, rampant corruption and diabolical evil committed by those at the highest puppet levels of federal power, and especially the elite puppet masters controlling them, their sins produce far more devastating consequences than this morally lacking man in the middle of this latest controversy.
Because there is no way that the FBI will properly conclude this part 2 of the Hillary investigation saga before the November 8 th election, Hillary, and her Democrats are predictably crying foul , demanding that the FBI immediately disclose what it has, which of course is a moot point that won’t happen. It seems highly unlikely that the email texts from Abedin and Weiner found on his phone would not contain clear criminal evidence that implicates Hillary. Since Hillary was the globalist choice after Obama was selected in 2008, it seems unlikely that the puppet masters would not permit this latest development to even occur. But then perhaps the ruling elite is pulling the plug on Hillary, concluding that she simply carries too much liability baggage with her deteriorating health condition and never-ending scandals, maybe the globalists are rethinking an alternative replacement like her obnoxiously aggressive VP candidate, the Jesuit-trained and educated Tim Kaine.
That said, there are some cynics who believe that this recent odd turn is the last ditch desperado attempt being staged to overturn Trump winning by a landslide. This conjectured scenario goes something like this: a few days prior to the election the FBI will once again “clear” Hillary of all charges. This, in turn, would offer her the last minute much needed boost being able to cash in on her worn out persecution complex , plagued forever by her “right wing conspiracy” theory against the “much maligned” woman of destiny.
In response to all her scandals, Hillary’s M.O. has always been to falsely blame some villainous sinister force. This year it’s been Putin hacking into her emails, and Trump, Putin, and Assange colluding and plotting behind her back. She’s always been as paranoid as Richard Nixon , attempting to deflect the heat she draws from her own skullduggery lies by constantly pointing fingers to externalize blame onto others. It’s a deeply rooted pathological complex that certain tightly screwed sociopaths possess.
This latest sudden turn of events obviously has James Comey incurring the wrath of Hillary Democrats as well as the Justice Department. By disclosing the reopened investigation so close to the election date that undoubtedly casts some influence on the potential outcome, Comey is defying his AG boss while clearly violating DOJ written policy . Lynch herself even tried to quash Comey’s letter to Congress. But as diGenova alluded, by Comey’s own past misdeeds (and those of his boss and Obama as well), the FBI director placed himself between this rock and a hard place by his own slipshod, half-ass probe failing to acquire Weiner’s phone the first time around.
The entire sordid affair of this year’s totally rigged political election – pre-fixed in Hillary’s favor – blatantly reveals to America the gross misnomer of the US “justice” system being two-tiered, one for elitist crime cabal bosses like Hillary and the other for the rest of us 99% no longer protected in a totalitarian police state by our once rule of law the US Constitution. Regardless of what happens in the future, the truth genie’s already been let out of the bag, and for eyes open enough to see, it’s floating in the Washington cesspool of filth, debauchery and deception regularly perpetrated by our “entrusted perps” we have as our so called leaders.
Moreover, this year’s unending batches of Wiki-leaked DNC/Hillary emails and Project Veritas undercover campaign videos confirm that the entire US political, as well as economic system, is morally and financially bankrupt, irreparably broken and in need of complete overhaul. Voter fraud and election fraud are rampant. Soros funded electronic voting machines that are preprogrammed to vote for Hillary are operating in 16 key battleground states. America’s internal house now is in total disarray, badly in need of a deep cleaning purge like never before. Mainstream media is strongly biased against Trump in its blind support for Hillary . As Secretary of State she treasonously sold out our nation, placing us all at high security risk and under foreign interest control at the hands of high rolling bidders so she and her fat cats can get richer as fellow partners-in-crime from places like Saudi Arabia and Israel, destroying our once sovereign country while aiding, abetting, financing and supporting our enemies the global terrorists around the world. She helped create ISIS and plans world war against Russia, China and Iran. The traitors in our government and their globalist puppet masters – the Rothschilds, Rockefellers , the Bushes and Clintons all need to be rounded up, imprisoned and tried at The Hague for both treason and their endless crimes against humanity.
The Best of Joachim Hagopian
Joachim Hagopian [ ] is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com . Previous article by Joachim Hagopian: Another US False Flag? Do you enjoy reading Patriot Rising? | 0 |
10-26-16 In September 2015, at the behest of its legitimate government, Russia began aerial operations to combat ISIS and al-Nusra terrorists in Syria. Numerous other likeminded groups are involved, just as cutthroat, just as ruthless, just as extremist, masquerading as moderate rebels when none exist - supported by Washington, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, other Gulf States, Jordan, Israel and Turkey.Theyre massacring civilians, killing government soldiers defending them, using chemical and other banned weapons, committing gruesome atrocities.Why does Russia pretend conflict is civil when Syria was invaded by terrorists, imported from scores of countries, serving as US imperial foot soldiers? Why does it pretend moderate fighters are involved when none exist? Why does it insist on separating nonexistent moderates from terrorist groups its combating when all anti-government forces are the same?Why isnt it targeting all armed groups wanting Assad toppled and Syrian sovereign independence destroyed? Its the only way to free the country from the scourge its facing - supported by Washington and its rogue allies, NATO and regional ones.Why did it halt its aerial operations to liberate eastern Aleppo, declaring a unilateral ceasefire, a so-called humanitarian pause - a major blunder, accomplishing nothing? Ongoing since October 18, its letting US-supported terrorists infesting the city replenish their ranks, regroup and mobilize for heavy attacks, largely harming civilians Moscow says it wants protected.Last Saturday evening, Russia ended its humanitarian pause because US-supported terrorists in eastern Aleppo prevent civilians from leaving, holding thousands hostage as human shields, including the sick and wounded.Yet it ceased aerial attacks, yielding the advantage to dark forces its sworn to eliminate. What kind of strategy gives them the upper hand? It gets worse.On October 26, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov issued the following statement:The Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Air Force have been sticking to a moratorium on air strikes for the past eight days. They are staying out of a 10-km (six-mile) zone around Aleppo.Six humanitarian corridors, field kitchens and first aid stations are open for civilians leaving eastern Aleppo 24 hours a day.Russia and the Syrian government are ready to resume humanitarian pauses in Aleppo if they receive guarantees from international organizations confirming readiness to evacuate the sick and the wounded as well as civilian population from the rebel-held areas.Fact: Maintaining an airstrike moratorium aids Washington, its rogue allies and terrorists in eastern Aleppo they support.Fact: What good are humanitarian corridors if eastern Aleppo residents are prevented from using them, risking death or serious injury if they try.Fact: International organizations have no control over terrorists in eastern Aleppo - or anywhere else in the country. So what good are their guarantees if made?Fact: As long as Russia continues making the same mistakes repeatedly, the struggle to liberate Syria will likely go on interminably without resolution - a forever war, while countless thousands more civilians will die, be seriously injured and endure hardships people in Western societies cant imagine, victims of US imperial ruthlessness.A handful of eastern Aleppo civilians alone escaped via a humanitarian corridor. According to one now free, their relatives were seized, imprisoned and tortured.The only way to liberate thousands of others is by relentlessly smashing their terrorist captors, eliminating them - not giving them breathing room to mobilize for greater attacks.Washington is delighted with Moscows ceasefire and humanitarian pause, serving US imperial interests, State Department spokesman admiral John Kirby saying:We welcome the stated intention to extend this pause, and we hope that this extension will be more successful than it has been thus far - meaning the longer it continues, the greater the benefit to US-led dark forces, the worse off trapped Syrians in eastern Aleppo will be, the longer the struggle to liberate Syria will go on.Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at . Logged | 0 |
Centrist French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron extended his lead in the polls over his rival Marine Le Pen on Friday, the final day of a tumultuous election campaign that has turned the country’s politics upside down. [The election is seen as the most important in France for decades with two diametrically opposed views of Europe and France’s place in the world at stake. The National Front’s Le Pen would close borders and quit the euro currency, while independent Macron, who has never held elected office, wants closer European cooperation and an open economy. The candidates of France’s two mainstream parties were both eliminated in the first round on April 23. Read the rest on Reuters … | 1 |
Next Cold War Roundup 11/23/16: The official story of how the 3 US Green Berets were killed in Jordan has been disputed. Iraqi militias completed the encirclement of Mosul. The USS Zumwalt broke down again in the Panama Canal. And more in our latest Next Cold War roundup…
3 Green Beret Soldiers Killed in Jordan _ By Jack Murphy, Army special operations veteran and editor of SOFREP: “Three Green Berets killed by ISIS infiltrator after CIA ignored warnings.” Green Berets Matthew Lewellen, Kevin McEnroe, and James Moriarty were on an inter-agency mission in Jordan, part of the CIA “Timber Sycamore” covert operation “to train and arm so-called moderate Syrian rebels.” Murphy’s Special Forces (SF) contacts said the official story is not true. It wasn’t an accident. It was a planned, deliberate attack by an ISIS sympathizer who was either a Jordanian military guard or one of the “moderate” rebels the SF are training.
_ Special Forces soldiers have complained “repeatedly” that the CIA vetting is “dubious at best” and the so called moderate rebels coming into the the training program “were actually ISIS and al-Nusra infiltrators.” The “CIA’s para-military component, called Ground Branch” have made the same complaints, all of which have been ignored. It’s illegal to provide support to terrorist organizations but there are some ways to override that law using loopholes that require very high level approval from the Secretary of State, Attorney General and the White House.
Syrian Rebels Have MANPADs in Southern Syria _ Syrian rebels from the “Ansar al-Islam Front and factions of the FSA” have published a video demonstrating SA-7 MANPADS shoulder-launch missiles. Middle East Eye speculates that the supply of MANPADS might indicate that the US has changed their policy of prohibiting distribution of these weapons because one of their high-level rebel sources said, in September, that this would happen if Syria and Russia increased their attacks on Aleppo. The source said: “Rebels are being told only to target Syrian helicopters, not Russian – but it’s not clear they will abide by this.”
_ Al Masdar News reports the Syrian army and local fighters have made gains in the province of Quneitra, near the Golan Heights.
Mosul _ Iraqi foreign minister al-Jaafari announced that one third of Mosul has been liberated from ISIS. 1000 ISIS fighters were killed and 650 captured.
_ The Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also known as Shiite militias though not all the soldiers are Shia, have completed the encirclement of Mosul . “The PMU reached Peshmerga positions in Sino and cut off the last ISIS-controlled road linking Mosul with the rest of Iraq.” They will now continue operations in Tal Afar, near the Syrian border.
Another Zumwalt Breakdown _ The Navy’s newest ship, the USS Zumwalt, broke down again , for the second time in 2 months, this time while passing through the Panama Canal.
Turkish Coup: NATO Officers Seeking Asylum _ NATO Secretary-General Jen Stoltenberg confirmed that some Turkish military officers within the NATO command structure are seeking asylum in the countries where they were stationed. He did not provide any specifics on the asylum requests. Turkish Pres. Erdogan said the number was not high.
_ Turkey’s crackdown after the failed coup attempt continues and they have made many changes to their own NATO personnel . Stoltenberg said : “I think Turkey will fill these places. It is up to Turkey who will be appointed here.”
_ Stoltenberg traveled to Istanbul on Sunday for the annual NATO Parliamentary Assembly session and will meet with Erdogan on Monday.
_ 38-40 Turkish officers in Germany, ranking “from non-commissioned officer to colonel” applied for asylum, per Hurriyet’s Turkish military sources . German media DW reported “ close to 60 Turkish nationals holding diplomatic passports ” stayed in Germany when they were summoned or due to return to Turkey, and the majority of those were military personnel (and some family members) from NATO bases.
_ At least 2 Turkish officers at NATO headquarters in Brussels requested asylum. 41 of the 50 Turkish military personnel in Brussels were “withdrawn from duty” and Turkey has not yet replaced them.
_ On Sunday, Erdogan said : “How can a terrorist, a terrorist soldier, a soldier who has been involved in plotting a coup, be employed in NATO? […] NATO cannot entertain accepting asylum requests of this kind.”
_ More than 400 Turkish military and staff were summoned back to Turkey after the coup attempt but some chose not to return, claiming that colleagues who did return were arrested.
Syria: De Mistura’s Proposal for Aleppo _ UN envoy Staffan de Mistura proposed that the Syrian government grant autonomy to East Aleppo “in exchange for peace” and he called for the al Qaeda affiliated rebels to leave East Aleppo and go to other rebel-held parts of Syria. The Syrian foreign minister, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, rejected the proposal and said state institutions should be restored across the city and that Syria would not let the people of East Aleppo remain “hostages to 6,000 gunmen […] “We agreed on the need that terrorists should get out of east Aleppo to end the suffering of the civilians in the city.”
_ Retired Col. Pat Lang’s response to de Mistura’s proposal: “Say what?” In speculating why de Mistura would do this: “The barrel bombing and hospital destruction memes are not having the desired effect and the “White Helmet” farce has been thoroughly debunked, so something else had to be tried.”
_ Moallem welcomed Syrian-to-Syrian talks without foreign influence but de Mistura couldn’t offer help with that, nor could he guarantee a ceasefire.
_ De Mistura has made offers to the jihadis in East Aleppo before, including an offer to personally escort them (with their weapons) from the city. The jihadis refused to leave and said they would fight to the death and they continue to shell the government-held West Aleppo, killing 8 school children and a teacher in recent days.
Syria: Rebels Continue to Shell Government-Held West Aleppo _ The original headline of this BBC article was “Syria war: Aleppo rebel attack on school kills seven children.” The headline was changed to: “Syria war: Aleppo self-rule rejected by government.” The text of the article changed significantly too, as demonstrated by this comparison tool .
Syria: Nusra-Led Rebels Deny Civilian Exit _ The pro-rebel Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has confirmed that the al Nusra-led rebels “are actually blocking the civilians from getting out”of East Aleppo.
_ Anti-war.com also reports that the Associated Press has spoken to people whose relatives have told them that the rebels told civilians who decided to leave to do it at night for safety reasons. Then when the civilians approached the crossing, the rebels opened fire on them. Food shortages in East Aleppo are caused by rebels hoarding aid supplies, according to the Syrian army. The rebels deny this.
Syria: ISIS Weakening at Deir Ezzor _ ISIS position in Deir Ezzor is weakening . Both the Syrian and Russian air forces have been bombing ISIS in and around Deir Ezzor. They also have ground forces in the area. ISIS manpower is affected by the battles in Mosul and Raqqa.
_ ISIS continues to launch offensives on the Syrian army position, and Al Masdar reports that despite repeated offensives, ISIS has not been able to make any significant advances on the Syrian army positions at “Al-Jafra Farms and Deir Ezzor Airport.”
Syria: Al-Bab _ Syrian foreign minister Al-Moallem said Turkish forces were violating Syria’s sovereignty: “We cannot accept to have one Turkish soldier to remain on Syria’s land.”
Halifax Security Forum _ Turkey’s EU affairs minister, Omer Celik, criticized Turkey’s NATO allies on Saturday while at the Halifax Security Forum in Canada, and while accompanied by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, retired US Gen. John Allen, and US Senator John McCain:
Celik : “Iran and Russia intervened in Syria, made a lot of mistakes, and caused the deaths of many people. As NATO allies, do we have a consensus on [reaching] a solution in Syria? […] Turkey proposed a no-fly zone, [but] our allies did not support that. We asked for safe zones, our allies did not support that. We said let’s fight terrorist groups, our allies did not support that. Our NATO allies are not showing solidarity with Turkey.”
War and Elections _ Doug Bandow for Forbes: “ President-Elect Donald Trump: Stay Out Of Syria .” Bandow notes that “American politicians are still attempting to drag America into another tragic, bloody Middle Eastern conflict” and to do so would be “madness” but like Obama, Trump is surrounded by allies and advisors who are militaristic. Bandow calls out “ivory tower warriors” like Charles Lister and Thanassis Cambanis. “Washington has a half dozen or more conflicting goals, none of are important enough to warrant the use of force.”
_ From October, a profile of retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s choice for national security advisor: “ How Mike Flynn Became America’s Angriest General .” “He was one of the most respected intelligence officers of his generation. Now he’s Donald Trump’s national security alter ego, goading a crowd to lock Hillary Clinton up. What happened?”
_ Robert Parry: “ Trump’s Tulsi Gabbard Factor .” Parry says that Gabbard might be a signal that Trump intends to do a major break with the neocon foreign policy establishment, moving toward a more libertarian stance, but his choice for Secretary of State will be the biggest tell. If it’s someone like Romney, Giuliani or Bolton, the neocons “can breathe a sigh of relief.”
Analysis and Opinion _ DW interview with researcher Siemon Wezeman: “ Diplomacy and war games in the global arms trade .” “Moscow and Washington are rivals once again, using arms exports to boost their allies and frustrate each other’s plans. The two countries are also renewing their own nuclear arsenals.” Wezeman says that Russia is trying improve relations with Arab countries and sell them weapons but Gulf countries aren’t likely to buy from Russia if Russia sells to Iran.
_ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “ Syria and the Statistics of War : Trust none of what you hear, some of what you read, and half of what you see.”
Taleb: “I see propagandists and Al Qaeda apologists such as Charles Lister (at the Salafi-funded Middle East Institute) throw numbers that get cited –yes, some idiot will cite numbers from the Al Qaeda propagandist Charles Lister, and may eventually be cited in turn by some decent newspaper, hence get fixed for posterity.”
The post Green Berets Casualties in Jordan Story Disputed; Mosul Siege Completed; Zumwalt Broke Down Again appeared first on Shadowproof .
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Tea Party activists, while critical of the healthcare bill proposed by Speaker Paul Ryan ( ) are giving President Trump the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the process of honoring his campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. [“We have no doubt President Trump is on our side,” Tom Zawistowski, president of the We the People Convention and Ohio Tea Party leader, tells Breitbart News. “This is between the Tea Party movement and the conservative movement, on the one hand, and establishment Republicans, on the other hand,” the veteran Tea Party activist adds. “We’ve seen this act before,” Zawistowski notes. “Give us the House, we need the Senate, they say. Give us the Senate, we need the White House. Give us the White House, we need 60 votes in the Senate,” Zawistowski says. “We’re not playing these games any more,” he declares. “They can’t pass their bill without us. We won’t pass their bill unless we get what we want, need, and deserve — full repeal of Obamacare, and free market replacement. The Art of the Deal says people who can afford to walk away from the table win. Trump needs a deal and he needs to support our position to get one,” Zawistowski concludes. Other Tea Party activists around the country share Zawistowski’s trust in Trump. “I certainly understand what I believe to be the strategy of a phased approach. President Trump and Speaker Ryan have talked about a three phased approach to repeal and replace Obamacare. I understand it’s a complex issue. I trust this president,” Mark Skoda, founder of America First Tennessee and organizer of the March 4 Spirit of America rally in Nashville, tells Breitbart News. “My biggest concern is that they aren’t killing the regulation. If you don’t kill the regulation, then the possibility is for another president to reinstate some form of Obamacare through that regulatory structure. I’m also concerned, as Sen. Rand Paul has suggested, that the current proposal is, in effect, a de facto continuation of the individual mandate,” Skoda adds. “I’ve been telling people to calm down and be a little bit more strategic,” Bill Hennessy, founder of the St. Louis Tea Party, tells Breitbart News. “Donald Trump is a better negotiator than anyone in Congress,” Hennessy says. “The establishment thought President Trump was out of his mind when he announced he was running for president. They thought he was out of his mind when he promised to build a wall. One thing President Trump has shown, he always knows what he’s doing when it comes to setting the table for negotiations,” Hennessy concludes. “I started out as ‘ ’ and became a Trump supporter because President Trump kept his word,” Judson Phillips, founder and president of Tea Party Nation tells Breibart News. “President Trump promised us there will be a repeal of Obamacare, and I believe he will keep his word on that,” Phillips adds. “What Speaker Ryan and the establishment Republicans need to realize is this: they are destroying what little good will they have with the conservative movement. That is a fight they do not wish to have. It is a fight they will end up losing ” he says. “They needed the Tea Party to take the House, take the Senate, and take the White House. If they do what they do best, which is selling out the conservative base, they will find themselves in the minority in the House and in the Senate,” Phillips concludes. | 1 |
NYT: FBI Failed To Connect Trump To Putin By: Robert Kraychik November 2, 2016 The New York Times reported on Monday that the FBI has failed to establish “any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government.” Speaking with unnamed FBI sources, the left-wing “paper of record” reported that the FBI pursued an investigation into stateside Russian attempts to affect the presidential election. “Agents scrutinized advisors close to Donald J. Trump" in order to search for financial connections between Donald Trump’s political circle and “Russian financial figures," reported The New York Times . A report from Slate ’s Franklin Foer sought to advance the narrative of collusion between Trump and Putin pushed by Hillary Clinton, Democrats, and affiliated political allies. It was then forwarded by left-wing Democrat media personalities and affiliates. Trump Tower had a special server to communicate with Russia's Alfa Bank, reports the eternal badass @FranklinFoer . https://t.co/yIX6rZXbxJ — Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) October 31, 2016 So, why? Why Trump's stubborn almost devotion to Putin? Why the Russia friendly policies? Why the Mantafort links? Why the secret server? — Scott Gilmore (@Scott_Gilmore) October 31, 2016 Putin's Puppet didn't cover his tracks: Trump server directly communicating with Russia. Voters deserve answers now. https://t.co/VXQNIoQXB6 — Chad Griffin (@ChadHGriffin) November 1, 2016 Despite the narrative of Putin preferring to see Trump elected president, the FBI investigation apparently arrived at a different conclusion. The New York Times reported that unnamed FBI investigators said they “have become increasingly confident, based on the evidence they have uncovered, that Russia’s direct goal is not to support the election of Mr. Trump, as many Democrats have asserted, but rather to disrupt the integrity of the political system and undermine America’s standing in the world more broadly.” No mention was made of the Kremlin-run English-language propaganda outlet RT, which regularly pushes what can broadly be described as mostly left-wing anti-American and pro-Russian agitation. Also ignored were actual financial connections between Russian-related interests and the Clintons or their inner circle. For months, Democrat politicians and operatives have colluded with their news media allies to push a narrative of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin directing the Russian state apparatus to provide political support to Donald Trump.
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. 'They Live' — Possibly the Most Powerful Message in a Movie ‘They Live’ is a science-fiction movie from the Eighties that features aliens, a WWF wrestler and a ... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/they-live-possibly-most-powerful.html ‘They Live’ is a science-fiction movie from the Eighties that features aliens, a WWF wrestler and a whole lot of sunglasses. What’s not to like? While, at first glance, the movie appears to be a bunch of nonsense, ‘They Live’ actually communicates a powerful message about the elite and its use of mass media to control the masses. Is the movie describing the control of the Illuminati over our society? This article looks at the deeper meaning of John Carpenter’s strange but fascinating movie ‘ They Live ’. Warning: Major spoilers ahead (get over it, the movie is 24 years old). Watching They Live is a conflicting experience. It is an odd combination of eye-opening messages with lackluster acting, powerful social commentary with 1950’s B-movie special effects and gripping satire with odd punchlines. Constantly making viewers oscillate between “Wow, that was genius!” to “Wow, that was corny!”, it is difficult to properly evaluate the movie from a cinematographic point of view. However, from a “message” point of the view, They Live is gold. Based on Ray Nelson’s short story Eight O’Clock in the Morning, the movie is one of those rare subversive stories that forces viewers to question their world and their surroundings. Because, despite the fact that the movie is about ghoulish aliens, it communicates truths to the viewers that are only alluded to in mainstream movies. In fact, looking deeper into the storyline, one might realize that there’s probably more “science” than “fiction” in the story of They Live … especially when one has “truth-seeing sunglasses”.The hero of the movie, played by WWF wrestler Rowdy Roddy Pipper, is a drifter that is apparently nameless. In the short story and the movie’s credits, he is referred to as Nada, which means ‘nothing’ in Spanish. While this nameless nothing is broke and homeless, he still manages to expose the alien’s hidden rule of the world. How did he accomplish that? With the only thing he’d ever need: The Truth. Oh, and also guns. He used a lot of guns. Most importantly, despite the fact that Nada was tempted several times to shut up in exchange for “generous compensation”, he kept his integrity and never agreed to sell out to the aliens. Now, that’s a role model. To top it off, he says the best things ever. “I’m here to kick ass and chew bubble gum … and I’m all out of bubble gum.” Are the aliens in the movie an imaginative way to portray the world’s elite , those who secretly run the world, those we call the Illuminati? Let’s revisit this cult classic and see how it describes the hidden rule of the elite. The Premise Right from the beginning, as we see Nada walking around Los Angeles with his backpack, the movie sets a particular mood: Something is not quite right. While Nada appears to be a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, the city is not happy and it is not too kind to happy-go-lucky kind of guys.Quite the contrary, there is a sense of impending doom in the air: Poverty is rampant, helicopters fly around the city and street preachers speak of soulless beings ruling the world. “The venom of snakes is under their lips. Their mouths are full of bitterness and curses. And in their paths, nothing but ruin and misery. And the fear of God is not before their eyes! They have taken the hearts and minds of our leaders. “They have recruited the rich and powerful, and they have blinded us to the truth! And our human spirit is corrupted. Why do we worship greed? Because outside the limit of our sight, feeding off us, perched on top of us from birth to death are our owners. “Our owners — they have us. They control us. They are our masters. Wake up. They’re all about you, all around you!”. Is the preacher’s description of the “masters” applicable to the Illuminati? I believe so.As we follow Nada’s aimless drifting across the city, the camera often focuses on people gazing blankly at television screens, mindlessly absorbing the vapid messages it communicates. Regular Joes appear to truly enjoy their television shows … until an obscure organization hacks the airwaves to broadcast subversive messages about the hidden rulers of the world. “Our impulses are being redirected. We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep. (…) The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. “They have created a repressive society, and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. “We are focused only on our own gain. Please understand. They are safe as long as they are not discovered. That is their primary method of survival. Keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated.” Can the above statement be applied to those in power? I believe so.The Average Joes who watch this pirated TV broadcast all get a massive headache – the raw truth is indeed too much for most people to bear. One such viewer switches the channel after telling the guy on TV: “Blow it out your ass”. Just like today, most people do not want to hear about this kind of stuff … they just want to go back to their mindless TV viewing.Nada realizes that the street preacher and the man on television are connected through a local church. When he sneaks into the church, he discovers that it is actually the headquarters of an underground organization.On a wall inside the church is written “They Live We Sleep”, a phrase that describes the fundamental difference between the elite and the masses. Those in power know the truth about the world and possess the means and the power to truly “live”.The rest of the population is sedated, dumbed-down and manipulated into a zombie-like status in order for it to be as easily manageable as possible by the masters. The masses’ ignorance equals a state of endless slumber.Nada learns that the rebellious organization is attempting to recruit people to take down the rulers. However, a few days later, Nada discovers what happens to those who plot against those in power.Helicopters, bulldozers and police in riot gear raid the place, destroy everything and violently arrest the members of the underground organization. That is how the elite responds to contrary views.After witnessing the violent police shakedown , Nada begins to realize that something is wrong in America. The happy-go-lucky guy who believed in working hard and following the rules is starting to believe that something is amiss here.Determined to learn more, Nada re-enters the church and finds a few interesting things.The police painted over “They Live We Sleep”. Obviously, “They” don’t want that message to be known .More importantly, Nada discovers a box full of sunglasses that allows his to see the world as it is. Added bonus: They also look pretty cool. Seeing the Truth While the sunglasses found by Nada appear on the surface to be worthless, they actually provide him with the greatest gift of all: The Truth. When Nada first puts on the sunglasses, the experience is shocking.When he has his sunglasses on, Nada sees through the smoke and mirrors projected by advertisement and mass media . He only sees the core of their message and the only reason why they exist.No matter which magazine Nada flips open, he sees the same subliminal messages, which tells a lot about the true function of “celebrity” and “fashion” magazines.Despite the fact that they are all different, they all ultimately serve the same purpose: To reinforce messages from the elite to the masses. Nada also quickly understands the truth about money . “In God We Trust”? Some people are not human . They are from another race that has infiltrated society. Nada realizes that they are everywhere and that they hold positions of power, like this politician giving a typical “politician” speech on television. Is this a way to portray the Illuminati, or something much-much deeper ?Upon discovering this truth, Nada became pissed off. REALLY pissed off. How did he react to the situation? He did not go home and write a poem about it. Nope, he grabbed a shotgun and started shooting aliens.When the aliens realize that Nada can see through their disguise, they immediately alert the authorities saying “I’ve got one that can see”. Being able to “see” is obviously frowned upon by the aliens – they do not like to be exposed. Nada quickly becomes a social pariah and aliens start closing in on him. Confronted with this situation, Nada says profound and timeless words: “I don’t like this ne bit”.Many aliens are part of the police force as its sole purpose is to ensure that the alien’s rule is not disturbed. Most policemen are however regular humans and just follow the orders because that’s their job … a little like actual policemen who do the Illuminati’s work.Nada and everyone in the city are constantly monitored by flying surveillance cameras that are oddly similar to the new unmanned drones that are currently appearing around the world.Flying surveillance cameras were considered science fiction in 1988. They are reality today.An actual, modern unmanned drone mounted with a video camera.The concept of truth-seeing sunglasses is an interesting way to illustrate the importance of knowledge in one’s world perception. Two people can be looking at the exact same thing yet perceive two very different realities, depending on the level of information and awareness possessed by each person. Nada’s sunglasses can therefore represent one’s knowledge of the truth, which allows a clear perception of reality. Looking for Others Who Know the Truth Upon learning the shocking truth about the world, Nada feels the need to share this vital information with his friend Frank Armitage. Nada however quickly realizes some people do not want to hear about it. In fact, many actually get angry and offended at the simple mention of something that alludes to it. When Nada asks Frank to put on his sunglasses so he can see what he sees, Frank firmly refuses and calls him a “crazy motha…”.Nada replies with another classic line “Either you put these sunglasses on or start eating that trash can”.Then ensues one of the longest one-on-one fight scene I ever seen (eight minutes of punching and kicking), a scene that is dragged out for so long that it becomes utterly absurd and even comical. While the scene maybe appear ridiculous, it says something about the difficulty of making regular, average people wake up from their blissful ignorance.Frank finally sees the truth. All it took is Nada beating the crap out of him, sticking the sunglasses on his face against his will and forcing him to look around. Yes, convincing other people of the truth can be a hard task.It takes a lot of effort on Nada’s part, but Frank finally sees the aliens controlling the world. The two pals are then invited to a secret meeting of the underground organization that is attempting to rid the earth from the aliens.During the meeting, Nada and Frank are given truth-seeing contact lenses. The sunglasses gave truth-seers a nasty headache, especially when they are taken off. When first exposed to the truth, adapting to the new reality can indeed be difficult, and even painful. However, after a while, it becomes seamless part of the person. A little like wearing contact lenses.During the meeting, Nada and Frank learn that humans are being recruited by the aliens in exchange for wealth and power. As the leader of the underground organization says: “Most of us just sell out right away”. It is rather easy to make a correlation between the movie and actual politicians and celebrities we’ve seen in previous articles on this site who readily sell out to the Illuminati in exchange for wealth, power and celebrity.The meeting doesn’t last long, however, as police barge in the place and start shooting everyone there. They are designated a “terrorist organization” by the elite. Nada and Frank manage to escape and accidentally find themselves behind enemy lines, in the alien’s underground base. Behind Enemy Lines While exploring the aliens’ underground base, Nada and Frank stumble upon a party thrown by the aliens for human collaborators to thank them for their “partnership”. Although humans will never be considered equals to the aliens, those who sell out to them get monetary benefits … much like those who are not part of today’s elite who nevertheless sell out to push the elite’s New World Order Agenda . “Our projections show that by the year 2025, not only America but the entire planet will be under the protection and the dominion of this power alliance. The gains have been substantial, both for ourselves and for you, the human power elite.” Frank and Nada then discover the source of the aliens’ brainwashing signals: A television studio. The aliens use the network to broadcast hypnotic and subliminal signals to humans, blinding them from the truth about their rulers and the world. The message that is communicated here: Mass media is the elite’s favorite tool indoctrinate the masses and to keep them in servitude. The TV station ‘Cable 54’ is used by the aliens to hypnotize humans. Is this science-fiction? Barely. Nada realizes that the only way to save humanity from the grips of the aliens is to go to the roof of the TV station’s building and to take down the emitter of the subliminal messages, disguised as a satellite dish. Indeed, without an elite-controlled mass media, indoctrinating the masses will be a lot more difficult. So Nada and Frank start shooting their way towards the roof, not an easy task. The Disinformation Agent While this lady appeared to be nice at first, she tried to mislead, deceive and even kill Nada during his quest. She ends up shooting his pal Frank in the head.Nada met Holly Thomspon, a Cable 54 network executive, at the beginning of his wild rampage. While Nada appears to be somewhat enamoured with her, she always somehow brings trouble. During the “terrorist organization” meeting, Holly infiltrated the group, posing as a sympathizer and claiming that Cable 54 “was clean” and was not the source of aliens’ signal, which was false and misleading. Today, disinformation is widely used by the elite to confuse and mislead those who attempt to discover the truth about the world.During Nada’s rush towards the roof of the network’s building, Holly appears again, claiming that she wants to help him. However, she is simply trying to kill him before the mission is accomplished. She is therefore another human that sold out to the aliens being used to disrupt non-corrupted humans attempting to liberate themselves and others. Taking Down the Aliens Here’s the biggest spoiler of them all: Nada manages to take down the aliens’ transmitter and saves humanity. This heroic move gets him killed, however, as a policeman inside a helicopter shoots him dead. Nada therefore becomes the quintessential hero, sacrificing his life for the good of humanity – a martyr for human freedom from soulless rulers .Even though it cost his life, Nada visibly does not regret exposing the aliens to the world. With his last once of strength, Nada gives the aliens a uniquely human parting gift: the finger.TV viewers around the world now realize that those giving the daily news were also those who controlled them. In Conclusion Although They Live is usually described as “a science-fiction movie that criticizes consumer culture”, the scope of its message actually goes way beyond the usual “consumerism is bad” lecture. They Live can indeed be interpreted as a treatise on the thorough and systematic conditioning of human experience in order for a hidden elite to covertly control, manipulate and exploit the masses. In the movie, the rulers are portrayed as a completely different race that perceives humans as inferior – something that can easily be correlated to the attitudes about the bloodlines of the Illuminati. The presence of these strong messages in the movie is one of the reasons They Live became somewhat of a cult-classic, despite the fact that it was panned by movie critics. As the years go by, the movie’s message is becoming increasingly relevant … and freakishly realistic.Many of those who seek the truth about the world realize that it’s reins are held by an un-elected elite, one that is essentially hidden from the public eye. As the movie’s promotional poster says: “You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” Working behind the scenes, this secretive elite constantly works towards the creation of a global system that would serve its interests: a New World Order , ruled by one world government. As a human collaborator says in the movie to justify his selling-out: “There ain’t no countries anymore. No more good guys. They’re running the whole show. They own everything. The whole goddamn planet!” To facilitate the rulers’ work, the masses are kept in the dark and are distracted with the fake puppet show that is politics and the “no independent thought” programming that is mass media . Apathy, ignorance and indifference are the elite’s best friends.Despite its unimpressive special effects and odd dialogue, They Live manages to describe the world elite’s motives and strategy in a way that can be understood by all. And that is no simple task. However, in order to fully understand the movie’s message, one must be wearing truth-seeing sunglasses. Do you have yours on? Reference: http://vigilantcitizen.com / They Live is available on Amazon. 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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LONDON — The eighth installment of the Harry Potter series was presented on Tuesday evening at the Palace Theater here. Neither a book nor a film, it was a play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. ” But whatever the medium, the Potter saga continued with unabated interest: fans dressed in Hogwarts costumes, curiosity about the fate of characters and the allure of magic. When we last left Harry Potter, in the very last pages of J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” he was a bureaucrat sending his middle child, Albus Severus, off to Hogwarts for the first time. After the violence and darkness that had marked his younger years in Ms. Rowling’s story, all seemed well. Now Harry is back — in a play, this time — and all is not well. “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which had its first preview in London on Tuesday, begins with the final scene from “Deathly Hallows” and skitters rapidly forward a few years, sketching out Albus’s feelings of alienation both from Hogwarts and from his famous father. It is jarring and exciting to be seeing characters who seemed to be put to rest, suspended forever in place and time, suddenly reanimated. At the same time, the three main characters remained true to their younger selves. Ron still provides comic relief, Hermione remains cerebral and slightly bossy and Harry tries as hard as he can but doesn’t quite live up to his own expectations. It is odd to see it all unfold onstage when we are so used to approaching the story through Ms. Rowling’s books — reading them was a rite of passage for so many children (O. K. and adults) — or through the movies. But the audience at the Palace Theater here cannot be more thrilled or more appreciative or more ready to be caught up in the spirit of the undertaking. For those outside the theater and who wish to remain unburdened by details, spoilers will ensue in the next paragraph. Some scenes are filled with adolescent angst. At one point what appeared to be a live owl flew across the stage. The producers manage to create some literal stage magic. A wand moves papers across a desk, and books come out of a shelf and speak. SARAH LYALL As the line snaked around the Palace Theater, with people waiting for the play to start, a crowd milled outside, with many ticketless people clutching Potter books. On an especially balmy London day, some were in full Hogwarts uniforms, with capes and school colors. Many seemed to be in their 20s and enduringly loyal to the book series. “They were the best books I read in my childhood,” Jonathan Snow, 28, of Britain, said. “I just want to be back in that world. ” Ticketholders came from Canada, Italy, Singapore, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere. Erika Sloop, 25, and Dennis Allen, 27, from Tampa, Fla. who were in line, came to see the play three days after getting married in a wedding. The wedding party picked Hogwarts houses to join. They had tables decorated like Gringotts and the forbidden forest. Seating was arranged by a sorting hat and all the guests were given wands. They said the wedding date coincided with the performance. “We originally actually planned our honeymoon for Iceland,” Mr. Allen said. But when tickets became available on the Pottermore. com website, they changed plans. Inside the theater, the set seemed old, ornate and vaguely Hogwartian. The stage had suitcases on it and was surmounted by a large clock. A roar of applause rose when an announcement came that the show was about to start. ROSLYN SULCAS AND CHRISTOPHER D. SHEA Alohomora! Let the curtains draw back. “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the eagerly anticipated new play that promises a fresh installment of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga, will shed its shroud of secrecy on Tuesday evening. For months, the clock has been ticking down on Ms. Rowling’s Pottermore. com website, counting the weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds until the first performance of “Cursed Child,” which is being presented in two parts at the Palace Theater here. The first in a run of previews begins at 7:30 p. m. ahead of the official opening night on July 30. The first performance of Part 2 is on Thursday on some days, the two parts can be seen consecutively. The story line of the play is by Ms. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne, who wrote the script, and the creators have sought to impose intense secrecy about the plot and production. On Monday, Ms. Rowling posted a short video on Twitter with the hashtag #keepthesecrets by Tuesday afternoon it had more than 82, 000 views, with many commenters agreeing and others crying out to know what happens. “We simply want everyone who’s bought a ticket to #CursedChild to enjoy the onstage surprises,” Ms. Rowling wrote. That will become more difficult right after opening night, when reviews and the script (already the book on Amazon. com in Britain) will be published. The play sold out within hours of the online booking opening, and is full through May 27, 2017, although 40 tickets will be released on the Pottermore site each Friday at 1 p. m. for the following week. Tickets on resale websites are going for as much as $4, 800. It seems unlikely that in the age of social media, all secrets will be kept. The premise, though, is clear by now. The play begins where the final volume of the saga, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” left off, with an epilogue that showed some of the series’ principal characters — Harry, his friends Ron and Hermione, and Draco Malfoy — seeing their children off to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station. The announcement in December that Hermione would be played by a black actress, Noma Dumezweni, caused an online uproar that is still reverberating and included a denunciation by Ms. Rowling of critics of the casting decision. Tidbits judiciously revealed by Pottermore have stoked intense speculation. “When we altered the font of the title slightly, people were interpreting what it meant,” said Colin Callender, who the show with Sonia Friedman. Photographs of cast members in costume provoked theories about which house the young Albus Severus, Harry’s middle son, will belong to (his cloak covered the house colors) and whether he and the young Scorpius Malfoy, son of Harry’s longtime foe, Draco, will be friends or enemies. (The name seems like a clue, no?) In the final book’s epilogue, Albus is given particular attention, and in a 2007 documentary, Ms. Rowling casually said, “Albus is the one I’m most interested in,” when talking about the way her fictional characters linger in her imagination. Is he the Cursed Child? For those who wish they could apparate to the Palace Theater, keep watching this space for clues. For those who don’t want to know, watch for spoiler alerts. ROSLYN SULCAS | 1 |
