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WASHINGTON — Two groups of Russian hackers, working for competing government intelligence agencies, penetrated computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to emails, chats and a trove of opposition research against Donald J. Trump, according to the party and a cybersecurity firm. One group placed espionage software on the committee’s computer servers last summer, giving it unimpeded access to communications for about a year. The committee called in CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, early last month after the Democratic Party began to suspect an intrusion. A senior government official said Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, based in Brooklyn, also appeared to have been targeted, but it was not clear whether it lost any data. The breach at the Democratic committee was first reported on Tuesday by The Washington Post. The committee’s systems appeared to have had standard cyberprotections, which are no challenge for determined hacking groups. The attackers were expelled last weekend with CrowdStrike’s help, the committee said. It did not provide a detailed account of what had been copied from the systems, and it may never know. The connection to Russia may be explained simply by the global fascination with the presidential campaign and the mystery surrounding Mr. Trump, who has not been a major subject of foreign intelligence collection. But it also recalls a subplot to the race: Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, previously advised politicians in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, including former President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine. Opposition research itself is not all that valuable to a foreign government, but it can point to a candidate’s vulnerabilities. To a foreign government fascinated by an American election, any intelligence a campaign develops on an opponent could be exploited. Dmitri Alperovitch, a of CrowdStrike, said he believed that the group that first hacked the committee’s servers — a group his firm had named Cozy Bear long before the breach — appeared to be the same that downloaded communications in recent years from unclassified email systems used by the State Department and the White House. In 2014 and 2015, the effort to clean the State Department systems after those intrusions resulted in several shutdowns, some in the midst of delicate negotiations with Iran. The administration has never confirmed that the Russian government was behind those intrusions, but it has briefed officials on the details in classified sessions. “These are incredibly sophisticated groups,” Mr. Alperovitch said. “They covered their tracks well. It wasn’t until the second group came in,” stealing the opposition research on Mr. Trump, “that their presence was detected. ” The second group, named Fancy Bear, which appeared to have attacked in April, is believed to be operated by the G. R. U. the military intelligence service. Its past targets have included military and aerospace organizations from the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and South Korea. CrowdStrike concluded that neither Russian group knew the other was attacking the same organization. “One would steal a password, and the next day the other group would steal the same password,” Mr. Alperovitch said. Mrs. Clinton said on Telemundo that she had learned of the breach only after news outlets reported it. She called it “troubling,” but said she was unsure about the hackers’ goals. “Now, why?” she asked. “We don’t know yet. So far as we know, my campaign has not been hacked into, and we’re obviously looking hard at that. But cybersecurity will be an issue that I will be absolutely focused on as president. Because whether it’s Russia, or China, Iran or North Korea, more and more countries are using hacking to steal our information, to use it to their advantage, and we can’t let that go on. ” The Office of Personnel Management, whose files on about 22 million Americans with security clearances or applications for them were breached by Chinese hackers, is still trying to assess the damage first detected last year. The Democratic committee avoided any discussion of its vulnerabilities. “The security of our system is critical to our operation and to the confidence of the campaigns and state parties we work with,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the Democratic national chairwoman. “When we discovered the intrusion, we treated this like the serious incident it is and reached out to CrowdStrike immediately. Our team moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure our network. ” The party did not say how it came to suspect the intrusion. Cyberattacks by foreign governments are a constant threat to political campaigns. Because campaign operations are temporary, they often do not invest heavily in the kind of security that financial institutions, large companies and government agencies spend millions or billions of dollars on each year. And because campaigns are so with volunteers connecting through laptops and cellphones, they are particularly vulnerable. In 2008, hackers traced to the Chinese government infiltrated the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain. “It should come as no surprise to anyone that political parties are targets for foreign intelligence gathering,” Representative Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat who has been deeply involved in cyberissues, said in a statement. “Nonetheless, it is disconcerting that two independent operations were able to penetrate the D. N. C. one of which was able to stay embedded for nearly a year. ” | 1 |
TEL AVIV — A senior Iranian official goaded President Donald Trump on Sunday, insisting the U. S. would suffer an “unprecedented defeat” at the hands of an “iron dam” like Iran. [Ali Akbar Velayati, head of the Expediency Council’s Strategic Research Center, told the Tasnim news agency that a “calculating newcomer” like Trump wouldn’t dare confront Iran, which is far more powerful than other countries the U. S. has come up against. Velayati was responding to Trump’s veiled warning on Friday to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in which he said Rouhani “better be careful” about threatening the U. S. “We are by no means worried about Trump’s comments,” Velayati said, adding that despite Trump’s public rhetoric, the president is a calculating politician. Furthermore, the Iranian official told Tasnim, the opposition Trump faces at home among the media, judiciary and influential politicians will prevent him from doing what he wants with Iran. Velayati, who also served as Iran’s foreign minister, said the Islamic Republic was not seeking war against any country, but would not waste a moment defending itself if necessary. His comments come after Rouhani addressed the Iranian people on Friday in an event to commemorate the 38th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. “We are experiencing conditions in which some novices have come to power in the region, in the world and in the U. S. as they should all know that they have to talk to the Iranian nation with the language of respect and dignity,” Rouhani said. The following day, head of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations Kamal Kharrazi described the new president as “a rookie person and a newcomer on the political scene [who] has made many mistakes. ” The commemoration of the revolution was marked with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets and celebrating by burning effigies of Trump and chanting “Death to America,” and “Death to Israel. ” | 1 |
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A Queens woman was killed after being pushed in front of a subway train in Times Square on Monday, the New York Police Department said. The attack disrupted traffic at one of the city’s busiest transit hubs as trains were diverted and emergency workers converged on the scene. Assistant Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan detectives, said witnesses on both the subway platform and the train itself flagged down police officers and pointed out a suspect. Melanie a Queens woman, was taken into custody almost immediately and later charged with murder. The police described her as emotionally disturbed and said that she had made up a story last month about pushing a woman onto the tracks. The victim’s name was not immediately released. The police were combing through video from the platform and the area to better understand what happened, but the preliminary investigation suggested that the attack was unprovoked. The attack occurred at 1:20 p. m. when a woman was pushed in front of a No. 1 train. Swarms of police officers and emergency workers converged on the station, and subway traffic was rerouted as emergency crews worked to remove the body, which was pinned under the third car of the train. The Times Street station is the busiest on the subway system, with 66 million annual riders. It serves 10 subway lines and the shuttle to Grand Central Station. More than 200, 000 people navigate the tunnels there every day. Cases involving people being pushed in front of subway trains are exceedingly rare, but when they occur, they strike at some of the deepest fears held by city dwellers. In 2012, when Han of Queens was struck and killed by a train in Manhattan, The New York Post published a photograph of him on the tracks moments before his death. Less than a month later, when another person was pushed in front of a train in an unprovoked attack, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought to reassure jittery riders. “You can say it’s only two out of the three or four million people who ride the subway every day, but two is two too many,” Mr. Bloomberg said then. “I don’t know that there is a way to prevent things. There is always going to be somebody, a deranged person. ” In 1999, two attacks involving mentally ill people pushing unsuspecting victims into the path of trains, one fatally, led to legislation giving families the right to demand outpatient psychiatric treatment for their ill relatives. Known as Kendra’s Law, it permits state judges to order closely monitored outpatient treatment for people with serious mental illnesses who have records of failing to take medication, and who have frequently been hospitalized or jailed or have exhibited violent behavior. The law was named for Kendra Webdale, who was pushed to her death by Andrew Goldstein. He had stopped taking the medication he had been prescribed for schizophrenia. | 1 |
Thursday on Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated radio show, “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd was asked how he would define embattled former Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly on the heels of his departure from Fox News. Todd told host Hugh Hewitt that he didn’t view O’Reilly as a traditional conservative and was more an entertainer than the rest of his Fox News Channel colleagues. Partial transcript as follows (courtesy HughHewitt. com): HEWITT: Bill O’Reilly is gone. And I have been having an argument online today with our friend, Lachlan Markay at the Daily Beast, and Chris Cillizza. I have never considered Bill a conservative. I thought he was an entertainer, bombastic and loud, and there was a reason that President Obama would much rather be interviewed by Bill O’Reilly than Chuck Todd. He was never going to take you deep and focused. What do you, where do you put him on the spectrum of people who do what we do? TODD: Look, I agree with you. He was not sort of a traditional conservative. He was, to me, he gave voice, what he did, he was the tone setter. He was sort of that correctness. That was, if he had a true north, that was it, right? HEWITT: Yup. TODD: If there was some way he could do that story, and if he could do that every night, right, he would find a way to do some form of that every night. But what he was, was the you know, it’s like he was the opening act that brought the crowds, but he became almost more fun to watch than the concert itself, sometimes. HEWITT: Yeah. TODD: But he was the entertainer, probably more entertainer than any of the others, right? And anybody else in this ecosystem is, I mean, he said it in his own statement. I thought it was incredibly that he said informed and entertained. He used the word entertained. HEWITT: Yeah. TODD: No real journalist would use that. HEWITT: Yeah, yeah. TODD: Okay, and that’s fine. I admire the at least by saying that. But, so but he set a tone, and I think so while he was never, you cannot take an issue and say Bill O’Reilly championed that issue beyond the war, the phony war on Christmas, right? That was like a fun, that was an entertainment thing for him. But you couldn’t say championed one issue or one cause or thing like that. But what was thought, what would the conservative media ecosystem be without him? HEWITT: Well, he brought people to Fox. He built the mall, right? He built the mall, and the mall has Sean Hannity in it, who like me is a partisan. TODD: Yeah. HEWITT: But he was an anchor store in a mall, but he was not selling conservative goods. That’s what I’ve always said. I’ve got to ask you about, though, the other thing. And I’m, I don’t, allegations are allegations. There are a lot of them about it. I just point out I’ve been doing this since ’89. I’ve never had one allegation against me. And last time I was on your set, I’m sitting next to Tom Brokaw, who’s been doing this a lot longer than that, and there’s never been one allegation against him. You know, it is a business in which it’s possible to be professional and a gentleman without ever attracting these kinds of charges. TODD: It is. And the fact of the matter is, look, here’s my understanding of what happened. The board of directors at 21st Century Fox said this is just bad for business. And I, the culture is bad for business. HEWITT: Yeah. TODD: Obviously, advertisers are speaking. What are you doing? You’re paying all this money. And look, you cannot help but connect O’Reilly to Ailes and say there had to be a culture of look the other way if the guy approving settlements was also accused. So you know, it really underscores this idea that this stuff happens when you create a culture of tolerance for it. HEWITT: Yeah, workplace dynamic matters. I will say this as an NBC guy now, if they put Tucker Carlson in there, and they give Dana that hour, that’s stiff winds for us, because they’re both serious people and they’re smart. And that’s what we have to … TODD: You know, I don’t want to get into the lineup. I have, let’s just say there’s a lot of people who have a lot of theories about, I will say this. I think there has never been more, if you enjoy watching the cable news prime time game, I would just say this. There’s never been more jump balls. HEWITT: Exactly. TODD: The big guy, the big guy on the block looks more vulnerable than ever. Golden State, they look like, you know, it’s like Golden State without Kevin Durant. It looks pretty beatable. HEWITT: Wait a minute. You’re talking about the Cavaliers without LeBron, Chuck. TODD: Oh, sorry. That’s right. I’m sorry. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