Every tourist to the Balkans has probably heard about the dramatic remaking of Macedonia’s capital, Skopje. years after the country peacefully won independence from the former Yugoslavia, its capital is in the midst of a huge : the construction of some 40 monuments, sculptures, facades and buildings. The transformation is meant to sweep away the pall and attract tourists. I was one of them last year. Everywhere I looked, I felt small, dwarfed by shiny, new gargantuan bronze statues of Alexander the Great and his parents, Philip II of Macedon and Olympias, that lord over the main plaza. Galloping horses here and imposing Doric columns there round out various corners facades and balconies reminded me of Josef Stalin’s wedding apartments along East Berlin’s broad boulevards, which have a certain retro appeal these days but still feel overwrought. Despite the immense investment here — the current estimate of the project is $727 million, according to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network — tour operators who aren’t closely linked with the country’s tourism office are championing a different reason to visit the region: ecotourism. This nascent industry is less interested in Skopje’s overhaul and more keen to spirit travelers along the country’s hiking trails to Byzantine monasteries and caves, and arrange cycling tours and homestays with cordial Macedonians who can talk about their country’s culture and history. My guide, Slobodan (who goes by his nickname, Danko) works for one of these operators, Macedonia Experience, run by Jane Josifovski, which organizes Jeep safaris, horseback riding, caving, diving and paragliding. My visit last year came when Macedonia had been in the headlines, as hundreds of thousands of refugees had crossed the country’s southern border en route to northern Europe. And yet, Mr. Josifovski told me, overnight stays and tourism in general in Macedonia were moving at a strong clip, helped along by cheap flights into Skopje on the budget airline Wizz Air and inexpensive travel within the country. The morning after I arrived in the capital, Danko drove me to Matka Canyon, one of his favorite haunts. A former student of architecture and the son of engineers, he told me on the way that he had decided to be a mountaineer (and drummer). Most weekends, he heads into the mountains, less than an hour’s drive from Skopje, to hike or ski. From the trailhead, I followed him up narrow, leafy passes and around switchbacks while he recounted the history of the pathways we’d be exploring. The Ottomans had blazed many of Matka’s trails as they sought to build a railroad from Lake Ohrid, on the Albanian border, into Macedonia’s interior. Danko occasionally turned back to point out the view. We could see the Treska River and forested, misty ravines, as well as spiked ridges, like blades of a knife. He later led me to see the Church of St. Nikola, which was locked, but while perched at a nearby picnic table on a ledge overhanging the summit, he pointed first to hooks driven into the sides of the steep faces, and told me which he himself had scaled. He then pointed to the canyon’s depths, to the cloistered, emerald Lake Matka and to the Monastery of St. Andrew, alongside an attractive lakeside chalet resort, making for a dramatic panorama. We made our way down the mountain toward the lake and once we reached the shore, Danko hailed a small motorboat with a thatched bamboo roof to take us across to the resort. Once there, we sipped espressos and gazed out at the striated gorge while waiting for the next boat that would take us up the Treska River to Cave Vrelo. It had turned chilly, and the thought of touring a frigid cave didn’t excite me, but Danko insisted it would be worth the effort. Our boat finally appeared, and we sped onward through the cavernous passage, where I saw Robinson bungalows and tree houses on the banks and ducks with their ducklings scurrying away from our boat. Cave Vrelo is among 10 caves in the Matka Canyon, and it is also among Europe’s deepest. As we docked near its entrance, Danko pointed out murky gaps in the exterior where divers slip inside. We were taking the overland route, and as we descended the slippery stairs, I gradually saw that Danko had been right: Before me were stalactites, smooth in contour, like otherworldly wax, and one most noticeably shaped like a pine cone. Bats swerved overhead as we approached one stunning section known as the concert hall because members of the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra once played there after the cave was opened to visitors. We later sat at the restaurant Mechkina Dupka, or Bear’s Cave, where I ordered the Village Chicken. It was baked, covered in a savory mushroom sauce, and came with fresh squash sautéed in garlic and olive oil, along with a hearty house white wine from Macedonia’s Tikves region. We had a long drive ahead of us, said Danko, via Tetovo and into the Mavrovo National Park, so we toasted our journey before hitting the road. When we reached Tetovo, Danko navigated heavy traffic, and I wondered if a stop there was worth our time. But as we finally pulled up alongside the Sarena Dzamija mosque, my eyes took in the vibrant painting and graceful design. This was indeed a rare find, in part because it is uncommon for a mosque’s exterior to be so adorned — Sarena Dzamija translates to “decorated mosque” — but also because two sisters, named Hurshida and Mensure, rather than sultans or pashas, had bankrolled the construction in 1438. The women are buried in the octagonal stone turbe adjacent to the mosque. By dusk, we were at Mavrovo National Park, and had checked into the inviting home of Deni and Tina Lazareski in the village of Leunovo, located in the park itself. The pair welcome tourists and had recently built an addition to their home for guests. Tina had prepared stuffed peppers in a tomato sauce for us, and we sat around the dinner table long after the meal, talking about our families, and in particular, life under Communism, all aided by Danko’s translation. Danko had hoped to guide me to the summit of Mount Medenica in the Bistra Massif the next day, but we woke to a heavy fog and he didn’t want to risk getting lost. So we chose a trail at a lower elevation that still afforded us pretty views of wild horses in the distance and shepherds with their flocks, as well as clusters of almost supernatural, cotton thistles. We departed the pastoral scene for Galicnik, a village renowned for its traditional folk dancing and weddings every July, where we met Marko Bekric, who runs a business. Over lunch at his family’s restaurant, he explained that the business had been inspired by years of cycling the Bistra mountains, scoping out new paths, and thinking that enthusiasts from abroad would thrill to the unspoiled nature, as he does. The Macedonian government evidently thought the same, granting him a rural development loan to start the venture. After lunch, he led me across the road to show me an abandoned factory he’d renovated where he stores the bikes. Someday, he added, he’d like to convert the building into a museum and offer instruction on making sheep and goat cheese. The tour, though, reached a height the next day when it shifted from ecotourism to cultural immersion in gorgeous Ohrid, one of Europe’s oldest cities at a jewel of a lake bordering both Macedonia and Albania. Our guide, Nebojsa Kamilov, led us up and down the hills of the city — whose Slavic name comes from vo rid, or “city on the hill. ” At just about every turn we took in sweeping views of the translucent water, none so sublime as those at the picturesque Church of St. Jovan at Kaneo, perched on a finger jutting out into the vast lake. A student of art and history, Nebojsa gave a fascinating overview of Ohrid’s Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman roots its scholarly legacy (the first Slavic university was established here by the Sts. Kliment and Naum) and the hundreds of other churches that once dotted the hillsides, supposedly one for every day of the year. We visited several of these ubiquitous and elegant multidomed churches, each with a covetable collection of frescoes, icons and mosaics. My favorite was the Church of St. Kliment and St. Pantelejmon, which had a mosaic mysteriously signed “Made by those whose names are only known to God. ” These, of course, were the soaring buildings of their day, structures that involved immense expenditures and likely cost overruns that would dwarf those in Skopje. But these churches, this landscape, had stood the test of time. As Macedonia’s capital remakes itself, their permanence is a reassuring reminder that while this country has changed hands more times than one can count, its beauty and its culture endure. | 1 |
Donald Trump on “The Apprentice”: The false values of reality TV have been carried over into the current presidential race. (NBC)
There is no shortage of signs of impending environmental catastrophe, including the melting of the polar ice caps and the rise of atmospheric carbon to above 400 parts per million . The planet’s sixth mass extinction is underway. It is not taking place because of planetary forces. Homo sapiens is orchestrating it. We are at the same time bankrupting ourselves by waging endless and unwinnable wars. We have allowed our elites to push more than half the U.S. population into poverty and, often, profound despair through deindustrialization. We do nothing to halt the waves of nihilistic violence by enraged citizens who carry out periodic mass shootings in schools, malls, movie theaters and other public places. The political and financial elites flaunt their greed and corruption. Donald Trump appears to pay no federal income taxes. Bill and Hillary Clinton use their foundation as a tool for legalized bribery. Our largest corporations have orchestrated a legal tax boycott. The judicial system is a subsidiary of the corporate state. Militarized police carry out public executions of unarmed people of color. Our infrastructure, including our schools, roads and bridges, along with our deindustrialized cities, are in ruins. Decay and rot—physical and moral—are pervasive.
We are blinded to our depressing reality by the avalanche of images disseminated by mass media. Political, intellectual and cultural discourse has been replaced with spectacle. Emotionalism and sensationalism are prized over truth. Highly paid pundits who parrot back the official narrative, corporate advertisers, inane talk shows, violent or sexually explicit entertainment and gossip-fueled news have contaminated cultural life. Reality television, as contrived as every other form of mass entertainment, has produced what might be called a reality presidential candidate.
Mass culture, because it speaks to us in easily digestible clichés and stereotypes, reinforces ignorance, bigotry and racism. It promotes our individual and collective self-glorification. It sanctifies nonexistent national virtues. It takes from us the intellectual and linguistic tools to separate illusion from truth. It is all show business all the time.
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There are hundreds of millions of Americans who know that something is terribly wrong. A light has gone out. They see it in their own suffering and hopelessness and the suffering and hopelessness of their neighbors. But they lack, because of the contamination of our political, cultural and intellectual discourse, the words and ideas to make sense of what is happening around them. They are bereft of a vision. Austerity, globalization, unfettered capitalism, an expansion of the extraction of fossil fuels and endless war are not the price to be paid for progress and the advance of civilization. They are part of the savage and deadly exploitation by corporate capitalism and imperialism. They serve a neoliberal ideology . The elites dare not speak this truth. It is toxic. They peddle the seductive illusions that saturate the airwaves. We are left to strike out at shadows. We are enticed to succumb to the racism, allure of white supremacy and bigotry that always accompanies a culture in dissolution.
We cannot, for this reason, discount the possibility that Donald Trump will be elected president. The election outcome will be decided by whatever emotion Americans feel when they cast their ballots.
Celebrity narratives, manufactured pseudo-drama, sex scandals, natural disasters, insults and invective, mass shootings and war flash before us in a constant jumble of images on ubiquitous screens. The assault of images obliterates reality. A former congressman who sends a picture of himself in underwear to a woman is a national news story. Sober examinations of our economic, foreign, judicial and environmental policies are dismissed as too complicated and boring. It does not produce engaging images. The electronic media’s sole goal is to attract viewers and advertising dollars. It has conditioned us to demand an endless vaudeville act.
We are infected because of this mass indoctrination by what Daniel Boorstin in “ The Image : A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America” calls “social narcissism.” The bottomless narcissism of Trump and Bill and Hillary Clinton cater to this social narcissism. They reflect back to us our desperate longing for, as well as celebration of, entertainment, celebrity, wealth, power and self-aggrandizement. It is not only advertising and public relations, as Boorstin points out, that carries out the incessant manufacturing of illusions that feed social narcissism. Journalists, book publishers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, positive psychologists, self-help gurus, the Christian Right and talk show hosts all feed the mania for illusion. They all chant the insane mantra that reality is never an impediment to what we desire. We can have anything we want if we work hard, get an education, believe in ourselves, grasp that we are exceptional and believe the impossible is always possible. It is magical thinking. And magical thinking is the only real commodity the elites have left offer to us. Make American Great Again. Or America already is great. Take your pick of idiotic clichés.
“We tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by expecting more than the world can give us or than we can make of the world,” Boorstin writes. “We demand that everyone who talks to us, or writes for us, or takes pictures for us, or makes merchandise for us, should live in our world of extravagant expectations. We expect this even of the peoples of foreign countries. We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality. We demand them. And we demand that there be always more of them, bigger and better and more vivid.”
The incessant search for instant gratification and the most appealing image, including the image of ourselves we manufacture for others on social media, has robbed us of the ability to examine ourselves and our society. It has extinguished the truth. The terminal decline of the American empire, the utter incompetence of our elites to manage everything from the ecosystem to the economy and foreign policy, the climate crisis, along with the widespread poverty and despair that defines over half of America, do not fit with the illusion. So these realities are blotted from public consciousness. The poor are rendered invisible. The climate crisis is ignored. The foreign policy debacles will be fixed with more bombs. A culture that can no longer discern or confront reality is unable to reform itself and dies. Only the Soviet and fascist dictatorships, along with the medieval Catholic Church, controlled thought as effectively. | 0 |
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.
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! đŸ‡şđŸ‡¸ (@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.
Her parents had been out with friends at the hotel restaurant approximately 200 feet from where the child had been sleeping. When her mother Kate McCann went to check on her around 11 pm, but she was gone.
“We go to bed every night with the agonising feeling that just maybe tomorrow we will find something to lead us back to Madeleine. To let us know what happened. To give us hope,†Kate McCann, who is now an ambassador for Missing People, said at the launch of a new nonprofit organization called Find Every Child, in London this week .
Though it has been nearly a decade since their little girl vanished, the family has continued the search, and believe that there is a possibility that she may still be alive.
“When my little girl first disappeared, on that horrendous night that changed our lives forever, I could never have imagined that nearly 10 years later we would still be in the same position,†she continued.
In 2013, five years after Portuguese police had closed the case, they reopened it and revealed two new police sketches. It was believed that they were supposed to be of the same man, but from two different witnesses. Reddit and others on social media are now asking, what if it was actually two different men, and what if it was the Podestas?
Podesta + brother Tony, +photos of Madeleine McCann's kidnappers, note the mole placement on Tony @wikileaks @DonaldJTrumpJr #spiritcooking pic.twitter.com/miRcNJKDTF
— Marqui Robbins (@MarquiRobbins) November 7, 2016
Awkward! Sketches from 2007 Madeleine McCann case look just like Clinton associates. Victim of #SpiritCooking ? #Podestabros #DNCLeak2 pic.twitter.com/by7AHqESzD
— Jazu the Deplorable (@Jazukai) November 7, 2016
An email found in the Wikileaks release of John Podesta’s emails at the time of McCann’s disappearance implies that he may have been vacationing around the time of her disappearance, but does not indicate where.
People have also pointed out that another police sketch related to the case looks strikingly similar to Anthony Wiener.
WHAT IS GOING ON??? #MadeleineMcCann @0hour @JaredWyand https://t.co/GWq661Yyv8 pic.twitter.com/7zrpSn7tyz
— Don Burke (@d0nburke) November 7, 2016
Shortly after the rumor began to go viral, Twitter went offline for over 20 minutes, which helped to fuel the theorists even more. Wikileaks was also the target of a DDOS attack.
That moment when you Realize they are DDOS'ing @WIkiLeaks @Twitter and @4Chan to cover up a Horrific Crime. RIP Madeleine McCann. pic.twitter.com/4EqSAcOpWA
— Kyle (@refutal) November 7, 2016
Bizarrely worded messages in the Podesta emails had lead to conspiracy theories on 4chan and Reddit that John Podesta was involved in some sort of child sex ring , last week.
"I'm dreaming about your hotdog stand in Hawaii…"
This is code for something.
Sex trafficking? https://t.co/BNulNKBi4u pic.twitter.com/L3l5j40ahy
— Mike Cernovich đŸ‡şđŸ‡¸ (@Cernovich) November 3, 2016
The same evening, the world became familiar with the term “ Spirit Cooking .â€
The Podestas' "Spirit Cooking" dinner?
It's not what you think.
It's blood, sperm and breastmilk.
But mostly blood. https://t.co/gGPWFS3B2H pic.twitter.com/I43KiiraDh
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 4, 2016
Tony Podesta’s home also contains photographs of nude teenage girls in one of the bedrooms — because “art.â€
“Folks attending a house tour in the Lake Barcroft neighborhood in Falls Church earlier this year got an eyeful when they walked into a bedroom at the Podesta residence hung with multiple color pictures by Katy Grannan, a photographer known for documentary-style pictures of naked teenagers in their parents’ suburban homes,†the Washington Post reported in 2004.
“They were horrified,†Tony’s wife Heather told the Post of her guests reactions, as a grin reportedly spread across her face.
While it is extremely far-fetched that the Podestas would be involved in this extremely high-profile missing persons case, the fact that thousands of people are having serious discussions about it on a Sunday evening speaks volumes about the trust people have in Hillary Clinton’s inner circle.
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SAI YOK, Thailand — Saira Tahir, a London lawyer, waved a bamboo pole with a plastic bag affixed to the end high in the air. A tiger leapt and swatted it like a house cat batting a string toy. For her $140 premium admission, Ms. Tahir also bathed a tiger, a cub and posed for a photo with a tiger’s head in her lap. “It’s a surreal experience being so close to them,” she said. “Even with the tiger’s head in your lap, you can feel the energy. It’s not something you do every day. ” Part Buddhist monastery and part petting zoo, the Tiger Temple in western Thailand has long been the bane of conservationists and animal rights activists who accuse it of abuse and exploitation even as it offers tourists an Edenesque wildlife fantasy. Now, after complaints of trafficking in endangered species, the government is trying to shut down the attraction. But there are two major obstacles: the temple, which has gone to court to block the closing, and the tigers. What do you do with nearly 150 carnivorous cats raised in captivity? The government began removing the tigers this year but was ordered to stop after the lawsuit was filed in February. Until the case is resolved, the fate of the tigers is mired in a legal standoff that pits wildlife officials, conservationists and Thailand’s military government against a wealthy tourist enterprise backed by influential Buddhist monks. The Tiger Temple, in rural Kanchanaburi Province near the Myanmar border, started collecting animals 15 years ago with an act of charity. Villagers took an injured tiger cub to the local abbot, who agreed to care for it. Word spread, and soon there were six tigers. “We built this temple to spread Buddhism,” said Supitpong Pakdjarung, a former police colonel who runs the temple’s business arm. “The tigers came by themselves. ” The tourists came next. Today, the temple takes in $5. 7 million a year from ticket sales, wildlife officials say, and receives millions more in donations. A standard ticket, about $17, entitles a visitor to walk a leashed tiger and pose with a chained tiger. The 15 or so monks who live on the grounds have little to do with the tigers beyond occasionally posing with them for tourists. But a Buddhist atmosphere is part of the pitch. The temple promotes itself as a place where tigers betray their wild nature to coexist with humans in Buddhist harmony. “We can live together peacefully because of kindness,” Mr. Supitpong said. Some monks and staff members believe that certain tigers are reincarnated monks or relatives. Mr. Supitpong said that through meditation, monks had come up with dietary solutions to repair genetic defects from inbreeding. “It is a spiritual connection,” he said. The Buddhist imprimatur also makes the temple a powerful adversary in its legal battle with the government. In Thailand, the moral authority of monks rivals the secular authority of the law. “They have the power to say right or wrong in terms of morality,” said Surapot Taweesak, a scholar in philosophy and religion at Suan Dusit Rajabhat University in Bangkok. “This makes people listen and not dare to argue or debate with monks for fear of being sinful. ” The government has ordered the temple to stop breeding tigers, charging fees to tourists and letting visitors feed tigers, officials say, but the temple has refused. “The monks have the attitude, ‘I am over the law,’ ” said Teunchai Noochdumrong, the director of Thailand’s Wildlife Conservation Office. “They say because they are monks, they have the right to take care of all the animals in that area. ” The abbot, Phra Vissuthisaradhera, is “not a monk,” Ms. Teunchai said. “He’s a criminal. ” Mr. Vissuthisaradhera, who was attacked and clawed on the face last year by his favorite tiger, declined to be interviewed. For years, the temple has faced allegations of misconduct. Recently, a handler was caught on video punching a tiger in the head. Mr. Supitpong acknowledges that staff members sometimes have to strike the tigers to distract them from focusing on tourists as prey. “We have to hit them so we can change the tiger’s mood at the moment,” he said. Charges of tiger smuggling date to at least 2008, when the British group Care for the Wild said the temple was illegally trading tigers with a farm in neighboring Laos. Last year, the temple’s veterinarian resigned and reported that three tigers had vanished from the temple. He handed over three microchips that he said had been removed from the tigers such chips are used to track endangered animals. An Australian organization, Cee4life, claims that 281 tigers have been born at the temple over the years and that natural deaths alone could not account for today’s population, which stands at 138, not counting the 10 already removed by the government. The organization also presented evidence that some of the temple’s first tigers had been caught in the wild and that others had been brought later from Laos. The temple’s business success has inspired dozens of other operators of unlicensed zoos to offer tourists close contact with rare animals, said Edwin Wiek, the founder of the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand. The animals they breed are unwanted once they mature, Mr. Wiek said, contributing to Thailand’s role as a global hub for illegal trafficking in endangered animals. Tiger parts are in high demand in Asia, particularly China, for use in traditional medicine. Tiger bone can fetch as much as $168 a pound, and tiger penis soup goes for as much as $320 a bowl. At the Tiger Temple, only tigers under age 4 — there are 16 of them now — are brought out for tourists. Larger tigers, which can be careless about the rules of interspecies harmony, are retired to cages. After the veterinarian’s accusations, the government revoked the temple’s permission to keep tigers. The temple lacks documents proving ownership, so wildlife officials contend that the tigers belong to the government. Temple officials deny abusing the tigers or trading in tigers or tiger parts. They lack ownership papers, they say, because most of the tigers were born at the temple. Mr. Supitpong said that the three tigers suspected to be missing were still on the premises, and that he had no knowledge of any microchips being removed. During a raid last year, government officials also found eight hornbills and six Asian black bears, also protected species. The temple said it was the legitimate owner of those animals, too, but lacked the documents proving it, Ms. Teunchai said. When wildlife officials tried to seize the animals last year, protesting monks and temple supporters blocked the main road to the temple. Officials circumvented the protest by driving a crane to the side of the temple and hoisting the bears over a wall. Mr. Supitpong says the temple earns $3 million a year in ticket revenue, about half what the government says. Most of the donations go toward the construction of a $29 million temple that is expected to be completed in 2022, the next Year of the Tiger. The temple will be one of Thailand’s largest. “We have received all the funds by the tigers’ virtue,” Mr. Supitpong said. “In the past we called it ‘monks feed tigers.’ But now it’s ‘tigers feed monks.’ ” There are about 2, 000 captive tigers in Thailand, but most are a mix of Bengal tigers, a type that is native to the Indian subcontinent, and Indochinese tigers. Only an estimated 189 Indochinese tigers — the subspecies native to the region — remain in Thailand’s forests. The crossbred tigers are of no value in protecting the species as a whole, conservationists say. While the temple tigers are not domesticated — their behavior can be unpredictable, and there have been several attacks on tourists and staff members — they are not wild, either, having been raised in captivity and unafraid of people. If the Tiger Temple is shut down, the tigers cannot simply be set free in the jungle. The 10 tigers removed by the government were taken by truck to a government center, the Khao Prathap Chang Wildlife Breeding Center, in neighboring Ratchaburi Province, where each has a cage equipped with a concrete pool the size of a large bathtub. The cages, unlike those at the temple, have no access to an enclosure with grass and trees. Temple officials insist that tigers are better off at the temple. “In Thailand, this is the best place for them,” said Tanya Erzinclioglu, a volunteer coordinator. But Banpot Maleehuan, the government center’s director, said ending the tigers’ close contact with people had already been good for them. “They have been here two months now, and they are becoming real tigers,” he said. “A tiger is a tiger, not a pet. They have to live their nature. ” | 1 |
ELIZABETH, N. J. — More than three weeks after the bombings in New York City and at the Jersey Shore, the man accused in the attacks pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges relating to the attempted murder of police officers. The man, Ahmad Khan Rahami, who appeared in Superior Court here via video conference from his bed at University Hospital in Newark, said little, generally giving answers to questions. Mr. Rahami, 28, has been in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds since his capture on Sept. 19 in Linden, N. J. It was the public’s first glimpse of Mr. Rahami since he was loaded into an ambulance after a shootout with officers that ended a search for the person responsible for planting bombs here, in Seaside Park, N. J. and in Manhattan. One of the bombs, planted under a trash bin on 23rd Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, exploded on Sept. 17, injuring 31 people. Earlier that day, an explosive detonated in a trash can in Seaside Park, where a race had been scheduled. Another blast occurred as a robot was trying to disarm explosives left in the trash at the train station in Elizabeth. A fourth bomb was found in Chelsea, but it did not detonate. Charges relating to the bombings have been filed in federal court, although Mr. Rahami has not been arraigned on them. It is rare for so much time to pass between a defendant’s arrest and his first appearance in court. But in the days after Mr. Rahami’s capture, state prosecutors opposed an effort by public defenders to visit him, saying that he was “incapacitated and unable to communicate” and therefore unable to assert his right to a counsel. Little has been said about Mr. Rahami’s health. He was shot several times after he fired on officers who had discovered him asleep in the vestibule of a bar. But on Thursday, he could be seen reclining in a hospital bed, his head propped up by a pillow. A white sheet was draped over his body, concealing the extent of his injuries. In a soft voice, Mr. Rahami answered “yes” to a few routine questions from the judge: Was he able to hear what the judge was saying? Had he seen a copy of the criminal charges? One of his lawyers, Peter Liguori, did much of the talking, as he stood over Mr. Rahami’s bed, in a yellow hospital gown and blue gloves. Mr. Liguori said Mr. Rahami would be pleading not guilty to each of the charges. “I will enter a not guilty plea, of course, on all the charges,” the judge, Regina Caulfield, said before setting bail at $5. 2 million. Judge Caulfield outlined the charges Mr. Rahami faces in state court, the most serious of which were the attempted murder of five police officers. None were seriously injured. He is accused of shooting one officer in the torso, although that officer was spared serious injury because of his body armor. It is not known when Mr. Rahami will be formally arraigned in federal court on charges. An naturalized United States citizen, he is said by federal prosecutors to have taken his inspiration from “Brother Osama bin Laden” and other international terrorists, including members of the Islamic State, according to a criminal complaint and a notebook he had when he was apprehended. Still, much about his radicalization remains unknown. Mr. Rahami spent hours watching videos on the internet espousing violent jihad, frightening his father, Mohammad Rahami, who confronted his son and said he shared his concerns with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, after his son had been arrested on assault charges in a domestic violence case. But Mr. Rahami’s radicalization does not appear to have occurred entirely in his bedroom, above the family’s fried chicken restaurant here. He traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan for extended periods in recent years. He returned home from one yearlong trip in 2014, noticeably angry, friends and relatives have said. His family grew concerned that he may have come under the sway of a radical cleric while living in Quetta, Pakistan, where the Rahami family has relatives. | 1 |
Les voix des femmes musulmanes ont été quasiment noyées par le débat agité sur l’interdiction de se baigner en burkini sur les plages de plus de 30 municipalités françaises femmes pour qui ces maillots couvrant complètement le corps ont été conçus. Le New York Times a sollicité leurs avis, et les réponses — plus de 1000 messages de Belgique, de France et d’ailleurs — vont bien de la question des tenues de plage. Le résultat brosse le portrait de la vie de la femme musulmane, voilée ou pas, dans les parties d’Europe où le terrorisme a le plus tendu les sociétés. Le mot “combat” a été utilisé des dizaines de fois. Beaucoup de celles qui sont nées en France parlent de confusion quand on les enjoint de rentrer là d’où elles viennent. Les tribunaux ont suspendu plusieurs interdictions suite à une décision du Conseil d’État la semaine dernière — l’interdiction à Nice, où s’est déroulé un horrible attentat terroriste le 14 juillet dernier, a été suspendue ce jeudi — mais le débat est loin d’être terminé. “Depuis des années, nous supportons les regards et les propos menaçants,” écrit Taslima Amar, 30 ans, enseignante en banlieue parisienne. “On m’a demandé de rentrer chez moi (alors que je suis chez moi). ” Désormais, Mme Amar a ajouté, elle espère quitter la France avec son époux. Laurie Abouzeir, 32 ans, écrit qu’elle envisage de se mettre à son compte et de s’occuper d’enfants à son domicile toulousain. Cela lui permettrait de porter le voile, qui est vu d’un mauvais il et parfois même interdit sur certains lieux de travail. Beaucoup de femmes écrivent que les préjugés se sont intensifiés ces derniers mois et années, citant les attaques terroristes de Paris en 2015, ainsi que celles de Bruxelles et de Nice cette année. Halima Djalab Bouguerra, étudiante de 21 ans à évoque une date antérieure, estimant que les choses avaient déjà commencé à changer en 2012, avec les meurtres de Mohammed Merah dans le du pays. “Il y a surtout eu des regards qui ont changé” écrit Mme Bouguerra. “Les langues se sont déliées, plus personne n’a peur de dire à un musulman : “Rentre chez toi. ” Voici quelques extraits des commentaires que nous avons reçus, parfois condensés et modifiés pour plus de clarté, et traduits en français lorsqu’ils nous ont été envoyés en anglais. _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ | 1 |
BLACK OPS ADVERTISINGNative Ads, Content Marketing, and the Covert World of the Digital Sell By Mara Einstein248 pp. OR Books. Paper, $18. I don’t often watch late night television, which may be why I was caught unawares. Jimmy Fallon’s opening monologue began hilariously enough, when abruptly he pivoted to a series of inexplicably weak jokes centered on a forthcoming football game. It slowly dawned on me that I was watching a commercial for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” albeit one baked right into the opening monologue and delivered by Fallon himself. The realization that something you thought to be “real” is actually an advertisement is an increasingly common, if unsettling, sensation. Mara Einstein calls it “content confusion,” and if her book, “Black Ops Advertising,” is right, we’re in for even more such trickery, indeed a possible future where nearly everything becomes hidden commercial propaganda of one form or another. She forecasts the potential of a “world where there is no real content: Everything we experience is some form of sales pitch. ” Einstein, a former advertising executive turned media professor (who, among other things, worked campaigns for Uncle Ben’s and Miller Lite) makes it clear that things were not always this way. Once upon a time the line between editorial and advertising, if not exactly a Chinese wall, was somewhat clearer. Einstein’s and accomplished book is mainly about the effort to tear down that wall. The sledgehammers and pick axes in this case are things like “sponsored content,” “native advertising” and “content marketing” designed to fool you into thinking they are real. Such stealth advertising may entertain or inform, yet it also brands, or more cleverly, facilitates a later branding exercise or sales pitch. The handoff can be smooth enough that you don’t notice you’ve been steered to exit through the gift shop. “Black Ops” presents some startling examples of stealth advertising. Remember that guy who in 2012 jumped out of a helium balloon at 128, 000 feet for a new world record? Covered widely in the media, it was all, according to Einstein, a disguised Red Bull marketing campaign, but one where Red Bull’s role was so discreet as to be almost invisible. You may also recall the audacious “tagging” of Air Force One by a graffiti artist named Marc Ecko, which has been viewed nearly a million times on YouTube. It was a hoax intended for the branding of a clothing and accessories label. That “ad” fooled so many members of the public and press that it was awarded the top prize for digital media at the annual Cannes Lions advertising festival. The book is slightly guilty of exaggerating the novelty of advertising techniques. Content that doubles as brand advertising is not exactly new. In the 1980s, “The Transformers” and “G. I. Joe” were popular children’s cartoons but also advertisements, and so of course was the much beloved “Mickey Mouse Club” back in the 1960s. The idea of inventing media stories for commercial purpose also has a long pedigree, dating to at least the late 1920s, when Lucky Strike staged a protest (the “torches of liberty”) featuring attractive women demanding the right to smoke outdoors as a part of suffragist liberation (yielding, ultimately, an equal right to lung cancer). Subliminal advertising, perhaps the blackest of all black ops, was popular in the 1950s, until it was banned. The difference, Einstein argues, lies in how much effort is going toward the dark arts. It is, she suggests, for one simple reason: that we, the public, are so good at avoiding or ignoring traditional advertising. We are fickle fish, cynical creatures who have already been hooked so many times that the simpler lures no longer work. We avoid ads using devices as simple as the remote control (originally conceived as an technology) and as sophisticated as phones (thanks, Apple). Many of us have developed a mental blindness that helps us see through advertising as if it were not there. Indeed, ad avoidance has become a lifestyle, so much so that some people will simply declare, “I don’t watch advertising” the same way one might declare adherence to a diet. Einstein’s book wanders from its main topic into a fuller review of contemporary advertising practice, including on social media, mass harvesting of private data and other unappealing practices. Perhaps the most important contribution she makes is providing a clear sense of what free content actually costs. There was a time when the idealists among us prophesied that the 21st century would be a golden age of free stuff, powered by a culture of sharing, and that targeted advertising would be a blessing for consumers. Today that vision has soured and even seems like a bad joke given how plagued we are by the rise of stealth advertising, the invasions of privacy, the proliferation of clickbait and stalking advertising, and the general degradation of much of the web. Einstein is not enthusiastic about contemporary advertising practice, and few of us are likely to regard constant deception as attractive. But what’s the remedy? One, briefly mentioned by Einstein, is legal. The Federal Trade Commission regards advertising posing as legitimate content to be an illegal form of “consumer deception. ” Einstein calls for more enforcement, but admits that it’s not easy. What does one do, for example, about the many movies (like “The Transformers”) and reality shows (“Keeping Up With the Kardashians”) that are simultaneously entertainment and advertisement? Einstein is not the first former marketing executive to turn on her profession James Rorty, in 1934, wrote of his colleagues: “They are dead men. Their bones are Bakelite. Their blood is water, their flesh is pallid — yes, prick them and they do not bleed. ” But unlike Rorty, who wanted to destroy advertising, she would prefer to save it: She is nostalgic for the recent past, when audiences sitting through commercials made deception unnecessary. But if that’s the remedy, it is a lost cause: No one who figures out how to avoid advertising willingly goes back. Einstein too quickly discards the most important remedy for advertising’s abuses: paying for content. A broader historical view can remind us that media competes with paid media (like HBO, film, books). Those who don’t want to live in a world constantly trying to trick us into watching ads may have the most impact by voting with their dollars and starving the beast of the attention it needs to survive. Paying for things (Facebook, if it let you pay, Einstein tells us, might be $12 a year) strikes at the heart of the business model, and indeed a partial revolt is already underway, as suggested by the popularity of subscription services like Netflix. It is a reminder that supported entertainment is hardly indelible or eternal, but a relatively recent invention whose future is insecure. From this perspective, the rise of black ops advertising may be less a sign of power than of desperation. | 1 |
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Doreen Virtue – It’s a week of your empowerment! You step up into leadership, in helping those who are afraid, angry, or in need of healing – and this includes helping yourself.