If you spend more on education, will students do better? Educators, politicians and unions have battled in court over that crucial question for decades, most recently in a sweeping decision this fall in Connecticut, where a judge ordered the state to revamp nearly every facet of its education policies, from graduation requirements to special education, along with its school funding. For many years, research on the relationship between spending and student learning has been surprisingly inconclusive. Many other factors, including student poverty, parental education and the way schools are organized, contribute to educational results. Teasing out the specific effect of money spent is methodologically difficult. Opponents of increased school funding have seized on that ambiguity to argue that, for schools, money doesn’t matter — and, therefore, more money isn’t needed. But new, research suggests that conclusion is mistaken. Money really does matter in education, which could provide fresh momentum for more lawsuits and judgments like the Connecticut decision. The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in July, was conducted by the economists Julien Lafortune and Jesse Rothstein of the University of California at Berkeley and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of Northwestern. They examined student test scores in 26 states that have changed the way they fund schools since 1990, usually in response to a lawsuit like Connecticut’s, and compared them with those in 23 states that haven’t. While no two states did exactly the same thing, they all had the effect of increasing funding for the poorest districts. The time frame is important: That’s when courts changed how they think about states’ obligations to public schoolchildren. Previously, nearly all school funding lawsuits focused on the question of “equity” — did disadvantaged students receive funding equal to that of their peers? The problem with that perspective was the answer could be “yes,” even if funding was too low across the board. Starting with a 1990 court case in Kentucky, courts started asking about “adequacy” instead. Were school districts getting enough money, which might require giving extra money to districts that enroll many students? “There’s been this wave of school finance reform across the country over the last few decades,” Mr. Rothstein said. “I think it’s fair to say it’s the largest reform aimed at equity since school desegregation, and we really didn’t know what the impacts were. There’s now growing evidence, from my work and from others, that those reforms did lead to improved achievement and improved outcomes for children in school districts. ” Mr. Lafortune, Mr. Rothstein and Ms. Schanzenbach also solved a difficult methodological problem that had plagued school finance researchers for decades. More money isn’t an end unto itself — the goal is to produce better results. But before the recent widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards, every state had its own standards and related tests. That made it hard to compare academic results from one state to another. The researchers took advantage of the one test that is taken by a representative sample of schoolchildren nationwide: the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is administered by the Department of Education. Although NAEP results are usually published only for whole states and a small number of large urban school districts, the researchers got the education department to let them analyze individual student scores. Those results include information on the ’s race and income, as well as school district attended. The researchers could compare performance in poor and wealthy districts before and after changes in spending. They found a consistent pattern: In the long run, over comparable time frames, states that send additional money to their school districts see more academic improvement in those districts than states that don’t. The size of the effect was significant. The changes bought at least twice as much achievement per dollar as a experiment that decreased class sizes in the early grades. Another paper, published this year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, looked at the same question through a different lens. That study examined outcomes, like how long students stayed in school and how much they earned as adults, for students in districts with and without funding changes. Here, too, researchers saw gains with more money spent. That study was conducted by C. Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern, Rucker C. Johnson from the University of California at Berkeley and Claudia Persico, then a graduate student at Northwestern and now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin. They examined outcomes for about 15, 000 people, born between 1955 and 1985, and found that for poor children, a 10 percent increase in spending each year of elementary and secondary school was associated with wages that were nearly 10 percent higher, a drop in the incidence of adult poverty and roughly six additional months of schooling. “The notion that spending doesn’t matter is just not true,” Mr. Jackson said. “We found that exposure to higher levels of public spending when you’re in school has a pretty large beneficial effect on the adult outcomes of kids, and that those effects are much more pronounced for children from families. ” Donald J. Trump’s recent nomination of Betsy DeVos, a wealthy Republican and longtime supporter of private school vouchers, to be secretary of education probably won’t help the cause of those who want to use this research to spend more in public school districts. But because 92 percent of all funding comes from state and local sources, the decision won’t be up to her. It will lie with state lawmakers who now have a better reason to invest more in school districts educating children who have the least money. What the studies do not offer, notes Jennifer Alexander, chief executive of the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, a group that backs charter schools and other overhauls, is robust information on the best use of the money. “How money is spent is equally important,” she said, “and I don’t think we have enough information about that from these studies. ” Mr. Rothstein cautioned that the idea that states could erase the achievement gap between poor and middle class students by simply cutting a few checks was unrealistic. “There has been a tendency to expect magic from these reforms,” he said. But a change does not have to solve a problem completely, he said, to be valuable. “We should consider them successful if they contribute in a meaningful way to closing the gap,” Mr. Rothstein said. “We have to make some assessment as to whether it’s enough to matter, but enough to matter can be quite a bit less than totally eliminating it. ” | 1 |
Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the .) Today’s introduction comes to us from Jennifer Medina, a national correspondent based in Los Angeles, and the photographer Melissa Lyttle. When “Zoot Suit” made its debut in New York in 1979, it was the first time a Chicano show had made it to Broadway. But the musical by Luis Valdez was a distinctly Los Angeles production: it was commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum and portrayed a 1940s murder trial involving youths known as pachucos. The trial is set against the backdrop of the infamous Zoot Suit riots, a series of racially motivated attacks against in the summer of 1943. To help mark the Los Angeles Center Theater Group’s 50th anniversary, the show returned recently to the downtown stage for the first time since 1978. When tickets went on sale late last year, the production sold out quickly and has since been extended three separate times, a rare occurrence at the theater. The acclaim and enthusiasm demonstrates how the play touches a deep nerve in Los Angeles, particularly at another moment of political upheaval. Some of the shows most devoted fans are showing up to the performances dressed in their own zoot suits and vintage attire. We spoke to some of them to hear what the play means to them. Click here to see photographs of these stylish fans and read their interviews. (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • Gov. Jerry Brown and California legislative leaders announced a multibillion dollar deal to pay for repairs to the state’s aging roads and bridges. The agreement included a raise on taxes at the pump. [SFGate] • Here’s what you need to know about the bill. [The Mercury News] • The California attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said he had filed an amicus brief supporting San Francisco’s court challenge to President Trump’s order targeting sanctuary cities. [Los Angeles Times] • John Cox, a Republican newcomer, now leads the pack of candidates trailing Gavin Newsom in next year’s race for California governor, according to a new statewide poll. [The Sacramento Bee] • The Fox News host Bill O’Reilly issued an apology on Tuesday to California Representative Maxine Waters after making comments about her hair. [The New York Times] • The progressive Jewish community that helped raise Trump adviser Stephen Miller is struggling to figure out how a native son found an intellectual home with the president and his allies. [The Hollywood Reporter] • A measure that would bar employers from firing workers for having an abortion or giving birth to a child out of wedlock is getting pushback from religious groups. [Los Angeles Times] • Oakland allowed well over a year to pass between the last two fire inspections of the halfway house struck by a deadly blaze this week, an apparent breach of a state law requiring annual reviews. [San Francisco Chronicle] • A man who slipped out of handcuffs and escaped from the back seat of a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s patrol car was arrested in Las Vegas. [Los Angeles Times] • A newly disclosed claim Google filed against the head of Uber’s car unit may help Uber. [The New York Times] • As state water officials head into the Sierra Nevada on Thursday for their annual snowpack reading, California still has a huge amount of snow covering its highest mountain peaks. [Los Angeles Daily News] • Heavy rains this winter led to a bumper crop of crane flies, often called “mosquito hawks,” in San Diego County. They look scary, but are quite benign. [San Diego Union Tribune] • Choked by traffic and overwhelmed by housing costs, a greater percentage of Bay Area residents than a year ago now say they yearn to flee the region. [The Mercury News] • The Getty Research Institute has acquired hundreds of thousands of items from Frank Gehry’s career. [The New York Times] • Despite the spectacular over the award for best picture at the Oscars this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will continue to work with the accounting firm PwC. [The New York Times] • Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, has won 200 games faster than any other coach in league history. [The New York Times] Imagine you’re a newly born elephant seal, like the one above. You’re lying on the beach trying to get some rest. And then all of a sudden, a loud, buzzing drone comes out of nowhere, totally interrupting your nap. These kinds of incidents are becoming more common on beaches up and down the California coast, according to workers at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. Laura Chapman, 26, a rescue coordinator at the center, said in an interview Wednesday that the drones were likely being used for sightseeing or taking pictures, and that their pilots might be unaware of the harbor and elephant seals they are disturbing. “With new technology comes new responsibility,” she said. Ms. Chapman said that the noise was interrupting a very sensitive period in the lives of the young seals, and that the disruption could have implications for the pups’ nutrition. “If the animal’s looking at the drone, if they’re looking at you, they’re being harassed,” she said. “We just want people to know how big an impact they can have. ” Want to submit a photo for possible publication? You can do it here. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
Breitbart Senior Editor MILO has been named LGBTQ Nation’s 2016 person of the year, an award for the “top newsmaker” in the LGBTQ community. [MILO beat Vice Mike Pence for the top vote, receiving 70, 000 votes, over 80% of all votes. Pence also received a formidable 23, 000 votes. LGBTQ Nation say interview with MILO will be released next week. In their announcement of the award, LGBTQ Nation noted some of the allegedly “awful” reasons why MILO made the news in 2016, before acknowledging the Breitbart senior editor’s ability to influence the news cycle. Yiannopoulos made the news throughout 2016 and always for truly awful reasons. He was a queer cheerleader for Donald Trump, whom he called “Daddy. ” He has harassed and demeaned transgender people repeatedly. Hate him or love him, one thing Yiannopoulos truly excels at is getting attention for himself and his causes. If he decides to highlight an issue, his fans will follow his every word on the subject and more often than not, it’ll get moved to a mainstream audience as the story picks up steam from online chatter. For a gay guy from Britain, he has truly made his mark on conservative American politics and entertainment. He’s been able to brand himself the ultimate gay provocateur in a year of provocateurs. Yiannopoulos, however, wanted to add to his list of accomplishments in 2016, telling LGBTQ Nation his list included, “My banishment from Twitter, recently announced book deal ( now!) college tour, my jawline, and a really cute Siberian fox sable fur I just snapped up. ” LGBTQ Nation’s editorial staff added a note to the article indicating they removed a reference to MILO as a member of the movement. Read the full announcement at LGBTQ Nation here. DANGEROUS is available to now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself! | 1 |
Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor who became an eloquent witness for the six million Jews slaughtered in World War II and who, more than anyone else, seared the memory of the Holocaust on the world’s conscience, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87. Menachem Rosensaft, a longtime friend and the founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, confirmed the death in a phone call. Mr. Wiesel, a charismatic lecturer and humanities professor, was the author of several dozen books. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But he was defined not so much by the work he did as by the gaping void he filled. In the aftermath of the Germans’ systematic massacre of Jews, no voice had emerged to drive home the enormity of what had happened and how it had changed mankind’s conception of itself and of God. For almost two decades, the traumatized survivors — and American Jews, that they had not done more to rescue their brethren — seemed frozen in silence. But by the sheer force of his personality and his gift for the haunting phrase, Mr. Wiesel, who had been liberated from Buchenwald as a with the indelible tattoo on his arm, gradually exhumed the Holocaust from the burial ground of the history books. It was this speaking out against forgetfulness and violence that the Nobel committee recognized when it awarded him the peace prize in 1986. “Wiesel is a messenger to mankind,” the Nobel citation said. “His message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity. His belief that the forces fighting evil in the world can be victorious is a belief. ” Mr. Wiesel first gained attention in 1960 with the English translation of “Night,” his autobiographical account of the horrors he witnessed in the camps as a teenage boy. He wrote of how he had been plagued by guilt for having survived while millions died, and tormented by doubts about a God who would allow such slaughter. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed,” Mr. Wiesel wrote. “Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never. ” Mr. Wiesel went on to write novels, books of essays and reportage, two plays and even two cantatas. While many of his books were nominally about topics like Soviet Jews or Hasidic masters, they all dealt with profound questions resonating out of the Holocaust: What is the sense of living in a universe that tolerates unimaginable cruelty? How could the world have been mute? How can one go on believing? Mr. Wiesel asked the questions in spare prose and without raising his voice he rarely offered answers. “If I survived, it must be for some reason,” he told Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times in an interview in 1981. “I must do something with my life. It is too serious to play games with anymore, because in my place, someone else could have been saved. And so I speak for that person. On the other hand, I know I cannot. ” There may have been better chroniclers who evoked the hellish minutiae of the German death machine. There were arguably more illuminating philosophers. But no single figure was able to combine Mr. Wiesel’s moral urgency with his magnetism, which emanated from his deeply lined face and eyes as unrelievable melancholy. “He has the look of Lazarus about him,” the Roman Catholic writer François Mauriac wrote of Mr. Wiesel, a friend. President Obama, who visited the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp with Mr. Wiesel in 2009, called him a “living memorial. ” “He raised his voice, not just against but against hatred, bigotry and intolerance in all its forms,” the president said in a statement on Saturday. “He implored each of us, as nations and as human beings, to do the same, to see ourselves in each other and to make real that pledge of ‘never again. ’” Mr. Wiesel long grappled with what he called his “dialectical conflict”: the need to recount what he had seen and the futility of explaining an event that defied reason and imagination. In his Nobel speech, he said that what he had done with his life was to try “to keep memory alive” and “to fight those who would forget. ” “Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices,” he said. A year earlier, on April 19, 1985, Mr. Wiesel stirred deep emotions when, at a White House ceremony at which he accepted the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement, he tried to dissuade President Ronald Reagan from taking time from a planned trip to West Germany to visit a military cemetery there, in Bitburg, where members of Hitler’s elite Waffen SS were buried. “That place, Mr. President, is not your place,” he said. “Your place is with victims of the SS. ” Mr. Reagan, amid much criticism, went ahead and laid a wreath at Bitburg. Paradoxically, the confrontation led to Mr. Wiesel’s first postwar visit to Germany. He said afterward that he had been extremely moved by the young German students he met and the depth of their painful search for an understanding of their country’s past. He urged reconciliation. “Has Germany ever asked us to forgive?” Mr. Wiesel asked. “To my knowledge, no such plea was ever made. With whom am I to speak about forgiveness, I, who don’t believe in collective guilt? Who am I to believe in collective innocence?” Mr. Wiesel had a leading role in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, serving as chairman of the commission that united rival survivor groups to raise funds for a permanent structure. The museum became one of Washington’s most powerful attractions. “He was a singular moral voice,” said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museum’s director. “And he brought a kind of moral and intellectual leadership and eloquence, not only to the memory of the Holocaust, but to the lessons of the Holocaust, that was just incomparable. There is nothing that can replace the survivor voice — that power, that authenticity. ” In his 1966 book, “The Jews of Silence: A Personal Report on Soviet Jewry,” Mr. Wiesel called attention to Jews who were being persecuted for their religion and yet barred from emigrating. “What torments me most is not the Jews of silence I met in Russia, but the silence of the Jews I live among today,” he said. His efforts helped ease emigration restrictions. Mr. Wiesel condemned the massacres in Bosnia in the — “If this is Auschwitz again, we must mobilize the whole world,” he said — and denounced others in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Darfur region of Sudan. He condemned the burnings of black churches in the United States and spoke out on behalf of the blacks of South Africa and the tortured political prisoners of Latin America. Yet the plight of Jews was foremost. In 2013, when the United States was in talks with Iran about limiting that country’s nuclear weapons capability, Mr. Wiesel took out a advertisement in The Times urging Mr. Obama to insist on a “total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure” and its “repudiation of genocidal intent against Israel. ” Central to Mr. Wiesel’s work was reconciling the concept of a benevolent God with the evil of the Holocaust. “Usually we say, ‘God is right,’ or ‘God is just’ — even during the Crusades we said that,” he once observed. “But how can you say that now, with one million children dead?” Still, he never abandoned faith indeed, he became more devout as the years passed, praying near his home or in Brooklyn’s Hasidic synagogues. On the airplane that was to take him to an Israel darkened by the war in 1973, he sat shoeless with a friend, and together they hummed Hasidic melodies. “If I have problems with God, why should I blame the Sabbath?” he once said. Mr. Wiesel had his detractors. The literary critic Alfred Kazin wondered whether he had embellished some stories, and questions were raised about whether “Night” was a memoir or a novel, as it was sometimes classified on high school reading lists. Mr. Wiesel blazed a trail that produced libraries of Holocaust literature and countless film and television dramatizations. While some of this work was enduring, he denounced much of it as “trivialization. ” What gave him his moral authority in particular was that Mr. Wiesel, as a pious Torah student, had lived the hell of Auschwitz in his flesh. Eliezer Wiesel was born on Sept. 30, 1928, in the small city of Sighet, in the Carpathian Mountains near the Ukrainian border in what was then Romania. His father, Shlomo, was a shopkeeper worldly enough to encourage his son to learn modern Hebrew and introduce him to the works of Freud. Later in life, Mr. Wiesel was able to describe his father in less saintly terms, as a preoccupied man he rarely saw until they were thrown together in Auschwitz. His mother, the former Sarah Feig, and his maternal grandfather, Dodye Feig, a Viznitz Hasid, filled his imagination with mystical tales of Hasidic masters. He grew up with his three sisters, Hilda, Batya and Tzipora, in a setting reminiscent of Sholom Aleichem’s stories. “You went out on the street on Saturday and felt Shabbat in the air,” he wrote of his community of 15, 000 Jews. But his idyllic childhood was shattered in the spring of 1944 when the Nazis marched into Hungary. With Allied troops fast approaching, many of Sighet’s Jews convinced themselves that they might be spared. But the city’s Jews were swiftly confined to two ghettos and then assembled for deportation. “One by one, they passed in front of me,” he wrote in “Night,” “teachers, friends, others, all those I had been afraid of, all those I could have laughed at, all those I had lived with over the years. They went by, fallen, dragging their packs, dragging their lives, deserting their homes, the years of their childhood, cringing like beaten dogs. ” “Night” recounted a journey of several days spent in an airless cattle car before the narrator and his family arrived in a place they had never heard of: Auschwitz. Mr. Wiesel recalled how the smokestacks filled the air with the stench of burning flesh, how babies were burned in a pit, and how a monocled Dr. Josef Mengele decided, with a wave of a bandleader’s baton, who would live and who would die. Mr. Wiesel watched his mother and his sister Tzipora walk off to the right, his mother protectively stroking Tzipora’s hair. “I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever,” he wrote. In Auschwitz and in a nearby labor camp called Buna, where he worked loading stones onto railway cars, Mr. Wiesel turned feral under the pressures of starvation, cold and daily atrocities. “Night” recounts how he became so obsessed with getting his plate of soup and crust of bread that he watched guards beat his father with an iron bar while he had “not flickered an eyelid” to help. When Buna was evacuated as the Russians approached, its prisoners were forced to run for miles through high snow. Those who stumbled were crushed in the stampede. After the prisoners were taken by train to another camp, Buchenwald, Mr. Wiesel watched his father succumb to dysentery and starvation and shamefully confessed that he had wished to be relieved of the burden of sustaining him. When his father’s body was taken away on Jan. 29, 1945, he could not weep. “I had no more tears,” he wrote. On April 11, after eating nothing for six days, Mr. Wiesel was among those liberated by the United States Third Army. Years later, he identified himself in a famous photograph among the skeletal men lying supine in a Buchenwald barracks. Only after the war did he learn that his two elder sisters had not perished. In the days after Buchenwald’s liberation, he decided that he had survived to bear witness, but vowed that he would not speak or write of what he had seen for 10 years. “I didn’t want to use the wrong words,” he once explained. He was placed on a train of 400 orphans that was diverted to France, and he was assigned to a home in Normandy under the care of a Jewish organization. There he mastered French by reading the classics, and in 1948 he enrolled in the Sorbonne. He supported himself as a tutor, a Hebrew teacher and a translator and began writing for the French newspaper L’Arche. In 1948, L’Arche sent him to Israel to report on that newly founded state. He became the Paris correspondent for the daily Yediot Ahronot as well, and in that role he interviewed Mr. Mauriac, who encouraged him to write about his war experiences. In 1956 he produced an memoir in Yiddish. Pared to 127 pages and translated into French, it then appeared as “La Nuit. ” It took more than a year to find an American publisher, Hill Wang, which offered him an advance of just $100. Though well reviewed, the book sold only 1, 046 copies in the first 18 months. “The Holocaust was not something people wanted to know about in those days,” Mr. Wiesel told Time magazine in 1985. The mood shifted after Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Israel in 1960 and the wider world, in watching his televised trial in Jerusalem, began to grasp anew the enormity of the German crimes. Mr. Wiesel began speaking more widely, and as his popularity grew, he came to personify the Holocaust survivor. “Night” went on to sell more than 10 million copies, three million of them after Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club in 2006 and traveled with Mr. Wiesel to Auschwitz. Mr. Wiesel wrote an average of a book a year, 60 books by his own count in 2015. Many were translated from French by his wife, Marion Erster Rose, who survived the war hidden in Vichy, France. They married in Jerusalem in 1969, when Mr. Wiesel was 40, and they had one son, Shlomo Elisha. They survive him, as do a stepdaughter, Jennifer Rose, and two grandchildren. For Mr. Wiesel, fame did not erase the scars left by the Holocaust — the nightmares, the perpetual insecurity, the inability to laugh deeply. “I live in constant fear,” he said in 1983. In 2007, a man who called Mr. Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust fictitious pulled him out of a hotel elevator in San Francisco and attacked him. (The man was convicted of assault.) From 1972 to 1976, Mr. Wiesel was a professor of Judaic studies at City College, where many of his students were children of survivors. In 1976 he was appointed the Andrew W. Mellon professor in the humanities at Boston University, and that job became his institutional anchor. In an effort to promote understanding between conflicting ethnic groups, Mr. Wiesel also started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Through a synagogue acquaintance of Mr. Wiesel’s, it invested its endowment with the money manager Bernard L. Madoff, and his Ponzi scheme, revealed in 2008, cost the foundation $15 million. Mr. Wiesel and his wife lost millions of dollars in personal savings as well. Mr. Wiesel lived long enough to achieve a particular satisfying redemption. In 2002, he dedicated a museum in his hometown, Sighet, in the very house from which he and his family had been deported to Auschwitz. With uncommon emotion, he told the young Romanians in the crowd, “When you grow up, tell your children that you have seen a Jew in Sighet telling his story. ” | 1 |
OAKLAND, Calif. — Since she was 14, Tiffany says, she has been sold for sex, offered via hundreds of advertisements on Backpage. com, a website that grew rich on classified ads for services like escorts, body rubs and exotic dancers. Far from being a marketplace for consensual exchanges, Backpage, the authorities said, often used teasers like “Amber Alert” and “Lolita” to signal that children were for sale. In the midst of a Senate investigation, a federal grand jury inquiry in Arizona, two federal lawsuits and criminal charges in California accusing Backpage’s operators of pimping children, the website abruptly bowed to pressure in January and replaced its sex ads with the word “Censored” in red. Even so, Tiffany — a street name — did not stop using the site, she said. Instead, her ads moved to Backpage’s dating section. “New in town,” read a recent one, using words that have become code for selling sex. “Looking for someone to hang out with. ” Other recent dating ads listed one female as “100% young” and suggested that “oh daddy can i be your candy. ” In the fight against child sex trafficking, shutting down an epicenter like Backpage was a major victory, but one against a relentless foe that quickly unfurled new tentacles. The demise of Backpage’s adult ads undermined the trade, but it also illustrated how difficult it is to stamp out the practice of selling children for sex. The crime is rarely punished with the full force of the law — charges like rape or statutory rape — officials say in many places it leads to just a citation, instead of an arrest. For Tiffany, 18, the demise of Backpage’s adult listings has made things far more unpredictable — and dangerous, she said. The old ads allowed her to try to vet customers by contacting them before meetings, via phone or text message. With far fewer inquiries from the dating ads, she said, her first encounters with men now take place more often on the street as she gets into cars in red light districts around the Bay Area. “It’s harder to catch a date now,” she said. “Now everybody’s daddy puts them on the street. ” Eric Quan, a sergeant in the unit with the San Jose Police Department, said there had been a conspicuous rise in street prostitution in San Jose, where Tiffany is often forced to work. “When Backpage was running adult ads, we used to get tips, but that has dropped off,” Sergeant Quan said. “It makes it a lot more complicated for us to figure out what’s going on. ” “I do see more girls on the street, but we’re not sure why,” he said, referring to all females, not specifically minors. “There’s more guys out there, too, because there’s more girls to choose from. ” Advocates said that while the elimination of the listings was a step forward, by itself it was more an inconvenience than a crippling blow. “It was such a huge marketplace that any way to eliminate the widespread distribution of ads is progress,” said Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights4Girls, a organization focused on violence. “But until we see a more comprehensive solution, it is going to pop up elsewhere. ” The fight against the sex trafficking of children is an old and often doomed one, in part because the crime is typically tied to poverty and dysfunctional families. Many of the girls and boys are runaways or foster children whose disappearances rarely set off a real Amber Alert. Nationally, about 35 percent of minors charged with prostitution are, like Tiffany, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In Alameda County, Calif. where pimps have sold Tiffany most often, more than 60 percent of children who are trafficked or at risk of being trafficked are according to the Alameda County district attorney. The county’s population is about 12 percent. Few jurisdictions keep data on the men arrested in such cases. But one area that keeps track, King County in Washington, found that 79 percent of the men charged with seeking to pay for sex with a minor from 2013 to 2015 were white, while 44 percent of those they were accused of propositioning were . The county’s population is 7 percent . “We educate our judges that although there is no single buyer profile, buyers are predominantly white, educated, married men,” said Victoria Sweet, a lawyer for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. It is unclear how many minors are forced into prostitution each year, but the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said reports of online child sex trafficking had increased by more than 800 percent from 2010 to 2015. The organization said this was “directly correlated to the increased use of the internet to sell children for sex. ” Backpage, where revenue increased to $135 million in 2014 from $5. 