Your inner child is both strong and sensitive this week, meaning that you may feel extra-imaginative, extra-emotional, and experience the magical healing energy that comes from pure childlike faith.
With the full moon, do get extra rest if possible. Be aware that some people may experience insomnia and be grouchy as a result. Take care of yourself accordingly.
From the Magical Unicorns Oracle Cards at: http://bit.ly/UnicornsCards
SF Source Doreen Virtue | 0 |
“If you are not having a fight with somebody,” Tom Wolfe told The Guardian in 2004, “then you are not sure whether you are alive when you wake up in the morning. ” Mr. Wolfe is famous for his and books of literary journalism (“The Electric Acid Test” in 1968, “The Right Stuff” in 1979) and for social novels like “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1987) and “A Man in Full” (1998). Like an industrial engineer who also makes bespoke dueling pistols in his shed on the weekends, Mr. Wolfe has made a side career of skirmishing with the eminati (his term) in an array of cultural fields. If fighting enlivens one’s mornings, Mr. Wolfe has had little need of caffeine. He took aim at Modern art and its enabling theorists in “The Painted Word” (1975) and modern architecture and its critical druids in “From Bauhaus to Our House” (1981). In his essay “Stalking the Beast” (1989) he the American literary establishment for its solipsistic retreat from realism. He referred to three of his antagonists — John Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving — in the title of another essay, published in 2000, as “My Three Stooges. ” Mr. Wolfe’s assaults were not meant to be well received by his entrenched opponents, and indeed they were not. He was tagged as an incorrigible philistine and worse. Few took his more combative books and essays altogether seriously, though they sharpened the conversation. Oddly, little of the stirred mud stuck to him. To recall these contretemps is to freshly appreciate Mr. Wolfe’s cameo appearance in “The Simpsons” when, after Homer smears chocolate on the author’s trademark white suit, Mr. Wolfe yanks it off to reveal an identical clean one underneath. Mr. Wolfe, now 85, shows no sign of mellowing. His new book, “The Kingdom of Speech,” is his boldest bit of dueling yet. It’s a whooping, and hyperbolic raid on, of all things, the theory of evolution, which he finds to be less scientific certainty than “a messy guess — baggy, boggy, soggy and leaking all over the place,” to put it in the words he inserts into the mouths of past genetic theorists. Secondarily, this book is a rebuke of the work of the linguist Noam Chomsky, whom Mr. Wolfe refers to as “Noam Charisma. ” Rebuke is actually too frivolous a word for the contumely Mr. Wolfe looses in his direction. More precisely, he tars and feathers Mr. Chomsky before sticking a clown nose on his face and rolling him in a baby stroller off a cliff. Mr. Wolfe does not complain about evolution on religious grounds in fact, he is an atheist. He begins by declaring the notion of the big bang to be vaguely ridiculous, and likens it to a mythopoetic bedtime story. Everything came from nothing? Most essentially, Mr. Wolfe employs new research from the controversial anthropologist Daniel Everett to argue that the power of speech — man’s signal attribute — is not the product of evolution at all but rather a tool that man created. “Bango!” Mr. Wolfe writes. “There is a cardinal distinction between man and animal. ” He wonders how airtight the theory of evolution can be if it does not account for such a thing. “What is it,” he asks, “that has left endless generations of academics, certified geniuses, utterly baffled when it comes to speech?” Scientists will be likely to shrug at Mr. Wolfe’s lucid if overexcited synthesis of other people’s ideas and respond this way: We’ll get there, in terms of sussing out speech, through the combined use of anatomy and physiology and biochemistry. The structures that support language don’t fossilize, so evidence is simply harder to come by. This is not something we will lose sleep over, no matter how much you pogo and spit in the Sid Vicious manner. Mr. Chomsky, on the other hand, reading “The Kingdom of Speech,” may lose a bit of sleep. Mr. Wolfe chronicles the arguments against two of that linguist’s central theories — the notion that humans are born with an unseen language organ in the brain, and the complicated structural concept of recursion in language — and declares Mr. Chomsky to be bankrupt in nearly every regard, a pretentious man whose ideas set linguistic study back for decades. He narrates disputations of Mr. Chomsky’s work as if they were prizefights: “OOOF! — right into the solar plexus!” Mr. Wolfe seems especially incensed that as a scholar, Mr. Chomsky privileged mental work over fieldwork, making linguistics an indoor rather than an outdoor pursuit. (In this book’s first section, Mr. Wolfe attacks Charles Darwin on similar grounds, paying almost no attention to the nearly five years Darwin spent aboard the Beagle.) These arguments neatly parallel his brief against American novelists whom, Mr. Wolfe thinks, don’t get out of the house nearly enough. Because this is a Tom Wolfe production, there is a great deal of funny and acid commentary on social class. About the possibility that Darwin, a wealthy and connected British gentleman, might have plundered some of his ideas about evolution from Alfred Russel Wallace, a social nobody, he writes: “The British Gentleman was not merely rich, powerful, and refined. He was also a slick operator … smooth … smooth … smooth and then some. It was said that a British Gentleman could steal your underwear, your smalls and skivvies and knickers, and leave you staring straight at him asking if he didn’t think it had turned rather chilly all of a sudden. ” Because this is a Tom Wolfe production, a torrent of language is set free. Sentences spin past like whirligigs, or like Rube Goldberg devices that emit a pellet of information only after bouncing off four increasingly unlikely surfaces. Mr. Wolfe’s prose here is mostly but there are moments when he seems on the verge of losing it, of falling into fragments of nonsense that will put older readers in mind of the insane columns Larry King once filed for USA Today. Here is Mr. Wolfe, for example, on the work of eight evolutionists he wishes to mock: “I surfed and Safaried and finally moused upon the only academic I could find who disagreed with the eight failures, a chemist at Rice University … Rice … Rice used to have a football team … the Rice Owls … wonder how they’re doing now? I moused around on the Rice site some more, and … not so great last season, the Owls … football … and I surfed to football concussions … exactly as I thought!” The system in his cranium, here and elsewhere, has gone haywire. “The Kingdom of Speech” is meant to be a provocation rather than a dissertation. The sound it makes is that of a lively mind having a very good time, and enjoying the scent of its own napalm in the morning. | 1 |
Reasons to Risk Nuclear Annihilation latest neocon/liberal-hawk scheme is for the U.S. population to risk nuclear war to protect corrupt politicians in Ukraine and Al Qaeda terrorists in east Aleppo, two rather dubious reasons to end life on the planet, says Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Obviously, I never wanted to see a nuclear war, which would likely kill not only me but my children, grandchildren, relatives, friends and billions of others. We’d be incinerated in the blast or poisoned by radiation or left to starve in a nuclear winter.
But at least I always assumed that this horrific possibility would only come into play over something truly worthy, assuming that anything would justify the mass extinction of life on the planet. Peter Sellers playing Dr. Strangelove as he struggles to control his right arm from making a Nazi salute.
Now, however, Official Washington’s neocons and liberal interventionists are telling me and others that we should risk nuclear annihilation over which set of thieves gets to rule Ukraine and over helping Al Qaeda terrorists (and their “moderate” allies) keep control of east Aleppo in Syria.
In support of the Ukraine goal, there is endless tough talk at the think tanks, on the op-ed pages and in the halls of power about the need to arm the Ukrainian military so it can crush ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who dared object to the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 that ousted their elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
And after “liberating” eastern Ukraine, the U.S.-backed Ukrainian army would wheel around and “liberate” Crimea from Russia, even though 96 percent of Crimean voters voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia – and there is no sign they want to go back .
So, the world would be risking World War III over the principle of the West’s right to sponsor the overthrow of elected leaders who don’t do what they’re told and then to slaughter people who object to this violation of democratic order.
This risk of nuclear Armageddon would then be compounded to defend the principle that the people of Crimea don’t have the right of self-determination but must submit to a corrupt post-coup regime in Kiev regardless of Crimea’s democratic judgment.
And, to further maintain our resolve in this gamble over nuclear war in defense of Ukraine, we must ignore the spectacle of the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev wallowing in graft and corruption .
While the Ukrainian people earn on average $214 a month and face neoliberal “reforms,” such as reduced pensions, extended years of work for the elderly and slashed heating subsidies, their new leaders in the parliament report wealth averaging more than $1 million in “monetary assets” each, much of it in cash.
A Troubling Departure
The obvious implication of widespread corruption was underscored on Monday with the abrupt resignation of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who was the appointed governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region. A scene from “Dr. Strangelove,” in which the bomber pilot (played by actor Slim Pickens) rides a nuclear bomb to its target in the Soviet Union.
Though Saakashvili faces charges of abusing power back in Georgia, he was nevertheless put in charge of Odessa by current President Petro Poroshenko, but has now quit (or was ousted) amid charges and counter-charges about corruption.
Noting the mysterious wealth of Ukraine’s officials, Saakashvili denounced the country’s rulers as “corrupt filth” and accused Poroshenko and his administration of sabotaging real reform.
“Odessa can only develop once Kiev will be freed from these bribe takers, who directly patronize organized crime and lawlessness,” Saakashvili said . Yes, that would be a good slogan to scribble on the side of a nuclear bomb heading for Moscow: “Defending the corrupt filth and bribe takers who patronize organized crime.”
But the recent finger-pointing about corruption is also ironic because the West cited the alleged corruption of the Yanukovych government to justify the violent putsch in February 2014 that drove him from office and sparked Ukraine’s current civil war.
Yet, the problems don’t stop with Kiev’s corruption. There is the troubling presence of neo-Nazis , ultranationalists and even Islamic jihadists assigned to the Azov battalion and other military units sent east to the front lines to kill ethnic Russians.
On top of that, United Nations human rights investigators have accused Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service of hiding torture chambers .
But we consumers of the mainstream U.S. media’s narrative are supposed to see the putschists as the white hats and Yanukovych (who was excoriated for having a sauna in his official residence) and Russian President Vladimir Putin as the black hats.
Though U.S. officials, such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, helped organize or “midwife” the coup ousting Yanukovych, we are told that the Ukraine crisis was a clear-cut case of “Russian aggression” and Crimea’s decision to secede (and rejoin Russia) was a “Russian invasion” and an “annexation.”
So, all stirred up with righteous indignation, we absorbed the explanation that economic sanctions were needed to punish Putin and to destabilize Russian society, with the hoped-for goal of another “regime change,” this time in Moscow.
We weren’t supposed to ask if anyone had actually thought through the idea of destabilizing a nuclear-armed power and the prospect that Putin’s overthrow, even if possible, might lead to a highly unstable fight for control of the nuclear codes.
Silencing Dissent
Brushing aside such worries, the neocons/liberal-hawks are confident that the answer is to move NATO forces up to Russia’s borders and to provide military training to Ukraine’s army, even to its neo-Nazi “shock troops.” Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
After all, when have the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks ever miscalculated about anything. No fair mentioning Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or other lucky countries that have been on the receiving end of a benighted “regime change.”
An American who protests or even mentions the risk of nuclear war is dismissed as a “Kremlin stooge” or a “Putin puppet” or a “useful fool” repeating “Russian disinformation” and assisting Moscow’s “information war” against the U.S. government.
But if you’re still a bit queasy about risking nuclear annihilation to keep some Ukrainian kleptocrats in power, there is the other cause worth having the human race die over: protecting Al Qaeda terrorists and their “moderate” rebel comrades holed up in east Aleppo.
Since these modern terrorists turn out to be highly skilled with video cameras and the dissemination of propaganda, they have created the image for Westerners that the Syrian military and its Russian allies simply want to kill as many children as possible.
Indeed, most Western coverage of the battle for Aleppo whites out the role of Al Qaeda almost completely although occasionally the reality slips through in on-the-ground reporting , along with the admission that Al Qaeda and its fellow fighters are keeping as many civilians in east Aleppo as possible, all the better to put up heartrending videos and photos on social media.
Of course, when a similar situation exists in Islamic State-held Mosul, Iraq, the mainstream Western media dutifully denounces the tactic of keeping children in a war zone as the cynical use of “human shields,” thus justifying Iraqi and U.S. forces killing lots of civilians during their “liberation.” The deaths are all the enemy’s fault.
However, when the shoe is on the Syrian/Russian foot, we’re talking about “war crimes” and the need to invade Syria to establish “safe zones” and “no-fly zones” even if that means killing large numbers of additional Syrians and shooting down Russian warplanes.
After all, isn’t the protection of Al Qaeda terrorists worth the risk of starting World War III with nuclear-armed Russia? And if Al Qaeda isn’t worth fighting a nuclear war to defend, what about the thieves in Ukraine and their neo-Nazi shock troops? Calling Dr. Strangelove.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ). | 0 |
One day after Muhammad Ali Jr. spoke with members of Congress about being detained at a Florida airport last month, he was briefly stopped again before boarding a flight on Friday afternoon, his lawyer said. When Mr. Ali, whose father died last year, arrived at Reagan National Airport in Washington on Friday for a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. he gave his Illinois identification card to a JetBlue agent to get his boarding pass, said his lawyer, Chris Mancini, who was traveling with him and witnessed the episode. Almost immediately, Mr. Ali was told that there was a problem and that the agent needed to call the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Mancini said. Mr. Ali, 44, was asked his date of birth, where he was born and his Social Security number, Mr. Mancini said. After answering the questions, he was told that his identification card, which expires in 2019 but is not a driver’s license, was invalid for flying. “The same state ID from Illinois that he traveled to Washington on was rejected,” Mr. Mancini said in an interview on Friday night. Mr. Ali then produced his United States passport, which was accepted, and went through security and boarded the flight with his mother, Khalilah the second wife of Muhammad Ali, and Mr. Mancini. Mr. Mancini said that the episode lasted between 20 and 25 minutes. “This whole thing smacks of some sort of retaliation for his testimony,” he said. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, was on the same flight, and posted about the episode on Twitter, saying that Mr. Ali had been “detained again. ” In a statement, the Transportation Security Administration disputed that the holdup at the ticket counter lasted long and said that Mr. Ali’s jewelry caused a delay at the security checkpoint. The agency said that it did not have the authority to detain passengers. “Upon arriving at the airline counter, a call was made to confirm Mr. Ali’s identity with T. S. A. officials,” the agency said. “When Mr. Ali arrived at the checkpoint, his large jewelry alarmed the checkpoint scanner. He received a targeted in the area of his jewelry to clear the alarm and was cleared to catch his flight. ” An agency spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about what prompted the additional scrutiny of Mr. Ali’s identification. Mr. Mancini said he was baffled by the agency’s statement because Mr. Ali did not complain about his treatment at security, only at . Mr. Mancini said he was helping Ms. through the checkpoint and did not notice that Mr. Ali had been stopped for additional scrutiny. “They are making up stories,” he said. “We have never said anything about anything happening after he left the ticket counter. ” He said he planned to file a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security and was “working toward a lawsuit. ” “People need to start paying attention to what’s happening in our country,” he said. “Our rights are being eroded. ” The dispute between Mr. Ali and the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the T. S. A. follows an episode on Feb. 7 in which he and his mother were stopped for about an hour and a half at Fort International Airport after returning from Jamaica. Mr. Mancini said then that Customs and Border Protection officials had asked Mr. Ali, “Where did you get your name from?” and, “Are you Muslim?” Mr. Ali and his mother recounted their ordeal at a forum with House Democrats on Thursday and both spoke out against President Trump’s new travel restrictions. “I believe they were religiously and racially profiling me,” Mr. Ali said of the officials, according to reports. When they arrived at the airport on Friday, Mr. Mancini said, he and Mr. Ali joked about whether they would face additional scrutiny because of his comments. | 1 |
VINEYARD OF THE SAKER T he AngloZionst Empire’s propaganda machine, otherwise known as the corporate media, has had great difficulties deciding what it should say about the Russian naval task force which has been sent to Syria. The Americans have decided to express their usual contempt for anything Russian and describe this force as centered on the “geriatric” aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, while the Brits chose to describe it as a formidable “armada” about to completely obliterate the moderate terrorists in Syria. Illustration above: The Nuclear Battle-Cruiser Peter The Great My friend Alexander Mercouris has recently written a superb analysis explaining that, in reality, this task force was neither geriatric nor that formidable. Rather than repeating it all here, I prefer to write what I will consider a follow-up to this excellent piece with a few more details added to it. The first step will be to debunk a few fundamental misconceptions. Let’s begin by the Russian aircraft carrier. The “Heavy Aircraft-Carrying Cruiser Admiral of the Soviet Fleet Kuznetsov” Did you know that the Russian don’t even call the Admiral Kuznetsov an aircraft carrier. The official designation of the Kuznetsov is “Heavy Aircraft-Carrying Cruiser”. It is important to understand why. What is, in your opinion, an aircraft carrier? Or, let me put it this way, why does the United States maintain a force of 10-12 heavy aircraft carriers? If you believe Ronald Reagan, it is to “forward deploy” and bring the war to the Soviets (that was, then, the rationale for a 600 ship navy and US carriers in the northern Atlantic). Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that US, British, French aircraft carriers are a colonial rule enforcement tool . You park one or two aircraft carrier battle groups a few hundred miles from a disobedient country, and you bomb the shit out of it until it rolls over. That is, in reality, the only rationale for these immense structures. And the beauty of it is that you can threaten most of the planet and that you do not depend on allies agreeing to your mission. So, we can say that US and other western aircraft carriers are a long range power projection capability to be used against weak and poorly defended countries. Why weak and poorly defended only? Here is the ugly secret that everybody knows: aircraft carriers cannot be defended against a sophisticated enemy. Had the Cold War turned hot, the Soviets would have simultaneously attacked any US carrier in the north Atlantic with a combo of Air launched cruise missiles Surface ship launched cruise missiles Submarine launcher torpedoes I cannot prove the following, but I can just testify that I had plenty of friends in the US military, including some who served on US aircraft carriers, and they all understood that US carriers would never survive a Soviet saturation attack and that in case of a real war they would have been kept away from the Soviet shores. I will only add here that the Chinese apparently have developed specialized ballistic missiles designed to destroy carrier battle groups. That was then, in the early 1990s. Nowadays even countries like Iran are beginning to develop capabilities to engage and successfully destroy US carriers. The Soviets never built any real aircraft carriers. What they had were *cruisers* with a very limited amount of vertically launched aircraft and, of course, helicopters. These cruisers had two main purposes: to extend the reach of the Soviet air defenses and to support a landing of a force from the sea. One very special feature of these aircraft carrying Soviet cruisers is that they had very large (4,5-7 tons) cruise missiles designed to strike at a high-value enemy ships, including US aircraft carriers. You can read up on the “Kiev-class” aircraft carrying cruiser here . Another key characteristic of these Soviet aircraft-carrying cruisers is that they carried a rather lame aircraft, the Yak-38 which was plagued by problems and would have been a very easy target for US F-14. F-15, F-16 or F-18. For that reason, the Kiev-class air-defenses were centered on its surface-to-air missiles and not on its complement of aircraft. By the time the Kuznetsov was built, the Soviets had developed aircraft which were at least equal, if not superior, to their western counterparts: the MiG-29 and, especially, the SU-27. And that gave some of them the idea to build a “real” aircraft carrier. T he decision to built the Kuznetsov was an extremely controversial one which faced a lot of opposition. The Kuznetsov’s “selling points” were that she was a much superior air defense platform, that she could carry vastly superior aircraft and, last but not least, that she could compete for prestige with the US heavy aircraft carriers, especially the planned but never built nuclear-powered follow-on generation. I find that argument wholly unconvincing and nowadays I am pretty confident that most Russian naval force planners would agree with me: Russia does not need US-style aircraft carriers and if she needs any aircraft carriers at all, then they would have to be designed around a *Russian* mission requirement and not just to copy the Americans. [Sidebar: I would love to get on my favorite soapbox and tell you all the bad things I think about aircraft carriers in general and why I think that the Russian Navy should be submarine and frigate centered, but this would take up too much space. I will just say that I much rather have many frigates or corvettes than a few heavy cruisers]. So the Kuznetsov ended up being a mega-compromise and, as compromises go, a pretty good one. Think of it: even though the Kuznetsov packs 12 massive Granit anti-ship missiles, it has, at least potentially, a complement of aircraft bigger than the French Charles de Gaulle (50 vs 40). Initially, the Kuznetsov carried 12 pure air to air SU-33, but now these will be gradually replaced with 20 much more modern MiG-29K and its 24 Ka-27 helicopters will be replaced by the most advanced reconnaissance and attack helicopter on the planet, the Ka-52K . The Kuznetsov still has two major weaknesses: a frankly dated propulsion system (see the Mercouris article) and a lack of on-board AWACs aircraft. The latter is a direct consequence of the design philosophy of the Kuznetsov which was never designed to operate much beyond 500-1000 km from the Russian border (again, the crucial roughly under 1000 km Russian force planning philosophy ). To sum this all up: the Kuznetsov is a fine aircraft carrier which nevertheless reflects a compromise design philosophy and which was never intended to project Russian power at long distances the way western, especially US, carriers have . Now let’s turn to the rest of this Russian naval task force The rest of the Russian naval task force around the Kuznetsov One big name immediately stands out: the Heavy Nuclear Rocket Cruiser Peter the Great. The nuclear battle-cruiser Peter the Great This is one heavy beast and currently the most heavily armed ship on the planet. I won’t even go into all the details here, check this article for a list of armaments if you are interested, suffice to say here that this battlecruiser can do everything: anti-air, anti-ship, anti-submarine. She is packed with top of the line sensors and advanced communications. Being the flagship of the Northern Fleet she is also the de-facto flagship of the entire Russian Navy. Last, but not least, the Peter the Great carries a formidable array of 20 Granit anti-ship missile. Please note that the combined firepower of Granit anti-ship missiles of the Kuznetsov and Peter the Great is 12+20 for a total of 32. I will explain why this is important below. The rest of the task force is composed of two Large Antisubmarine Ships (destroyers in western terminology), the Vice-Admiral Kulakov and the Severomorsk, and a number of support vessels. The Kulakov and the Severomorsk are based on the Udaloy design and are modern and all-around capable combat ships. All these ships will soon merge into one force, including two small missile ships (corvettes in western terminology) which carry the famous Kalibr cruise missiles and which specialize in attacking surface ships. Finally, though this will not be advertised, I believe that this task force will include at least two Akula-class nuclear attack submarines, one Oscar-II cruise missile submarine (armed with another 12 Granit cruise missiles) and several Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines. To sum this all up. The Russian naval task force is a Russian attempt to bring together a number of ships which were never designed to operate as a single naval task force far away from Russia. If you want, it is a clever Russian “hack” . I would argue that it is also a rather successful one as this task force as a whole is a very impressive one. No, it cannot take on all of NATO or even the USN, but there are a number of things which it can do very effectively. Now we can turn to the big question, What can the Russian naval task force in Syria really do? The 7 ton Granit P-700 (3M45) Before looking at the bigger picture, there is one detail which I think deserves to be mentioned here. Just about every article I read about the Granit cruise missile says that it is an anti-ship cruise missile. I also wrote that above in order to keep things simple. But now I have to say that the Granit probably always had a “B” mode, “B” as in “beregovoy” or, if you prefer, “coastal” or “land” mode. I don’t know whether this mode existed from day 1 or whether it was added later, but it is now certain that the Granit has had such a mode. It was probably a fairly minimalistic capability, without fancy guidance and other tricks (which the Granit has in its main anti-ship mode), but the Russians have recently revealed that the upgraded Granits now have a *real* (“complex”) land attack capability. And that requires a totally new look at what that means for this task force. This is what we know about the new and improved Granit (which the Russians refer to as 3M45): Mass: 7 tons Range: 500-600km Warhead: 750kg (conventional and nuclear capable) The Granit is also capable of some very advanced things, including having one missile flying at 500m or higher to detect the target and the rest of them skimming the surface while receiving the data from the high-flying one. These missiles are also capable of automatically attacking from different directions to better overwhelm air defenses. They can fly as low as 25m and as high as 17’000m. What this all means is that these Granits missiles are very capable tactical-operational range missiles of their own right . And considering that there are at the very least 32 such missiles in the Russian task force (46 if a Oscar-II class sub is also present), that means that this task force has a tactical missile firepower similar to an entire rocket brigade! Should things go very wrong, this task force could not only seriously threaten any USN/NATO surface ship within 500km of Syria, but also every single city or military base in this range . I am rather surprised that the western fear-mongers missed this one because it ought to scare NATO pretty badly :-) To be honest here, some specialists are expressing big doubts about the land-attack capabilities of the Granit. Everybody knows that these are relatively old and very expensive missiles, but nobody knows how much effort was really put in their modernization. But even if they are not nearly as capable as advertised, the fact that 32 to 46 of such missiles will be sitting just off the Syrian coast will be a formidable deterrent because nobody will never know what these missiles can do until they really do it. Next: T he combined capabilities of the Russian naval task force and the S-300/S-400 missiles deployed in Syria give the Russians a world-class air-defense capability. If needed the Russians could even throw in A-50 AWACs from Russia protected by MiG-31BMs. What most observers do not realize is that SA-N-6 “Grumble” which forms the core of the air defenses of the Peter the Great is a S-300FM, the modernized naval variant of the S-300 . It is also capable of the amazing Mach 6 speed, has a 150km range, an added infrared terminal capability, a track-via-missile guidance system which allows it to engage ballistic missiles and an altitude envelope of 27’000m. And, guess what – the Peter the Great has 48 such missiles (in 20 launchers), roughly the equivalent of 12 S-300 batteries (assuming 4 launchers per battery). One of the major weaknesses of the Russian deployment in Syria has been the relative low number of missiles the Russians could fire at any one time. The US/NATO could simply saturate Russian defenses with large numbers of missiles. Frankly, they can still do it, but this has now become much, much harder. Can the Russians now stop a US attack on Syria? Probably not. But they can make it much harder and dramatically less effective. First, as soon as the Americans fire, the Russians will see it and they will warn the Syrian and Russian armed forces. Since the Russians will be able to track every US missile, they will be able to pass on the data to all the air defense crews who will be ready by the time the missiles arrive. Furthermore, once the missiles get close, the Russians will be able to shoot down a lot of them, making necessary for the Americans to conduct battle damage assessment from space and then re-strike the same targets many times over. Second, stealth or no stealth, I don’t believe that the USN or the USAF will risk flying into Russian controlled airspace or, if it does, this will be a short-lived experiment. I believe that the Russian presence in Syria will make any attack on Syria a “missile only” attack. Unless the Americans take down the Russian air defenses, which they could only if they want to start WWIII, US aircraft will have to stay outside the Syrian skies. And that means that the Russians have basically made their own no-fly zone over Syria and that a US no-fly zone is now impossible to achieve . Next, the Kuznetsov will be brining a number of fixed and rotary wing aircraft including 15-20 Ka-27 and Ka-52K helicopters, and 15-20 SU-33K and MiG-29K (I don’t think there has been an official figure announced). What the Russians have said is that the fixed-wing aircraft will be upgraded to be able to attack ground targets. Will all that make a difference? Maybe, on the margins. It will definitely help dealing with the expected influx of moderate terrorists coming from Mosul (courtesy of the US operation to flush them down into Syria), but the Russians could have simply moved more SU-25 or even SU-34 to Khmeimin or Iran at a much smaller cost. Thus in terms of its air-wing, I fully agree with Mercouris – this will be mainly a real-life training opportunity and not a game changer. Conclusion T his deployment is highly uncharacteristic of what the Russians have been training for. They have basically found a way to reinforce the Russian contingent in Syria, especially against Hillary’s “no fly zone” nightmare. However, this is also a case of making virtue out of necessity: the operation in Syria was always too far from the Russian border and the Russian force in Syria always too small for its task. Furthermore, this deployment is not sustainable in the long term, and the Russians know it. They have successfully imposed a “Yankee no fly zone” over Syria long enough for the Syrian to take Aleppo and for the Americans to vote for their next President. After that, the situation will either get dramatically better (Trump) or dramatically worse (Hillary). Either way, the new situation will require a completely different Russian strategy. —The Saker PS: I am aware of the semi-official Russian announced plans to build a modern aircraft carrier, probably a nuclear one, with catapults and all. For whatever it’s worth, I am very much opposed to this idea which I find wasteful and which does not fit the Russian defense doctrine. The new generation of Russian subs (SSNs and SLBMs), however, gets my standing ovation. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP INSTALLATION ABOUT THE AUTHOR The Saker is the nom de guerre of a former Russian-born military analyst and founder of the Saker network of sites. Note to Commenters Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. 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Cospedal se estrena en Defensa ordenando un ataque en diferido y en forma de simulación SE TRATA DE UNA OPERACIÓN EN PARTES DE LO QUE ANTES ERA UNA OFENSIVA Ministerio de Defensa
La nueva ministra de Defensa, María Dolores de Cospedal, acompañada por el jefe del Estado Mayor de la Defensa (JEMAD) y el comandante del Mando de Operaciones (CMOPS), ha tomado hoy su primera decisión al frente del ministerio ordenando un ataque “en diferido y en forma de simulación, simulación de lo que hubiera sido en diferido en partes de lo que antes era una maniobra”.
Cospedal se ha dirigido a las tropas en la base de Retamares, en el municipio madrileño de Pozuelo de Alarcón, para explicar los detalles de la operación contra “ese señor”.
“Se hará una operación en diferido de una maniobra en forma de ofensiva contra esa persona, organizando el ataque simulado también dándole la forma, en su parte, de operación retribuida”, ha detallado a los soldados.
Ante el silencio sepulcral de las tropas, que han evidenciado problemas para entender las instrucciones de la ministra, Cospedal ha añadido que “hoy hay personas que pueden discutir si es más o menos oportuno, si militarmente está mejor o peor llevado… o mejor o peor hecho. Pero así ha sido como se ha pactado. Hay que hacerlo como hay que hacerlo”.