3 million in 2008, derived more than 90 percent of its earnings from its adult ads, according to the California Department of Justice. Backpage representatives declined to comment, but in a statement released in January the company said it had notified law enforcement whenever it became aware of illegal activity. It also said it was protected by a federal statute that shields internet content providers from liability. “The shutdown of Backpage’s adult classified advertising is an assault on the First Amendment,” the company’s statement read in part. In Oakland, International Boulevard is among the busiest strips in the nation for the trafficking of minors, part of a network whose spokes extend to similar strips in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle and Reno, Nev. In warm weather, Tiffany said, she can often be found there, dressed in little more than a halter top and panties. The Oakland police, enmeshed in their own scandal, said they had not seen a recent increase in prostitution along International Boulevard. Other departments around the nation acknowledged that they were not the best source for such information because officers infrequently made arrests and did not track activity. In January, a law barring children from being arrested for prostitution went into effect in California. Tiffany said she had been sent as far away as Pennsylvania and Florida, usually via Backpage ads. Once she was given a bus ticket while her pimp took a plane, she said. Tiffany, who spoke on the condition that her real name not be used, said she was trying to quit the business. But without a high school diploma, her job prospects are slim. During an interview, she spoke about the last four years, recounting the threat of violence from both pimps and the men who buy her. But she also said she had been in love with some of her pimps, most of them men, one a woman. Within the span of a few seconds, she burst into tears while talking about the betrayal she felt when one pimp punished her by having his brother touch her, then had a fit of laughter while reading complimentary text messages from men who had purchased her for sex. With her long fingernails, hair extensions and a preoccupation with the fashionable, she could easily be mistaken for an unremarkable teenager. She said she would be “too bored” to work a regular job. Tiffany’s mother, who she said might have worked as a prostitute, gave her to her grandmother the day she was born. Her father, she said, is a pimp. At 14, she was lured by two Facebook acquaintances to a party that became a gang rape, she said. Since then, she said, she had been conditioned — through beatings, gang rapes and other violence — to please her pimps, many of whom found her by perusing Backpage. “It’s something I’m good at,” she said. “Once you bust a first date, you’re likely to bust another. You have power, and you know you’ll never be broke again. ” (As it happened, though, pimps generally kept all her money.) For years, Tiffany said, she habitually took Ecstasy, which she said made her “happy and numb” — a state that she said enabled her to work long hours and forget the fact that she was being sold for sex. At 16, she was placed in the custody of Awaken, a Christian nonprofit organization that works to end sexual exploitation, but she repeatedly ran away to return to pimps. Awaken put Tiffany in touch with a reporter in the hope that her sharing her experience would help others in similar situations. In recent weeks, Tiffany said, she has become scared of being on the street after a man who had bought her showed her a loaded gun. “I feel like something’s going to happen to me,” she said. “The average life is seven years, and I started at age 14. When I started, the other girls called me ‘Baby. ’” She paused. “Now, I’m one of the older ones. ” | 1 |
Governments from more than 190 countries on Thursday adopted a measure that for the first time will reduce the climate impact of international jet travel. The accord adds an exclamation point to a week in which enough countries signed onto the broader Paris climate deal to ensure that it will enter into force later this year. The aviation plan, the product of years of negotiations, was approved by acclamation at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization, or I. C. A. O. in Montreal. The measure could force air carriers to take major steps to improve fuel economy in their routes and fleets, very likely accelerating the purchase of newer, more efficient planes. Carriers may pass the cost of the program on to consumers in higher airfares, though most experts think any increases would be relatively small. Leaders hailed the accord, which will take effect in 2021, as a major step in reducing the environmental impact of international aviation, which is currently responsible for about 2 percent of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. Secretary of State John Kerry called the measure “unprecedented” and said it built on the Paris agreement and other international efforts to reduce emissions. “This measure addresses a growing source of global emissions, demonstrates the international community’s strong and growing support for climate action in all areas and helps avoid a patchwork of potentially costly and overlapping regional and national measures,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. Along with international shipping, international aviation was not covered by the Paris accord reached in December. On Tuesday, with the ratification of that pact by the European Union, it reached a threshold — acceptance by countries responsible for more than 55 percent of the world’s emissions — that causes it to go into effect. It is expected to enter into force before the next large United Nations climate meeting, in Morocco early next month. The aviation measure will be voluntary for the first six years, and even countries that commit to it voluntarily will be allowed to opt out on relatively short notice. Under the program, airlines will buy credits to offset emissions from individual flights. The credits will come from alternative energy installations, forest conservation programs and other projects that prevent some amount of greenhouse gas emissions. But critics point to several possible problems. Some environmental groups said the plan did not go far enough, forecasting that it would fall short of the goal originally set by the aviation organization to offset all of the growth in emissions from air travel after 2020. At least 65 nations, including the United States, China and the European Union countries, have signaled that they will participate during the voluntary phase of the measure. The measure exempts many smaller countries that do not have large international air carriers, and because of rules on competition, that could mean that some popular routes from participating countries could be exempt as well. Several countries that are significant sources of international air travel, including Russia and India, on Thursday expressed formal reservations about the agreement, indicating they would not participate, at least for now. Critics and supporters of the measure alike noted that much work remains to be done before the agreement is put into effect. Mechanisms must be developed to monitor and report current emissions, and criteria established to select conservation programs and other projects that will count toward offset credits. The aviation industry has supported the idea of mitigating the climate impact of its jet engines. Manufacturers have taken steps to improve the efficiency of current engines, and some carriers have begun replacing some of their conventional jet fuel with biofuels. Some airlines have also encouraged environmentally conscious passengers to buy offsets voluntarily for their flights. Under the new measure, the airlines would buy the offsets, and they could pass the cost on to all passengers. But one estimate by the aviation organization forecasts that by 2025 the annual cost to airlines would be less than 1 percent of revenue. On Thursday, industry representatives welcomed adoption of the measure. Michael Gill, executive director of the Air Transport Action Group, a coalition of manufacturers, carriers and other companies, said he was heartened by how many countries, including small developing countries with a lot at stake as climate change takes hold, had agreed to participate voluntarily. “Despite some reservations over the scheme being voluntary in its initial years, the support of all these states — large, small, developed and developing — shows the commitment of the international community, working through I. C. A. O. to deliver a robust measure,” Mr. Gill said in a statement. But an analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research group, shows that the agreement as approved will offset only about of the growth in emissions from international aviation above 2020 levels. That means the proposal falls short of the goal originally set by the International Civil Aviation Organization of “ ” growth after 2020. | 1 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 by Michael Collins FBI Director James Comey. Wikimedia
FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress on new evidence in the Clinton email scandal represents interference in the presidential campaign commensurate with his failure to indict candidate Hillary Clinton for crimes greater than those committed by citizens that are now serving time. His actions are a paradigm for the dysfunctional and dangerous state of the political system in the United States.
UPDATE : Two former Republican Attorneys General harshly criticized FBI Director James Comey for his letter to Congress on the Hillary Clinton email affair. Michael Collins 5:42 EDT Mukasey blasts Comey and attorney general over Clinton email case Louis Nelson 10/31/16 07:16 AM EDT
Director Comey’s letter to Congress of October 28 about “emails that appear to be pertinent in the [Clinton] investigation” was a deliberate, premeditated action that will harm Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s chances in the presidential election. His letter may have an even greater impact on Democratic Party down-ballot candidates in Senate and House races and, as a result, influence the post election balance of power in Congress.
There is no question that Comey knew that his actions would have significant political impact just days before the election. The fact that he defied established procedures of the Justice Department and instructions from superiors shows the intentional nature of his acts.
Comey’s abuse of power and illegal interference in the election is another major marker on the road to the total evisceration of constitutional rights and protection begun in earnest with the Patriot Act of 2001 . His actions should be judged as a blatantly illegal act by one of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement officials. It doesn’t matter if you support Clinton, Trump, Johnson, or Stein. Allowing the FBI to get away with this outrageous attempt to influence elections kills any hope of finally achieving the goal of an open political process and fair elections.
Comey’s Profound Insincerity
The Department of Justice has established policies for handling legal matters that may impact an election. Former Attorney’s General Janet Reno and Eric Holder outlined policies stating that the Justice Department should avoid prosecutions or other actions close to elections that might influence those elections. Attorney General Loretta Lynch made this point to Comey. Despite reports that FBI “agents had not been able to review any of the material, because the bureau had not yet gotten a search warrant to read them,” Comey somehow deduced that the emails might be significant. He took the unusual step of informing Congress about the emails he had yet to examine.
Former Assistant United States Attorney , Nick Ackerman, argued:
“Director Comey acted totally inappropriately. He had no business writing to Congress about supposed new emails that neither he nor anyone in the FBI has ever reviewed.”
Does Director Comey think we are idiots? Clearly, he went out of his way to influence the election in a conspicuous fashion. There can be no doubt about this assertion.
After some significant blowback from former Justice officials, Comey felt compelled to write an explanatory memo to FBI employees. He said:
“I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record [of the original email investigation]. At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression. In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.” James Comey memo to FBI employees, Washington Post, Oct 28, 2016 ,
This passage from his letter is an admission that Comey knew his actions would influence the election. Before “know[ing] the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails,” he released an update to Congress that could easily be interpreted as an indication that there was a significant development in the Clinton case. Why else would he write the letter?
Comey told FBI employees, “I don’t want to create a misleading impression.” If Comey wanted to avoid a “misleading impression,” he might have told the truth if he insisted on writing a memo to Congress. Based on what we know now, he should have said:
There are some emails on the computer belonging to a close Clinton aid. No one at FBI has seen the emails. We don’t’ even have a warrant to download them. These emails might or might not be important enough to warrant reopening the investigation.
The fact that Comey failed to tell the truth about the status of the emails proves his ill intent toward the Clinton campaign.
Comey’s Violation of Law
The 1939 Hatch Act bars Federal employees from a broad range of political activities.
Richard Painter, a former lawyer in the Bush White House Counsel’s office, filed a formal complaint against FBI Director Comey for violating that act. He argued: “I believe that the Hatch Act and ethics rules are violated if it is obvious that the official’s actions [Comey’s] could influence the election, there is not another good reason for taking those actions, and the official is acting under pressure from persons who obviously want to influence the election.”
Comey’s actions will clearly influence the elections. There was no “good reason” to release the memo on evidence not yet reviewed or analyzed. And, Comey admits that he acted “under pressure” from critics in Congress, Republicans, who obviously “want to influence the election.”
In addition, Painter cited another law on the use of public office for private gain. Painter refers to the following section of the United States Code:
2635.702 Use of public office for private gain.
“An employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise …”
Comey’s actions have the direct effect of endorsing the Trump campaign “enterprise.” Trump has insisted again and again that the email case be reopened. Comey reopened it on the flimsiest of grounds. The net effect of his actions props up the Trump campaign just when it looked like the enterprise was finished.
Comey’s Reports to … ?
Comey’s actions serve the Trump campaign and its donors. It wasn’t an easy form of service by the FBI Director. Comey had to ignore established policies, common sense, his superior, the Attorney General, and the Hatch Act in order to send his very high impact letter.
Will it be worth it?
If Comey acted on his own without any outside inducements or threats, we should all pause and say a short prayer for him. In that scenario, he is an utter fool playing in a league way above his skill set and doing great and memorable damage to the political process.
But, Comey is no fool. I wrote favorably about his willingness to stand up to the Bush White House in 2007, Comey’s Evidence of a Crime . Then, he seemed to have a quality not often seen in government or corporate environments – a willingness to “stand up to the boss.” That may have been true at the time. Today, however, Comey seems unable to decide who his boss is. He clearly caved in to the administration and the Clinton interests when he failed to indict Hillary Clinton for even a misdemeanor for her many violations of national security policies. Now, he’s caving into the interests of the Republicans and the repellant Trump campaign.
The key question is who got to Comey and how?
We know that both Clinton and Trump are unfit for the presidency or any other elected or appointed office in the United States. However, we need to know who has the type of power and force to make the FBI Director behave like a fool. | 0 |
You put the question to Sanya a gold medal runner who has come back from so many injuries and who hopes to make another Olympic team before she retires. Would she let Russia, which carries about it the odor of doping, into the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro? She shook her head. “You think about everything that happened, and how far up the chain it has gone there,” she said of Russia last month. “Missing the Olympics? For sure, that’s a reasonable punishment for the crime. ” The accumulating evidence of a doping program filled with duplicity and evasion lay exposed to the sun. A Russian athlete, a former state official and even the director of Russia’s main drug testing laboratory say the world should not believe the results produced by Russian athletes, as illegal chemistry underlies them. The doping corruption begins at the highest reaches of the Ministry of Sport, they assert, and extends downward, accompanied by the suspicious deaths of two potential . The good news is that the world’s best athletes are rising in revolt and demanding investigations. Nearly 600 British athletes, The Guardian reports, have called for a sweeping, worldwide investigation. American, European and Canadian skiers, swimmers and runners have added their insistent voices. The news is that the regulatory bodies of world sports are like so many somnolent detective bureaus. The chiefs wag their heads and rummage through desks for musty reports and murmur, yes, yes, what a shame … Craig Reedie, the chief of the World Agency, recently explained his regulatory approach to my colleague Rebecca Ruiz. “We’re not going to turn around to people and say: ‘These are the rules.’ If one of our stakeholders comes and says, ‘Can you advise us on how to proceed’? Then, clearly, we will advise them. ” I know Sir Craig is a knight and all that. So please, just this once, let him pull out his broad sword and slay a dragon. This week it’s the turn of another world body with a record, the International Association of Athletics Federations. On Friday, the I. A. A. F. which governs track and field, will announce whether Russia and its athletes can participate in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The I. A. A. F. is run by another knight, the former Olympic gold medal runner Lord Sebastian Coe. In 2015, Lord Coe, a longtime vice president in the organization, replaced Lamine Diack, who had served as president for 16 years. Soon after he left the I. A. A. F. Diack was arrested. He has been accused of taking many, many bribes to cover up positive doping tests by Russian athletes. Diack held a seat on the International Olympic Committee, as Sir Craig does currently. International sport is cozy. (Olympic reform is best pushed genteelly, not to mention gingerly honk too loudly about transgressions and your country might find its hopes of hosting an Olympics dashed.) WADA has taken a few important steps. Last year, its report uncovered systemic corruption in Russian track and field and pointed to many strands of corruption in winter sports. However, agency leaders resisted for many months calling in investigators to plunge down the necessary alleyways. All the while, the agency’s own athletes’ committee, and the heads of various national federations, pleaded for full investigations. Now my colleagues Ruiz, Juliet Macur and Ian Austen reported this week that WADA not only sat on detailed tips from Russian but also passed along word of one such to the same government officials accused of running the doping program. “You need to have proper, corroborated evidence in order to prove things,” Sir Craig said. “Secondly, we didn’t have powers under the old code to investigate. ” Both of his claims are baffling. WADA had, since 2010, two firsthand witnesses, a top athlete and a top official in the Russian antidoping agency, testifying to corruption in doping. Now there is another witness, Grigory Rodchenkov, who ran the laboratory that handled the tests of thousands of Russian Olympians, and who described for The New York Times how he developed a powerful, doping elixir. Rodchenkov sounds an awful lot like the Joe Valachi of Russian sports. (Valachi was the first great Mafia informer.) The good doctor estimated that by the end of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, he and his work mates had expunged 100 dirty test results. Russian athletes won a splendid number of medals at those Winter Games. I’m no district attorney, but that strikes me as powerful firsthand testimony. As well, WADA was explicitly charged with monitoring code compliance by its signatories, which include Russia. In December 2014, the chief of the United States Agency, Travis Tygart, wrote a tough, private letter to WADA. He suggested that it strap on its police cap and badge and get to work. “Anything less than a full, complete and successful investigation by WADA … would constitute an abdication of WADA’s responsibilities,” he wrote in a letter also signed by the board chairman, Edwin Moses. “We do not believe that WADA lacks the power to conduct an investigation, protect witnesses or take steps” to investigate whether national agencies have become corrupted. Throat clearing is necessary here. Russian athletes are not uniquely fallen creatures. The list of American runners and bikers and skiers who have doped is long and desultory, although there is no evidence that this is . The Salt Lake Winter Olympics in 2002 was a festival of bribes and doping. An Italian doctor was the Dr. Frankenstein of sports doping. The Finns had a major doping scandal a decade or so back. The Kenyan and Ethiopian runners would be a heartwarming marvel were it not that so many keep getting nabbed by blood doping. Athletes everywhere face justifiable doubts. But that narrative coexists with a more hopeful one. Save for Russia and a few other nations, the battle against doping has taken many strides forward. Circumstantial evidence for this is found in the fact that in most disciplines, athletes no longer set records every few years. That was true during the 1980s and 1990s. (The home run years in major league baseball offered a direct corollary, replete with complicity by the owners and rulers of that sport.) “It’s much harder to dope, and the advantage you can gain is less than it used to be,” notes Max Cobb, director of U. S. Biathlon and a longtime reformer in the arena of world sport. “ can take an athlete from 10th place to first place, but you’re no longer seeing those extraordinary, ‘Oh my God, how did that guy finish two minutes faster’ moments. ” The question now is what to do when a nation goes rogue and dedicates itself to systematically undermining doping regulations. The Russians under Vladimir Putin have lashed their national pride to the mast of athletic achievement. Russia is a global superpower, and not easily sent stomping to its room. But even the latest interim report from WADA this week gives not much cause for hope. A large number of athletes continue to evade tests, and when asked their whereabouts, as is required of every athlete worldwide so that drug testers can find them, a striking number of Russian athletes list “military cities. ” Testing officers need special permission to enter these cities, which delays and in some cases prevents testing. When in Eugene, Ore. last month, I talked about this with the American runner . “I’m literally tested at least two times a week,” she said. “At least. I’m happy to live up to those standards. I just want that standard to be the same all around the world, including Russia. ” That seems a reasonable request. On Friday, we’ll see if the cops of sport are up to the task of walking their beat. | 1 |
In the wake of the fatal train crash in Hoboken last week, New Jersey Transit ordered on Wednesday that a second crew member must stand watch as the engineer pulls a train into that busy terminal. The railroad issued an immediate mandate that the conductor must move to the driving cab of the train to serve as a second set of eyes and ears during the last segment of trips into Hoboken and Atlantic City. On the train that crashed at Hoboken Terminal last Thursday morning, killing one person and injuring more than 100 others, the engineer was alone in the driving cab and the conductor was in his normal position farther back among the passengers. That train was speeding toward the terminal before it plowed through the bumper at the end of the line and jumped onto the platform, witnesses and elected officials said. As the front car of the train rose up, it brought the roof over the platform crashing down, causing the instant death of a woman who was passing by. The cause of the crash has not been determined. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board said on Wednesday that they were extracting data and video from recorders they retrieved from the train’s driving cab. They said that the engineer told them he did not remember the crash but that he was rested when he started his shift that morning. No trains have run to or from Hoboken Terminal since the crash, and New Jersey Transit has not said when it will reopen. A spokeswoman for the railroad declined to comment on the new directive, so it was unclear if it was a reaction to what has been learned about the circumstances of the crash. But it is no small change in the railroad’s practices. The conductor’s role is to mind the passengers, ushering them on and off the train and collecting tickets. The conductor plays no part in the operation of the train. That is left to the engineer, who is like a captain of a ship. This change in procedures is akin to requiring that the first mate stand next to a ship’s captain and point out any route markers or potential hazards as the ship comes into port. The bulletin says the “conductor and the engineer are to focus exclusively on the railroad, calling signal, checking the route and ensuring that the train is operated safely in compliance. ” It applies to trains arriving in Hoboken and at the terminal in Atlantic City, both of which have platforms at the ends of the rails, creating the potential for trains to crash into people. The new rule’s implementation on Wednesday afternoon came as a surprise to Stephen Burkert, the general chairman of a union that represents New Jersey Transit conductors. “They’re looking to have a safer railroad, which I fully agree with,” Mr. Burkert said. “Safety is always first for my members and the riding public. ” But, he added, the rules will require more work for conductors. “What it technically does is put more job responsibility on the conductor, besides what they had to do yesterday,” he said. “You have effectively doubled the work responsibilities for the conductor. ” | 1 |
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The FBI’s recent announcement, that the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and private server has been reopened, made Huma Abedin a household name if it wasn’t already. However, many missed the chilling video released by Anonymous, exposing Abedin just days before the FBI’s announcement. It’s one that the mainstream media didn’t want you to see, but every American needs to watch it.
After the laptop of Abedin’s estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, ended up in the hands of the FBI, Hillary’s misdeeds came under scrutiny once again. With another scandal and more controversy hitting the Clinton campaign, many have begun talking not only about Hillary Clinton but her closest aide as well. However, emails, laptops, and perverted husband Anthony Weiner are the least of our worries when it comes to Huma Abedin.
In a mission to inform Americans, an informative but bone-chilling video has been released by Anonymous, exposing the real Huma Abedin. Although Mad World News previously reported on her ties to radical Islam, the recently released video that’s now begun to circulate on social media lays out her connections in an easy to follow visual that every American needs to see.
“Who Is Huma?” the video asks, and the answer is chilling. The narrator of the video names four main players in exposing the truth behind Abedin and her disturbing ties to groups and people who fund terrorism. Those players are obviously Abedin herself and Hillary Clinton , but also Abdullah Omar Nasseef and Saudi Arabia, where Huma was raised from the age of two until she was 18.
According to the video and verified by a lengthy piece in Vanity Fair , Huma worked for the Abedin family business, The Institute of Minority Muslim Affairs, which is a pro-Sharia Law newsletter “owned by the Muslim World League, Saudi Arabia’s global organization that promotes violent Wahhabi Islam,” BizPac Review reports. This family business was created by Abedin’s father and Nasseef, one of the four main players identified in the clip, who is also one of the founders of the Muslim World League.
With Huma being Hillary’s closest aide, Huma’s close ties to terrorism extend to Hillary Clinton, which is a frightening thought considering she could be our next president. What’s worse, if Hillary is elected president, she would have Huma Abedin become Secretary of State, according to leaked emails between Hillary Clinton and her former chief of staff Cheryl Mills.
While everyone is concentrating on what may or may not be in the emails discovered on the laptop of Abedin’s perverse husband, this is the information everyone should see before voting. This woman, with undeniable ties to terrorists and 9/11 funders, has been Hillary’s shadow and right-hand for decades, and that won’t change if Hillary becomes president. In fact, it could only get worse. If you want to know the true measure of someone’s character, look who they surround themselves with. The old saying, “Birds of a feather flock together,” rings true, and these are two birds that should be in a cage, not our White House. | 0 |
London police are investigating a suspected terror attack and have arrested a 48 year old on suspicion of attempted murder after a van was driven into a crowd of people on a London street near a mosque in Finsbury Park. Eyewitnesses have said the man got out of the vehicle and shouted “I want to kill all Muslims”. [One died during the attack and 10 were injured, but it is unclear whether the death was caused directly by the van ploughing into the crowd. Police said in a statement overnight that all the victims of the attack were from the Muslim faith. Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Cressida Dick said in a statement Monday morning: London has woken up to the news of another appalling attack on our city. My thoughts are with the family of the man who has died and with all those who were injured. My officers were on the scene almost immediately, and other uniformed and specialist officers quickly arrived to support them. They worked quickly with colleagues from the other emergency services to treat the injured. I want to thank all those members of the public who assisted police and emergency services in our task. There is now an ongoing investigation by our Counter Terrorism Command to establish why this attack was carried out. London is a city of many faiths and many nationalities. An attack on one community is an attack on all of us. Terrorists will not succeed in their attempts to divide us and make us live in fear. ” Extra officers are on duty in the area to help reassure the local community. They will be there for as long as they are needed. Communities will see additional officers patrolling across the city and at Muslim places of worship. We are working as hard as we can to protect all our communities, and we will not be defeated. In a separate statement, police said the attack happened while a man was already “receiving first aid from the public at the scene” and that this was the individual who had died. Because it was unclear whether the man had already died before the attack took place, police said “Any causative link between his death and the attack will form part of our investigation. It is too early to state if his death was as a result of the attack”. “No matter what the motivation proves to be, and we are keeping an open mind, this is being treated as a terrorist attack and the Counter Terrorism Command is investigating. ” Speaking to Sky News Monday, Miqdaad Versi, assistant of the Muslim Council of Britain described the moments leading up to the attack. He said: “This was a group of individuals who were praying at the Muslim Welfare House. They were just coming back from prayers and one individual happened to collapse on the floor, and people who wanted to help that individual came around him to support him, and at that moment in time that’s when the van mounted the curb and attacked that whole group, and resulted in that one injury that we’re aware of. ” Previous reports that there had been multiple individuals in the van, and that the driver was carrying a knife have not been confirmed by police Monday morning. The Finsbury Park Mosque outside which the attack took place had just let out after Taraweeh — special, Ramadan prayers. Prime Minister Theresa May has described the attack as a “terrible incident” while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he is “shocked” by the “awful event”. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said in a statement: “We should make clear that if this attack is confirmed as a deliberate terrorist attack then this should be classed as an act of terrorism. “The British Muslim community requires all decent people to stand with us against this evil violence. “Rampant Islamaphobia [sic] has been on the rise for a number of years and those on the far right have perpetuated hatred against Muslims. They should be called out for their hatred. “The days ahead will be difficult, but with unity and tolerance we will prevail. We will not allow these far right extremists to divide our diverse communities. “Enough is enough, my condolences and prayers for all the victims and their families. They are in my prayers. ” The salafist Finsbury Park mosque has previously been in the news as having been the home of famed hate preacher Abu Hamza Al Masri, as well as having attacker Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid as attendees. In recent years the mosque has changed its management team and has not been mentioned in connection with any recent terror plots. Eyewitness tells @jamesrbuk man drove van at pedestrians outside London mosque, then shouted “Kill me, kill me, I want to kill all Muslims” pic. twitter. — BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) June 19, 2017, London Ambulance Service Deputy Director of Operations, Kevin Bate said: “We were called at 12. 15am to reports of a road traffic collision at Seven Sisters Road. “We have sent a number of ambulance crews, advance paramedics and specialist responses teams to the scene. An advance trauma team from London’s Air Ambulance has also been dispatched by car. “We are working closely with other members of the emergency services at the scene. “Our priority is to assess the level and nature of injuries and ensure those in the most need are treated first and taken to hospital. “More information will follow when we have it. ” | 1 |