Tras dos horas pasando revista, la titular de Defensa ha abandonado la base militar y los soldados han vuelto a sus quehaceres habituales. | 0 |
In a New York Times piece, “sanctuary” cities are called out for not doing “enough” to protect illegal aliens. [The piece, written by Shakeer Rahman and Robin Steinberg, slams New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for not going far enough when it comes to obstructing federal immigration officers from deporting illegal aliens: The abruptness of the raids provoked criticism from local officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who vowed to stand with immigrant communities. But mass deportation under President Trump will also happen through a more routine policy that is in the mayor’s control: endless, unnecessary arrests for offenses, which end up feeding immigrants into the federal government’s deportation machine. It’s not enough for cities like New York to declare themselves “sanctuaries,” which simply means that the local police won’t detain noncitizens on the federal government’s behalf. If cities really want to protect immigrants, they must also end the style of policing that makes immigrants the victims of unnecessary arrests and disproportionate punishment. Many of these unnecessary arrests stem from the discredited idea that a draconian crackdown on the most minor offenses — littering, selling loose cigarettes, biking on the sidewalk — will prevent more serious crimes. This model of policing, known as broken windows or zero tolerance, helped to drive mass incarceration. Its next cost could be mass deportation. The then decries the idea that illegal aliens can be deported for “minor offenses like simple marijuana possession” or any “crime involving moral turpitude,” despite that policy seeming to have not changed at least over the last decade. ICE agents were also attacked in the with Rahman and Steinberg writing, “Even if cities stop sharing arrest information, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been known to send plainclothes agents to local courts, where they wait for immigrants to appear for misdemeanor charges. ” The goes on to say that Trump’s deportation effort of illegal immigrants, specifically those who have committed crimes, “can’t happen without boots on the ground,” though ICE has long used agents to investigate, arrest and deport criminals. “Until cities reject the failed thinking that led to mass incarceration, local police and prosecutors will be doing the legwork for mass deportation,” the concludes. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
Previous The Only Coup Is a Stolen Election
Wars and rumor of wars. There is no coup. What you are watching is a media distraction. The MSM is actually covering Hillary’s criminality for the very first time. Are you naive enough to believe the media has had a change of heart? Look at the timing. Most of the early balloting is done. The George Soros’ voting machines have been placed into 16 key states. Dead people have already early-voted. But the media would have you believe that Hillary cannot win. When the fake polls at ABC show Trump is now leading, you have to question your common sense if you think you are not being played. And getting the people to believe that Hillary cannot win because of the late exposure of her criminality, will keep the people from working hard to prevent it.
How can America be so stupid as to believe that the main stream media has had a change of heart? Chris Matthews endorsing Trump along with other main stream media outlets? Really? Was Santa Claus standing in the background laughing?
The criminal elite and their media pawns have spent the entire election campaign vilifying Trump and now we are to believe that they have found Jesus and are suddenly supporting Trump? For you farm boys, this is called playing possum.
If you don’t want to live under the biggest criminal to ever run for President, you must block out the media and their minions because if you don’t and Hillary steals this election, I will be saying I told you so. The only way Trump wins the election, is if the people vote in overwhelming numbers for him and no amount of election fraud can overcome a super majority. For the record, voting machine fraud is designed to flip a percentage of the vote. An overwhelming victory cannot be negated without it being painfully obvious to everyone. So, don’t get lulled into complacency. Keep working for Trump!!!!
Believe who you want America, but in 5 days, if you lose your focus in supporting Trump and start assuming a victory, you are going to hand the election to Soros and Clinton.
Here is the anti-dote to the MSM BS. which is contained in the following video. | 0 |
On a hot September day in Brooklyn, I got off the G train at Metropolitan Avenue and walked through Williamsburg, a neighborhood so thoroughly celebrated it has become something of a cliché. Though it is only one subway transfer from my Flatbush Avenue apartment, I hadn’t been to the neighborhood in years. Today, it has the same incongruous mix of old and new that defines gentrifying neighborhoods. I walked by condos next to ornate Orthodox churches and modest postwar townhouses. The crowd included men in suits, fashionably unfashionable neighborhood elders sitting on McCarren Park benches, and nannies pushing expensive strollers past industrial facades painted with colorful murals. Sleek restaurants had opened alongside bodegas, coffee shops and pharmacies — establishments that had somehow held on. Since I have lived the larger part of the last decade along the stretch of Flatbush Avenue south of Crown Heights known as Caribbean Flatbush, the version of Brooklyn that one finds in Williamsburg — the Brooklyn of national popular perception a sort of East Coast Portlandia, only richer — was largely foreign to me. Sure, I’d been to Smorgasburg, Brooklyn Flea’s roaming food market, so I knew that $10 jars of pickles and “artisanal mayonnaise” were not entirely mythological. I have drunk more than my share of lambrusco at my favorite Fort Greene happy hour bar, Olea, and devoted many Sundays to multihour brunches with girlfriends among the cozy brownstones of Cobble Hill or Prospect Heights. But while I’m not oblivious to its charms and temptations, upscale Brooklyn — whether hip or tony — is not my Brooklyn. So, as a writer and parent of a young child, being tasked with exploring the borough’s cushier corners felt like a dream assignment. Who, after all, wouldn’t delight in getting the blessing of your employer to eat and drink and treat yourself to the best of your town? Over a weeklong period, I searched out a side of Brooklyn that scarcely existed two decades ago. I visited boutiques and bistros, spas and cocktail lounges, cinemas and creative new waterfront parks. It was a quest that would not have been complete without at least one afternoon in Williamsburg. Across the skyline I spotted my destination: the futuristic silver tower of the William Vale, which had opened just nine days before. Among the newest in a series of luxury hotels that have opened in recent years in the borough — including the nearby Wythe and the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge — the William Vale is ostentatious even by the standards of “new Brooklyn. ” Along with its standard $ $500 rooms, each of which features an balcony, it offers a “garden residence,” a duplex suite with an enormous patio and an outdoor Jacuzzi. Starting rate: $6, 000 a night. The William Vale rises from its and surroundings like an opulent monument surrounded by nondescript headstones. As I waited for the elevator in the lobby, which was splashed with abstract color, I made small talk with the host, a thin man in a handsome suit, his hair parted down the middle like a 1950s film villain. “You’re from the neighborhood?” he asked as he escorted me to the 22nd floor. No, farther south, I told him. Flatbush. He looked perplexed. He lived in Upper Manhattan, he said. “In 15 years, I’ve probably been to Brooklyn only a handful of times. ” Now he was commuting here. It felt like the revenge of the bridge and tunnel crowd. At Westlight, the hotel’s Andrew Carmellini bar, I fought back my fear of heights and headed for the outer deck, peering across the East River to the full expanse of Manhattan. Servers wore vaguely retro navy blue dresses, and a Jason Schwartzman sported a wooden bow tie. While not going out of its way to defy stereotype, the place was welcoming — more casual, and less affected, than its showy, setting would suggest. In a loftlike room lit by globe lights, I pulled up a stool at the bar and ordered a $14 glass of Sonoma County sauvignon blanc, a fair price of admission for the dizzying views. Counterintuitively, perhaps, another stop I made in Brooklyn was Crown Heights, a neighborhood that was still closely associated with the 1991 riots when I arrived in the city in the . Today, it exemplifies gentrification. Along Franklin Avenue, chic new restaurants, bars and boutiques open with such frequency that if even a few months pass between visits, I sometimes find myself disoriented. Was that slick sushi spot there before? When did this wine bar open? Within blocks of one another, there is Aita, a Italian trattoria with pasta that is praised in superlatives an elegant Mexican restaurant with a tile bar and a pressed copper roof (Chavela’s) and Glady’s. The last of these serves a similar menu to so many jerk chicken places except that it has a Michael Jacober, who is a Per Se alum an evocative dining room and potent dark and stormy slushies with a fierce kick of ginger. As if overnight, one Crown Heights street has more fine restaurants than some cities. On a weekday afternoon, I met a girlfriend at Café Rue Dix, a bistro on Bedford Avenue, where we were greeted with a warm, unironic “Welcome to Africa. ” We sat at a sidewalk table during a happy hour that draws regulars from the neighborhood for its signature cocktail, the Kale Hemingway (white rum, green juice, lime and maraschino, $9) bread and spring rolls. The warm, comfortably weathered space does, somehow, feel both distinctly Crown Heights and vaguely Parisian, though this last impression may have been the cocktail talking. I ducked next door to Marché Rue Dix, a “cultural concept store” opened by Nilea Alexander, the (with her Senegalese husband, Lamine Diagne) of Rue Dix. The shop had flooring and sold chunky sunglasses and funky coats, candles and stylish African imports. Like the nearby and newly opened Crabby Shack, a bright and airy urban seafood spot, Rue Dix’s twin businesses gave me hope that at least some of the spoils of Crown Heights’ transformation might benefit black business owners. Like the wave of gentrification that has washed from Williamsburg ever deeper into Brooklyn — north into what was once the Polish enclave of Greenpoint, east into Bushwick and south through — I Ubered from neighborhood to neighborhood. It was a luxury I normally afford myself only on the increasingly rare, occasion of excess. But during my weeklong stint exploring upscale Brooklyn, I went out of my way to treat myself to such extravagances. I booked an afternoon “Urban Oasis” massage for $135 at Fort Greene’s Cynergy Spa, where a long, hallway led to a room with gilded mirrors and a white noise machine playing ambient water sounds. Despite its location at a busy intersection, the place somehow managed to feel like a refuge. Afterward, I dipped into Karasu, the hidden, bar behind the comfort food restaurant Walter’s, where a sophisticated, room featured a wall of Japanese whiskeys. Charles Mingus played overhead while I sipped a Nettai, a snow cone of rum, orgeat, mandarin and yuzu ($14) through a metal straw. I hadn’t felt so relaxed in months. Over the following days, I resisted impulse buys in boutiques like Sincerely, Tommy and Peace Riot drank rosé while watching vintage David Lynch at the cushy new Syndicated theater, in Bushwick, which has a full bar, a “seasonal ingredient” food menu and table service and with my husband, Tim, and toddler, Roxie, walked the length of Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, an area that reminds me more of Boston than Brooklyn and which is home to Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters. Along the promenade, I couldn’t help but look up at the windows overlooking New York Harbor and wonder, what would it be like to wake up to that view? Or with the new Pier Six park, a model of postindustrial urban redesign, as your front yard? During my week of big spending, I was especially excited for a lavish date night dinner with my husband. But deciding where to go proved difficult. I waffled over whether to really go all out at the widely recommended Blanca, a prix fixe restaurant behind Roberta’s in Bushwick. At $195 per person, not including drinks, tax and tip, it would have cost over $500. Twice, I made and canceled reservations. Finally, I decided. I just couldn’t do it. Instead, I booked a table at Olmsted for 10:30 p. m. on a Wednesday, an York dinner hour and the only reservation I could get. When Tim and I arrived, the place — with a living wall, exposed bricks that had been painted white, and a backyard aglow with lights — was packed. Early Nineties Naughty by Nature (“O. P. P.? Yeah, you know me”) played as we were seated at a table beside the open kitchen, where a man with tweezers and comfortable sneakers carefully placed final touches on plates. The whole dining room smelled like the area around the Ebbets Field apartment complex, where the Golombeck spice factory infuses several city blocks with the scent of cumin and coriander, curry and paprika. It was a comparative bargain at $145 for two, including cocktails. Everything was beautiful, from the delicate porcelain water glasses, and swirled like soft serve, to the bartender who wore long dreads and danced with the cocktail shaker as if it were a maraca. When the food arrived, one small plate at a time, it was beautiful, too. There was crawfish boil chicharrón in a newspaper cup, earthy chapati — small, flat disks served with cucumbers and labne — and a $12 rosemary cocktail of fire and acid. Amusing us both, Tim’s main was one giant slice of tomato. Having traveled from the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket just up the street, it was served breaded and fried, . How is it, I asked. “It’s like a grilled cheese,” Tim said. “It has that … ” he trailed off, transported to some cozy food memory. “I love putting tomatoes on my grilled cheese,” he said, as if struck by a revelation, an boy excited about food for the first time. We both laughed. We laughed at the novelty of my week and the fundamental strangeness of being granted the opportunity to step into a life so different from my own. But in the end, a week of excess was a reminder of one of the basic promises of New York life, which remains the ability to straddle multiple worlds and to get glimpses into those that aren’t your own. At the forefront of Williamsburg’s hotel revival, the Wythe Hotel (80 Wythe Avenue wythehotel. com) is housed in a 1901 waterfront factory. The (starting at $395) boutique hotel has an art cinema, a Marlow Sons sibling restaurant, Reynard, and the Ides, a “ ” cocktail bar where a draft pilsner will set you back $11. The new kid in town, the William Vale (111 North 12th Street thewilliamvale. com) claims the longest hotel pool in New York City, and has 183 guest rooms (from the $300s) with windows, balconies, designer décor and contemporary art. Not yet open, but now taking reservations for February 2017, the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge (60 Furman Street 1hotels. ) will be one of the few luxury hotels south of Williamsburg. Among its selling points are a restaurant by Seamus Mullen and a rooftop patio with a plunge pool and fire pit. In a nod to Brooklyn’s waterfront history, the room designs incorporate reclaimed wood from the old Domino Sugar factory. From $350. | 1 |
A suburban Chicago high school is taking the Obama education agenda all the way with new classes and seminars that teach kids that whites are committing “genocide” against blacks, that America is violating the “rights” of transgender Americans, that whites are suppressing the voting rights of blacks, and a long list of other activist ideas. [New Trier Township High School is one of the Chicago area’s premier high schools in the tony suburb of Winnetka, a lake shore town north of Chicago. But, along with teaching math, science, English, and history, the school is launching into a major indoctrination project based on Obama’s agenda of liberal activism. An exposé of the agenda by the Illinois Family Institute shows that “progressivism” is coming fast and furious at New Trier’s kids. The list of classes and speakers for this new series is being called “a rather bold and raw effort at propaganda with decidedly and bigoted biases on display. ” Some of the titles of these seminars and workshops are “Whose Civil Rights?: Transpeople of Color Navigating the U. S.,” “21st Century Voter Supression,” “Blackenomics 101 (The Movement, The Music, The Solution),” “Mass Incarceration: Race and Prison in America,” and “R. E. A. L.: Race, Equity, and Leadership — A Unique Course for High School Students. ” Revisionist history is also a major topic of this agenda and will include programs titled, “A People’s History of Chicago” and “Western Bias in Science. ” Even the smallest children will be targeted for Obama’s project with a program being called, “Developing Empathy Acceptance by Reading Picture Books to Children. ” As part of the “Blackenomics 101” program, a special rap song has been written which includes the lyrics, “Blackenomics nigga, Black beat black, nigga” and “Die motherf*cker die. ” This agenda, though, is not something isolated to one Chicago school it is part and parcel to a huge program Barack Obama has forced onto schools all across the country. As F. H. Buckley, a professor at Scalia Law School, recently revealed in an at The New York Post, these sort of extreme, programs based on a virulently agenda is part of Obama’s “New Civics” program imposed on schools that receive federal funding. “Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics” shows how the Obama DOE has indoctrinated college students through progressive “New Civics” programs that seek to repurpose higher education away from the study of Western institutions, and even away from scholarship in general, in order to make little community organizers of our students. The goal of the New Civics movement, concludes the NAS, is to teach students “that a good citizen is a radical activist,” putting “political activism at the center of everything that students do in college, including academic study, pursuits, and ventures. ” Instead of a civics education that studies the foundations of American government, New Civics teaches students “how to organize protests, occupy buildings, and stage demonstrations. ” Programs like those described above being forced on kids at New Trier are also being programmed into schools all across the nation from the earliest grade school classes to the halls of higher education. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — As he confronted a series of international challenges from the Middle East to Asia last week, President Trump made certain that nothing was certain about his foreign policy. To the extent that a Trump Doctrine is emerging, it seems to be this: don’t get roped in by doctrine. In a week in which he hosted foreign heads of state and launched a cruise missile strike against Syria’s government, Mr. Trump dispensed with his own dogma and forced other world leaders to their assumptions about how the United States will lead in this new era. He demonstrated a highly improvisational and situational approach that could inject a risky unpredictability into relations with potential antagonists, but he also opened the door to a more traditional American engagement with the world that eases allies’ fears. As a private citizen and candidate, Mr. Trump spent years arguing that Syria’s civil war was not America’s problem, that Russia should be a friend, and that China was an “enemy” whose leaders should not be invited to dinner. As president, Mr. Trump, in the space of just days, involved America more directly in the Syrian morass than ever before, opened a new acrimonious rift with Russia, and invited China’s leader for a largely convivial, let’ dinner at his Florida estate. In the process, Mr. Trump upended domestic politics as well. He rejected the nationalist wing of his own White House, led by Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, who opposes entanglement in Middle East conflicts beyond fighting terrorism and favors punitive trade measures against Beijing. And Mr. Trump, by launching the strike on Russia’s ally Syria, undercut critics who have portrayed him as a Manchurian candidate doing the bidding of President Vladimir V. Putin after the Kremlin intervened in last year’s election on his behalf. Given his unpredictability, none of this means that Mr. Trump has pivoted permanently in any of these areas. The White House has prepared an executive order that the president may sign in the coming days targeting countries like China that dump steel in the American market. And Mr. Trump is sending Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson on Tuesday to Moscow, where he will have the additional task of trying to smooth over the rancor of recent days, in addition to exploring whether Russia could be a real partner in battling the Islamic State in Syria. Moreover, the missile strike, in response to a chemical weapons attack, was intended to be a limited, operation, and the president seemed determined to quickly move on. After announcing the attack Thursday evening, he made no mention of it Friday during public appearances, nor on Saturday during his weekly address. As of Saturday afternoon, the president had not even taunted President Bashar of Syria online, although he did thank the American troops who carried out the missile strike and defended the decision not to target the runway at the air base that was hit. “Our decisions,” Mr. Trump said in the Saturday address, “will be guided by our values and our goals — and we will reject the path of inflexible ideology that too often leads to unintended consequences. ” That concept, flexibility, seems key to understanding Mr. Trump. He hates to be boxed in, as he mused in the Rose Garden last week while contemplating the first new military operation of his presidency with geopolitical consequences. “I like to think of myself as a very flexible person,” he told reporters. “I don’t have to have one specific way. ” He made clear he cherished unpredictability. “I don’t like to say where I’m going and what I’m doing,” he said. That flexibility was a hallmark of his rise in real estate, and if critics preferred the word erratic, it did not bother Mr. Trump — it has since worked well enough to vault him to the White House. But now that he is commander in chief of the world’s most powerful nation, leaders around the world are trying to detect a method to the man. “There is no emerging doctrine for Trump foreign policy in a classical sense,” said Kathleen H. Hicks, a former Pentagon official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There are, however, clear emerging characteristics consistent with the attributes of the man himself: unpredictable, instinctual and undisciplined. ” On Syria, Mr. Trump had mocked President Barack Obama for setting a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and urged him not to launch a punitive strike against Syria after Mr. Assad crossed it in 2013. That attack, with a death toll of 1, 400, dwarfed last week’s toll of 84. And just days before last week’s attack, Mr. Tillerson indicated that Washington would accept Mr. Assad’s remaining in power. Indeed, critics, including Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, argued that Mr. Assad felt free to launch a chemical attack precisely because Mr. Trump’s administration had given him a green light. Russia, critics added, did not constrain Mr. Assad because it has had a blank check from an overly friendly Trump administration. And Mr. Trump’s efforts to bar Syrian refugees from the United States, they said, sent a signal that he did not care about them. “President Trump seems not to have thought through any of this, or have any kind of broader strategy, but rather to have launched a military strike based on a sudden, emotional decision,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote in an article for The Huffington Post on Saturday. Mr. Assad is not the only leader testing Mr. Trump. North Korea has missile after missile in recent weeks, almost as if trying to get Mr. Trump’s attention. So far, he has been measured in his response, urging President Xi Jinping of China during his visit to do more to rein in North Korea. But national security aides have also prepared options for Mr. Trump if China does not take a more assertive stance, including reintroducing nuclear weapons in South Korea. Mr. Trump’s action in Syria was welcomed by many traditional American allies who had fretted over Mr. Obama’s reluctance to take a greater leadership role in the Middle East, and feared that Mr. Trump would withdraw even more. After the missile strike, Israeli news outlets were filled with headlines like “The Americans Are Back,” and European leaders expressed relief both that he had taken action and that he had not gone too far. “We have learned that Trump is not so isolationist as many Europeans feared he would be — he appears to care about victims of a gas attack in Syria,” said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London. “We have learned that he understands that U. S. influence had suffered from the perception — which grew under Obama — that it was a power weakened by its reluctance to use force. ” That touches on another animating factor as Mr. Trump deals with foreign challenges — doing the opposite of whatever Mr. Obama did. Mr. Trump’s first instinct after the Syrian chemical attack was to blame Mr. Obama for not enforcing his red line, never mind that Mr. Trump had urged him not to at the time. Even as he announced the missile strike on Thursday night, Mr. Trump asserted that his predecessor’s handling of Syria had “failed very dramatically. ” Intentionally or not, though, Mr. Trump adopted language similar to that used by Mr. Obama and many other presidents in defining American priorities. While in the past Mr. Trump said the United States did not have a national interest in Syria, last week he said instability there was “threatening the United States and its allies. ” He also said that “America stands for justice,” effectively espousing a responsibility to act in cases of human rights abuses, as other presidents have at times. Until now, Mr. Trump has largely eschewed such language. Just three days earlier, he had hosted Egypt’s authoritarian president, Abdel Fattah and made no public mention of the thousands of people the Cairo government has imprisoned in a political crackdown. “What is striking to me is a subtle yet clear shift away from the rhetoric of pure American narrowly defined, as espoused by candidate Donald Trump,” said Robert Danin, a former Middle East negotiator who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “What has emerged is a new language of American leadership in the world that we have not heard before from President Trump. ” Mr. Grant and others noted that the strike, coming as Mr. Trump shared a meal with Mr. Xi, could resonate in Asia as well, leaving North Korea to wonder whether the president might resort to force to stop its development of ballistic missiles. But Ms. Hicks said Mr. Trump’s flexibility — or unpredictability — was itself “extremely risky. ” If other countries cannot accurately predict what an American president will do, she said, they may act precipitously, citing the example of China’s extending its maritime claims in the South China Sea. “Imagine if Donald Trump then took exception in ways they didn’t anticipate and major wars ensued,” she said. “Bright lines, derived from clear interests and enforced well, are generally best, and I don’t think Donald Trump likes to be constrained by bright lines. ” | 1 |
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Wall Street really wants Congress to override both presidential candidates and We the People, and push that Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) through after the election, but before the new President and Congress take office.
As Politico's Morning Trade reported Thursday, "Eight major financial services industry associations made an appeal to congressional leaders to support passage of the TPP this year."
Well, that's that, then; instructions have come down from management. Get TPP done -- and lock in corporate rule -- before democracy and representative government and We the People can stop it.
Meanwhile ... those countries we are "partnering" with? How are people and workers treated? How do countries like Vietnam handle basic human rights, labor rights, environmental protections, things like that? What are we getting ourselves into? - Advertisement -
Nguy...n Ngoc Nhdegrees Quynh is coordinator for the Vietnamese Bloggers Network and receiver of the 2015 Civil Rights Defender of the Year award ,
"Civil Rights Defenders is delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2015 Civil Rights Defender of the Year Award is Nguy...n Ngá»c Nhdegrees Quynh. She is Coordinator for the Vietnamese Bloggers Network and well known for her use of social media to speak out against injustices and human rights abuses in Vietnam."
In 2014, Quynh the Stockholm-based NGO Civil Rights Defenders honored her as a Human Rights Defender.
Quynh blogs under the pseudonym of Me Nam (Mother Mushroom). She writes about corruption in the government and warns readers about problems with things like the way the government protects them from things like toxic chemical spills.
Because of this, Vietnam has arrested Quynh on charges of "spreading propaganda against the state." - Advertisement -
NY Times, October 11, " Vietnam Arrests Mother Mushroom, a Top Blogger, for Criticizing Government ":
"The authorities in Vietnam said on Tuesday that they had arrested a popular blogger who has criticized the country's one-party government over politically delicate topics, including a dump of toxic chemicals that devastated fishing communities and set off protests.
"The blogger, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 37, was detained on Monday in Khanh Hoa, a south-central province. She was accused on Tuesday of distorting the truth and spreading propaganda against the state, according to the Vietnamese news media. The charges carry a maximum prison term of 12 years. No trial date was given."
Quynh could be imprisoned for up to 12 years for criticizing her government's handling of a toxic chemical spill at a foreign-owned steel mill. | 0 |
For more than a year, much of the public scrutiny of Exxon Mobil was captured by the #Exxonknew hashtag — shorthand for revelations about research on climate change conducted by the company while it funded groups promoting doubt about climate science. Articles about that research have energized protests against Exxon Mobil and the fossil fuel industry and had a role in initiating queries by at least five attorneys general, led by Eric T. Schneiderman of New York. Early on, his office demanded extensive emails, financial records and other documents from the oil company, leaving many observers with the impression that a deeper look into the company’s past was the focus of the investigation. But in an extensive interview, Mr. Schneiderman said that his investigation was focused less on the distant past than on relatively recent statements by Exxon Mobil related to climate change and what it means for the company’s future. In other words, the question for Mr. Schneiderman is less what Exxon knew, and more what it predicts. For example, he said, the investigation is scrutinizing a 2014 report by Exxon Mobil stating that global efforts to address climate change would not mean that it had to leave enormous amounts of oil reserves in the ground as “stranded assets. ” But many scientists have suggested that if the world were to burn even just a portion of the oil in the ground that the industry declares on its books, the planet would heat up to such dangerous levels that “there’s no one left to burn the rest,” Mr. Schneiderman said. By that logic, Exxon Mobil will have to leave much of its oil in the ground, which means the company’s valuation of its reserves is off by a significant amount. “If, collectively, the fossil fuel companies are overstating their assets by trillions of dollars, that’s a big deal,” Mr. Schneiderman said. And if the company’s own internal research shows that Exxon Mobil knows better, he added, “there may be massive securities fraud here. ” Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon, dismissed the idea that its forecast could be viewed as fraudulent. “If it turns out to be wrong, that’s not fraud, that’s wrong,” he said. “That’s why we adjust our outlook every year, and that’s why we issue the annual forecast publicly, so people can know the basis of our forecasting. ” The company has said allegations that it secretly developed a definitive understanding of climate change before the rest of the world’s scientists are “preposterous. ” Mr. Schneiderman has praised reports from publications, including Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, that detailed Exxon Mobil’s past research. And all indications were that his office planned to use its subpoena powers to unearth new documents that might show a disconnect between what the company was saying publicly and what it was saying privately about climate change over several decades. In the interview, however, Mr. Schneiderman said his focus lay elsewhere. “The older stuff really is just important to establish knowledge and the framework and to look for inconsistencies. ” He called his efforts a straightforward fraud investigation, like many that he and his predecessors have taken on in subjects as as the crash of securities and Volkswagen’s diesel engine deceptions. Mr. Schneiderman also mentioned, as an example of questionable public statements by Exxon Mobil, congressional testimony in 2010 by its chief executive, Rex Tillerson, who said that while the company acknowledged that humans were affecting the climate through greenhouse gas emissions to some degree, it was not yet clear “to what extent and therefore what can you do about it. ” Mr. Tillerson added, “There is not a model available today that is competent” for understanding the science and predicting the future. Mr. Schneiderman disagrees, and cited the industry’s own extensive climate research and the actions it has taken in response, including exploration in the melting Arctic and raising the decks of offshore oil platforms to compensate for rising sea level. “These guys have the best science for their engineering purposes,” he said. “We’re confident they’re not wasting shareholder dollars to do things that are inconsistent with the science they have internally. ” Since November, when the investigation was first revealed, and as other state attorneys general announced their support, Mr. Schneiderman’s intentions have been questioned and, he said, misconstrued. Supporters of Exxon Mobil have accused him and his colleagues of using prosecutorial powers to pursue political ends and of trying to squelch the First Amendment rights of the company, its scientists and anyone who agrees with them. Lamar Smith, a congressman from Texas and chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, accused the attorneys general of “pursuing a political agenda at the expense of scientists’ rights to free speech” and has issued subpoenas demanding internal documents from Mr. Schneiderman and another state attorney general, as well as eight groups that have supported the investigations. Hans von Spakovsky, a conservative commentator, compared the investigation by the attorneys general to the Spanish Inquisition, and the Daily Caller asked whether Mr. Schneiderman had suggested “jailing global warming skeptics. ” Mr. Schneiderman talks about such accusations with incredulity. “This is an investigation,” he said. “It is a civil fraud case. No one is being prosecuted — we’re not out to silence dissenting views. ” He has said, however, that if criminal actions turn up in the evidence the state gathers, criminal charges could be filed. When asked about the First Amendment implications of investigating Exxon’s statements, he repeated a sentence he has uttered many times: “The First Amendment doesn’t protect you for fraud. ” He added, “ monte operators can’t say, ‘Hey, I’m just exercising my First Amendment rights! ’” When asked about the focus of Mr. Schneiderman’s investigation, Joel Seligman, an expert in securities law who is the president of the University of Rochester, said that “at some level, this is a investigation — and there is no guarantee it will lead to a case. ” Exxon Mobil has sued to block subpoenas from Massachusetts and the United States Virgin Islands, but the company has provided hundreds of thousands of pages of documents to New York. If the investigation does turn up the kind of evidence that could lead to a civil case, it is still unclear whether New York or the other states might win, said David M. Uhlmann, a former top federal prosecutor of environmental crime and a professor at the University of Michigan law school. Until governments impose the kind of regulations that will lead to concrete action to slow or reverse climate change, he said, “We’re going to continue to drill for oil and frack for gas. ’’ In that case, he continued, Exxon may “utilize a significant portion of its reserves, which means it may not even be wrong when it states that it expects to utilize its reserves. ” Even if Exxon is wrong in saying that it expects to be able to use all its reserves, “The question is whether they know that they are wrong and are therefore lying to investors,” he added. The investigation, Mr. Schneiderman said, mirrors an earlier inquiry into a coal giant, Peabody Energy. In 2013, he issued subpoenas for internal documents related to climate change, and found false statements to shareholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Simple stuff like ‘it’s impossible to predict the effect of a carbon tax on the coal market,’ and they paid a consultant a lot of money to predict the effect of a carbon market,” he said. Peabody signed an agreement pledging to properly disclose the climate risk to its business. Mr. Schneiderman has also been accused of conspiring with environmental groups, but he said, “People bring information to us all the time. If it’s got merit to it, we follow up on it. ” Groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists have investigated the fossil fuel industry for years, he said, and so “it would be malpractice for us not to meet with people like this. ” The industry’s tactics come “straight out of the tobacco playbook,” he said. “It’s delay, and sowing doubt. ” Mr. Schneiderman has refused to comply with the congressman’s subpoena, stressing the importance of federalism — normally an argument used by conservatives against federal overreach. When asked for comment, Kristina Baum, a spokeswoman for the Science committee, said that Mr. Smith was unavailable. | 1 |
November 15, 2016
Former Smiths frontman Morrissey says he is ‘currently contemplating the warm, welcoming embrace of early retirement’ after his album of songs for children ‘Hello Young Persons Everywhere’ failed to chart this weekend. The album, a long-standing ambition for the singer, contains a number of reworked children’s standards including ‘This Old Man, He Played One’ and ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ along with a selection of self-penned numbers including ‘Algebra is a Frightful Bore’ and ‘It is Inadvisable to Commence Your Sentences With a Gerund’. ‘It was my intention to offer today’s younger folk entertainment of an improving nature’ remarked the singer ‘as an alternative to the abominations that are the likes of Hannah Montana and Chuggington. It appears that the entertainment industry has pulled together along with the British Brainwashing Corporation to prevent such an endeavour from ever succeeding.’ Another organisation no longer supporting the singer is The Early Learning Centre who had planned a promotional tie-in with the album’s release. They withdrew support upon hearing the lead single ‘I Know an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly’: ‘I know an old woman, who swallowed a fly, And because of this careless old lady, This innocent fly will die Fly will die (x5) ‘I know an old woman, who swallowed a fly, Oh ignorant greedy old woman, I hope that you suddenly die, Hurry up and die (x7)’ Morrissey is keen to stress that despite quitting music, he will not be shunning the limelight. ‘I am already in negotiations with the producers of QI about joining their fragrant and estimable team. Meanwhile, I am ready to unleash my first book for the teenage market. I consider it a necessary counterbalance to the inanities of Eugenia Lavender and Budgie the Helicopter.’ The book: ‘Eats, Shoots and Dates: How the Poor Grammar and Punctuation of Others Has Long Ruined my Chances of Finding Lasting Love’ is published by McMillan in March. Share this story...
Posted: Nov 15th, 2016 by Skylarking Click for more article by Skylarking .. More Stories about: From The Archives 0 | 0 |
What large mammal regularly kills humans in the Eastern United States? And what other large mammal might significantly reduce those deaths? The answer to the first question is the deer. Deer do not set out to murder people, as far as anyone knows, but they do jump out in front of vehicles so often that they cause more than a million collisions a year, resulting in more than 200 deaths. The answer to the second question, according to a new scientific study, is the cougar. Laura R. Prugh, a wildlife scientist at the University of Washington Sophie L. Gilbert, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Idaho and several colleagues argue in the journal Conservation Letters that if eastern cougars returned to their historic range, they could prevent 155 human deaths and 21, 400 human injuries, and save $2. 3 billion, over the course of 30 years. And although cougars do kill humans sometimes, the scientists estimated that the total number of lives lost would be fewer than 30, far fewer than the number of lives saved. The scientists studied 19 states, including Maine, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina and Wisconsin. Four other states — Delaware, Illinois, Indiana and Rhode Island — were part of the eastern cougar’s historic range, which was wiped out by the early 1900s. However, those states do not have enough open forestland to support viable cougar populations, the scientists said. I have a personal interest in this new report. In 2004, I wrote an entirely selfish and completely undocumented essay lamenting the damage that deer were doing to my garden and suggesting, only partly that the lawn and garden community would be willing to sacrifice a few pets and joggers if mountain lions could be brought to the suburbs to get rid of the Bambi plague. I noted that deer were also responsible for human deaths, although that was not my true motivation. I’m sure I wasn’t the first to have this idea. What deer do to cultivated suburban yards can make otherwise peaceful people quite bloody minded. But I didn’t do the numbers. Dr. Prugh and her colleagues have done the numbers in an attempt to find some real answers. The return of cougars on their own is entirely possible, they say. The animals have come back to parts of the Midwest over the past few decades and are starting to appear in the East. One animal was documented in Connecticut. That kind of natural repopulation would be likely to face less resistance than a reintroduction, which she was not advocating, Dr. Prugh said. But would their reappearance really help? She and her colleagues took a methodical approach to putting together available numbers on how deer populations grow, how many car accidents involve deer and how accidents increase with a growing deer population. They gathered information on how many deer a cougar might kill — about 259 over an average life span of about six years — and how much open, forested land was necessary for cougars to sustain a wild population — about 850 square miles. Then the scientists tested a variety of mathematical models and came up with their projections. One of the questions they needed to consider was whether the cougars would be killing just deer that would die anyway from starvation or illness. The scientists took what Dr. Prugh said was a conservative approach that about 75 percent of the deer the cougars killed would have died anyway. They also considered that as adult deer decrease in number, more fawns survive. So killing deer doesn’t immediately shrink the population. Adrian Treves, the head of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved with the study, said he was impressed with the analysis and thought it might underestimate the benefits of cougars. He said in an email that there would probably be an even greater reduction in collisions, “if governments and private citizens allow cougars to recover to historic levels. ” Figuring out the downsides of having cougars back was more difficult. The numbers of cougars would be considerable in some states once the deer and cougar populations stabilized — about 1, 000 each in New York and Wisconsin, 350 or so in Missouri and only eight to 15 in New Jersey. They estimated lost livestock values in the areas studied at $2. 35 million a year. But they were not able to get good estimates of pet loss, because it is hard to pin down which pets that disappear were killed by cougars. They may have been killed by coyotes, or cars, or may have been taken in by someone else. Also, they could not account for the obvious emotional response to predators. Even if the estimate is correct that five times as many people would be saved by cougars as would be killed, death by deer and cougar are different. “The idea of being killed in a car crash with a deer just doesn’t scare people the way the idea of a cougar leaping on your back in the woods does,” Dr. Prugh said. But she says she hopes that if cougars do return to the Eastern states, an understanding that they could bring tangible benefits will make people “a little more accepting, even if they are still scared. ” | 1 |
FBI Reopens Hillary Clinton Email Case After New Information Surfaces Posted on Oct 28, 2016 FBI Director James Comey testified on Capitol Hill in July and said the probe of Hillary Clinton’s private email server was finished. ( Evan Vucci / AP )
The heat is back on Hillary Clinton. On Friday, the FBI told Congress that it is reviewing its investigation of her private email server after new emails emerged.