I think Clinton has bought her way with large donors into this Oresidency, it reeks of BIG money, pay for play, quid pro quo, you scratch my back I'll Scratch yours and it's the antithesis of what democratic voters think they are getting in Hillary Clinton. A sad testimony to an election of the people, for the people, by the people- her campaigh is all about big money, power and greed. | 0 |
Every nation is free to vote for the political leaders it wants, said Pope Francis Saturday, while Europe itself is in danger of “falling apart. ”[“Every country is free to make the choices it believes are right for itself. I cannot judge if it is making this choice for this reason or another, because I do not know its internal politics,” Francis said, in reference to the upcoming French presidential elections. We must “respect people’s opinions, honest opinions of a political discussion,” he said. During the return flight from Egypt to Rome on Saturday, the Pope granted a press conference to the journalists aboard the papal flight, during which he was asked about the populist movements expanding in Europe. Virginie Riva of the French group, “Radio Europe 1,” made direct reference to the French presidential elections, claiming that French Catholics “are being forced to vote for either a populist or an extremist, and they are divided and confused. ” Late last month, a first round of elections reduced the list of presidential candidates to Marine Le Pen of the Front National party and Emmanuel Macron of the “En Marche!” party. The final, vote will take place on May 7. Francis confessed that “I do not understand French internal politics,” but repeated the principle that every country is free to make the choices it believes are right for itself. “I have worked to have good relations, including with the current President, with whom there was a difficulty once, but afterwards I was able to speak clearly with him about the issue, while respecting his viewpoint,” the Pope said. “I do not know the history of the two candidates [Le Pen e Macron] I do not know where they are from,” he added. “Yes, I do know that one is a representative of the far right, but the other candidate, I truly do not know where he is from,” he said. “For this reason, I cannot offer a clear view on France. ” The Pope said that he was recently asked why there is not a Catholic political party, a proposal that the Pope found impractical and anachronistic. “This man is good, but he is living in the last century!” Francis said, referring to the person who made the suggestion. The Pope also reflected on the future of Europe, as he has done on other occasions. “Europe is in danger of coming undone this is true,” he said. “There is a problem that frightens Europe and perhaps increases populism: the problem of migration. This is true,” he said. “But let us not forget that Europe is made of migrants: centuries and centuries of migrants … that’s us!” “But it is a problem that must be studied well, and we must also respect people’s opinions, honest opinions of a political discussion with a capital “P”: great Politics, not the small national politics that eventually end up falling down,” he said. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
Rep. Louie Gohmert ( ) told Fox and Friends on Friday that Congress concluding business on Thursday and not being in session on the day after fired FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he leaked information about his private conversations with President Donald Trump left the president to “dangle. ”[House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s office on Tuesday sent out an email announcing the change. “Members are advised that — pending timely completion of H. R. 10 — votes are no longer expected in the House on Friday, June 9,” the email stated. “Last votes of the week are now expected at approximately 4:00 PM on Thursday, June 8. ” The Majority Leader’s office told Breitbart News that the decision was made because the Democrats withdrew all amendments from the Choice Act being considered by the House leading to business concluding a day early. But Gohmert said it sends the wrong message about Republicans support for Trump. “Tuesday, apparently, our leadership changed the week’s scheduling and said let’s go dark on Friday, which means the emphasis will not be on what we’re doing good in Washington,” Gohmert said. “We are basically leaving the president to dangle,” Gohmert said. “I’m very concerned we are not being supportive enough to get the message out and here President Trump is … as [Senator] Marco Rubio was pointing out … the only thing that didn’t leak was the truth — that [Trump] was not under investigation. ” Meanwhile, at his weekly press briefing on Thursday, Ryan said he didn’t have time to watch the Comey hearing but vaguely supported Trump by claiming he was “new” to the government and its modus operandi. “As far as the conversations and all that, I’m not going to speculate on any of this, I would just add that of course there needs to be a degree of independence between the DOJ, FBI and the White House and lines of communications established,” Ryan told reporters. “The president’s new at this, he’s new to government,” Ryan continued. “So he probably wasn’t steeped in the long running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. “He’s new to this,” Ryan said. “We now know why [Trump] was frustrated when the FBI director told him three times there’s no investigation of him yet the speculation was allowed to continue,” Ryan said. “So obviously we know now why he was frustrated. ” | 1 |
D. Alexandra Dyer felt as though her face were on fire. She put her car into drive, but got only a couple of hundred feet before she had to pull over in searing pain and squeeze her eyes shut. Rescuers arrived as the caustic drain cleaner turned her face purple and dissolved her skin. As recounted later by her lawyer, she then screamed four words that they could not possibly comprehend. “Kim Williams did this!” Ms. Dyer had just left work on that hot evening last August in Long Island City, Queens. As she approached her car, parked on a deserted stretch of Skillman Avenue, a man she had never seen before was waiting for her. “Can I ask you a question?” he said. Before she could answer, he flung a cup of drain cleaner in her face, and fled. It was the terrifying climax of a drama, with accusations of embezzlement, a and collusion at the last place one might expect it: a charity that brings musical performances and arts programs to New York City’s hospitalized, disabled, elderly and poor. Three people have been arrested. Ms. Dyer, 60, who had recently been hired as executive director of the charity, Healing Arts Initiative, has undergone multiple operations to rebuild her face. Among those charged is Ms. Williams, 47, the charity’s payroll manager, who is accused of stealing more than $750, 000 and orchestrating the attack after Ms. Dyer questioned her about bookkeeping lapses. The defendants, including Ms. Williams, have proclaimed their innocence through their lawyers. The account of the attack, and the tense months leading up to it, were described by Ms. Dyer’s lawyer, Ronald G. Russo, because prosecutors have instructed Ms. Dyer not to speak publicly since she is a witness in the case. The fallout continues. This month, Ms. Dyer filed a lawsuit against the board of Healing Arts Initiative on behalf of the charity itself, saying board members let the thefts happen on their watch. The suit seeks their removal. (Mr. Russo, a former federal prosecutor, is Ms. Dyer’s lawyer in the suit.) A lawyer for Healing Arts, David G. Samuels, declined to comment on Thursday because of the continuing suit. Ms. Dyer, a seasoned nonprofit executive, had taken the helm of Healing Arts in July, joining one of the city’s arts charities. It was started as Hospital Audiences Inc. in 1969 by a pianist named Michael Jon Spencer, after he played a recital to a rapt audience at the Manhattan State Psychiatric Center. Over the years, Healing Arts grew to a $ operation that serves 350, 000 people annually, through workshops and live performances. It provides handicapped seating at Shakespeare in the Park, presents concerts by Alvin Ailey dancers and runs a gallery for artists with mental illnesses. But some staff members had noticed a surge of fiscal irregularities in the past couple of years, Mr. Russo said. Checks were bouncing. The credit cards that Healing Arts used to buy blocks of discount tickets for its clients were being refused. The organization’s debt had ballooned from under $100, 000 to over $2. 2 million from 2012 to 2015, even as the executive director at the time, J. David Sweeny, cut the staff to 14 employees, from 28, and reduced the rent by moving the charity’s offices from SoHo to Queens. At the heart of Healing Arts’ fiscal operation was Ms. Williams. She had been hired in 2011, through an agency called Professionals for Nonprofits, as a payroll clerk. Under Mr. Sweeny, she enjoyed wide latitude, especially after he got rid of the chief financial officer and did not replace her, Mr. Russo said. Soon, she was effectively running the fiscal operations and had several other accounting employees reporting to her. Ms. Williams, who had an apartment in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, seemed to live fairly well for someone who had started out at a yearly salary of $43, 000 and had worked her way up to $60, 000. She drove a Mercedes, had a second home in Florida and posted about her shopping sprees on Facebook. Some of her income may have come from a side business she owned and ran from her office computer called Virago Inc. which sold sex toys and offered online sex seminars. But the real secret to Ms. Williams’s lifestyle, prosecutors and the police say, was that she stole prodigiously from Healing Arts, cutting checks to dozens of phantom employees and them into accounts controlled by her and her best friend, Pia Louallen. “That’s how the whole financial thing got to us,” Lt. Alexander Fagiolo, commanding officer of the 108th Precinct detectives, said at a news conference this month. From November 2012 through August 2015, according to prosecutors, Ms. Williams embezzled at least $750, 000 — an average of more than $1, 000 per workday. She kept $600, 000 and gave the rest to Ms. Louallen, prosecutors said. One longtime board member, Kitty Lunn, said that while she did not suspect that Ms. Williams was raiding the till, she was concerned about the declined credit cards and the checks that did not clear. She urged fellow board members to investigate. In January 2015, the board hired a forensic accountant. His finding after several days of reviewing the books, according to Mr. Russo: “No improper transactions. ” Ms. Lunn, a paraplegic dancer who has headed her own nonprofit, was incredulous. In May 2015, she quit in frustration. “I said to the board, ‘There’s something funny going on with the money, and all of you are going to be responsible,’” she recalled. By this time, Healing Arts was looking for a new executive director — Mr. Sweeny had left for another charity, though he remains on the Healing Arts board. (He declined to comment, referring all calls to the board president, D. Leslie Winter, who did not respond to voice mail messages.) Enter Ms. Dyer, with an M. B. A. from Columbia and decades of experience managing nonprofits. She also holds a master’s degree in divinity, was ordained a Roman Catholic priest by a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests and is of a congregation in Greenwich Village. Concerned when her new colleagues told her about the money shortfalls and climbing debt, Ms. Dyer began digging around, Mr. Russo said. When she asked Ms. Williams for access to the accounting system, he said, Ms. Williams repeatedly stonewalled her. On Aug. 17, Ms. Dyer introduced Ms. Williams to a new chief financial officer she planned to hire. His name was Frank Williams (no relation to Ms. Williams) and, Ms. Dyer told her, he was an expert who would decipher Healing Arts’ imbalanced books. Ms. Williams suddenly came down with a toothache, Mr. Russo said, and left the office. Later that day, the police said, she bought drain cleaner at a supermarket in Queens with her credit card. She was absent the next day, Aug. 18, claiming that she had to go for a dental procedure. Surveillance video revealed that she had come to the office at 6 a. m. and left with boxes of files, Mr. Russo said. Ms. Williams never returned to work and stopped communicating with Healing Arts. The day after that, on Aug. 19, Ms. Dyer was attacked. She spent the next two months at the burn unit of Cornell Medical Center. But she continued to run Healing Arts from her second day in the hospital, Mr. Russo said, meeting with forensic accountants even though her eyelids were sewn shut, and fielding calls from colleagues. More troubles surfaced, Mr. Russo said. Healing Arts, it turned out, was paying workers’ compensation premiums based on a payroll of $5. 5 million, more than the charity’s entire budget. A company ledger showed a discrepancy of $480, 000 that was noted simply as a “payment adjustment. ” While Ms. Dyer mended, the police and the Queens district attorney’s office labored to piece together the criminal case and tracked Ms. Williams, who was spending time in Florida. In December, Ms. Dyer viewed a photo lineup and identified Jerry Mohammed, a from Troy, N. Y. with a record of convictions, as her assailant. Surveillance video taken the day of the attack shows him getting into a Mercedes belonging to Ms. Louallen, the police said. On April 4, Mr. Mohammed and Ms. Louallen were arrested. Ms. Williams fled, prosecutors said, but at 8:57 p. m. she was arrested behind the wheel of a white 2010 Mercedes E350 at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. She was charged with two counts of assault, two counts of conspiracy, two counts of grand larceny, weapons possession, falsifying business records and 48 counts of identity theft. She is being held without bail and faces up to 25 years in prison. Mr. Mohammed is charged with assault, conspiracy and weapons possession and also faces up to 25 years. Ms. Louallen is charged with grand larceny and conspiracy and faces up to 15 years. Mr. Mohammed’s lawyer, Michael D. Siff, said on Wednesday that Ms. Dyer had picked someone other than his client at an lineup in Queens on April 12. The district attorney’s office declined to comment. Today, Ms. Dyer’s face is a pinkened map of scar tissue. One eye is and runs continuously. The other opens only partially, beneath an imperfectly restored eyelid. But she is back at work. And Healing Arts continues its mission to bring cultural medicine to the sick and the injured. Ms. Dyer knows something of this firsthand. Last September, as Ms. Dyer lay in her hospital bed, a folk singer named Kathy Lord, one of Healing Arts’s contractors, entered the room. “I’ve seen a lot of things over the years, and that was probably just about as bad as it gets,” said Ms. Lord, who runs a nonprofit called Music That Heals. “I said, ‘Alexandra, here I am, Music That Heals,’” Ms. Lord recalled. Knowing of Ms. Dyer’s faith, she sang the country gospel song “One Day at a Time. ” “One day at a time, sweet Jesus,” it goes. “That’s all I’m asking from you. Just give me the strength To do every day What I have to do. ” Tears ran down Ms. Dyer’s ravaged face. | 1 |
США: реформироваться или распадаться? Тьерри Мейсан Наблюдая за президентской гонкой в США Тьерри Мейсан отмечает возрождение давно забытых распрей. Хилари Клинтон недавно заявила, что на этих выборах главное не выбрать какую-то программу, а ответить на вопрос, кем являются американцы. На самом деле, не по политическим соображениям руководители республиканской партии отказались поддерживать своего кандидата Дональда Трампа, а из-за его поведения. До сих пор США остаются страной эмигрантов, прибывших со всех концов света и считающих свою страну особым государством. Однако реальная ситуация даёт о себе знать, и эти представления рушатся, что может повлечь за собой разрушение самих США.
Сеть Вольтер | Дамаск (Сирия) | 26 октября 2016 français Español italiano English Deutsch Português ελληνικά Türkçe عربي За время избирательной кампании, которая близится к завершению, риторика кандидатов значительно изменилась, и между двумя лагерями наметился раскол. Если вначале кандидаты обсуждали чисто политические вопросы (например, распределение материальных средств или национальная безопасность), то сегодня они рассуждают, в основном, о сексуальных отношениях и деньгах.
Именно эти, а не политические вопросы взорвали Республиканскую партию, лидеры которой отказались поддерживать своего кандидата, а это перемешало всю политическую шахматную доску и воскресило давно забытые распри. Г-жа Клинтон, с одной стороны, старается сохранять политическую корректность, а «Дональд», со своей стороны, разбивает в пух и прах лицемерие бывшей «Первой леди».
Хилари Клинтон выступает за равенство между мужчинами и женщинами, хотя она без колебаний нападала и очерняла тех, кто рассказывал о своих связях с её мужем, представляет себя не по своим личным качествам, а лишь как жена бывшего президента, и обвиняет в женоненавистничестве Дональда Трампа, который не скрывает своего неравнодушного отношения к женскому полу. А Дональд Трамп клеймит приватизацию государства и коррупцию Фонда Клинтон при предоставлении иностранным гражданам доступа в Госдеп, проведённую Обамой реформу здравоохранения, выгодную не гражданам, а медицинским страховым агентствам. Он доходит даже до обвинений в адрес самой избирательной системы.
Я совершенно согласен с тем, что речи Дональда Трампа порой смахивают на расизм, но я не считаю это основным содержанием предвыборной кампании, несмотря на тот шум, который делают из этого проклинтоновские СМИ.