According to The New York Times, the new information came from Anthony Wiener’s electronic devices in an unrelated case. Wiener is the husband of Huma Abedin, one of Clinton’s top aides.
The latest developments could lead to the FBI reopening its criminal investigation into Clinton.
In the letter to Congress, FBI Director James Comey stated:
In previous congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server. Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony.
In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. 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.
Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committee about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.
The Associated Press reported that the Clinton campaign and White House did not have any immediate comments .
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who believes Clinton set up a “criminal scheme,” was happy with the news.
“Perhaps finally justice will be done,” Trump said.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the department would “cooperate to the full extent that we can.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan had little sympathy for Clinton and said she has “nobody but herself to blame.”
“She was entrusted with some of our nation’s most important secrets, and she betrayed that trust by carelessly mishandling highly classified information,” Ryan, R-Wis., expressed in a statement. “This decision, long overdue, is the result of her reckless use of a private email server, and her refusal to be forthcoming with federal investigators. I renew my call for the Director of National Intelligence to suspend all classified briefings for Secretary Clinton until this matter is fully resolved.”
READ: The Podesta Emails From WikiLeaks
The Democratic presidential nominee got a pass this summer on her “extremely careless” handling of classified information while secretary of state. We shall see if the latest developments lead to further criminal action against the Democratic presidential nominee or impact the election on Nov. 8. | 0 |
Email
In a speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee earlier this year, Hillary Clinton, who vehemently opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement warned against anyone who tries to “to shut down debate, especially in places of learning like colleges and universities.” Her concern, of course, was with reassuring pro-Israel students that she stood behind them as they battled efforts to criticize Israel from the left.
It is certainly sportsman-like of Clinton to be open to debate, but the reality is that the free exchange of ideas on campus is currently under assault, not from the left but from the right. Consider the following incident from here in Ohio.
On September 21, the Case Western Reserve University Radical Student Union showed a documentary titled “ ,” which is available to all members of the university community through the Kanopy streaming service. Today, the RSU stands accused by the , a nonprofit pro-Israel group, of engaging in an “antisemitic expression” that “condoned terrorism,” simply for showing the film in public. One radical student critical of Israel’s policies likened the climate of fear on the CWRU campus with respect to this issue as akin to be “stalked.”
The RSU decided to host the film to raise awareness and in the words of its president, Gabriel Murcia, to give “voice to people who don’t have a voice.” Although some 100 people attended the screening, the RSU decided at the last minute not to have a formal discussion after the film when an email raising the specter of antisemitism emerged from the president of a pro-Israel student group.
I have watched this film at least four times now. There is absolutely not one shred of evidence of antisemitism in it if by that word we mean hatred or discrimination against the Jewish people. The film does, however, take Israel to task for engaging in a dishonest campaign of public diplomacy. These efforts have tended to cast the problem in Israel/Palestine in terms of terror instead of territory, and have made it seem as if Palestinians are on the whole just prone to violence instead of people with legitimate grievances about displacement and dispossession of land.
After the movie, a student fellow of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a group formed after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, noted that though “every student on this campus is entitled to express their opinion” the film was biased and “unacceptable to be presented by a student organization at our university.” The her opposition to the BDS movement and argued that the president of CWRU had made opposition to academic boycotts the institution’s official stance.
The student’s reference is to a in which the president and provost, like many university administrations across the country, communicated their personal opposition to the academic boycott of Israel following the American Studies Association’s endorsement of it. They argued that the boycott compromised academic freedom. Never mind that the academic boycott was set up to help Palestinian scholars achieve academic freedom while under the Israeli occupation. The AMCHA Initiative liked their statement so much that it still links to it on its website. The statement was not, however, the official position of CWRU, simply the personal opinions of its two highest administrators.
The statement by the CWRU administration and the letter from the CAMERA fellow recall, as I pointed out in a , Edward Said’s comment, nearly 40 years ago, that politically speaking, the Palestinian in the United States “does not exist.”
I thought the matter was at an end, but to my surprise the about the movie screening. A university administrator who directs a continuing education center dedicated to “ ” condemned the film and the RSU, as if a radical Jewish tradition did not exist. He also implied that faculty drove the group’s agenda, implying that the students were not bright enough to think for themselves. The chairman of the board of trustees of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, Gary Gross, meanwhile, called the film a bunch of “lies and distortions” without providing any evidence in support of the assertion. In fact, the film is about a policy of using lies and distortions to advance the interests of a foreign government. Gross added that he supports free speech, but then ominously intoned, “We will follow what’s happening on [the CWRU] campus through our partner agency, Cleveland Hillel.”
The reference to Hillel was not an idle one. Cleveland Hillel just partnered with CWRU on the creation of the new Albert & Norma Geller Hillel Student Center which includes within it classrooms available for undergraduate courses. Some students on the left are dismayed that they are forced to take classes in a building run by a group that offers “ .”
This incident is part of nationwide trend. Universities all over the country are under surveillance, most famously at the University of California, Berkeley, where a student-led course titled Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis was canceled after AMCHA coordinated with other groups, including CAMERA, to pressure administrators. The course was later reinstated, but the intimidation continues online. An anonymous website called the Canary Mission, established in 2015, targets those on campus critical of the Israeli occupation. The site’s main goal is to harass student activists and attempt to block their admission into graduate school.
If Hillary Clinton really does care about academic freedom, she should step up and publicly condemn the blacklisting of students and faculty concerned about Palestinian human rights. And so should the university presidents who invoked academic freedom as the rationale for their opposition to the ASA’s endorsement of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. These leaders should also learn something from the experience on the Berkeley campus and stop caving in to people who have trouble tolerating a perspective that challenges them to think.
When I informed Mr. Murcia about his group’s inclusion on the AMCHA website he was saddened. As he put it, “All we did was show a movie.”
Ted Steinberg teaches history and law at Case Western Reserve University. He is the faculty advisor to the Radical Student Union and the author, most recently, of Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York . | 0 |
US charges 61 with India-based scam involving 15,000 victims US charges 61 with India-based scam involving 15,000 victims By 0 166
The US Justice Department has charged 61 people and entities with involvement in a major India-based scam that targeted thousands of Americans.
The scheme involved Indian call centers, where some workers called American citizens and convinced them to pay their non-existent debts by impersonating Internal Revenue Service (IRS), immigration and other federal officials, the Justice Department said in a statement on Thursday.
Some victims were even offered short-term loans or grants on condition of providing good-faith deposits or payment of a processing fee.
The scammers had stolen more than $300 million from at least 15,000 unsuspecting citizens, the department noted.
The victims’ money was laundered by an American network of criminals who used debit cards or wire transfers under fake identities, the indictment said.
Federal officials arrested 20 people across America on Thursday. Additionally, 32 individuals and five call centers in India were charged… | 0 |
Archives Michael’s Latest Video Will The FBI Email Investigation Shed New Light On The Lolita Express And Other Clinton Sex Scandals? By Michael Snyder, on October 31st, 2016
Could it be possible that the newly discovered Clinton emails that the FBI is currently examining contain evidence of crimes other than just the mishandling of classified documents? For years, there have been shocking allegations about the sexual behavior of both Bill and Hillary Clinton in the conservative media, but neither Bill nor Hillary has ever been convicted of a sexual crime. However, that may be about to change. There is nobody on the planet that has been closer to Hillary Clinton over the past decade than Huma Abedin, and now the FBI has their hands on approximately 650,000 emails that were stored on electronic devices owned by her and her estranged husband Anthony Weiner. Without a doubt, many of those emails will relate to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents, but many of those emails will also be personal in nature. So what will the FBI learn about the Clinton sex scandals from those emails, and will that information be shared with the American public?
In particular, any information regarding Clinton ties to Jeffrey Epstein and “the Lolita Express” could be extremely explosive.
Bill and Hillary Clinton were both very good friends of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein before he was convicted of soliciting sex from a young girl in 2008. In fact, flight records show that Bill Clinton was a frequent passenger on Epstein’s plane that eventually came to be known as “the Lolita Express”…
Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the “ Lolita Express “—the private passenger jet owned by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—with an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein’s address book under an entry for “massages,” according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker and published today for the first time . The logs also show that Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a “potential co-conspirator” in his crimes .
Overall, Bill took at least 26 trips on board “the Lolita Express”. Fox News says that the plane “earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls.”
But sex with underage girls didn’t just happen on the plane. One of the favorite destinations for “the Lolita Express” was Epstein’s 72-acre “Orgy Island”. Here is more from Fox News …
“Bill Clinton … associated with a man like Jeffrey Epstein, who everyone in New York, certainly within his inner circles, knew was a pedophile,” said Conchita Sarnoff, of the Washington, D.C. based non-profit Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, and author of a book on the Epstein case called “TrafficKing.” “Why would a former president associate with a man like that?”
Epstein, who counts among his pals royal figures, heads of state, celebrities and fellow billionaires, spent 13 months in prison and home detention for solicitation and procurement of minors for prostitution. He allegedly had a team of traffickers who procured girls as young as 12 to service his friends on “Orgy Island,” an estate on Epstein’s 72-acre island, called Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands .
Are you starting to understand how serious this could be?
If Bill Clinton had sex with an underage girl just one time, that would be enough to potentially send him to prison for the rest of his life.
Court records show that Jeffrey Epstein had 21 different phone numbers for Bill Clinton. To say that they were close would be a massive understatement.
And what was the nature of Hillary Clinton’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein?
There are so many unanswered questions, and I don’t know what these 650,000 emails are going to show. But there are persistent whispers that law enforcement officials that were looking through them for the Anthony Weiner case found something big.
And the truth is that the FBI would have never renewed this investigation so close to the election unless a gamechanger had been discovered. FBI Director James Comey had to know that he was going to take a tremendous amount of heat for this decision, and to move forward on something like this without good reason would be career suicide.
For the moment, Hillary Clinton is putting on a brave face. On Monday, she challenged the FBI to hurry up and read her emails so that they could see that she had nothing to hide…
With eight days remaining until Election Day, Hillary Clinton told a crowd of supporters here Monday that the FBI should hurry up and check out the additional emails that agents said they found while investigating the estranged husband of one of her aides.
“Go ahead. Look at them,” the Democratic nominee said about the emails that may have been originally housed on a private server she used as secretary of state — a revelation that has thrown the presidential election into turmoil.
Maybe Clinton is telling the truth, but with her you just never know. As I recently explained to a live studio audience down at Morningside , Hillary Clinton is a habitual liar and it is hard to trust her about anything at this point.
If she is lying about these emails, hopefully we will find out very quickly.
Her opponent, Donald Trump, seems energized by this new scandal, and he is warning that America may be facing a “constitutional crisis” if Clinton wins the election…
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, buoyed by tightening polls and a renewed controversy over Democrat Hillary Clinton, told an enthusiastic crowd in suburban Grand Rapids Monday that the U.S. could face a “constitutional crisis” if Clinton is elected president on Nov. 8.
Trump predicted a “protracted criminal investigation and probably a criminal trial,” and said “nothing will get done.”
FBI Director James Comey has “brought back his reputation” by reactivating an investigation into the handling of her State Department e-mails , Trump said to loud cheers.
But the cold, hard reality of the matter is that we could potentially be facing something much more serious than just a “constitutional crisis”.
If the FBI finds evidence of very serious crimes committed by Hillary Clinton, she could actually be forced to withdraw from the race on the eve of the election, and that would throw the entire process into a state of chaos .
Even so, it is exceedingly important that the American people get the truth about what is in these emails, and hopefully that will happen as rapidly as possible.
About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and End Of The American Dream. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.* | 0 |
Joe Biden’s personal compartment on the modified Boeing 757 that serves as Air Force Two had the feel of a motel manager’s office equipped with communications gear. The room held a little black couch with a pullout bed he had slept on more times than he could count over the last eight years, during which he logged more than a million miles aloft. We were en route back to Wilmington, Del. from Cartagena, Colombia, in early December, and Biden was sitting in a black leather seat with a binder in his lap. It contained the speech he had given at the Democratic National Convention in July. He told me he had been rereading it. He began reciting aloud: “If you live in neighborhoods like the one Jill and I grew up in, if you worry about your job and getting decent pay. . .. ” His voice accelerated. “If you worry about your children’s education, if you’re taking care of an elderly parent, there’s only one person in this race who. . .. ” He looked up at me and sighed. “I wish to hell I’d just kept saying the exact same thing. ” Biden was afflicted with regret. He was sorry that, on the campaign trail, he had spoken so often about Donald Trump’s unfitness for office and not enough about what Hillary Clinton would do for the middle class. He was sorry he didn’t push harder inside the White House for a tax cut. And he was still torn over his decision not to run for president, a race that he said would have been “brutal” but that he also believed he could have won. I spoke with Biden intermittently in the months before and after Election Day, and I had no doubt as to why he didn’t jump in. He was still corny, gabby, lovable Uncle Joe, the guy who once said: “Stand up, Chuck! Let ’em see you!” to a man in a wheelchair. But nearly every speech and interview now included some moving mention of his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and how much Biden was doing, and intended to continue to do for the rest of his life, to speed the search for cancer cures. I saw Biden cry in Manchester, N. H. in October when holding an infant that he was told was named after Beau. I saw him near tears in West Mifflin, Pa. the weekend before the election, when he was joined onstage by the former Pittsburgh Steelers Franco Harris and Mel Blount — which reminded him of the footballs the team owner sent to young Beau and his brother, Hunter, in the hospital after they were injured in the 1972 car accident that killed Biden’s first wife and baby girl. On his deathbed, Beau advised his father to run, but many friends — including President Obama — didn’t think he was up to it emotionally, and the vice president finally agreed. “For all that’s important to me in almost a sacred sense,” he told me mournfully, the decision was unavoidable. “The family was broken, and I was more broken than I thought I was. ” How broken? “I don’t know what I’d do if I was in a debate and someone said, ‘You’re doing this because of your son,’’u2009” he told me one late November day in his West Wing office. “I might have walked over and kicked his ass. ” And yet minutes later, he was standing at his desk, fidgeting and replaying what might have been in 2016. The South Carolina primary would have given him a strong start, he said, citing his internal polls there. “Hard to believe, but I was more popular with blacks than Barack was. ” Biden clearly loathes the new president he said during the campaign that if he and Trump were in high school, he’d “take him behind the gym” for the way he bragged about groping women. Trump reminded him of the bullies who teased him as a child on account of his stutter, calling him “ . ” But the politician who has long believed all politics is personal wants to keep it impersonal with Trump. “The president and I have concluded that there’s no value in making that ad hominem argument,” he told me of Obama. “It gets you nowhere. ” Biden wasn’t shocked that Hillary Clinton lost. He had noticed before the election that Trump was connecting with the people he grew up with in Pennsylvania. This shaped his thoughts on how Democrats should respond. When the subject of Trump came up aboard Air Force Two, Biden referred to a story about how, as a freshman senator, he saw Jesse Helms, the archconservative North Carolina Republican, ripping into a piece of disabilities legislation. Biden was furious about it and began attacking Helms to Mike Mansfield, the Democratic Senate majority leader. Puffing on his pipe, Mansfield asked Biden if he knew that Helms and his wife had adopted a disabled boy no one else would take. “Question a man’s judgment, not his motives,” Mansfield instructed. Biden, who was invited by Helms decades later to give his eulogy, is convinced that absorbing Mansfield’s advice is what allowed him to work with Senate Republicans during the Obama years, to negotiate the approval of the New Start treaty, the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the expansion of the tax credit, among other accomplishments. His approach to Trump, he said, wouldn’t be fundamentally different. “It falls in that category,” Biden told me. “It’s one thing to say: ‘I think the proposal on the following is a serious mistake. I think it’s gonna do the following damage.’ It’s another thing to say, ‘The guy’s a fucking idiot, and he is an egomaniac who’s a whatever. ’’u2009” Biden suggested he might lobby former Republican colleagues when “circumstances generate blowback among mainstream Republicans. ” He remains in the shrinking camp that believes Trump may yet step up, at least a bit, to the demands of high office. His hope is that Trump’s “sense of grandeur is so immense that he’d rather succeed than unleash these forces. ” Given how many Trump voters would lose their insurance under full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, he may well back off of repealing it, Biden said. As for the rest of his own administration’s legacy, he said, “I’m not prepared to bet my granddaughter’s college tuition, but it’s less likely to be undone than frayed on the edges. ” Biden’s biggest worry is that Trump, for all his bluster, could be a global bystander, unwilling to engage a messy world with anything more than . “The question I get everywhere is: ‘Is American leadership going to continue? ’’u2009” he told me on Air Force Two. If Trump “just stays behind the lines — hands off — it could be very ugly. Very, very ugly. ” In July, the president of Latvia asked Biden to fly there as soon as possible and give a televised speech assuring the Baltic states that the United States would fulfill its NATO obligations and defend them against a Russian invasion. He did so, emphatically, but his promises offer little comfort Day. The prospect of Vladimir Putin fulfilling his dream of Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe is not far from Biden’s mind. “Now if we walk away — Hungary, Poland, even the Baltic states, these guys all start to hedge their bets,” he said. Biden’s national security adviser, Colin Kahl, who was with the vice president on the plane, interjected to outline the contradictions in Trump’s emerging foreign policy. If the United States is going to be more cooperative with Russia and Bashar ’s Syria but more confrontational with Iran, Kahl asked, how will Trump handle them joining together to fight ISIS? “It’s like a Rubik’s cube trying to figure this guy out,” Biden sighed. “We have no freakin’ idea what he’s gonna do. ” When they were Senate colleagues, and Biden was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Biden thought Obama was in too much of a hurry — and Obama found the chairman a tad condescending. But in the White House, the two men became exceptionally close. “There was never a point,” Obama told me recently, “where I thought he was distancing himself from me or positioning himself. Never been a time when he wasn’t telling me something he really thought. ” Their families, too, drew together. “Family has been central for us — that’s our baseline,” Obama told me. “We both feel freer to do what we think is right because if it doesn’t work out, our families will still love us. ” Biden later told friends that he thought the president was sincerely looking out for him in 2015 when he advised him not to run — though he also felt Obama had grown fond of the bright mark he could leave on history by passing the baton from the first black president to the first female president. The big question now is when, and how, they will the arena. Obama has already said that, unlike George W. Bush, he won’t refrain from commenting on his successor. Biden may go further. Amid discussion of resistance to Trump, he surprised me with talk of 2020, when he’ll turn 78. “I’ll run,” the vice president deadpanned, “if I can walk. ” Three days later, he informed the Washington press corps that he wasn’t joking. Biden isn’t likely to run, but keeping the door ajar gives him a bigger voice in Democratic Party debates. The one that worries him most is over repositioning to win back Trump voters. He has little patience with Democrats who want to move either left or right. “’u2009‘We gotta move to the center,’ ‘We gotta move to those white guys,’ ‘We gotta move to those people’ or ‘We gotta double down on the social agenda. ’’u2009” It’s a false choice, he said: “They are totally compatible. I have never said anything to the A. C. L. U. that I wouldn’t say to the Chamber of Commerce. ” This was the vision of the Democratic Party to which Biden had dedicated his career. “Amtrak Joe” famously commuted every day from Wilmington to Washington — three hours for 36 years. He told me that as the train neared Baltimore, he habitually peered into the rapidly passing homes close to the tracks — a flip book of families of various backgrounds who might have recognized themselves in his convention speech. “I wonder what the conversation at the dinner table is,” he told me. Sometimes he saw his own family in the early 1960s in those houses. He imagines the families’ struggles with everyday expenses: “’u2009‘Honey, we need a new set of tires, but you gotta get another 20, 000 miles out of them.’ That’s the goddamn discussion people are having! That’s their lives!” Before the election, Biden had begun to map out what his plans would look like. Soon he would be back on Amtrak, riding to and from a institute bearing his name at the University of Pennsylvania and a center at the University of Delaware, and continuing the “cancer moonshot” — a initiative marshaling resources in government and the private sector to accelerate cancer research. In the meantime, he’ll help play defense against Trump. “Even if the Democratic Party didn’t want me, I’m not walking away,” he said. “I’ve worked on this stuff my whole life. ” After Air Force Two touched down on the tarmac in Wilmington, I asked him about a line he liked to use before the election. “So do you still believe what your grandfather said, that God looks out for drunken Irishmen and the United States of America?” Biden said he wasn’t sure about the Irishmen, but he was about the country. “I have to believe that,” he said. “There’s no sense being in this business unless you’re an optimist. ” | 1 |
Behind the headlines - conspiracies, cover-ups, ancient mysteries and more. Real news and perspectives that you won't find in the mainstream media. Browse: Home / Something Strange Happened After Bombing In Iraq – Fake, Staged, Hoax Essential Reading Holocaust, Hate Speech & Were the Germans so Stupid? – Updated By wmw_admin on March 23, 2011
The brilliant examination of the ‘Holocaust’ by Anthony Lawson has since been censored on the basis of a false Copyright infrigment. But as Lawson explains, this just another attempt to stiffle freedom of expression The Origins of Modern Banking By wmw_admin on January 2, 2004
It was Thomas Jefferson who said, “banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies”. And as Kieron McFadden reveals, he was not being alarmist Soros/CIA Plan to Destabilize Europe By Wayne Madsen on September 28, 2015
The same forces that orchestrated the various ‘colour revolutions’ and the ‘Arab Spring’ are behind Europe’s migrant crisis. Wayne Madsen explains America Before Columbus By Rixon Stewart on September 1, 2006
Could it be that certain powers have a vested interest in keeping our real history under wraps? Because a great deal has been unearthed which is completely at odds with conventional notions regarding the origins of what we know today as America “WIPED OFF THE MAP”– The Rumor of the Century By wmw_admin on January 21, 2008
How President Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated and deliberately distorted. So that the term “wiped off the map” has now become synonymous with the Iranian leader’s attitude to Israel – even though he never uttered those words Does God Play Dice with the Universe? By Rixon Stewart on December 1, 2003
Research into particle physics is revealing a world full of almost magical qualities. Could it be that this mysterious, puzzling world is in fact the world of the spirit – the spiritual world that saints and mystics throughout history have sought to explo Who Are The Illuminati? By wmw_admin on April 24, 2004
Conspiracy theory is now an accepted turn of phrase but sometimes one hears the expression, sometimes whispered rather than spoken. “The Illuminati”. David Cole at Auschwitz By wmw_admin on October 7, 2006
Now directly linked, a must see video. Watch as a young Jew demolishes the standard notion of the Holocaust, highlighting its contradictions and flaws with logic and clarity. An hour long video of absolutely essential viewing Coming Clean By wmw_admin on April 29, 2004
Chemtrails are not the product of some ‘Conspiracy Theory’. They are real. We get the low down from an aircraft mechanic who has done his own investigating Who’s That Man? By Rixon Stewart on January 21, 2008
It’s Saddam Hussein of course. Or so western media and Coalition authorities would have us believe. But was the man sentenced and supposedly executed in Baghdad really Saddam Hussein? | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s transition team asked the State Department this week to submit details of programs and jobs aimed at promoting gender equality, rattling State Department employees concerned that the incoming administration will roll back a cornerstone project of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The memo, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times on Thursday, directed employees to outline “existing programs and activities to promote gender equality, such as ending violence, promoting women’s participation in economic and political spheres, entrepreneurship, etc. ” It also requested a list of positions “whose primary functions are to promote such issues” — though not the names of people in those positions — as well as how much funding was directed to programs in 2016. The United States Agency for International Development also received the request, according to a senior official there. The wording of the memo is neutral and does not hint at any policy change. Nevertheless, some State Department employees took note of the reference to “ staffing,” which they said could also refer to programs focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, though the memo did not refer specifically to them. The memo is reminiscent of one the transition team sent recently to the Energy Department, which asked for the names of people who had worked on climate change or attended global climate talks organized by the United Nations within the past five years. That more detailed questionnaire, on the heels of Mr. Trump’s appointment of a climate change denialist to head the Environmental Protection Agency, sowed fears that the Trump administration would purge anyone involved in trying to curb the effects of climate change. The latest request drew expressions of concern from advocacy groups and some on Capitol Hill. “The transition team should clarify their intent,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, in a statement. “I can promise that if the next administration intends to roll back programs designed to lift women up, it will very quickly meet stiff opposition in the Senate. ” The transition team declined a request for comment on the memo. A person answering the phone in the State Department transition office directed inquiries to the public affairs office, which declined to confirm the memo’s existence or to discuss information being sought. After a slow start, the transition team is accelerating its work to staff the State Department, sending memos requesting information from the rank and file on issues such as the department’s antiterrorism initiative, Countering Violent Extremism. Mr. Trump has made the fight against the Islamic State central to his foreign policy and has railed against what he said was President Obama’s refusal to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism. ” The transition team’s questions have led some in the department to assume that, at a minimum, the program will be renamed Countering Islamic Extremism. Transition officials are said to be concerned about how many senior jobs in the department will be vacated by departing political appointees. They asked whether there would be anyone to show the secretary of Rex W. Tillerson, around his office. On Wednesday, the State Department press secretary, John Kirby, told reporters that in general terms, the information being sought by Mr. Trump’s team was not out of the ordinary. “Having gone through a transition myself a few years ago, without getting into detail, I can tell you that the kinds of things, the kinds of material, the kind of information that they are asking for is very much in keeping with what I’ve seen in at least the one previous presidential transition that I lived through when I was at the Pentagon,” Mr. Kirby said. Secretary of State John Kerry has spoken to Mr. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, in what Mr. Kirby said was a “nice chat where the secretary had an opportunity to congratulate him. ” On Tuesday, Mr. Tillerson met in Washington with Vice Mike Pence and other senior members of Mr. Trump’s national security team. Mr. Kerry has tended to champion efforts to counter climate change while at the State Department, but Mrs. Clinton made issues a leitmotif of her tenure. In her first year, she created the position of ambassador at large for global women’s issues, appointing Melanne Verveer, who had been her chief of staff when she was first lady. Mr. Kerry kept the post, which is currently held by Catherine M. Russell, a former chief of staff to Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Some at the department now worry it will be eliminated. Several of Mrs. Clinton’s showcase projects, like clean stoves for the developing world, had a strong gender component. In travels to El Salvador, India and Pakistan, she gathered female entrepreneurs to discuss their challenges. She often drew a link between the treatment of women and the nation’s security. “If you look at where we are fighting terrorism,” she said in an interview in 2009, “there is a connection to groups that are making a stand against modernity, and that is most evident in their treatment of women. ” Mrs. Clinton also gave equal benefits and protections to partners of American diplomats. In an internal memo, she wrote, “Like all families, our Foreign Service families come in different configurations all are part of the common fabric of our post communities abroad. ” Although Mr. Trump has a record of derogatory comments about women, it is not clear why he would want to roll back the department’s work in this area. News of the memo came the same day he appointed Kellyanne Conway, who managed his campaign, as counselor to the president, making her the woman in the White House. One of the people on Mr. Trump’s State Department transition team, Erin Walsh, is a former Goldman Sachs executive in Asia who has worked to advance gender issues. At a conference in 2013, she promoted the “10, 000 Women Initiative,” a program sponsored by Goldman to provide women with a business and management education. A senior State Department official said it was possible that the memo was simple . But in the current political environment, and given the language Mr. Trump used in the campaign, he said, people were reading the most malign implications into it. “I can’t believe any of this has been shared with the because Exxon under Tillerson has been extremely supportive of women’s issues,” Ms. Verveer said. “It’s just really hard to fathom. ” Moreover, Mr. Tillerson was on the Boy Scouts of America’s executive board when the group voted in 2013 to lift the ban on gay scouts. | 1 |
“A review of information compiled by a Senate committee in 2016 reveals that 72 individuals from the seven countries covered in President Trump’s vetting executive order have been convicted in terror cases since the attacks,” according to a report issued by the Center for Immigration Studies on Saturday. [“These facts stand in stark contrast to the assertions by the Ninth Circuit judges who have blocked the president’s order on the basis that there is no evidence showing a risk to the United States in allowing aliens from these seven countries to come in,” the report states: In June 2016 the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, then chaired by new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, released a report on individuals convicted in terror cases since . Using open sources (because the Obama administration refused to provide government records) the report found that 380 out of 580 people convicted in terror cases since were . The report is no longer available on the Senate website, but a summary published by Fox News is available here. The Center has obtained a copy of the information compiled by the subcommittee. The information compiled includes names of offenders, dates of conviction, terror group affiliation, federal criminal charges, sentence imposed, state of residence, and immigration history. The Center has extracted information on 72 individuals named in the Senate report whose country of origin is one of the seven countries included in the vetting executive order: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The Senate researchers were not able to obtain complete information on each convicted terrorist, so it is possible that more of the convicted terrorists are from these countries. Here’s the list of “admitted terrorists from all of the seven dangerous countries” from the report: Somalia: 20Yemen: 19Iraq: 19Syria: 7Iran: 4Libya: 2Sudan: 1Total: 72, “[A]t least 17 individuals entered as refugees from these countries,” the report notes: Three came in on student visas and one arrived on a diplomatic visa. At least 25 of these immigrants eventually became citizens. Ten were lawful permanent residents, and four were illegal aliens. The report adds “[t]hese immigrant terrorists lived in at least 16 different states,”: New York (10) Minnesota (8) California (8) Michigan (6) Washington state (2) 11 other states (39) “Ironically, Minnesota was one of the states suing to block Trump’s order to pause entries from the countries, claiming it harmed the state,” the report observes. “At least two of the terrorists were living in Washington, which joined with Minnesota in the lawsuit to block the order,” the report concludes. | 1 |
President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget asks Congress to construct 60 miles of new border walls along the U. S. border — all of which would be located in Texas. [The plan is for the Rio Grande Valley Sector to receive 32 miles of a new border wall, and 28 miles of a new levee wall. The levee in Hidalgo County is designed to address flooding. The budget refers to the new border wall as “a physical wall. ” Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, “We are absolutely dead serious about the wall. ” He called it one of President Trump’s “top three” budget priorities, reported Breitbart News on Tuesday. Mulvaney denied that the administration was scaling back funding for border walls by saying the Trump administration’s budget was a striking hike from the 2017 budget. The 2018 budget increases allocations for border security by $1. 1 billion, and $1. 5 billion for the U. S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The director of the Office of Management and Budget also urged Trump voters to be patient and said this proposed action was a beginning for a project that will be protracted. “Keep in mind you can’t just … you don’t automatically magically build a wall in the middle of nowhere,” the director stated. The budget for the U. S. Department of Justice also asks for $1. 8 million to “meet litigation, acquisition, and appraisal demands during the construction along the border between Mexico and the United States. ” Breitbart News reported that the funds would be used to hire 12 attorneys and eight staff members for the section of the DOJ that defends litigation arising from eminent domain proceedings (the Environmental and Natural Resources Division’s Land Acquisition Section, “LAS”). Those who are fighting the construction of border walls are mostly on partisan lines. Democratic U. S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett ( ) said “Putting taxpayers on the hook to pay for it is just the latest brick in a wall of broken campaign promises. If we are going to pour billions into concrete, it ought to be an investment in ourselves, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure,” reported Dallas’ WBAP 820 AM on Thursday. However, landowners in Texas say they will fight mightily to keep their property, and they hope the litigation will be protracted beyond any Trump administration tenure. The New York Times report also said there are more than 90 eminent domain lawsuits from landowners in South Texas and they have been pending since 2008. The Dallas radio station reported that Senator John Cornyn ( ) who serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration said, “If we really want to secure our borders, and I think the voters in this last presidential election indicated they did, we must be willing to devote the necessary level of funding to achieve it. ” Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 1 |
October 31, 2016 at 5:53 am
I grew up in a rural area, went off to the city and got a very good education, and now, once again, I live in a rural area. What has always amazed me is that in every cafe, at every gas station, at every local watering hole, you hear people talking politics, about this very thing, that we are being used by a bunch of heartless thugs. The elites think we are stupid. But we aren't. We know who our enemies are. And we are ready to fight them. | 0 |
RT.com reports:
The search warrant allows the bureau to scour through some 650,000 emails discovered on a laptop belonging to ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner and apparently also used by his wife, Clinton’s closest aide Huma Abedin. The probe is set to check if any of the texts are related to the reopened investigation of the former secretary of state’s private email use.
The authorization came two days after FBI Director James Comey finally revealed the existence of the emails stash which was reportedly discovered by the agency in early October.
“ The process has begun, ” a federal law enforcement official told the New York Times.
The new emails were discovered as part of a separate ‘sexting’ probe into former Representative Anthony Weiner (D-New York). His electronic devices were seized during that investigation.
Abedin claims she has no knowledge of any of her emails being on the electronic device belonging to her husband, CBS News has learned on Sunday. A source told the network that newly-discovered emails belonged to Weiner, not his wife, who left her husband earlier this year over his sexting addiction.
Clinton’s longtime aide is allegedly cooperating with the investigation and “ seemed surprised that the emails were there, ” according to the CBS source.
On Friday, FBI Director Comey announced that due to new findings, the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server had been reopened, as he sent a letter notifying Congress of the email review.
The review, which is likely to take weeks, will seek to determine whether any of those messages are work-related, and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the probe aimed to check whether Clinton’s actions undermined US national security. ‘I can’t predict how long this will take us to complete’– Comey on reopening Clinton email investigation https://t.co/6SJJAU349V pic.twitter.com/EjuwwFENZ8
— RT America (@RT_America) 28 October 2016
The unexpected announcement came just over a week before Americans head to the polls to determine the winner in the race for the White House between Democrat Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Even though some of those emails passed through Clinton’s private server and could be duplicates of the information already handled by the FBI as part of the previous investigation, the probe is unlikely to wrap up before November 8.
Concerned by the FBI’s move to relaunch the investigation so close to the election date, US Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid on Sunday sent a letter to the FBI director hinting that Comey had violated the Hatch Act, which bars the use of an executive branch position to influence an election.
“ Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law, ” Reid, a senator from Nevada, said in the letter to Comey.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook also questioned the legality of the FBI’s actions. Comey’s letter to Congress was “ long on innuendo, short on facts, ” Podesta told CNN’s State of the Union. “ We are calling on Mr. Comey to come forward and explain what’s at issue here, ” Podesta said, adding the significance of the emails was unclear.
In the meantime, the NYT reported that senior Justice Department officials vowed to make all resources available to conduct the investigation as quickly as possible.
In July the FBI’s long investigation of Clinton’s private email use during her time as secretary of state ended without any charges. | 0 |
Get Ready For Civil Unrest: Survey Finds That Most Americans Are Concerned About Election Violence Time is rapidly slipping away and November 8th will be here before we know it Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse - October 27, 2016 Comments
Could we see violence no matter who wins on November 8th? Let’s hope that it doesn’t happen, but as you will see below, anti-Trump violence is already sweeping the nation.
If Trump were to actually win the election, that would likely send the radical left into a violent post-election temper tantrum unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Alternatively, there is a tremendous amount of concern on the right that this election could be stolen by Hillary Clinton. And as I showed yesterday, it appears that voting machines in Texas are already switching votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton . If Hillary Clinton wins this election under suspicious circumstances, that also may be enough to set off widespread civil unrest all across the country.
At this moment there is less than two weeks to go until November 8th, and a brand new survey has found that a majority of Americans are concerned “about the possibility of violence” on election day…
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.” 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.
But many on the left are not waiting until after the election to commit acts of violence. On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s star on the Walk of Fame was smashed into pieces by a man with a sledgehammer and a pick-ax…
Donald Trump took a lot of hits today, and not just in the Presidential race. With less than two weeks to go before America decides if the ex- Apprentice host will pull off a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was destroyed early Wednesday morning by a man dressed as a city construction worker and wielding a sledgehammer and pick-ax in what looks to be a Tinseltown first.
And there were two other instances earlier this year when Donald Trump’s star was also vandalized. One came in January, and the other happened in June …
This is of course not the first time the GOP candidate’s star has been attacked or defaced since Trump announced his White House bid in summer 2015. The most extreme measure was a reverse swastika being sprayed on the star at 6801 Hollywood Blvd in late January. In June this summer, a mute sign was painted on Trump’s star in a seemingly protest against the antagonistic language and policies some have accused Trump of promoting and reveling in during the campaign. In both cases, Trump’s star was quickly cleaned and back as new within a day.
We have seen anti-Trump violence on the east coast as well. Earlier this month, someone decided to firebomb the Republican Party headquarters in Orange County, North Carolina. On the building next to the headquarters, someone spray-painted “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else” along with a swastika.
There have also been other disturbing incidents of anti-Trump violence all over the nation in recent days. A recent Lifezette article put together quite a long list, and the following is just a short excerpt from that piece…
On Oct. 15 in Bangor, Maine, vandals spray-painted about 20 parked cars outside a Trump rally. Trump supporter Paul Foster, whose van was hit with white paint, told reporters, “Why can’t they do a peaceful protest instead of painting cars, all of this, to make their statement?”
Around Oct. 3, a couple of Trump supporters were assaulted in Zeitgeist, a San Francisco bar, after they were allegedly refused service for expressing support for Trump, GotNews reports. “The two Trump supporters were attacked, punched, and chased into the street by ‘some thugs’ that a barmaid called out from the back.” Lilian Kim of ABC 7 Bay Area tweeted a photo of the men, in which one was wearing a Trump T-shirt and the other was wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” shirt.
On Sept. 28 in El Cajon, California, an angry mob at a Black Lives Matter protest beat 21-year-old Trump supporter Feras Jabro for wearing a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. The assault was broadcast live using the smartphone app Periscope.
There is a move to get Trump supporters to wear red on election day, but in many parts of America that might just turn his supporters into easy targets. Let’s certainly hope that we don’t see the kind of violent confrontations at voting locations that many experts are anticipating.
Of course there are also many on the right that are fighting mad, and a Hillary Clinton victory under suspicious circumstances may be enough to push them over the edge.
For example, this week former Congressman Joe Walsh said that he is “grabbing my musket” if Donald Trump loses the election…
Former Rep. Joe Walsh appeared to call for armed revolution Wednesday if Donald Trump is not elected president.
Walsh, a former tea party congressman from Illinois who is now a conservative talk radio host, tweeted, “On November 8th, I’m voting for Trump. On November 9th, if Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket. You in?”
And without a doubt, many ordinary Americans are stocking up on guns and ammunition just in case Hillary Clinton is victorious. The following comes from USA Today …
“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.
Today America is more divided than I have ever seen it before, and the mainstream media is constantly fueling the hatred and the anger that various groups feel toward one another.
Ironically, Donald Trump has been working very hard to bring America together. In fact, he is solidly on track to win a higher percentage of the black vote than any Republican presidential candidate since 1960 .
If Hillary Clinton and the Democrats win on November 8th, things will not go well for Hillary Clinton’s political enemies. The Clintons used the power of the White House to go after their enemies the first time around, and Hillary is even more angry and more bitter now than she was back then.
And the radical left is very clear about who their enemies are. This is something that I discussed on national television earlier this month …
As I write this, it is difficult for me to even imagine how horrible a Hillary Clinton presidency would be.
But at this point that appears to be the most likely outcome .
Out of all the candidates that we could have chosen, the American people are about to put the most evil one by far into the White House.
Perhaps Donald Trump can still pull off a miracle and we can avoid that fate, but time is rapidly slipping away and November 8th will be here before we know it. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP | 0 |
More than 50 former government officials and national security and military figures have signed an open letter to Donald J. Trump, urging him to disclose details of his overseas business investments before Election Day. The letter — signed by dozens of supporters of the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton — was drafted as Mr. Trump, the Republican pick who is reported to have extensive overseas entanglements, has refused to release his tax returns. Michael J. Morell, a former acting director of the C. I. A. and Michael G. Vickers, a former under secretary of defense for intelligence, put together the letter with input from Samantha Vinograd, a former senior adviser to Thomas E. Donilon, a former national security adviser. “Donald Trump still has not revealed to the American public his international business relationships, even as it becomes increasingly clear that his overseas ties could well constitute significant conflicts of interest when it comes to charting U. S. foreign policy,” the letter reads. “This is unprecedented for a candidate for the nation’s highest office. As such, we are calling on Mr. Trump to disclose, in full, the nature of his business relationships overseas — to include specifically who his business partners are and what and where are his foreign investments. ” The signers — who also include prominent Republicans such as Michael Chertoff, who led the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, Mr. Bush’s deputy secretary of defense — add that Mr. Trump should “pledge that he will divest himself of his overseas business interests should he win the presidency. ” In a comment after this article was published, Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, singled out one of the letter’s relatively signers for criticism, without directly addressing the substance of the letter. “If Wendy Sherman is the definition of who is considered a reliable government official, this letter and its signatories lose all credibility,” Mr. Miller said. “Sherman was appointed to the State Department by Hillary Clinton during her disastrous tenure and was the lead negotiator in opening up Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — for business, ultimately funding terrorist activities and exporting violence around the world. ” He added, “Based on her complete failure in representing American foreign policy and deep ties to Secretary Clinton, this letter epitomizes the rigged system in Washington that has continued to fail Americans over and over again. ” Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, recently announced changes that would take place at the Clinton Foundation, which relies heavily on foreign donations, in an effort to eliminate the potential for the appearance of conflicts of interest if she becomes president. Those changes were announced after Mrs. Clinton faced intense scrutiny, including from Mr. Trump, over the foundation’s foreign donations. Mr. Morell, a supporter of Mrs. Clinton who worked with her while she was secretary of state, said he and Mr. Vickers sought the letter after Newsweek reported that Mr. Trump has had business dealings with questionable figures in China, India and Russia, and claimed to have had negotiations with Col. Muammar before he was toppled as the dictator of Libya. “On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian leadership, while outlining policies that read like a Kremlin wish list,” the letter reads, referring to the president of Russia. “He has claimed that Putin would never invade Ukraine, suggested permanently ceding Crimea to Russia and placed conditions on upholding our obligation to protect our NATO allies,” according to the letter. “He has floated lifting sanctions against Russia, which would benefit both Putin and the Trump Organization. ” The signers wrote that the next president would take office at a complicated moment globally, adding: “Our policies must be motivated exclusively by what is in America’s best interest, not by the financial interests of our president. The onus is on Donald Trump to assure voters that this will be the case by disclosing the nature of his overseas relationships and committing to divest such assets. ” | 1 |
Deutsche Bank WARNING: Dismal 3rd Quarter Results Can Trigger Global Collapse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFY6Cydnxms
Oct 26, 2016 DAHBOO77
Deutsche Bank WARNING: Fears dismal quarter results will trigger global crash TOMORROW
26 October 2016 , by Siobhan McFadyen (Express)
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/725012/Deutsche-Bank-crisis-fears-robot-traders-will-trigger-global-crash
EXCLUSIVE: THE FUTURE of Deutsche Bank could be decided tomorrow when bosses release its third quarter results, ex
Bank of England Asks UK Banks To Detail Their Exposure To Deutsche And Italian Banks
26 October 2016 , by Tyler Durden (Zero Hedge)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-26/bank-england-asks-uk-banks-detail-their-exposure-deutsche-and-italian-banks | 0 |
TRUNEWS 11/07/16 Jerome Corsi, Dr. Peter Jones | Election Day: Reprieve or Judgment? November 07, 2016 Will the exposure of America’s darkest secrets make Christians hunger for Our Creator? Today, Rick Wiles addresses the REAL choice in Election 2016, where our nation will decide whether to endorse Satanism, or back a revival of The Body of Christ. Rick also speaks with Dr. Peter Jones about Hillary Clinton’s personal shaman, and WND senior writer, Jerome Corsi, to share his breaking developments on the state of the 650,000 emails seized by the FBI.
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IPet Goat And The Solar Flare In the video IPet Goat II, you see many symbols, some appear to represent celestial movements. In Egyptian mythology the planets and stars are shown in hieroglyphs as moving about on boats. In the film IPet Goat II, there is a figure riding on a boat which has been called Messianic by some viewers. However, I think this figure is a representation of the sun, he is very yellow, like the Simp(suns), he appears to be covered in flames and his hair looks distinctly like flames. He also seems to have sunspots on his face. Sunspots are quite distinct from ordinary spots.The reason I mention the Simp(suns) is that their eyes are designed to look like the circumpunct, a circle with a dot in the centre which represents the sun. [ link to en.wikipedia.org (secure) ] Also in the simpsons, Homer is obsessed with doughnuts and the torus is a doughnut shape that is seen throughout nature and space and has been the subject of much theorising by physicists such as Nassim Harramein.Sorry, back to IPet Goat II. The II in the title suggests it could be the symbol of Gemini. In the celestial realm the sun is currently moving through the sign of Gemini and will be moving to Wasat, a fixed star in the constellation and which appears to be where you might locate the phallus part of the constellation.You can see the phallus around the 4 min mark [ link to en.wikipedia.org (secure) ] This area is where the water signs are located in the sky. The sun moved through this area over the past few months.A little further in the video, just after the phallus scene, you see the sun produce either a massive solar flare or possibly an EMP which knocks out the grey men in the suits.Now I know there is much speculation about a possible celestial event and/or a financial collapse happening soon, perhaps these events have been foreshadowed by this video.The sun reaches the phallus around 11th July and if the video is prophetic, then we can expect some solar related event to happen very soon after that.This is the sun's position on 11th July Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare "The more you know, the crazier you look" Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Maybe the Christ figure is a representation of you and your journey through this reality. Why would the "son" gaze at the sun? Anonymous Coward ( OP ) Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Maybe the Christ figure is a representation of you and your journey through this reality. Why would the "son" gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 That's a good question, but I dont think it's the "son", I think the figure is the sun and he appears to be moving through the mazzaroth, or what we know as the Zodiac which is how the sun travels along the ecliptic in the sky.I know that some people identified the area where he gazes at the end of the video as possibly Scorpio. The sun will be nearer Scorpio around the winter time, around November. If he is indeed gazing at Scorpio ahead of him,that would indicate that the events are over before winter ends and before the sun moves into Scorpio. Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Maybe the Christ figure is a representation of you and your journey through this reality. Why would the "son" gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 That's a good question, but I dont think it's the "son", I think the figure is the sun and he appears to be moving through the mazzaroth, or what we know as the Zodiac which is how the sun travels along the ecliptic in the sky.I know that some people identified the area where he gazes at the end of the video as possibly Scorpio. The sun will be nearer Scorpio around the winter time, around November. If he is indeed gazing at Scorpio ahead of him,that would indicate that the events are over before winter ends and before the sun moves into Scorpio. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Right but as he emerges he's gazing at the sun. Does the sun gaze at the sun? Anonymous Coward ( OP ) Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Maybe the Christ figure is a representation of you and your journey through this reality. Why would the "son" gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 That's a good question, but I dont think it's the "son", I think the figure is the sun and he appears to be moving through the mazzaroth, or what we know as the Zodiac which is how the sun travels along the ecliptic in the sky.I know that some people identified the area where he gazes at the end of the video as possibly Scorpio. The sun will be nearer Scorpio around the winter time, around November. If he is indeed gazing at Scorpio ahead of him,that would indicate that the events are over before winter ends and before the sun moves into Scorpio. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Right but as he emerges he's gazing at the sun. Does the sun gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 I see what you mean, at the end he is gazing at some object which appears to have rings coming off it. Saturn is actually in Libra, where it ends and Scorpio begins. Saturn's been there for a while, it moves very slowly and will continue to remain there for at a while longer. The sun could be gazing at Saturn perhaps. Saturn is golden coloured. Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Maybe the Christ figure is a representation of you and your journey through this reality. Why would the "son" gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 That's a good question, but I dont think it's the "son", I think the figure is the sun and he appears to be moving through the mazzaroth, or what we know as the Zodiac which is how the sun travels along the ecliptic in the sky.I know that some people identified the area where he gazes at the end of the video as possibly Scorpio. The sun will be nearer Scorpio around the winter time, around November. If he is indeed gazing at Scorpio ahead of him,that would indicate that the events are over before winter ends and before the sun moves into Scorpio. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Right but as he emerges he's gazing at the sun. Does the sun gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 I see what you mean, at the end he is gazing at some object which appears to have rings coming off it. Saturn is actually in Libra, where it ends and Scorpio begins. Saturn's been there for a while, it moves very slowly and will continue to remain there for at a while longer. The sun could be gazing at Saturn perhaps. Saturn is golden coloured. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 I still think that represents you gazing at the sun. I think there is an important message there for you. Just mho. Anonymous Coward Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare I, Pet Goat is too important. I believe it must be decoded to understand future events and their timeline. Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare I, Pet Goat is too important. I believe it must be decoded to understand future events and their timeline. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 29592187 I think you might be right. Maybe some of it is already happening. ISON Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare In the video IPet Goat II, you see many symbols, some appear to represent celestial movements. In Egyptian mythology the planets and stars are shown in hieroglyphs as moving about on boats. In the film IPet Goat II, there is a figure riding on a boat which has been called Messianic by some viewers. However, I think this figure is a representation of the sun, he is very yellow, like the Simp(suns), he appears to be covered in flames and his hair looks distinctly like flames. He also seems to have sunspots on his face. Sunspots are quite distinct from ordinary spots. The reason I mention the Simp(suns) is that their eyes are designed to look like the circumpunct, a circle with a dot in the centre which represents the sun. [ link to en.wikipedia.org (secure) ] Also in the simpsons, Homer is obsessed with doughnuts and the torus is a doughnut shape that is seen throughout nature and space and has been the subject of much theorising by physicists such as Nassim Harramein.Sorry, back to IPet Goat II. The II in the title suggests it could be the symbol of Gemini. In the celestial realm the sun is currently moving through the sign of Gemini and will be moving to Wasat, a fixed star in the constellation and which appears to be where you might locate the phallus part of the constellation.You can see the phallus around the 4 min mark [ link to en.wikipedia.org (secure) ] This area is where the water signs are located in the sky. The sun moved through this area over the past few months.A little further in the video, just after the phallus scene, you see the sun produce either a massive solar flare or possibly an EMP which knocks out the grey men in the suits.Now I know there is much speculation about a possible celestial event and/or a financial collapse happening soon, perhaps these events have been foreshadowed by this video.The sun reaches the phallus around 11th July and if the video is prophetic, then we can expect some solar related event to happen very soon after that.This is the sun's position on 11th JulyI realise the video is around 3 years old but these events look like they are on the verge of happening this year, so I thought I would mention this. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Sun Halo - circumpunct - circled dot Anonymous Coward Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Maybe the Christ figure is a representation of you and your journey through this reality. Why would the "son" gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 That's a good question, but I dont think it's the "son", I think the figure is the sun and he appears to be moving through the mazzaroth, or what we know as the Zodiac which is how the sun travels along the ecliptic in the sky.I know that some people identified the area where he gazes at the end of the video as possibly Scorpio. The sun will be nearer Scorpio around the winter time, around November. If he is indeed gazing at Scorpio ahead of him,that would indicate that the events are over before winter ends and before the sun moves into Scorpio . Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Report Copyright Violation Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Sorry, back to IPet Goat II. The II in the title suggests it could be the symbol of Gemini. In the celestial realm the sun is currently moving through the sign of Gemini and will be moving to Wasat, a fixed star in the constellation and which appears to be where you might locate the phallus part of the constellation.You can see the phallus around the 4 min mark [ link to en.wikipedia.org (secure) ] This area is where the water signs are located in the sky. The sun moved through this area over the past few months.A little further in the video, just after the phallus scene, you see the sun produce either a massive solar flare or possibly an EMP which knocks out the grey men in the suits.Now I know there is much speculation about a possible celestial event and/or a financial collapse happening soon, perhaps these events have been foreshadowed by this video.The sun reaches the phallus around 11th July and if the video is prophetic, then we can expect some solar related event to happen very soon after that.This is the sun's position on 11th July Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Genesis 32:30-3130 So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel:[a] “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” 31 Just as he crossed over Penuel the sun rose on him, and he limped on his hip. Anonymous Coward Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare "The light halts upon his thigh " Anonymous Coward Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare "The light halts upon his thigh " Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69699674 The light halts upon his thigh " Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69699674 "phallus". See my link above. Anonymous Coward ( OP )User ID: 69290995 Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Maybe the Christ figure is a representation of you and your journey through this reality. Why would the "son" gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 's a good question, but I dont think it's the "son", I think the figure is the sun and he appears to be moving through the mazzaroth, or what we know as the Zodiac which is how the sun travels along the ecliptic in the sky.I know that some people identified the area where he gazes at the end of the video as possibly Scorpio. The sun will be nearer Scorpio around the winter time, around November. If he is indeed gazing at Scorpio ahead of him,that would indicate that the events are over before winter ends and before the sun moves into Scorpio . Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69699674 'halo' and it could symbolise rings of Saturn rather than a sun halo. In a still it looks like a halo but in the video there is a lot of movement and a lot of rings/halos.I'm glad you mentioned clouds because I was going to question whether there would be clouds as far up as the sun. They do seem to have the appearance of clouds. f800 The light halts upon his thigh " Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69699674 "phallus". See my link above. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69699674 Re: IPet Goat And The Solar Flare Maybe the Christ figure is a representation of you and your journey through this reality. Why would the "son" gaze at the sun? Quoting: f800 's a good question, but I dont think it's the "son", I think the figure is the sun and he appears to be moving through the mazzaroth, or what we know as the Zodiac which is how the sun travels along the ecliptic in the sky.I know that some people identified the area where he gazes at the end of the video as possibly Scorpio. The sun will be nearer Scorpio around the winter time, around November. If he is indeed gazing at Scorpio ahead of him,that would indicate that the events are over before winter ends and before the sun moves into Scorpio . Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69699674 'halo' and it could symbolise rings of Saturn rather than a sun halo. In a still it looks like a halo but in the video there is a lot of movement and a lot of rings/halos.I'm glad you mentioned clouds because I was going to question whether there would be clouds as far up as the sun. They do seem to have the appearance of clouds. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Saw a lovely rainbow halo around the sun July 4th This video links I Pet Goat to today based on Scorpius [ ( OP )User ID: 69290995 Saw a lovely rainbow halo around the sun July 4th This video links I Pet Goat to today based on Scorpius [ Quoting: rachel3108 'll find out very shortly if 7th July is the date for the asteroid strike. There are 2 asteroids passing close today I beleive. Personally I'll also be watching out to see if anything interesting happens on 16th August, the date from the Deep Impact film. Anonymous CowardUser ID: 3234272 Watch this full 10 min original version.What does anyone make of this? Please post your thoughts, if that short film is telling, you should see this for more insight. [ ... That's a good question, but I dont think it's the "son", I think the figure is the sun and he appears to be moving through the mazzaroth, or what we know as the Zodiac which is how the sun travels along the ecliptic in the sky.I know that some people identified the area where he gazes at the end of the video as possibly Scorpio. The sun will be nearer Scorpio around the winter time, around November. If he is indeed gazing at Scorpio ahead of him,that would indicate that the events are over before winter ends and before the sun moves into Scorpio . Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69699674 'halo' and it could symbolise rings of Saturn rather than a sun halo. In a still it looks like a halo but in the video there is a lot of movement and a lot of rings/halos.I'm glad you mentioned clouds because I was going to question whether there would be clouds as far up as the sun. They do seem to have the appearance of clouds. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69290995 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 69699674 's so complex. Is there any chance you could summarise what it is about so I and anyone else who might be interested can understand the gist of what is being said and might be able to follow it with some insight.Many thanks. Anonymous Coward | 0 |
Thanks To Recreational Marijuana Being Passed, Californians' Former Charges Are Being Downgraded Nov 16, 2016 0 0
On the night of the presidential election, many things in our country changed. One of the big winners was marijuana as four new states passed legislation that now allows for recreational marijuana. Those included are Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada and California . With the new law, a person can grow up to 6 plants.
Since the laws went into effect the very next day, many people who have been charged with marijuana-related crimes are now finding themselves in unfamiliar, but fortunate territory.
According to South California Public Radio , attorney Bruce Margolin said:
“People with possession for sale, possession with the intent to sell, transportation or giving away more than an ounce, or sale of cannabis, would normally face prison time from three to four years. However, now it’s been reduced to six months in jail, maximum, and a $500 fine, or both.”
The Drug Policy Alliance states that over 11,000 people are arrested each year with cannabis-related charges. Part of the Alliances push for the law changing to recreational use is that it would positively impact the lives of these people who were charged with these “crimes.” Such non-violent crimes should not ruin a person’s life.
These new laws help to bring this specific issue into focus and will likely be a hot topic around this issue for some time to come.
What should be acceptable for marijuana related charges? In what ways should these charges affect a person’s life and their job? If it was a non-violent act, should the charges be less? Should some charges that were filed before the new legislation be entirely dropped? Which ones specifically? All of these questions are what lawyers, courts and defendants are now facing.
However, the new laws are still confusing to even lawyers and the courts. Margolin also said:
“They don’t know what’s going on. It’s like deer with headlights on them.”
While there have yet to be any official reports such as this one, it can be assumed that people and the courts in Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine are experiencing the same challenges in adapting to the new norm.
Other winners in the marijuana legislation on election night were Florida, Arkansas and North Dakota, as they approved medical marijuana laws. The 2016 Election was a game-changer for cannabis.
What do you think about the new laws being passed in these states? How should these laws affect a person’s life moving forward? Should there be any special consideration for those with children? In what ways do you see the new laws affecting society in general in those states? How soon will the rest of the nation follow suit now that 8 states, including the biggest one in the U.S. has now passed laws allowing recreational marijuana? At what point does industrial hemp come into the picture?
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science-Health Coaching and offers health coaching services through his website Orgonlight Health. You can follow the Orgonlight Health Facebook page or visit the website for more information on how to receive health coaching for yourself, your friend or family member as well as view other inspiring articles. | 0 |
At first blush it’s like a dream come true for conservatives: Donald J. Trump has become the first president to formally propose eliminating federal programs for the arts and humanities, which have long been in the cross hairs of Republicans, and the threat is all the more real because the party also controls Congress. “The lord has been good to me late in life, my friend,” Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative firebrand, said in an interview this week about the president’s assault on the National Endowment for the Arts, which Mr. Buchanan railed against during his insurgent run for president in 1992. But even with control in Washington, the fates of the arts endowment and the National Endowment for the Humanities are far from sealed. Several key Republican lawmakers are expressing support for the programs, which, since their experiences during the culture wars of a generation ago, have taken pains to counter accusations of coastal elitism by making sure to distribute their grants widely across all 50 states. And the contours of the political battle itself have changed since those earlier fights in the 1980s and ’90s. The arguments then were over ideology, taste, free speech and the size of government today they are about economic investment, federal priorities and how people feel about Mr. Trump remaking America to his liking. Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who is the chairwoman of a crucial Senate appropriations panel that oversees the endowments, said in a statement, “I believe we can find a way to commit to fiscal responsibility while continuing to support the important benefits that N. E. A. and N. E. H. provide. ” Her backing, like that of some other Republicans, comes after years of federal funds have flowed to artists in her state. Since 1995, the endowment has sent more than $18 million in grants to Alaska — a state which, partly because of its small population, ranks near the top when it comes to arts grants per capita. Two other Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, signed their names last month to a letter urging continued support for the endowments, which together get $300 million a year. A spokeswoman for Senator Capito, who is on the appropriations committee, said Friday that she would “advocate for her priorities, including funding for the arts and humanities, which are important to our economy and communities. ” And there were warm words among some Republicans in the House as well. Representative Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican who is on the House appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the endowments budget, said in a statement, “I support the present level of funding for these programs. ” The chairman of that House panel is Representative Ken Calvert, a California Republican. He said in a statement that with the government approaching $20 trillion in debt, he would take “all sides into account” as he works on the budget — but added that he recognized that “the N. E. A. and N. E. H. have a lot of support from the American people and members of Congress. ” The fight for the future of the endowments differs from those in the past. When the Reagan administration considered eliminating the arts endowment, officials backed off after the actor Charlton Heston, a conservative who was close to the president, and powerful board members of cultural institutions made the case for the arts. As the arts endowment came under attack during the culture wars of the 1990s — House Republicans voted to abolish it at one point — the agency changed the way it operated. The endowment abolished grants to individual artists, whose work could be provocative — and labeled offensive by some conservatives, causing free speech fights. And the agency began sending 40 percent of its money directly to states arts agencies to decide how to distribute. The result is that the arts endowment now sends grants to every Congressional district in the nation: In 2016, the agency said, it recommended 2, 400 grants in 16, 000 communities. That could make it harder for members of Congress to kill it, since doing so would cost their districts money. But the new paradigm also means that the money is spread so thin, with the awarding of many small grants, that it could bolster the arguments of opponents of the endowment who say the lost money could be made up elsewhere. Proponents of preserving endowment grants are increasingly speaking of them in terms that many Republicans can love — as investments that spur job creation as partnerships that award grants that are matched by private donations and as programs that help returning veterans or people who live in rural communities. Representative Leonard Lance, a New Jersey Republican who is of the Congressional Arts Caucus, said that as he tries to marshal support for the arts endowment among his colleagues, he is focusing on the jobs it supports not just in the arts sector but in tourism, restaurants and other fields as well. “I will try to be persuasive that there is a tremendous multiplier effect — that this brings in revenue to the government,” he said. Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget director, said at a news conference on Thursday that President Trump had “completely defensible” reasons for wanting to “defund” the two endowments, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “I put myself in the shoes of that steelworker in Ohio,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “The coal miner — the family in West Virginia. The mother of two in Detroit. And I’m saying, ‘O. K. I have to go ask these folks for money and I have to tell them where I’m going to spend it.’ Can I really go to those folks, look them in the eye, and say, ‘Look, I want to take money from you and I want to give it to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’? ” (The corporation sent $11. 8 million to radio and television stations in Ohio $1. 6 million to stations in West Virginia and $9. 1 million to stations in Michigan in 2014, the last year for which a breakdown was available on its website.) Members of Congress will hear next week from hundreds of activists who were already planning to gather in Washington on Monday and Tuesday to lobby for the arts. The announcement that the president is seeking to eliminate the endowments gave them a sense of added urgency, if not emergency. Robert L. Lynch, the president of Americans for the Arts, an arts advocacy group that has been a player in past battles to save the endowment, said, “We will hit every congressional office, every senatorial office, with our message. ” Even some opponents of the endowments concede that they have a fight on their hands. Mr. Buchanan — who once described the arts agency as “the upholstered playpen of the arts and crafts auxiliary of the Eastern liberal establishment” — said that he gave President Trump credit for trying to eliminate it, but that its demise was far from assured. “My guess is — and it always happens — that you come out very strong on the opening day,” he said, “and the arts community and the others will get to the Republicans and others and try to at least preserve these and keep them alive through the Trump era. ” | 1 |
Outspoken African Cardinal Robert Sarah has reacted fiercely to detractors of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, accusing them of “vulgarity and baseness” in their criticisms of the former pope’s afterword to the cardinal’s latest book. [“The arrogance, the violence of language, the disrespect and the inhuman contempt for Benedict XVI are diabolical and cover the Church with a mantle of sadness and shame,” Cardinal Sarah said. “These people demolish the Church and its profound nature,” he added. Critics of Benedict XVI have complained that the former Pontiff meddled in Church affairs by contributing the afterword to the German edition of the book, in which Benedict praises Cardinal Sarah and thanks Pope Francis for appointing the African prelate to his current post as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. In his afterword to Cardinal Sarah’s book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, Benedict XVI wrote that the liturgy is in “good hands” with the Guinean cardinal, while also praising Sarah for his prayer life. Sarah, Benedict writes, speaks “out of the depths of silence with the Lord, out of his interior union with him, and thus really has something to say to each one of us. ” “We should be grateful to Pope Francis for appointing such a spiritual teacher as head of the congregation that is responsible for the celebration of the liturgy in the Church,” Benedict writes. The last line of the afterword reads, “With Cardinal Sarah, a master of silence and of interior prayer, the liturgy is in good hands. ” Critics were quick to accuse the former pope of interfering in Church politics and trying to undermine Pope Francis. One, the Italian liturgist Andrea Grillo, a longtime detractor of Pope Benedict, claims that the former pope has behaved in a “scandalous way” by writing the afterword in praise of Cardinal Sarah and his book, accusing him of “clericalism” and “hypocrisy. ” “It’s as if Ratzinger suddenly renounced his renunciation and wishes to influence the decisions of his successor,” Grillo declared. Throughout his diatribe, Grillo refuses to call Benedict by his correct title, but insists on referring to him simply as “Ratzinger” or “emeritus bishop. ” Cardinal Sarah’s sharp reaction to Benedict’s critics echoes prior statements from the prelate, who never minces words. At a Washington prayer breakfast in May, 2016, the Vatican cardinal denounced marriage, transgender bathroom laws, and attacks on the family as “demonic. ” In his powerful address, Sarah said that these are “portentous times” for the Church and for the world, while slamming gender theory as “ideological colonization” and decrying the “insidious” dismantling of religious freedom in the United States. Regarding marriage, Sarah said that what is at stake is not an ideological war about “abstract ideas” but rather the protection of “ourselves, children, and future generations from a demonic ideology that says children do not need mothers and fathers. ” This earned the Guinean cardinal the enduring hostility of gay activists, one of whom has referred to him as “one of the shrillest voices against ‘gender ideology,’ marriage, abortion, contraception and other attacks on the family. ” The African prelate, who has been dubbed “a standard bearer for Catholic orthodoxy,” was the world’s youngest bishop in 1979, when Pope John Paul II summoned him to don the miter at only 34 years of age. He is now one of the most important cardinals in the Church, as the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, and his name often comes up on the short list of “papabili” — or papal candidates to eventually succeed Pope Francis. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
posted by Eddie Gun man have stolen a Dirty Bomb by force in Mexico and now the bomb can be on its way into the United States. Why is the media remaining silent on such an issue? I do not have any idea, but i know that mainstream media is controlled by 6 giant corporations….. so it raises my curiosity even more. A device containing radioactive substances including cesium-37 and americium-beryllium, was stolen from a government research facility in Mexico. Authorities are currently working to track down the group of men who grabbed the device Sunday night during an assault on a National Construction Laboratory warehouse in Tultitlan, Mexico state. | 0 |
Increasing numbers of children have high blood pressure, largely as a consequence of their obesity. A growing body of evidence suggests that high blood pressure may impair children’s cognitive skills, reducing their ability to remember, pay attention and organize facts. In the most comprehensive study to date, published on Thursday in The Journal of Pediatrics, 75 children ages 10 to 18 with untreated high blood pressure performed worse on several tests of cognitive function, compared with 75 peers who had normal blood pressure. The differences were subtle, and the new research does not prove that high blood pressure diminishes cognitive skills in children. Still, the findings set off alarm bells among some experts. “This study really shows there are some differences,” said Dr. David B. Kershaw, the director of pediatric nephrology at C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan, who was not involved with the research. “This was not just random chance. ” Dr. Marc B. Lande, a professor of pediatric nephrology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and his colleagues had children tested at four sites in three states, matching those with and without high blood pressure by age, maternal education, race, obesity levels and other factors. The researchers excluded children with learning disabilities and sleep problems, which can affect cognitive skills. Children with elevated blood pressure performed worse than their peers on tests of memory, processing speed and verbal skills, the researchers found. But all the scores were still in the normal range. Because of increased obesity, elevated blood pressure, also called hypertension, is no longer rare in children, though it is underdiagnosed. In a recent survey, about 3. 5 percent of 14, 187 children ages 3 to 18 had hypertension. “Most people don’t understand that cardiovascular risk factors — in this case, hypertension — can affect thinking and memory, and certainly they don’t think there could be an effect in childhood,” said Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a professor of psychiatry, neurology and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco, who has researched the effects of cardiovascular risk factors on cognition. Dr. Lande and his colleagues noted that children with high blood pressure tended to have other risk factors that might negatively affect cognition, including insulin resistance and obstructive sleep apnea. Children who had a formal diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea were excluded from the new study, but some adolescents with poor sleep participated. Dr. Lande said the study found “that the presence of hypertension made the effect of poor sleep on cognition even worse. ” Lower scores on cognitive tests do not necessarily indicate that a child is struggling in everyday life, experts cautioned. “Yes, there are certain differences, but what they mean in terms of life functioning isn’t clear,” said Dr. Julie R. Ingelfinger, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a senior consultant in nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital. But, she added, “We know from other studies that problems with memory, attention and cognitive function have a lot to do with how well you do in your job and at school. ” Children may be uniquely susceptible to cognitive deficits, Dr. Kershaw said. “One of my concerns is, if you have high blood pressure and you’re 10 to 18 years old, it may impact your cognitive function more than if you’re 40 or 50,” he said. The areas of the brain that control executive function mature until a person’s early 20s. So the idea is that perhaps hypertension could hinder that function, Dr. Kershaw said. Observational studies have shown that having high blood pressure in one’s early 40s to 60s increases the risk of cognitive decline later in life. Clinical trials have not shown, however, that controlling high blood pressure with drugs or lifestyle changes can prevent cognitive problems. More research is needed to decipher whether treating children who have high blood pressure with dietary changes, exercise or medication could improve their cognitive ability. The work is already underway: The 75 children with hypertension in the latest study are being treated and followed for a year. The last child will finish the study early next year, Dr. Lande said. “Then we’ll be able to know if subtle neurocognitive differences between hypertensive kids and the controls go away with treatment or not,” he said. Dr. Ingelfinger applauded the “carefully done” research, but said she was more interested in seeing the research. “The most important thing is, if blood pressure is controlled, do these cognitive changes go away?” | 1 |
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been warned public support is being “destroyed” by the fact her government has so far failed to deport half a million rejected asylum seekers.[ Friedrich, an MP for the Bavarian Christian Social Union, Mrs. Merkel’s sister party, said the German people were losing confidence in the government because so many asylum seekers were able to “dance around the state”. Meanwhile, Rainer Wendt, head of the federal police trade union, warned: “There is a deportation prevention industry, which must be changed urgently. ” Figures published by the German parliament on Monday showed a total of 556, 499 failed asylum seekers have stayed on in the country, with four in five residing in the country for more than six years, thus granting them extra rights. The Times reports around half are officially stateless, have medical conditions, or would not be accepted back into their home country, giving them a right to stay indefinitely. Others simply stayed in illegally or claimed to have no identity papers. Of the half a million failed asylum seekers, 77, 000 are from Turkey, 68, 000 from Kosovo, 50, 000 from Serbia, and 33, 000 from Afghanistan. “Allowing rejected asylum seekers to dance around the state like this is destroying the confidence of citizens in the capacity of the state to act,” said Mr. Friedrich, who also previously served as interior minister. Breitbart London reported last month on figures that showed some 99 per cent of migrants granted asylum in Germany were allowed to stay permanently. An investigation by Die Welt found that although asylum is granted for a period of three years under the Geneva Convention, nearly all German migrants granted asylum are allowed to stay indefinitely. Despite an attempt to tighten up residency permits last year, leave the stay is granted much more quickly in Germany than in other European Union states. | 1 |
UPDATE: Fox News has officially cut ties with Bill O’Reilly. Through the network’s parent company 21st Century Fox, the Murdochs issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon: “After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the Company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel. ”[In another statement released on Wednesday, the network announced that the new primetime will be Eric Bolling at 5pm Martha MacCallum at 7pm Tucker Carlson at O’Reilly’s old 8pm timeslot The Five with Kimberly Guilfoyle, Dana Perino, Bob Beckel, Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watter, and Juan Williams at 9pm and Sean Hannity will remain at 10pm. FOX NEWS: TUCKER CARLSON TO MOVE TO 8PM SLOT, THE FIVE SHIFTS TO 9PM pic. twitter. — Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) April 19, 2017, *** The Murdoch family has reportedly decided to pull The O’Reilly Factor off air amid allegations of sexual harassment against host Bill O’Reilly, and will soon be officially announcing his departure, according to sources close to Gabriel Sherman in New York magazine. According to Sherman, the decision was primarily driven by Rupert Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan, after The New York Times reported earlier this month that $13 million has been paid out from either Fox News or O’Reilly to five women to settle their sexual harassment claims against the host in lieu of litigation, despite O’Reilly’s denying the veracity of their claims. Fox News executives are reportedly meeting on Wednesday to discuss how to contain any damage from an O’Reilly dismissal. O’Reilly, who is currently on vacation, has hosted the network’s most popular show — The O’Reilly Factor — since the network’s inception in 1996 and remains the country’s cable news host. Sherman reports that “the board of Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox, is scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss the matter. ” Decisions are now being made as to whether O’Reilly will be allowed a final show to bid farewell to his audience. They are also discussing the terms of his release, with O’Reilly recently having signed a new $20 million a year contract. Executives within the company are also discussing who will fill O’Reilly’s primetime 8 pm slot, with hosts such as Eric Bolling, Dana Perino, and Tucker Carlson currently under consideration. Over 90 companies dropped advertising on The O’Reilly Factor over the allegations, while a small group of feminist protesters gathered outside the Fox News headquarters in New York calling on the network to fire O’Reilly. Last year, Fox News’ longtime chairman Roger Ailes resigned over claims of sexual harassment against several female staff members, including former hosts Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
New Report Finds Voters Have No Idea How Outraged They Supposed To Be About Anything Anymore Close Vol 52 Issue 43 · Politics · Election 2016
WASHINGTON—Saying that at this point, they were just taking their best guesses at how they should react to each new scandal that emerged about the presidential nominees, voters across the country admitted Monday they had no clue how outraged they are supposed to be about anything anymore. “It seems like there’s a new revelation that comes out each day about Trump or Hillary, and to be honest, I couldn’t even begin to tell you which ones I should just shake my head at and which ones are worth actually getting worked up about,” said Tempe, AZ voter Jeffrey Wilborne, who noted that between the recent breaking news alerts he received about the FBI reopening an investigation into Clinton’s emails just days ahead of the election and the barrage of apoplectic posts from friends on Facebook aimed at either the Democratic candidate or the FBI director, it was hard enough to tell which side to actually be resentful toward, let alone how angry to get. “I felt like it was pretty clear that I should be mad at Trump for what he said on that bus and at Hillary for telling Wall Street completely different things than she was telling us. But what about all that Clinton Foundation stuff? Should I be furious or just let that slide? I’m completely lost over here.” At press time, the nation’s electorate had settled on being completely apathetic to everything from here on out. Share This Story: Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter
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One person has been killed and three others injured in a shooting at a polling station in Los Angeles, California.
Via YourNewsWire
Two nearby polling stations in Azusa, a northern suburb of Los Angeles, have been placed on lockdown, along with two schools. The shooting was reported around 2pm local time (5pm eastern), and some reports indicate that it may have involved a police officer, and that the suspect is still at large
“This is a very volatile and critical situation,” Officer Jerry Willison of the Azusa Police Department said, according to the Times. The Azusa P.D. provided the following timeline of events.
Incident began at 202pm with reports of shots fired near Memorial Park 320 N Orange Ave.
— Azusa Police (@AzusaPD) November 9, 2016
1st arriving officers arrived/found multiple shooting victims.. they came under fire… Multiple ofcrs returned fire
— Azusa Police (@AzusaPD) November 9, 2016
The Times reports that the suspect ended up surrounded by police after retreating to a house, and was recognized by a witness who lives in the area. The polling place near where the shooting took place has been locked down, and so are area schools. The Los Angeles County Registrar is advising votersto avoid the area and use other polling locations.
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Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne announced that all early voting in the county was once again on the iVotronic machines after one day of early voting using paper ballots. The emergency usage of paper ballots took place on Tuesday, October 25 while a software problem was being resolved. The vendor corrected the problem and reinstalled the corrected configuration in time for all ballots the next day, according to Hawthorne in a press release on October 27.
The situation was recounted by ABC 12 News: An error in the voting machine programming by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) caused votes for one statewide court of appeals race not to be entered when a voter tried to vote straight ticket in either party according to a release from Chambers County.
Chambers County, Texas, is a small county, having only 13 precincts and only four early-voting locations. County Clerk Heather Hawthorne told The New American 1,801 ballots were cast before switching to the paper ballots. Some of those 1,801 voters were warned to double check their ballots due to the software glitch. Because Chambers County is a Republican stronghold, the Republican candidate will be more adversely affected than the Democratic candidate by unintended under-votes. The question is how many unintended under-votes were there for these candidates and how close will that contest be?
There was a similar ballot problem in 2010 in Travis County, Texas, although the 2010 error was made on the paper ballots. A number of military absentee voters who were bona fide Texas residents were accidentally sent ballots for federal overseas voters. The ballots for federal overseas voters did not include local contests, such as ones for the Texas House of Representatives, and it was impossible to vote for that contest using the ballots provided. Republican Dan Neil lost by 16 votes. The final vote total was Donna Howard (D) 25,026, Dan Neil (R) 25,010 and Ben Easton (L) 1,518. Neil challenged the election total for a number of reasons, in addition to the ballot format, but the Texas Legislature, even though it was supposedly solidly Republican, seated Howard even though a very common practice in such close elections is to seat neither candidate, pay both candidates, and give both candidates equal access to the building and caucuses while the dispute is resolved or a new election is called.
In this case in Chambers County, the affected contest is a judicial contest. Hopefully, it will not be as close as the House District 48 race in 2010.
The voters who were affected by the Chambers County computer glitch were fortunate the errors were obvious enough for voters to notice and bring to the attention of the election officials. How many errors go undetected because they are not obvious to the voters or the election processes are not transparent? Errors such as this serve as a reminder of how important it is that voting have a paper trail and be a transparent process with plenty of paper documentation in case it becomes necessary to reconstruct precinct vote totals or other vital election records. Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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MINNEAPOLIS — The 1988 Dassault Falcon 900 was about an hour into its flight from Atlanta in the wee hours of Friday, April 15, when the pilot made a distress call to air traffic controllers in Chicago. There was a medical emergency on board. A male passenger was unresponsive. And so the Chicago airport officials diverted the flight for an emergency landing in Moline, Ill. just 48 minutes from its intended destination of Minneapolis. As it turned out, the flight was carrying the musical genius Prince, who, a week later, would be found dead, collapsed in an elevator on the first floor of his suburban Minneapolis compound. “We had an emergency unscheduled landing at 1:35 a. m. on April 15 for a medical emergency for an unresponsive person,” said Jo Johnson, the human resource manager for Quad Cities International Airport in Moline. It remains unclear what caused Prince, 57, to become unresponsive on the flight last week. His publicist has attributed the crisis to the fact that the entertainer was “fighting the flu. ” But officials investigating Prince’s sudden death said Friday that the plane’s emergency landing, and what caused it, would be part of their sweeping inquiry. Prince spent only a few hours at a Moline hospital before his private jet flew home here, and the entertainer resumed life at his compound in nearby Carver County. Just days before his death, he attended a show at a local jazz club, and playfully showed off his new piano and guitar at a party at his studio. As law enforcement officials await the complete results of an autopsy performed Friday, they said they would be reviewing local pharmaceutical records as part of a broad effort to understand Prince’s full medical history. They declined to comment on reports that Prince had been taking pain medication, saying the investigation was continuing. “This is a tragedy for all of us,” said Jim Olson, the sheriff of Carver County, where Prince’s estate, Paisley Park, was located in the town of Chanhassen. “To you, Prince Rogers Nelson was a celebrity. To us, he was a community member and a good neighbor. ” Prince was last seen alive at about 8 p. m. on Wednesday evening when someone dropped him off at his estate, where he lived alone, Sheriff Olson said during the afternoon news conference. Unable to make contact with Prince on Thursday morning, Paisley Park staff members went looking for him in the sprawling compound. They found him unresponsive in an elevator and called 911 at 9:43 a. m. Sheriff Olson said. “The person is dead here,” a male caller told the dispatcher, according to a transcript of the 911 call. Later, the caller added, “And the people are just distraught. ” Medics responding to the home could not resuscitate Prince, who was pronounced dead at 10:07 a. m. Thursday, Sheriff Olson said. He was not sure, he said, how long Prince, dressed in a shirt and pants, had been collapsed in the elevator. There were no obvious signs of injuries, and Sheriff Olson said the death was not believed to be a murder or a suicide. Officials said the body had been released to Prince’s family but that it may be weeks before any details from the autopsy are released. Before that, further tests need to be completed and the medical history must be compiled. There remain many questions around Prince’s health. Sheila E, a friend who collaborated with Prince, said during an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the star did have hip problems from his performances onstage. He has said in interviews that he struggled with epilepsy as a child. The mystery of the end of Prince’s life has left his vast legion of supporters measuring their shock. As they wait for answers, fans around the world grieved and celebrated his life with the frenetic energy with which Prince lived it — with dance parties and widespread tributes, from social media posts to impromptu Broadway performances. Here in his hometown, the famed First Avenue dance club held a free overnight dance party from Thursday into Friday, with more scheduled through the weekend. Makeshift memorials popped up outside of the club and in front of Paisley Park. Billboards encouraged residents to wear purple, a major bridge was lit in the color and a purple orchid with a note that read “Rest In Peace Prince” lay on the table of the intimate Dakota Jazz Club where Prince sat when he attended a show there on Tuesday. “It’s a very somber moment here, but his legacy will live on,” Kinneva Brown said as she visited Paisley Park on Friday. Those who knew him and saw him in his final days said the master showman betrayed no sign that he was near death. With his Afro picked out, Prince hopped on stage before about 300 revelers last Saturday — the night after his emergency landing in Moline — at one of the parties he was famous for throwing at Paisley Park. He banged out a quick performance of “Chopsticks” on his new purple piano, Scott Lawrence, who was in attendance with his son, said. He then broke out a new Gus Guitar, placing it on the piano and then moving away. “It’s too cool to open up,” Prince joked, according to Mr. Lawrence. But the star also offered a few accidentally prescient words, Mr. Lawrence recalled. “Wait a few days before you waste your prayers,” he told the crowd, referring to reports of his medical emergency from the previous day. Close followers of Prince find it hard to believe that anything sinister could have played into his death. He was a Jehovah’s Witness and obsessively healthy eater. You couldn’t drink, smoke or even curse at his Paisley parties. “Better eat your cheeseburger before you get to Paisley,” Van Jones, a political commentator and activist who was a friend of Prince’s, said he used to think before visiting Prince. Last Saturday, Prince stopped by Electric Fetus, a Minneapolis record store, and bought about half a dozen CDs, said Bob Fuchs, the retail manager. Prince had been coming to the store for 30 years, Mr. Fuchs said, and nothing on this visit seemed out of the ordinary. “Thanks for your support,” Mr. Fuchs recalled telling Prince, referring to something the musician had been helping the store with. “He smiled and said ‘Hello’ and ‘You’re welcome. ’” “He looked very alert and well dressed,” Mr. Fuchs added. “He seemed the same old. I did not think anything about the way he looked. Nothing suggested to me anything different. ” | 1 |
After spending days claiming it would welcome United Nations involvement in the Syrian chemical weapons attack, Russia used its veto power on the U. N. Security Council to block a resolution condemning the attack and calling for its perpetrators to be brought to justice. [China abstained from the vote instead of voting “no,” a decision President Donald Trump praised as “wonderful” and a sign of progress in U. S. relations since China generally votes with Russia on Syrian affairs. China’s U. N. ambassador, Liu Jieyi, said the resolution could be “amended” into a form China would vote for and said it was his country’s “longstanding hope that the Security Council can speak with one voice on Syria. ” “With its veto, Russia said no to accountability. Russia once again has chosen to side with Assad, even as the rest of the world, overwhelmingly comes together to condemn this murderous regime,” said the American ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. “You are isolating yourselves from the international community every time one of Assad’s planes drop another barrel bomb on civilians and every time Assad tries to starve another community to death,” Haley told the Russians. The UK Daily Mail reports on a dramatic confrontation between Russian deputy ambassador Vladimir Safronkov and British ambassador Matthew Rycroft at the U. N. that reportedly occurred on Wednesday night. “Time and time again, Russia has abused its veto protect the regime and to defend its use of chemical weapons,” said Rycroft. “What has Russia got in return for its seven vetoes in six years? Russia’s initiative in 2013 to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons has been exposed as a shambles. Russian pride in the Astana process has been turned to humiliation and Russia’s credibility and reputation across the world have been poisoned by its toxic association with Assad. ” The “Astana process” is a reference to Syria peace talks held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. Safronkov exploded in a rant at Rycroft, claiming that the United Kingdom was trying to undermine improving relations between the United States and Russia. “You’re losing sleep that we might be working together with the United States, with the United States. That is what you fear,” Safronkov thundered at the British ambassador. “You’re doing everything to make sure this kind of cooperation is undermined. What have you done to advance a ? You welcome various opposition groups in London and Paris, illegal armed groups. ” “Don’t you dare insult Russia again,” Safronkov reportedly told Rycroft, accusing him of “irresponsibility” and using “dirty language. ” At one point during his tirade, when Rycroft turned his attention elsewhere, the Russian deputy ambassador snapped, “Look at me. Don’t turn your eyes away. Why are you looking away?” Safronkov explained that the reason Russia vetoed the U. N. resolution was because it “appointed the guilty party prior to the investigation, prior to an independent and objective investigation,” an approach that was “incompatible with the legal norms. ” However, the U. N. resolution did not actually name the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad as the perpetrator of the attack. It condemned “the reported use of chemical weapons, in particular the attack on Khan Sheikhoun” and called upon the Syrian government to fully cooperate with an investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The resolution, which was drafted by Britain, France, and the United States, would have obliged Syria to provide flight plans and details of air operations on the day of the chemical weapons attack, the names of its helicopter squadron commanders, and access to airbases from which the attack might have been launched. This was evidently the provision to which Russia objected most strongly. Safronkov’s accusation that the U. K. wanted to sabotage relations between Russia and the U. S. might seem odd, given the talk from both Washington and Moscow about how those relations have hit a War low, but this is emerging as the official Russian narrative about the current diplomatic tension. For example, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that the Trump administration is under pressure from “those who want to prevent it from curing the wounds inflicted by Barack Obama’s administration, and are using the Russian card in internal political struggles. ” “It’s deplorable, and we regret what is going on, but we can do little except asking to back accusations with facts,” said Lavrov. “There hasn’t been a single fact, although under the pressure of President Donald Trump’s foes the White House has been forced to periodically make statements containing unfounded accusations against us. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Former Senator Bob Dole, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan, worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish contact between Taiwanese officials and Donald J. Trump’s staff, an outreach effort that culminated last week in an unorthodox telephone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s president. Mr. Dole, a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston Bird, coordinated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and the transition team to set up a series of meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and officials in Taiwan, according to disclosure documents filed last week with the Justice Department. Mr. Dole also assisted in successful efforts by Taiwan to include language favorable to it in the Republican Party platform, according to the documents. Mr. Dole’s firm received $140, 000 from May to October for the work, the forms said. The disclosures suggest that Trump’s decision to take a call from the president of Taiwan, Tsai was less a diplomatic gaffe and more the result of a plan by Taiwan to use the election of a new president to deepen its relationship with the United States — with an assist from a seasoned lobbyist well versed in the machinery of Washington. “They’re very optimistic,” Mr. Dole said of the Taiwanese in an interview on Tuesday. “They see a new president, a Republican, and they’d like to develop a closer relationship. ” The United States’ One China policy is nearly four decades old, Mr. Dole said, referring to the policy established in 1979 that denies Taiwan official diplomatic recognition but maintains close contacts, promoting Taiwan’s democracy and selling it advanced military equipment. The phone call between Mr. Trump and Ms. Tsai was a striking break from nearly four decades of diplomatic practice and threatened to precipitate a major rift with China, which admonished Mr. Trump in a editorial in the overseas edition of People’s Daily. The disclosure documents were submitted before the call took place and made no mention of it. But Mr. Dole, 93, a former Senate majority leader from Kansas, said he had worked with transition officials to facilitate the conversation. “It’s fair to say that we had some influence,” he said. “When you represent a client and they make requests, you’re supposed to respond. ” Officials on Mr. Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment. The documents suggest that Mr. Dole helped the government of Taiwan establish early access to Mr. Trump’s inner circle during the campaign, when Mr. Dole worked to involve Mr. Trump’s aides in a United States delegation to Taiwan and to facilitate a Taiwanese delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. The effort has continued in the weeks since the election, with Mr. Dole on Tuesday saying he was trying to fulfill a request from a special envoy from Taiwan who was visiting Washington to see Reince Priebus, tapped by Mr. Trump to be White House chief of staff, and Newt Gingrich, who is close to the . (The Priebus meeting, Mr. Dole said, would most likely have to wait until Mr. Trump is inaugurated.) Mr. Dole, the only former Republican presidential nominee to endorse Mr. Trump, arranged a meeting between Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, whom Mr. Trump has chosen to be his attorney general, and Stanley Kao, Taiwan’s envoy to the United States, and convened a meeting between Taiwanese officials and Mr. Trump’s transition team, the documents say. Mr. Dole, who said he first took an interest in Taiwan as a senator when Congress was considering the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act that established the current policy, has lobbied for the Taiwanese government for nearly two decades. In a letter in January, Mr. Dole laid out the terms of his agreement to represent the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, Taiwan’s unofficial embassy, including a $25, 000 monthly retainer. That letter and the document detailing Mr. Dole’s work for the Taiwanese were filed at the Justice Department, which requires foreign agents to register and detail their efforts at influencing the United States government. Among his duties, the letter said, were helping Taiwan achieve its “military goals” and obtain membership in the Partnership, the trade deal that Mr. Trump has promised to withdraw from. Mr. Dole was also to arrange for Taiwanese officials to meet with members of Congress from both parties and arrange access to Republican presidential contenders and to the party’s national convention. The government of Taiwan has retained a powerful bipartisan constellation of former members of Congress to promote its interests in Washington. Richard A. Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat and former House majority leader, also signed a $ contract to represent the Taipei office this year, as did Thomas A. Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, a former Senate majority leader, in 2015. Mr. Trump’s transition team has sent mixed messages about the call with Ms. Tsai, whether it was meant as a mere gesture of good will or a provocation aimed at drawing Taiwan closer to the United States as a way of challenging China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province. Vice Mike Pence suggested in the days after the call that Mr. Trump had merely been affording a courtesy to another “democratically elected leader. ” But in a series of Twitter posts on Sunday, Mr. Trump suggested a more confrontational motive, criticizing China for unfair trade practices and aggressive military moves. “Did China ask us if it was OK” to take such actions, Mr. Trump asked rhetorically, appearing to counter suggestions that the United States must ask Beijing’s permission to communicate with Taiwan. Several senior advisers to Mr. Trump have long advocated stronger United States support for Taiwan, arguing that it would help to counterbalance Beijing’s influence. Alexander Grey and Peter Navarro, Trump transition advisers, wrote an article last month in Foreign Policy branding the Obama administration’s treatment of Taiwan “egregious. ” Over the weekend, Taiwan’s official Central News Agency said that Edward J. Feulner, a member of Mr. Trump’s transition team and the former president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports stronger ties with Taiwan, had played a crucial role in bringing about the call with Mr. Trump. Mr. Feulner met with Ms. Tsai in Taiwan in October. Even before the phone call, Taiwan had succeeded in accomplishing important goals with Mr. Trump’s team. At their convention in Cleveland in July, Republicans adopted a platform that for the first time enshrined the “six assurances” to Taiwan made by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, including that the United States would not set a date for ending arms sales to the Taiwanese. | 1 |
25 Views November 10, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
For people who are worried about Druckenmiller selling his gold…
Before we get to Druckenmiller selling his gold, look at the collapse in the 30-year bond market as interest rates continue to surge! A picture is worth a thousand words… 30-Year U.S. Treasuries Continue To Plunge Today, Hitting New Lows!
By Bill Fleckenstein President Of Fleckenstein Capital November 10 ( King World News ) – I am going to stick with yesterday’s format and try to make sense of the market motion, then turn to the action lower in the column, and I’m doing this in response to all the questions I’ve been getting about how various markets can possibly do what they’re doing, i.e., why are they behaving as they are… IMPORTANT: To find out which company Doug Casey, Rick Rule and Sprott Asset Management are pounding the table on that already has a staggering 18.1 million ounces of gold that just added another massive deposit and is quickly being recognized as one of the greatest gold opportunities in the world – CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
Great Again: Well, That Didn’t Take Long In the first place, let’s be clear, this is all guesswork, and a lot of the motion is noise and the overlapping of extremely short-term time horizons with longer ones. Be that as it may, I will give it my best shot. What we have seen over the last 48 to 72 hours is a massive psychological sea-change — albeit, almost certainly temporary — from overwhelming pessimism to overwhelming optimism regarding the prospects for the U.S. economy and all things American. That has collided with fumes from QE here, and actual QE from other counties. Said differently, a massive change in psychology has collided with free money to spark euphoria, something that can generally only last a short time.
As that begins to take place people begin to factor in all the things that can go right and very few of the things that can go wrong, though they don’t handicap the amount of time it takes to accomplish said things, nor the degree of difficulty in accomplishing them. For instance, if Congress magically passed a $1 trillion infrastructure project, it would take quite a good deal of time to get the permits and design what needs to happen before the first shovels hit the dirt, so to speak. Not to say that the consequences of doing the project wouldn’t be economically positive, but there is quite a long lag between planning to do it and actually starting it.
That matters because, at the moment, the multiple on the stock market is very high (north of 20), and it is where it is because of zero-percent rates (and the ridiculous TINA rationale). As rates rise, that tends to put pressure on valuations while it potentially causes some TINA-driven buyers to think twice, especially if they start to lose money. Given my belief that the bond bull market is finished, and that a Trump administration would likely be very unfriendly to bonds, interest rates are headed higher, something that could really be exacerbated if people’s perceptions about inflation change.
Buy and Hold On? The bottom line is, given the valuation of the stock market and the likely decline in bonds, it will be rather difficult for the stock market to trade on the potential for good news long enough for the good news to hit. Therefore, it is quite likely this could be the final equity market blow-off, however far it may go, sort of matching the bond blow-off of last summer.
There is some precedent for just this sort of stock market action, as something similar occurred right after Ronald Reagan was elected. I touched on this yesterday (and please don’t send me any emails telling me Trump is not Reagan, I totally understand that), i.e., that we have a potential sea-change in psychology from a very negative macro outlook for the U.S. economy to one that is expected to be better. Again, that doesn’t necessarily translate to higher equity prices, due to the impact of rising rates on the current level of valuations to consider. Nonetheless, after Reagan was elected there was about a two-week 10% rally in the S&P, which then reversed and a substantial decline ensued.
I believe if and when the stock market rally finally is perceived to have ended we could see a lot of destruction very fast, given the brittle structure that I have talked about ad nauseam. And of course a reversal in the stock market would probably impact the dollar (and metals) and we might even get a kneejerk reaction in bonds.
Taking Some “You” Time Nearly all markets are currently in motion, so it is best to step back, try to figure out what is really going on, think about what you are looking for that would cause you to change any positions you have, but avoid taking any action unless you are fairly certain about what is happening and why.
Beneath the surface of the stock market one can see that tech is being sold (that sector, especially FANG, has the highest multiples and therefore is the most vulnerable to a change in the bond market, plus a strong dollar hurts them), while “Trump plays” are being purchased. I don’t see how the market can readjust itself and really hold together because I don’t think there will be enough buyers of tech to accommodate the sellers, and thus the market overall could easily come under pressure fairly soon, but we will just have to see how that plays out.
WallStreet.com Basically, while we’re in this period of quasi euphoria, the market for the moment is a concept stock, like biotech, and concept stocks don’t generally bother having fundamentals, nor do people worry about them until they do, and then they decline drastically as a consequence of basically being binary.
With all of that out of the way I will turn to the action. Overnight the SPOOs were about 0.75% higher and the market itself was higher in the early going. We then got a quick reversal both lower then back higher, at least for the Dow (the S&P was up fractionally). The Nasdaq, however, kept leaking. By day’s end the former added over 1% while the latter lost 0.75%.
Away from stocks, the euphoria playbook was in use and all the outside markets were very volatile, with green paper quite strong, while oil lost 1% and bonds were initially strong, then were beat up again. The 10-year lost another 8 basis points, as yields have now risen from 1.50% to 2.12% in five weeks.
Precious metals gave up an overnight rally and were lower. Part of that was exacerbated by Stan Druckenmiller, who said he’d sold his gold into the election-night rally (I have covered that all in Ask Fleck). After going negative silver climbed back into positive territory, gaining 0.3%, while gold lost 1.5%. Included below are six questions and answers from the Q&A’s with Bill Fleckenstein. Bonus Q&A Question: Hi Fleck – Hope all is well and you are enjoying the interesting times we live in now. Forget Trump … let’s talk about the Indian PM who has overnight banned large currency notes and is forcing people to deposit them in lieu of newer notes. I feel that this will help to thwart black money (nearly $2 Trillion) and terrorist activities (fake notes etc.) and will also curb real estate prices. But this could change how people view Gold even more. I suspect many Indians now are conducting transactions in Gold (or Crypto currencies such as Bitcoin) which could elevate Gold demand. Import of gold in the form of coins and medallions is prohibited. Ah well, another interesting bit of info in the ever changing times we live in. Narendra Modi Bans India’s Largest Currency Bills in Bid to Cut Corruption Enjoy Answer from Fleck: “ I suspect this will boost gold demand, after the initial shakeout in a scramble for cash by real estate guys. How can anyone trust the government at all after this?” Question: Fleck, I find it odd that SLV has not broken it’s Tuesday low, 11-8-16, while GLD has. Makes me believe that the down move in GLD is just “noise” unless, or until, SLV closes below the Nov. 8th low. Is this how you “analyze” price movement in the precious metal’s complex; that is, waiting for all assets to show a confirmation in movement? Thanks Answer from Fleck: “ Silver is benefitting from being an “industrial” metal, too. That is part of the concept that is working right now.” Question: Hey Bill,
1. In theory Trump should be good for ‘main street’ and I am wondering if this will cause inflation to tick higher? My inclination is that it will.
2. In the overnight Gold futures market it seems to be trading strong and then loses that strength when the U.S. opens. My guess is that more spec. longs are unwinding and this should bring open interest down to a more normal level. I know you don’t regard the COT data as too meaningful but if Gold holds above $1,200 while spec. long open interest declines, would this be a good set up for the next leg higher?
Thanks! Answer from Fleck: “ 1. Yes, plus psychology is changing. 2. There are many scenarios that could be positive, not just yours.” Druckenmiller Sells His Gold Question: As far as I know Soros does trade his positions whereas Druckenmiller keeps his positions for some time. What do you make of Stan selling all his gold?
[Speaking to CNBC this morning, fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller – who had been pessimistic about the U.S. economy, said that he is now “quite, quite optimistic” on the U.S. economy following the election of President-elect Donald Trump. “It’s as hopeful as I’ve been in a long time.”
“I sold all my gold on the night of the election.” Why? “All the reasons I owned it for the last couple of years seem to be ending”, namely, expectations that inflation is now set to spike, forcing money out of safe assets – like gold and Treasurys – and into the dollar.] Answer from Fleck: “ Druck is a trader and investor. Please see the other post on this topic.” Question: In India the gold prices have doubled in few cities due to the currency note issue. Wall Street and the moron Drunkenmiller does not have a clue. Chinese demand will also accelerate due to yuan fall. Gold demand is spiking up in Asia all over. Out of touch Wall Street can control the gold prices only for few days. If this continues I will load up gold bars here in America to sell in India and rest of the Asia. There are enough rich people in India who want gold. Maybe “Stan” should sell any coins left over to me. Answer from Fleck: “ You make worthwhile points about demand, but in the short run they can be “trumped” by the herd for a little while.” Question: Interesting….I don’t recall gold miners caring a hoot when Druckenmiller declared that he was long gold. Now that he says he’s out (of gold), they obediently pay attention??? Answer from Fleck: “ LOL, for this five minutes.” *** To subscribe to Bill Fleckenstein’s fascinating Daily Thoughts CLICK HERE.
***KWN has now released the extraordinary audio interview with Egon von Greyerz, where he gives KWN listeners a look what is really happening behind the scenes globally and in the gold market, and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.
***ALSO JUST RELEASED: If You Are Worried About The Action In The Gold Market, Just Read This… CLICK HERE.
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winner Ken Jennings mocked Barron Trump for reacting to comedian Kathy Griffin’s beheading photo of President Donald Trump on Wednesday. [“Barron Trump saw a very long necktie on a heap of expired deli meat in a dumpster. He thought it was his dad his little heart is breaking,” Jennings tweeted. Barron Trump saw a very long necktie on a heap of expired deli meat in a dumpster. He thought it was his dad his little heart is breaking, — Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) May 31, 2017, According to a TMZ report, Barron was watching the news when Griffin’s hideous photo of his father’s severed head appeared . Barron reportedly became upset and called for his mother. ( Shields) “Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!” Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning. Jennings continued to sneer at those appalled by his statement, including Donald J. Trump, Jr. When u need to update your references https: . — Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) May 31, 2017, I will kill as many white rhinos as it takes to prove my masculinity to Donald Trump Jr. https: . — Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) May 31, 2017, | 1 |
Topics: anthony weiner , presidential politics , American Politics , Donald J. Trump , Groping , Clinton's emails Friday, 4 November 2016
[ Associated Press, Washington, D.C. ] FBI Director James Comey informed members of Congress this morning that he was expanding his investigation into e-mails, based on materials found on the laptop of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
The materials include an e-mail from Trump to "Carlos Danger," the on-line pseudonym which Weiner used, in which Trump bragged about groping then-Senator Clinton when she and former President Bill Clinton attended Trump's third wedding, to Melania Trump, at the billionaire's Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.
"There she was, her and Bill, smiling for the cameras, and all the time I had my hand on her ass," boasted Trump, according to Comey.
Comey went on to state that Weiner's laptop contained "sext" messages from Weiner to Trump, containing photos of a bulge in the former Congressman's tidy whiteys, and messages back from Trump to Weiner, containing photos showing Trump's tiny hands gripping a large zucchini.
Comey added that he, also, would be a subject of the ever-expanding investigation, because there were several selfies of himself on the laptop, including one in which he is posed sitting naked on a white horse with a garland of laurel on his brow, one of him dressed up to look like J. Edgar Hoover, in a dress, with the caption, "Infallible ME!" and a third one of him engaged in self-flagellation with a Cat'o Nine Tails.
"I deserved it," Comey explained. Make Philip J. Moss's | 0 |
US In Danger of Losing Allies In Asia Philippines President turning his country away from the US and pivoting in the direction of China.
Often called the Donald Trump of the Philippines, this new President is turning away from America as an ally and is embracing China.
This threat to national security cannot be overstated. If we lose the Philippines as an ally, China will have free military reign of Asia. South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and Vietnam will be in grave danger. An analysis of this potential threat is contained in the following video. | 0 |
February 4, 2016, in Charleston, SC.
And this? April 16, 2016 at Southwest College, Los Angeles.
And this, less than two months ago on Sept. 11, 2016?
On Thursday, October 26, 2016, Hillary was in Lake Worth, Florida for a rally.
She walks up to the cheering crowd, as a bearded guy in sunglasses hurries to her side.
He extends his left hand to Hillary; she clutches it tightly. The man then helps her to make a step up onto the platform.
Just one step.
Here’s the video:
Later that day, Hillary leaves Florida for another rally in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
Walking up a flight of 15 steps to board her campaign plane, while holding an umbrella in her left hand and clutching the handrail with her right, and “mumbling to herself” (according to Live Satellite News ), Hillary appears to be wobbly and unsteady. Halfway up the steps, she stumbles, tilting her umbrella down (0:17 mark).