Президент Клинтон по делу Моники Левински принёс публичные извинения и обратился к пасторам молиться о его прощении. И это важно. А Дональд Трамп, которого обвинили в подобных деяниях и подтвердили их звукозаписью, извинился только перед теми, кого он унизил, и к помощи духовенства не обратился.
Такие расхождения вызывают у католиков, православных и лютеран возмущение против кальвинистов, представленных в США, главным образом, пресвитерианами, баптистами и методистами. И хотя оба кандидата воспитывались в пуританских традициях (Клинтон как методистка, а Трамп как пресвитерианин), г-жа Клинтон обратилась к религии после смерти отца и сегодня она ходит на мессу в составе группы The Family, включающей начальников армейских штабов, а г-н Трамп свои религиозные чувства не выказывает и соборы почти не посещает.
Конечно, никто жёстко не ограничивает себя рамками канонов, по которым его воспитывали. Но когда у человека нет времени на раздумья, он бессознательно действует по этим канонам. Поэтому религиозная среда, в которой человек вырос, имеет значение.
Чтобы осмыслить, что поставлено на кон, нужно вернуться в Англию XVII века. Оливер Кромвель с помощью военного переворота смещает короля Карла Первого и устанавливает республику. Он намерен очистить стране её душу и приказывает казнить бывшего монарха. Руководствуясь идеями Кальвина, он устанавливает сектарный режим, массово расправляется с ирландскими папистами и вводит в стране пуританский образ жизни. Он также породил сионизм, призвав евреев в Англию, и стал первым в мире главой государства, который потребовал создания в Палестине еврейского государства. Этот кровавый эпизод вошёл в историю под названием Первой гражданской войны в Англии.
После возрождения монархии кромвелевские пуритане бегут из Англии. Они поселяются в Нидерландах, откуда некоторые из них на борту May flower направляются к берегам Америки и становятся «отцами-пилигримами», а другие в Южную Африку и становятся африканерами. Во время войны за независимость в США в XVIII веке кальвинисты вновь сталкиваются с Британской монархией, но в современных английских учебниках истории это называется Второй гражданской войной.
В XVIII веке во время войны Севера и Юга южные штаты, населённые в основном католиками, столкнулись с северными, где преобладали протестанты. История, написанная победителями, описывает эти события как борьбу за свободу и против рабства, что является чистейшей пропагандой, так как южные штаты отменили рабство во время войны, когда они заключили союз с британской монархией. По факту, это было выступление против британского трона, и некоторые историки по этой причине говорят о Третьей британской гражданской войне.
В ХХ веке распри внутри англо-саксов возобновляются, хотя в Соединённом Королевстве пуритане едины с христианами-неконформистами Премьер-министра Дэвида Ллойд Джорджа. Последние отделили Ирландию и вознамерились создать в Палестине «Еврейский очаг». Один из советников Ричарда Никсона Филипс Кельвин посвятил этим войнам обширную монографию, в которой он пришёл к выводу, что ни одна из проблем не была решена, и предсказал новую схватку [ 1 ].
Адепты кальвинистских церквей в течение 40 лет массово голосовали за республиканцев, а теперь они поддерживают демократов.
Я не сомневаюсь, что следующим президентом США станет г-жа Клинтон, а если г-н Трамп и будет избран, то его быстро устранят. Но за все эти несколько месяцев мы стали свидетелями масштабного перераспределения голосов в результате необратимого демографического процесса. Пуритане составляют всего лишь четверть населения страны, и многие из них склоняются к лагерю демократов. Но и их модель представляется исторической катастрофой. Она приказала долго жить в Южной Африке и не сможет долго просуществовать ни в США, ни в Израиле. После избрания президента, ситуация в США будет быстро изменяться, и вновь наступит разлад. В стране, где молодёжь поголовно не приемлет власть пуританских проповедников, вопрос о равенстве нельзя будет больше замалчивать. Пуритане выступают за общество, где все люди равны, но не равнозначны. Лорд Кромвель выступал за республику для англичан, но только после того, как перерезал ирландских папистов. Точно так же в США сегодня все равны перед законом, однако суды по одним и тем же статьям негров осуждают, а белым за те же преступления находят смягчающие обстоятельства. Во многих штатах одного лишь наказания за превышение скорости достаточно для того, чтобы человека лишили избирательного права. Так что белые и чёрные равны, но в ряде штатов многие чернокожие по суду лишены избирательного права. Парадигмой такого мышления во внешней политике является решение по «двум государствам в Палестине» - они равные, но, что более существенно, не равнозначные.
Пуританская идеология способствовала тому, что администрации пастора Картера, Рейгана, Буша (и мл., и ст. являются прямыми потомками «Отцов-пилигримов»), Клинтона и Обамы поддерживали ваххабизм вопреки афишируемым в стране идеалам. А в наши дни эта идеология используется для поддержки ИГИЛ.
Когда-то «Отцы-пилигримы» в Бостоне и Плимуте основали поселения, которые впоследствии были идеализированы в американском общественном сознании. Но историки более лаконичны, они назвали их «Новым Израилем», избравшим «закон Моисея». Их жители в своих соборах крестов не ставили, а расписывали их заповедями Моисея. Будучи христианами, они больше ценили еврейские тексты, чем евангельские. А своих женщин они обязали покрывать голову и ввели телесные наказания.
Тьерри Мейсан Перевод
Эдуард Феоктистов | 0 |
BY the time you finish reading this column, you would be foolish not to download the messaging app Signal onto your smartphone and computer. The free encrypted messaging service has won the acclaim of security researchers and privacy advocates, including Edward J. Snowden. All have said that Signal goes above and beyond other chat tools in keeping electronic communications private. And now more than ever, we may need it. That’s because hacks are on the rise — look at how the activist group WikiLeaks posted a trove of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, for all to see. Many are also watching for how government surveillance may grow under Donald J. Trump, who has chosen Mike Pompeo, who advocates greater surveillance, to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. Signal is one of many encrypted messaging services, but it stands out for its uncompromising security and ease of use. The chat service retains virtually no information from users, including messages and address books, on its servers. What’s more, messages remain encrypted when passing through Signal’s servers, meaning that the app’s creators can’t read them. “The default recommendation you’ll get from most security researchers for a messaging app is Signal,” said Joseph Bonneau, a postdoctoral researcher at the Applied Crypto Group at Stanford University. “It’s still the best in the field. ” That said, Signal is not perfect. It lacks some features of other messaging apps, like the ability to send stickers. And during my tests, the service had some glitches. But adding Signal to your folder of messaging apps is a must in an era when technology companies are collecting more personal information and government surveillance may expand. Some people have already cottoned on to this. Signal experienced a 400 percent jump in daily downloads since Mr. Trump won the election, according to Moxie Marlinspike, who founded Open Whisper Systems, the nonprofit that developed Signal. To Mr. Marlinspike, the surge in downloads reflects anxiety among Americans about the implications of Mr. Trump’s presidency for personal privacy. “Trump has threatened a lot of people and he’s about to be in control of the most pervasive and least accountable surveillance infrastructure in the world,” Mr. Marlinspike said. “A lot of people are justifiably concerned about that. ” Signal offers encryption, meaning a message is scrambled so that it becomes indecipherable to anyone but its intended recipient when it is sent from your device, and it remains so when it passes through the app’s server and reaches the recipient. When you initiate a conversation with someone on Signal, you and the recipient exchange cryptographic keys. Only the person who receives your message holds the key to decrypt and read it. That means that if a government agency had a wiretapping order for your Signal messages, Open Whisper Systems would not have the key to decipher the messages and would be unable to comply. Signal’s technology sets the standard for other messaging services, with its protocol being an system that other companies can freely use. WhatsApp, Facebook’s Messenger and Google embedded Signal’s encrypted messaging system into their own apps this year. Even so, security researchers said they preferred Signal over other messaging apps because it was more thorough in protecting users’ privacy. The only information Signal stores about users in its database is the last time someone connected to its server and when a person signed up for Signal. Other messaging apps maintain pieces of personal data on their servers. By contrast, while WhatsApp enables Signal’s full encryption by default in messages, there are caveats. WhatsApp may retain some meta data on conversations, including the phone numbers used in an exchange and the times that the messages were sent, according to the company’s privacy policy. WhatsApp also regularly accesses your phone number and contacts list, so the app can provide an list of your contacts who use its service to make it easier to message them. Google Allo, Google’s new messaging app that leverages artificial intelligence, does not enable Signal’s encryption in all its messages by default. Google offers full encrypted messaging only in Incognito sessions, a private mode that must be turned on manually. When you’re not chatting in Incognito mode, Google stores your Allo messages on its server. Similarly, Facebook’s Messenger enables encryption inside a private chat mode called Secret Conversations. But by default, normal Messenger chats lack that encryption. Even though Signal doesn’t record your information, the app still works across devices, like a desktop computer and a mobile device. Messages and contacts’ data are stored directly on users’ devices and synchronized between them. Let’s say you already use Signal on your iPhone and want to use it to chat on a Mac (Signal is available as a web app for Google’s Chrome browser for desktop computers). To link the desktop app with your iPhone, you would use the iPhone’s camera to scan a bar code on the Mac web app, which links the two devices together. Then, to get your contacts list and conversations to appear on the Mac, the Mac app pulls your contacts list and messages directly from the iPhone via an encrypted channel, according to Mr. Marlinspike. “It’s a bit more work, from our perspective,” Mr. Marlinspike said. “It’s more complicated than storing all this stuff on a server. ” Signal occasionally runs into glitches, such as when it comes to synchronizing data between computers and smartphones. In my tests, there were several occasions when Signal messages that were sent or received on my smartphone did not immediately show up inside the desktop app — though the messages eventually synchronized minutes later. Mr. Marlinspike, who is also the former head of security at Twitter, says he encourages people to report bugs so the group can continue to improve the service. Another downside is that your Signal account can work on only one mobile device at a time I could not, for instance, use Signal on both my iPhone and iPad. Mr. Marlinspike said it would support multiple mobile devices eventually. One last caveat is that Signal isn’t as fun to use as apps like Facebook Messenger, which lets you send stickers and animated GIFs to add color and personality to conversations. Open Whisper Systems said it planned to add these features, noting that GIFs are already supported in the Android version of Signal. Still, this is a trivial issue. I’d choose stronger privacy over sending stickers and animations any day. There is no logical reason to skip using Signal. The app is free for Android and iOS, and for computers it is a free for the Google Chrome browser. Plus, it’s easy to install and so architecturally secure that you can have the confidence to say whatever you want without fear of being spied on. Another benefit is that Open Whisper Systems is a nonprofit that relies on donations and grants, not a business that might eventually have an incentive to share your information with third parties like advertisers. That’s not to say Signal should be your only messaging app. You could use it exclusively for sensitive matters, like conversations. Then for casual chats like making plans with friends and loved ones, you could switch to more “fun” apps like Facebook Messenger and send all the stickers you want. Probably the biggest thing missing from Signal will be many of your friends. The app isn’t as popular among consumers as other mainstream messaging apps, so hanging out on Signal can feel lonely. So if you care about your privacy, other than installing Signal today, you should nag everyone you know to join the service, too. | 1 |
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For all of the storied history they can boast, the Kansas Jayhawks were not in the very first Final Four. The Oregon Ducks were. As their drought approaches eight decades, the Ducks will make their triumphant return. “Since 1939,” Ducks Coach Dana Altman said. “We waited a long time. ” In what was for all practical purposes a home game for Kansas, Oregon delivered a stunner on Saturday night, putting down speed bumps in front of the Jayhawks’ ordinarily turbocharged offense and displaying remarkable marksmanship to pull off an upset that has brought them closer to their second national championship than they have ever been. The Ducks enter their second Final Four assured that they will face another opponent. Next Saturday, in the national semifinals in Glendale, Ariz. they will play the winner of Sunday’s game between North Carolina and Kentucky. Had Oregon ( ) written a checklist for everything that needed to happen for them to advance, it is difficult to think of a single box they could not check off after the game. Jordan Bell being a monster ? Check. Bell, a junior, showed why he was named the defensive player of the year. He had assumed the role of top from Chris Boucher, who was lost to injury during the conference tournament, and was a force against the Jayhawks. Bell was a force against the Jayhawks, blocking eight shots and extending possessions, with 7 of his 13 rebounds coming on offense. He even found ways to create his own shots, chipping in 11 points. Do the math: He was two blocks from a still a rarity in the college game. Altman said he had never seen Bell play so well. “He was Jordan Bell and Chris Boucher together,” Altman said. Tremendous shooting? Check. In the first half, Oregon made 60 percent of its shots — 58. 3 percent from behind the arc, with seven . At the buzzer, the sophomore Tyler Dorsey banked in his fourth — from nearly 30 feet away — to give the Ducks a lead. By the end of the night, he had sunk six of 10 shots en route to a 27 points. Trouble for the Kansas star Josh Jackson? Check. Within the game’s first three minutes, Jackson, a freshman forward who will almost assuredly be a top pick in the impending N. B. A. draft, had two fouls. He was limited to 10 minutes in the first half — and, more important, no points. The only thing Oregon could not do was neutralize Frank Mason III, the Jayhawks’ senior point guard and a contender for national player of the year. With 17 points in the first half — in one stretch, he scored 15 straight — Mason kept the game within striking distance. In his final game for the Jayhawks ( ) Mason finished with 21 points and 4 assists — and played all 40 minutes. But this was a Murphy’s Law game for Kansas. From Oregon’s hot hand to Jackson’s foul trouble to Devonte’ Graham’s shooting — Graham, a junior who was nearly 4 for 10 from range over the season, was a stunning 0 for 7 from the field and missed all six of his attempts — nearly everything that could go amiss did. Even when a tight — almost nervous — Oregon offense let them back in the game, Kansas could not convert on the opportunity. The Jayhawks led just once the whole night: in the game’s opening minutes. Kansas had cruised through the first two rounds and demolished Purdue, in its previous game. The Jayhawks appeared to be poised for their 15th trip to the Final Four and a chance to win the tournament a fourth time. But the Jayhawks, who won the title in 2008 but have not reached the national semifinals since 2012, could not solve the Ducks. “They were the aggressor and certainly controlled the game almost from the jump,” Kansas Coach Bill Self said. Sprint Center is less than an hour’s drive from Lawrence, Kan. — the stands were a sea of red and blue, except for the section directly behind Oregon’s bench — and the crowd was overwhelmingly behind the Jayhawks, who kept it close by pushing the pace. Oregon, however, was not about to be beaten in a track meet. Especially not with Phil Knight, the Oregon present. Knight, after all, a shoe company called Nike that finds its roots in track. “We came in with the same same game plan,” Bell said. “They like to play fast, we like to play fast, too. ” Even when things did not seem to go well for the Ducks, it turned out just fine. In the second half, the freshman Payton Pritchard airballed an open from the corner only for Bell to catch the ball, go up with it and score — and draw a foul and complete the play. It was that kind of game for Oregon. With a lead that grew as large as 16 points in the second half, Oregon appeared hesitant in sets, milking the shot clock as though there were two minutes left, not 12. Kansas, undeterred, climbed back into the game. The Jayhawks cut the margin to with less than three minutes left. But again, it would turn out fine for the Ducks. With his team’s lead down to 6, Dorsey missed a desperation attempt to avoid a violation. Ball, as he had done so many other times Saturday night, kept possession for the Ducks. It ended in another by Dorsey. No stranger in the crowd could doubt it was not the Jayhawks’ night. And so they will take a short ride home after missing the Final Four again. The Jayhawks may be able to trace their lineage back to basketball’s inventor, James Naismith, but they could not overcome the Ducks. Oregon, after all, has some history of its own. | 1 |