Hillary turned 69 two days ago on October 26, but moves like a disabled old woman. | 0 |
The final line in this story about Liam Gallagher is making people laugh
@Anitathetweeter over on Twitter notes, “Love the final line of this Liam Gallagher anecdote”
Mad ferret. | 0 |
ISTANBUL — One man worked as a Turkish translator and was escorting tourists back to the airport. One woman, an airport worker, was looking forward to her wedding in 10 days. There were taxi drivers and a customs officer. And there was a Turkish couple who worked together, and died together, in the suicide attack Tuesday night at Istanbul Ataturk Airport that killed dozens of people and wounded more than 200. As officials said on Wednesday that the death toll from the attack had risen to 41, details about the victims began trickling out. At least 23 of them were from Turkey, according to a Turkish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the attack publicly. The victims reflected the cosmopolitan and international character of Istanbul, whose airport is among the world’s busiest, a hub for tens of millions of passengers connecting to Europe, the Middle East, Africa and beyond each year. Among the victims were five Saudis, two Iraqis and one citizen each from China, Iran, Jordan, Tunisia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, the Turkish official said. Hours after the attack — which has not been claimed by any group, although Turkish officials said they suspected it was the work of the Islamic State — a limited number of flights resumed, and workers continued clearing debris and replacing shattered windows at the airport. Unlike Brussels, where a terrorist attack in March closed the airport for days, Istanbul appeared determined to get back to business as usual. Under a sunny sky on Wednesday morning, cars streamed into the airport’s international terminal, where the attack occurred, almost like on a normal weekday. But traces of the blasts lingered: Police tape marked off the site of one of the explosions on the lower arrivals area. And workers in yellow vests pounded long support bars into the concrete sidewalk, erecting a metal fence dividing the road from the airport entrance. An elderly woman, who said she was a refugee from Afghanistan, sat on gravel in the shade, near a pile of her belongings, and watched them. Even as the airport reopened, scenes of grief played out at a nearby hospital. A young woman, wearing a brown and pink head scarf, rocked softly back and forth as an older woman embraced her, sobbing. The young woman’s husband was among the injured, and doctors had told her to prepare for the worst. “My God, why did you take him from me?” she said, her voice breaking. Those who survived spoke of panic and confusion, and of gunfire aimed directly at them. A young man said he was going through a metal detector on Tuesday night when he heard shooting. He said he came under fire as the assailants advanced, shooting. He saw one person fall to the ground and dove under the machine. Adnan Ersoy, a cabdriver at the hospital, said that three of his friends had been killed, and that eight had been wounded. “They were just taxi drivers,” he said. “Good people, people who were trying to survive and earn their money. ” Passengers making their way through the first airport security checkpoint on Wednesday seemed shaken. “It was only God’s grace that separated us from the tragedies that happened here,” said Tanika Golota, 26, a school counselor from Chicago, who was holding her Mila. The Golotas, on their way home from a vacation in Portugal with a layover in Istanbul, had left the airport just 40 minutes before the explosion on Tuesday night. “You see it on TV and you know it happens, but we are naïve to the fact that it could happen to us,” she said. A majority of the victims appeared to be Muslims, either Turks or visitors from Muslim countries. If the bombings are confirmed to be the work of the Islamic State, it will show once again that the group, which portrays itself as defending Islam and fighting Western powers, kills far more Muslims than on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria or in terrorist attacks in the region. The attack cast a pall over a city that until recently was brimming with projecting itself as a rambunctious, multicultural hub for the arts, with great cuisine and a dazzling history as a former imperial capital. But a series of terrorist attacks over the last year, some attributed to the Islamic State and others to Kurdish militants, have destroyed Turkey’s image as a haven in a dangerous region, and they have damaged its tourism industry. The chaos enveloping Turkey — including the attacks and an enormous influx of refugees that has strained resources — vividly illustrates how the civil war in Syria has rippled outward and destabilized neighboring countries. Turkey is grappling with growing domestic strains as well, with deep divisions between Islamists who support President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and secular and nationalist Turks who oppose what they regard as his increasingly authoritarian grip on power. Making matters worse, a war that Turkey had fought for more than three decades against Kurdish militants resumed last year, turning cities in the southeast into war zones. On Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that early indications suggested that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, was behind the latest attack, although officials had not released any information about the assailants by the afternoon. After other attacks, Turkish officials have equivocated, citing as potential culprits either the Islamic State or Kurdish militants. This, critics have said, provided the government with the pretext to crack down further on Kurdish militants, which has been a greater priority for Turkey than fighting the Islamic State. However, some analysts said the airport attack might be a for Turkey’s approach to the Islamic State. The United States and other allies have accused Turkey of not doing enough to fight the militant group, and even of contributing to its rise by allowing fighters and weapons to pass through Turkish territory as part of a policy of supporting Syrian rebels. “I was impressed with the rapidity with which the government said it was Daesh,” said Soli Ozel, a Turkish columnist and professor at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “It suggests to me that finally maybe they have learned what the hell they have done. ” John O. Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said on Wednesday that the attack “bears the hallmark of ISIL’s depravity,” but he did not confirm that the group was responsible. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Mr. Brennan added that the Islamic State typically does not claim responsibility for attacks in Turkey in order to send the Turkish government a grim warning but not alienate sympathizers and potential recruits in the country. The attack came days after Turkey, which has suffered ruptures in relations with many of its neighbors in recent years, took steps to reconcile with Israel and Russia. Turkey’s relationship with Israel fell apart six years ago after Israel commandos stormed an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip in violation of a blockade, killing several Turkish activists. In November, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet that strayed into its airspace across the Syrian border, raising tensions to a boil. But Mr. Erdogan sent a letter to the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, this week expressing remorse for shooting down the jet, and on Wednesday, the two leaders spoke by telephone. At least part of the reason for patching up relations with Israel and Russia was to help improve Turkey’s beleaguered tourism industry, and it bore quick results: On Wednesday, Russia announced that it would lift a ban on travel to Turkey and was moving toward normalizing economic relations. More than four million Russians went to Turkey in 2014, second only to Germans, but millions of Russian tourists stayed home this year. Moscow also banned most imports of fruits, vegetables and other agricultural goods from Turkey, but that ban is due to be lifted, as well. President Obama telephoned President Erdogan from Air Force One on Wednesday to express his condolences for the loss of life and offer America’s help. The White House did not confirm that the Islamic State was responsible for the attack, but the press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the assault illustrated the challenge that Turkey faces because of its shared border with Syria. Subways and streets in Istanbul were quiet on Wednesday, with tourists who had come despite previous violence — the airport bombings were the fourth suicide attack in Istanbul alone this year — trying to enjoy themselves. “It’s really sad,” said Alex Afridi, 50, from Sacramento, who was visiting Turkey with his family and staying in a hotel in the Beyoglu neighborhood of Istanbul. “This city was already hurting. It’s an amazing city. ” Turks said they felt stunned at the dismal turn their country had taken. “I was in a crying mood this morning, looking at the news,” said Osman Serim, 60, a businessman drinking coffee in Beyoglu. “What is going to happen? What is the hope? What is the future for young people?” | 1 |
Among the most controversial issues roiling Vienna was “Die Frauenfrage,” or “the woman question. ” As they were doing in many other cities and nations of Europe and North America, women were challenging a patriarchal society that judged them unworthy of the rights customarily accorded to men. You would hope that “Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age, ” at the Neue Galerie, would delve widely, deeply and fearlessly into this complex topic. But while scholarly essays in the hefty, catalog do just that, the show itself only partly and obliquely brings out the most interesting issues relating to women and the art of Gustav Klimt. That said, the 11 portraits at the heart of the show are fascinating to look at and, with help from the catalog, to think about. Among them, naturally, is Klimt’s best known painting, “Portrait of Adele I” (1907) which sold for a record $135 million in 2006, was made more famous last year by the movie “Woman in Gold” and has been on permanent display at the Neue Galerie since 2006. And yet, portraiture wasn’t Klimt’s main thing. He was primarily an allegorist who folded mythic figures into otherworldly visions of pagan religiosity. During the period covered by this show, he produced an average of only one portrait a year, all of women, and he hewed to a relatively standardized approach, a compromise between tradition and Modernism. In his major portraits, the subject’s head and features are rendered in a more or less conventionally realistic manner while the clothed body and background are painted more freely in styles reminiscent of Impressionism, Symbolism and Fauvism. While the paintings represent chic, modern women who belong to a world of elegance and luxury, they also have the effect of exoticizing and etherealizing their subjects. As the art historian Jill Lloyd observes in her catalog essay, they seem both women of their time and timeless symbols of femininity, at once contemporary and archaic. Ms. Lloyd avers that while Klimt’s preoccupation with women in the full range of his art “may well relate to a personal obsession, it also seems likely that Klimt viewed the subject of women as a key to the modernity of his art. ” His portraits, she observes, “embody allusions to ‘the women question’ that are far from straightforward to read. ” In light of the ways women are represented in popular culture today, these ideas are as relevant now as they were a century ago. The exhibition, which includes a selection of life drawings as well as numerous pieces of jewelry, decorative objects and furniture designed by Wiener Werkstätte artists like Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, doesn’t go much into Klimt’s personal life. But the catalog does. He was, as Ms. Lloyd puts it, a “serial philanderer. ” He never married but is believed to have fathered 14 children by his models and other women. But he also had a lifelong companion and confidante in the dress designer and business woman Emilie Flöge, though whether they were lovers remains a mystery. Did Klimt suffer from Sigmund Freud’s complex? Perhaps. In any event, his portraits of actual women are certainly exalting. Unfortunately, none of the explicitly erotic drawings he made of his models masturbating or of couples making love are included in the show for comparison with his more chaste portrait paintings here. On a more pragmatic level, Klimt had a considerable investment in his few portraits because he depended on their subjects for his income. In his catalog essay, the exhibition’s organizer, the Klimt scholar Tobias G. Natter, explains that after a successful, albeit controversial, career under Austrian state patronage, Klimt renounced governmental support and became the first president of the renegade Vienna Secession. This posed a problem, however, because Vienna lacked the independent dealer and gallery system that artists in Paris and London could rely on. Instead of such a marketplace, Klimt depended on a small circle of wealthy, private patrons. “The more he sought out adventure and distanced himself from his state patrons, the more indispensable the commitment of his private collectors and clients became,” Mr. Natter wrote. Klimt’s most important sponsor was Szerena Lederer, the subject of one of the exhibition’s more beguiling portraits. Made in 1899, it depicts its subject in a gauzy, glowing white dress against a pale beige background that contrasts sharply with her black hair and clearly defined facial features. The effect is ghostly. Along with her industrialist husband, August Lederer, Szerena would eventually amass the largest collection of Klimt’s work in private hands. The Lederer’s daughter, Elisabeth, is the subject of another portrait. Made in the portrait shows her swathed in a white, oddly elongated, cocoonlike dress against a blue background decorated with cartoonish Asian figures. Yet another member of the Lederer clan, Szerena’s niece Ria Munk, who committed suicide over a failed love affair at the age of 24 in 1911, is the subject of a posthumous portrait called “The Dancer” ( ). She is shown in a richly floral patterned robe open to reveal her bare chest against a background of flowers and Asian figures. The painting that conveys a spirit of modern femininity best isn’t of a woman but of a girl, Mäda Primavesi. Made in 1912, it depicts her in a white, dress standing on solidly planted feet with one arm akimbo. Gazing back at the viewer with a calm, forthright expression, she projects a that girls often are blessed to own. The painting could serve nicely as a poster for Day of the Girl, which just happened on Tuesday. After World War II, Primavesi emigrated to Canada, where she founded and headed a convalescent home for children. In 1987, she was in the news for selling a portrait by Klimt of her mother, Eugenia Primavesi, that had been thought lost. When Mäda Primavesi died in 2000, a note in the catalog says, “the last eyewitness to have personally experienced Klimt at the easel passed. ” | 1 |
On Monday, the White House announced Army Lt. General H. R. McMaster as the replacement for Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser. [McMaster was not one of the top candidates suggested by administration sources after President Trump’s first choice, retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, declined the position. Over the weekend, President Trump began interviewing three new candidates, along with the current temporary occupant of the position, retired General Keith Kellogg. McMaster was one of the three, along with former U. N. Ambassador John Bolton and West Point superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen. According to the White House announcement, Kellogg will continue serving under McMaster as chief of staff for the National Security Council. Thomas Ricks at Foreign Policy predicted McMaster would be Trump’s choice for National Security Adviser on Monday morning, describing him as “smart, energetic, and tough. ” “He has good combat experience, he was a good trainer, and he led the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment well in his deployment to Iraq, most notably in pacifying Tell Afar, to the west of Mosul,” Ricks wrote, adding that McMaster was supported to a “surprising degree” by people who had worked for him in the past. McMaster is the author of a book on Vietnam, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chief of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. The book strongly argues that military leadership should be willing to stand up to civilian political leaders when war is not waged successfully, and also criticizes military leadership for becoming distracted by bureaucratic infighting. McMaster’s leadership at the famed Battle of 73 Easting in Operation Desert Storm was an important part of the U. S. military’s resurgence, poetically described as “exorcising the ghosts of Vietnam” at the time. In that battle, a vastly outnumbered American unit defeated Iraqi forces with superior tactics, coordination, and technology, without suffering a single casualty. Last February, McMaster wrote an extensive account of the battle, and the lessons it provides for future conflict, for The National Interest. He is noted as an advocate of both strong conventional military forces and capability. Concerned by cuts to both manpower and equipment modernization, he warned the Senate last year that “we are outranged and outgunned by many potential adversaries … our Army in the future risks being too small to secure the nation. ” One of the lessons he recommends learning from the Battle of 73 Easting, a on, is that American forces may never again have such a pronounced technological advantage over enemy ground forces. One of the adversaries McMaster particularly worries about is Russia. Defense One reported in May 2016 that he believes the Ukraine conflict has “revealed that the Russians have superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated use of UAVs for tactical effect. ” McMaster feared American military planners have invested too much effort in “winning missile duels,” proclaiming such tactics of limited use against the “dispersion, concealment, intermingling with civilian populations … the ability to disrupt our network strike capability, precision navigation and timing capabilities” demonstrated by Russian forces in Ukraine. He was also concerned about Russia’s advantages in battlefield artillery. He was also concerned about Russia’s advantages in battlefield artillery, including their use of cluster munitions, thermobaric warheads, and heavy use of electronic warfare, citing reports of Russia’s astonishing effectiveness at shutting down Ukranian tactical radios, drones, and even the electrical fuses on their artillery shells. Even the vaunted American technological edge in air supremacy, tanks, and armored fighting vehicles has dangerously eroded, in McMaster’s estimation. | 1 |
How Putin Derailed the West
By Mike Whitney Nation state as a fundamental unit of mans organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era, 1971
Im going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria .not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Third Presidential Debate
" Counterpunch " - Why is Hillary Clinton so eager to intensify US involvement in Syria when US interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have all gone so terribly wrong?
The answer to this question is simple. Its because Clinton doesnt think that these interventions went wrong. And neither do any of the other members of the US foreign policy establishment. (akaThe Borg). In fact, in their eyes these wars have been a rousing success. Sure, a few have been critical of the public relations backlash from the nonexistent WMD in Iraq, (or the logistical errors, like disbanding the Iraqi Army) butfor the most part the foreign policy establishment is satisfied with its efforts to destabilize the region and remove leaders that refuse to follow Washingtons diktats.
This is hard for ordinary people to understand. They cant grasp why elite powerbrokers would want to transform functioning, stable countries into uninhabitable wastelands overrun by armed extremists, sectarian death squads and foreign-born terrorists. Nor can they understand what has been gained by Washingtons 15 year-long rampage across the Middle East and Central Asia that has turned a vast swathe of strategic territory into a terrorist breeding grounds? What is the purpose of all this?
First, we have to acknowledge that the decimation and de facto balkanization of these countries is part of a plan. If it wasnt part of a plan, than the decision-makers would change the policy. But they havent changed the policy. The policy is the same. The fact that the US is using foreign-born jihadists to pursue regime change in Syria as opposed to US troops in Iraq, is not a fundamental change in the policy. The ultimate goal is still the decimation of the state and the elimination of the existing government. This same rule applies to Libya and Afghanistan both of which have been plunged into chaos by Washingtons actions.
But why? What is gained by destroying these countries and generating so much suffering and death?
Heres what I think: I think Washington is involved in a grand project to remake the world in a way that better meets the needs of its elite constituents, the international banks and multinational corporations. Brzezinski not only refers to this in the opening Quote: , he also explains what is taking place: The nation-state is being jettisoned as the foundation upon which the global order rests. Instead, Washington is erasing borders, liquidating states, and removing strong, secular leaders that can mount resistance to its machinations in order to impose an entirely new model on the region, a new world order. The people who run these elite institutions want to create an interconnected-global free trade zone overseen by the proconsuls of Big Capital, in other words, a global Eurozone that precludes the required state institutions (like a centralized treasury, mutual debt, federal transfers) that would allow the borderless entity to function properly.
Deep state powerbrokers who set policy behind the smokescreen of our bought-and-paid-for congress think that one world government is an achievable goal provided they control the worlds energy supplies, the worlds reserve currency and become the dominant player in this centurys most populous and prosperous region, Asia. This is essentially what Hillarys pivot to Asia is all about.
The basic problem with Washingtons NWO plan is that a growing number of powerful countries are still attached to the old world order and are now prepared to defend it. This is whats really going on in Syria, the improbable alliance of Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah have stopped the US military juggernaut dead in its tracks. The unstoppable force has hit the immovable object and the immovable object has prevailed so far.
Naturally, the foreign policy establishment is upset about these new developments, and for good reason. The US has run the world for quite a while now, so the rolling back of US policy in Syria is as much a surprise as it is a threat. The Russian Airforce deployed to Syria a full year ago in September, but only recently has Washington shown that its prepared to respond by increasing its support of its jihadists agents on the ground and by mounting an attack on ISIS in the eastern part of the country, Raqqa. But the real escalation is expected to take place when Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2017. Thats when the US will directly engage Russia militarily, assuming that their tit-for-tat encounters will be contained within Syrias borders. Its a risky plan, but its the next logical step in this bloody fiasco. Neither party wants a nuclear war, but Washington believes that doing nothing is tantamount to backing down, therefore, Hillary and her neocon advisors can be counted on to up the ante. No-fly zone, anyone?
The assumption is that eventually, and with enough pressure, Putin will throw in the towel. But this is another miscalculation. Putin is not in Syria because he wants to be nor is he there because he values his friendship with Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Thats not it at all. Putin is in Syria because he has no choice. Russias national security is at stake. If Washingtons strategy of deploying terrorists to topple Assad succeeds, then the same ploy will be attempted in Iran and Russia. Putin knows this, just like he knows that the scourge of foreign-backed terrorism can decimate entire regions like Chechnya. He knows that its better for him to kill these extremists in Aleppo than it will be in Moscow. So he cant back down, thats not an option.
But, by the same token, he can compromise, in other words, his goals and the goals of Assad do not perfectly coincide. For example, he could very well make territorial concessions to the US for the sake of peace that Assad might not support.
But why would he do that? Why wouldnt he continue to fight until every inch of Syrias sovereign territory is recovered?
Because its not in Russias national interest to do so, thats why. Putin has never tried to conceal the fact that hes in Syria to protect Russias national security. Thats his main objective. But hes not an idealist, hes a pragmatist wholl do whatever he has to to end the war ASAP. That means compromise.
This doesnt matter to the Washington warlords .yet. But it will eventually. Eventually there will be an accommodation of some sort. No one is going to get everything they want, that much is certain. For example, its impossible to imagine that Putin would launch a war on Turkey to recover the territory that Turkish troops now occupy in N Syria. In fact, Putin may have already conceded as much to Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan in their recent meetings. But that doesnt mean that Putin doesnt have his red lines. He does. Aleppo is a red line. Turkish troops will not be allowed to enter Aleppo.
The western corridor, the industrial and population centers are all red lines. On these, there will be no compromise. Putin will help Assad remain in power and keep the country largely intact. But will Turkey control sections in the north, and will the US control sections in the east?
Probably. This will have to be worked out in negotiations, but its unlikely that the countrys borders will be the same as they were before the war broke out. Putin will undoubtedly settle for a halfloaf provided the fighting ends and security is restored. In any event, hes not going to hang around until the last dog is hung.
Unfortunately, were a long way from any settlement in Syria, mainly because Washington is nowhere near accepting the fact that its project to rule the world has been derailed. Thats the crux of the matter, isnt it? The bigshots who run the country are still in denial. It hasnt sunk in yet that the war is lost and that their nutty jihadist-militia plan has failed.
Its going to take a long time before Washington gets the message that the world is no longer its oyster. The sooner they figure it out, the better itll be for everyone. Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected] . | 0 |
Nearly two years after a sweeping corruption case first felled top leaders of FIFA, the governing body for international soccer announced on Friday that it had cataloged its officials’ wrongdoing and delivered the results of a internal investigation to government authorities. The investigation, undertaken by two prominent law firms in 2015, drew on millions of documents and interviews with current and former employees. Among those interviewed was Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s longtime president who stepped down amid scandal, his lawyer confirmed. In recent days, FIFA said, the organization turned over the last in a series of inquiry reports — totaling 1, 300 pages, with an additional 20, 000 pages of supplementary evidence — to Switzerland’s office of the attorney general. Swiss prosecutors, who have named Mr. Blatter and his former top deputy, Jérôme Valcke, as subjects of a criminal investigation, are expected to share the information with the United States Justice Department, which led international scrutiny of FIFA by charging dozens of soccer officials, businessmen and companies with racketeering, money laundering, wire fraud and bribery in 2015. In its announcement, FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, seemed eager to turn the page on one of the darkest chapters in its history. “FIFA committed to conducting a thorough and comprehensive investigation of the facts so we could hold wrongdoers within football accountable and cooperate with the authorities,” Mr. Infantino said. “FIFA will now return its focus to the game. ” The American and Swiss investigations are, however, continuing — deconstructing schemes spanning decades to which more than a dozen have confessed. So, too, is an investigation in France, where Mr. Valcke lives. That inquiry is being conducted by France’s national financial prosecutor’s office, which, like the American investigators’ has relied on cooperation from Switzerland’s attorney general. Swiss privacy laws dictate that FIFA’s information must be funneled through Swiss authorities. FIFA, based in Zurich, is forbidden to deliver documents directly to other governments, which frustrated FIFA’s lawyers during early stages of the United States’ case, as they sought to telegraph their cooperation and to solidify FIFA’s place as a victim in the eyes of the authorities. “The office of the attorney general of Switzerland appreciates the preliminary exchange of information and FIFA’s close and consistent cooperation,” Ladina Gapp, a spokeswoman for that office, wrote in an email on Friday. “Since the criminal proceedings are ongoing, FIFA is restricted from releasing or commenting on the findings from its investigation. ” The narrative reports and corresponding evidence newly turned over by FIFA might not be revelatory for government authorities, who have obtained voluminous information through their own interviews, raids and specific document requests, to which FIFA has responded on a rolling basis over the last two years. But the reports, produced by the American law firm Quinn Emanuel and the Swiss law firm Niederer Kraft Frey, catalog FIFA’s insight into its leadership’s possible crimes and signal a symbolic moment as the organization seeks to emerge from the scandal. The United States has charged more than 40 defendants in its case. Of those, 19 people have so far publicly pleaded guilty, along with multiple companies. As recently as December 2016, a new guilty plea was unsealed. Five soccer officials are actively fighting charges in the United States and set to stand trial in the fall, while numerous others remain abroad and have not answered to the charges against them. The investigations have been dizzying — and expensive — for FIFA, which has asked the United States government for tens of millions of dollars, a portion of the money that the convicted defendants have pledged to pay the Justice Department in restitution. The scandal has unseated dozens of international and national soccer officials, predominantly from South and Central America, some with deep roots in the sport and their names emblazoned on administration buildings. At least one implicated leader remains in power: Marco Polo Del Nero, the president of Brazil’s soccer association, who was indicted by the United States in 2015. Mr. Infantino, who succeeded Mr. Blatter as FIFA’s president last year, has broadly condemned the disfiguring corruption and advocated change, but he has not called for Mr. Del Nero’s resignation and met with him in Rio de Janeiro last summer as part of a routine visit. | 1 |
PARIS — Inspired by the Statue of Liberty, the American contemporary artist Jeff Koons is donating a monumental sculpture of a fistful of tulips to the City of Paris and the people of France to commemorate victims of the recent terrorist attacks here. One of Mr. Koons’s largest sculptures — 34 feet high, 27 feet wide and 33 feet deep — “Bouquet of Tulips” is meant to echo the hand of the Statue of Liberty, a gift to the United States from France. Currently under construction in Germany, the work, made of bronze, stainless steel and aluminum, will be permanently installed next year in the plaza in front of the Museum of Modern Art and the Palais de Tokyo. “I hope the work is to people,” Mr. Koons said in an interview here on Monday. “I hope that the ‘Bouquet of Tulips’ can communicate a sense of future, of optimism, the joy of offering, to find something greater outside the self. ” Inspired by floral paintings by Fragonard, Picasso and others, he said that he had chosen the tulips for their “buoyancy,” which he hoped would inspire the families of victims of the attacks to carry on. Jane D. Hartley, the United States ambassador to France and Monaco, said she had been thinking of a cultural offering the United States could give France “in a spirit of ‘we’re in this together’” after terrorist attacks last year: ones at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket, and then the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people. “My hope is this amazing sculpture will bring visitors to Paris,” Ms. Hartley said at a news conference on Monday announcing the donation. Tourism in Paris has declined dramatically since the attacks. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, told attendees at the news conference that the sculpture delivered an optimistic message in turbulent times. “We need to tell the youth and the young generation that it’s not true that tomorrow’s world will be worse than it is today,” she said. Ms. Hartley approached Mr. Koons after discussing the idea at a dinner in Paris in January with her friend Jerry I. Speyer, chairman of the board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a collector of the artist’s work. “I know how much he loves France, and he’s the most prominent American living artist,” Ms. Hartley said in an interview before the news conference. Mr. Koons, best known for his metallic sculptures of balloon animals and other souvenir and everyday objects, is also one of the most polarizing and figures in the contemporary art world. His works have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars, but he waived payment for the sculpture. The 3. 5 million euros ($3. 8 million) it will cost to produce and install the work are being raised from private donations by a nonprofit foundation, Fonds Pour Paris, and its counterpart in the United States, the Paris Foundation. This is the first commemorative work Mr. Koons, who lives in New York, has created, but he does have a festive work, “Balloon Flower (Red),” on display outside 7 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Koons’s work has proved controversial in France. When some of it was displayed at Versailles in 2008, part of a program showing contemporary art at that historic site, French art critics questioned “the intrusion within the walls of the chateau of 16 giant glittering sculptures by an artist considered a paragon of kitsch,” Le Monde reported at the time. Six years later, in a review of Mr. Koons’s work at the Pompidou Center in Paris, Le Figaro asked in a headline whether he was an “impostor or a creator?” | 1 |
Jason Frierson is an African-American Democrat seeking re-election to in November 2016. While he is not the incumbent this election, he was the assemblyman for the district during the 77th Nevada State Legislature; in 2013. His opponents are Republican Norm Ross and Democrat-turned-Libertarian John Moore , who is the current person representing the citizens.
Planned Parenthood Endorsement of Jason Frierson Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood Affiliates (NAPPA) website lists the candidates it endorses for the state’s 2016 Election Guide. On Frierson’s website, abortions are not on his list of issues. In fact, they are only listed in the list of groups and organizations that support him.
The candidate’s affiliation is evident in his photos taken with the women of the NAPPA dressed wearing the standard issue pink tee shirts. How can an African-American man accept the endorsement of a group whose founder began her campaign for birth control as eugenics against the black population?
Margaret Sanger pushed her agenda to forward her cause as early as 1912 when she authored a column, “What Every Girl Should Know.” In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control League and served as president until 1928. The league was the precursor to Planned Parenthood. Sanger was known to write for scientific journals on the importance of birth control for black women. One such article was entitled “Birth Control: The True Eugenics.” She even addressed the Klu Klux Klan in 1926 rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey, according to The Washington Times.
In 2012 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that there were 699, 202 legal abortions in the United States. That means the abortion to live birth ratio was 210 per 1,000, respectively. This number may not be accurate since there were only 49 areas supplying data.
Norm Ross Fundraiser for LLS Whereas Ross opposes any tax funding of Planned Parenthood and prefers support from organizations that save lives. As such, he and his wife, Mojgan, a candidate Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) Woman of the Year, held a fundraiser in their home raising $5,000 in donations.
During 2015, the organization invested $67.2 million in research to find a cure for leukemia and lymphoma. Their goal is diametrically opposed to that of Planned Parenthood.
The guest of honor was a young boy, a local resident, who has survived a blood cancer. The LLS website explains the program, Boy & Girl of the Year, provides inspiration and motivation for volunteers and donors.
Jeana Foster wrote this testimonial: “Working with LLS, meeting ‘Boy and Girl of the Year’ […] and knowing that my efforts will bring us closer to finding a cure for them and all those suffering from blood cancers is truly inspiring.”
Jason Frierson Following Hillary Clinton’s Policies Does Frierson agree with Hillary Clinton’s Democratic party line?
Does he support open borders, which has created a significant number of non-English speaking students in Nevada’s public schools? What does he think about allowing millions of refugees entering the U.S. without proper vetting? How about the massive tax increases Clinton has promised Americans? What is his stand about the Army General imprisoned for breaches of National Security? Does Frierson really think that Clinton deserves a get-out-of-jail-free-card for the same offenses? What is his position on Transgender restrooms? These questions need to be answered by Frierson. He appears to be a confused candidate; he is endorsed by an organization that provides abortion and was founded by a woman whose philosophy was eugenics of black Americans. Furthermore, Frierson tows the Democratic platform and supports Clinton’s illegitimate candidacy for the presidency.
By Cathy Milne
Sources:
Interview with Norm Ross October 20, 2016
Jason Frierson For Assembly District 8: Issues; Endorsements
The Washington Times: GROSSU: Margaret Sanger, racist eugenicist extraordinaire
Biography: Margaret Sanger
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Southern Nevada Chapter Website: About
Top and Featured Image Courtesy of Charlotte Copper’s
Inset Image Courtesy of Norm Ross – Used With Permission #CMJournalist , Frierson , John Moore , Norm Ross , Planned Parenthood | 0 |
(mis à jour 18:15 26.10.2016) URL courte 0 57 1 0 Les livres d’entretiens ne réussissent pas aux candidats à la présidentielle ! Après « Un président ne devrait pas dire ça », qui éclabousse Hollande, c’est « Un Fantasme nommé Juppé » qui se retourne contre son auteur. Dans les deux cas, leur livre révèle surtout le manque de vision de ces politiciens.
Wesh, Péju, trop de la balle le mec, ou quoi ? Trop chanmé, sérieux, comment qu'il les calcule pas les condés ! T'ain, j'le prenais pour un bouffon, deux de tension, trop cheum, tu vois, mais y déchire sa race, le cousin !
Eh oui, Juppé, il ne lui manque plus que le sweat capuche, la casquette des Chicago Bulls avec une plaque en simili métal et les chaînes autour du cou. Tel le djeune de base emmerdé par les flics dans ses petits trafics — pardon, dans son activité d'entrepreneur indépendant —, voilà-t'y pas que notre Ali-du 9-3-larchourma-de-ta-vie — ah voilà que ça me reprend — confesse toute la détestation que lui inspirent les flics et les juges. C'est dans un livre à paraître, Un Fantasme nommé Juppé , mais dont mes confrères n'ont pas hésitéà divulguer quelques bonne feuilles.
Monsieur le Premier ministre me pardonnera ma familiarité, c'est bien lui qui affirmait, dans un effort de coolitude assez déplacé quand on l'air comme lui de faire un usage plutôt déplacé des balais, qu'il « emmerdait » ceux qui le trouvaient ennuyeux, je vous en parlais d'ailleurs il y a quelque temps.
Donc le candidat favori des Français, selon ses propres mots, s'apparente donc à un Black Block de base qui scande en marge des manifs Loi travail « tout le monde déteste la police ». Oui, mais pas que. Dans son bouquin, notre énarque assoiffé de pouvoir explique qu'il n'aime donc pas l'intérieur, la justice, mais pas non plus le ministère des Finances « où il n'y a que des coups à prendre ». Sous Sarkozy, il ne voulait même pas du Quai d'Orsay, expliquant au président « Je ne veux pas porter ton cartable ».
Bref, rien n'est assez bien pour lui, « le meilleur d'entre nous » ne se voit que sur le trône élyséen. Grattez un peu et sous la couche de coolitude, l'animal à sang froid réapparaît rapidement. Comme la plupart de ses petits camarades, Alain Juppé n'est intéressé que par le pouvoir. Mais pour en faire quoi ? Pas forcément pour appliquer des idées dites « de droite » si l'on en croit cette confession : « J'ai été de droite pour prouver qu'on pouvait être intelligent et de droite ! » Ou pas, donc.
D'ailleurs, il suffit de se pencher un peu sur son action pour que le vernis « de droite » craque aussi légèrement. Quel homme de droite — quel républicain sensé, d'ailleurs — entretiendrait des liens aussi étroits avec l'UOIF, c'est-à-dire les Frères musulmans, comme le fait Alain Juppé ? Rappelons qu'il a remis la Légion d'Honneur à l'imam Tareq Oubrou, membre de l'UOIF et ami de Tariq Ramadan en août dernier.
Je me réfère également au témoignage d'Amine Elbahi, un jeune ex-soutien du candidat bordelais. Bel exemple d'intégration, le jeune homme s'était engagé dans la réserve citoyenne de l'Éducation nationale et dans les Républicains, aux côtés d'Alain Juppé. « Rester à ses côtés serait renier mes convictions. » explique maintenant Amine Elbahi, qui déplore qu'Alain Juppé travaille aux côtés des salafistes de l'UOIF, comme Amar Lasfar, Tareq Obrou, Ahmed Miktar, qui tous prônent un islam politique incompatible avec nos valeurs françaises et républicaines.
Oui, le pouvoir pour faire quoi ? On ne sait pas trop donc. Pour l'exercer, tout simplement, tout comme l'actuel locataire de l'Élysée qui lui aussi est là pour le plaisir d'être là et non pour porter une vision. Autre point commun entre les deux hommes : ils ont sorti des livres d'entretiens qu'ils auraient mieux fait de relire avant publication. Le scandale (dans un verre d'eau) du bouquin de Juppé n'ayant pas encore effacé celui du bien nommé« Un président ne devrait pas dire ça » de Hollande, vous avez encore ne mémoire les propos peu amènes du Corrézien de service à propos de la magistrature (tiens encore un point commun), de l'immigration ou de l'islam.
Eh bien devinez quoi, ce n'est pas de sa faute, à Hollande ! Ce sont les méchants journalistes qui l'ont pousséà la faute ! Tu parles, en 62 entretiens et 10 dîners, ils ont le temps de le pousser, pépère ! et c'est Jean Glavany qui nous l'affirme :
« … ils savaient depuis le début qu'ils gagneraient d'autant plus d'argent qu'ils pousseraient le président à la faute. Alors ils l'ont poussé, poussé, poussé… et il est tombé, tombé, tombé dans le piège. »
Pauvre pépère, il n'a pas fait exprès ! En tout cas, il y en a un qui n'est pas content, c'est Alain Juppé, parce que cette excuse bidon pour des propos foireux dans un livre probablement lamentable, elle est déjà prise, maintenant ! | 0 |
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