Zones"confuse | 0 |
She got and received just what she was seeking...her fifteen minutes. | 0 |
Hillary Clinton is a SERIAL KILLER? | 0 |
The general election effort to take down Donald J. Trump through television ads will begin on Wednesday, with the main “super PAC” supporting Hillary Clinton airing its first two attack ads on broadcast television in four swing states. The effort kicks off a campaign that will flood screens in those states in the months to come. The super PAC, Priorities USA Action, had initially planned to wait until after the June 7 primary contests to introduce TV ads attacking Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, but accelerated its effort against him. The group’s $6 million investment includes two ads that offer scathing critiques of Mr. Trump’s comments about women that will run for the next three weeks in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Nevada. Mrs. Clinton’s most devoted donors have given roughly $80 million to Priorities USA Action to stop Mr. Trump, more than the group raised in the entire 2012 election to President Obama. The ads are the beginning of the broader Democratic campaign against Mr. Trump, focused on convincing suburban and women that he does not respect them. Priorities USA Action said it also planned to run ads that critiqued Mr. Trump’s business record and portrayed him as out of touch with the Americans he says he represents, an approach similar to the one it used to depict the Republican nominee in 2012, Mitt Romney, as a cold corporate titan. Mrs. Clinton’s allies said Mr. Trump’s mocking of a New York Times reporter’s disability also effectively turned off swing voters, potentially providing fodder for future ads that depict Mr. Trump as insensitive and unprepared for the presidency. Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals criticized Mr. Trump similarly on his comments about women and on his business record during the party’s nominating contest, but the effort came too late to stop his momentum. One of the super PAC’s ads, called “Speak,” shows voters some of Mr. Trump’s caustic remarks about women as they wear shirts with Mr. Trump’s visage on them. The other, “Respect,” shows quick interviews with the candidate in which he outlines his positions on abortion and Planned Parenthood. The super PAC had initially invested $130 million to reserve time for broadcast and digital ads that would start running the day after the California and New Jersey primaries in June. But it decided to add an additional buy to accelerate the time line, aiming to sow early doubts about Mr. Trump, particularly among female voters who will have a disproportionate effect on the fall election and with whom Mr. Trump has shown a particular weakness in polls. Female voters favored Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump, 55 percent to 35 percent, in a New York News poll released in March, twice the gender gap of the 2012 presidential election, when President Obama defeated Mr. Romney. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which cannot directly coordinate with the super PAC, has tried to raise money by showing Mr. Trump’s comments assailing the former secretary of state for playing the “woman’s card. ” Mrs. Clinton, though, has tried to avoid directly provoking Mr. Trump, relying instead on outside groups like the super PAC to carry out direct attacks. The campaign’s online videos against Mr. Trump have focused mostly on his policy positions and on criticism by his rivals in the Republican primaries. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said the “Speak” ad had misrepresented one of his statements. “The pathetic new hit ad against me misrepresents the final line. ‘You can tell them to go BLANK themselves’ — was about China, NOT WOMEN!” he wrote on Twitter. That drew a rebuke from the super PAC. “Sorry Donald, but the ad isn’t only about your overt sexism, it’s about your divisiveness and character being unsuitable for the office of the presidency,” Justin Barasky, a spokesman for the group, said in an email on Tuesday morning. In an interview, Mr. Barasky said the group thought it had to advertise earlier after seeing the Republican “stop Trump” effort fall short. “The decision was made recently to go up now because we learned from Washington Republicans that you can’t wait to go after Trump,” Mr. Barasky said. “What they did was too little, too late, and we weren’t going to make the same mistake. ” The new ads adhere to similar lines of attack taken by Our Principles PAC, the super PAC led by Republican operatives. It released an ad, “Quotes,” featuring female actors reciting Mr. Trump’s quotations about women. The ad tested highly in effectiveness, but came out only days before the Republican primary in Florida, which Mr. Trump won. “Speak” is slightly different in that the ad uses Mr. Trump’s voice rather than those of actors, along with the voices of voters. “Our research shows most people know very little about Donald Trump,” Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Priorities PAC, said on MSNBC on Monday night, adding, “When we tested a lot of the ‘Never Trump’ ads, we realized very quickly they really had no idea what Donald Trump had been saying on the stump and what his record had been in business or toward women, and so it’s our job to make sure they see it. ” He added that the group would also be focused on Mr. Trump’s business record, an issue that numerous Republican groups and campaigns highlighted during the nominating contest. Mr. Cecil specifically mentioned Mr. Trump’s record of “making ties in China and hiring people in Bangladesh. ” | 1 |
President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time. Here’s how we analyzed it in real time, and our live fact checks. The State of the Union is … not happening this year, technically. But in a address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, President Trump was expected to deliver the equivalent: a speech intended to set the course for his policy agenda and mollify concerns on Capitol Hill after his uneven first month in office. ■ The president tries to set the tone in an interview on “Fox and Friends. ” He gives himself a grade of A so far. ■ Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York, said he would break a nearly streak and not try to greet the president, citing policy differences. Here is what to keep an eye on: President Trump suggested on Tuesday that the recent spate of bomb threats and cemetery vandalism could be politically coordinated attacks to “make people look bad” — an apparent suggestion that his opponents could be behind them. Speaking at the White House to attorneys general from around the country, Mr. Trump was asked by Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania, about the wave of attacks and how the federal government could work with state governments to confront the violence. “First, he said the acts were reprehensible,” Mr. Shapiro, a Democrat who was elected to the post in November, said while recounting Mr. Trump’s response. “Second he said: ‘And you’ve got to be careful, it could be the reverse. This could be the reverse, trying to make people look bad.’ ” The comments echoed the Twitter post of an adviser, Anthony Scaramucci, who suggested that Democrats were behind threats to Jewish community centers. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump was questioned for his seemingly reluctant denunciation of David Duke, the former Klansman who backed him, and for the onslaught of hate from supporters on social media. At a news conference this month, Mr. Trump suggested that people who were holding up signs at rallies were doing so to make him look bad. “Some of it is written by our opponents,” Mr. Trump said at the time. “You do know that. Do you understand that?” Approximately 100 tombstones were toppled at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia this week, the second such attack in the city in the last month. Synagogues, community centers and cemeteries around the country have been targeted this year. Democrats condemned Mr. Trump’s remarks on Tuesday and called for an apology. “For millennia, Jews have not only endured unthinkable violence, but the subsequent denial of that violence,” said Eric Walker, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. “For the president of the United States to insinuate that threats to Jewish community centers are illegitimate is truly beyond the pale. ” The League, which combats said it was “astonished” by Mr. Trump’s sentiments and called on him to clarify his remarks. Mr. Shapiro, speaking on the sidelines of the attorneys general conference, said that he was not entirely sure of what to make of Mr. Trump’s comments. “I was a little surprised by it, and others were, too, Republicans and Democrats,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The question I asked was a genuine one and one of great concern to people in my state. ” Mr. Trump told the attorneys general that he planned to discuss the issue during his address to Congress on Tuesday night. Mr. Trump gave his presidency an A so far in an interview broadcast Tuesday morning, but he added that he would only give himself a C for communicating how great he has been. Appearing on “Fox and Friends,” which he has called one of his favorite shows, Mr. Trump blamed former President Barack Obama for organizing opposition against him, called Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, “incompetent” and gently criticized his own press secretary for how he has handled leaks. The interview, shown just hours before Mr. Trump was to deliver his first address to a joint session of Congress, set the stage for a day when he will have perhaps the biggest audience available to him for the rest of his first year in office. He highlighted his plans to increase military spending, tighten borders and replace Mr. Obama’s health care program, and he boasted that he had already brought back jobs to America. “I think I’ve done great things, but I don’t think I have — I and my people — I don’t think we’ve explained it well enough to the American public,” he said. “I think I get an A in terms of what I’ve actually done, but in terms of messaging, I’d give myself a C or a . ” He acknowledged that he did not have the support of a majority of Americans in polls, but he said those who do back him were more intense. “The love is great,” he said. “And I saw a poll where I was at 45 or 46 percent, but one of the things they said is that the level of enthusiasm for me is as strong as they’ve ever seen. ” Mr. Trump rejected criticism by Ms. Pelosi, who said that for all the sound and fury, the president had not actually accomplished much in his first month in office. “I’ve been watching Nancy’s tape, and so I think she’s incompetent, actually,” Mr. Trump said. Asked by the Fox hosts if he thought Mr. Obama was responsible for some of the protests against his policies, Mr. Trump agreed but brushed it off. “I think he is behind it,” he said. “I also think it’s politics,” adding, “And look, I have a very thick skin. ” Mr. Trump, who has railed against leaks, said some of them had probably come from holdovers from the Obama administration. But he said his press secretary, Sean Spicer, was wrong to have brought a group of staff members into his office and inspect their cellphones in the presence of White House lawyers. “Sean Spicer is a fine human being he’s a fine person,” Mr. Trump said. “I would have done it differently. I would have gone with different people. ” He added: “I would have handled it differently than Sean. But Sean handles it his way, and I’m O. K. with it. ” For almost three decades, Representative Eliot L. Engel, a New York Democrat, has stood along the aisle of the House chamber for every presidential address to Congress, waiting to shake the president’s hand. But on Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump will become the first president since 1989 to not receive a greeting from Mr. Engel. As curious reporters mused whether Mr. Engel would repeat his annual ritual of claiming his seat long before the address begins, the lawmaker bypassed the prime empty aisle seat and a chance to shake hands with his fellow New Yorker. Among other disagreements that factored into his decision to skip the handshake, Mr. Engel said, were Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and his attacks on the news media. “The president needs to work with all people,” Mr. Engel said. “And therefore I will listen to what he has to say today, but I will not greet him and shake his hand. ” Mr. Engel, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, has been among Mr. Trump’s most vocal critics in the House, pressing for further investigations into the administration’s ties to Russia. In January Mr. Engel introduced legislation that would punish any foreign entity found to have intervened in a federal election. Some Democrats planned to make a statement with their wardrobe as well: A group of female members planned to wear white, the color of the suffragist movement, in a signal to Mr. Trump on women’s rights. Representative Lois Frankel of Florida, the chairwoman of the Democratic Women’s Working Group, said on Twitter that the choice of attire symbolized “a pledge to protect women’s health, fair pay, paid leave more!” Based on the preview that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, gave reporters on Monday, Mr. Trump is expected to hark back to his “law and order” theme by promising more aggressive federal policing of gun crimes, drugs and other areas in response to a rise in violent crime in some big cities. Crime is near historic lows nationwide and remains far below levels seen in the 1970s and ‘80s. But Mr. Sessions, a former senator and prosecutor who was an important campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, told reporters he was worried that the increase in violence in some major cities, like Chicago and Baltimore, was “not a blip” and could signal “a trend. ” Mr. Sessions gave speech of his own on that topic Tuesday morning to the National Association of Attorneys General in Washington. Mr. Sessions said he wanted to let local police officers know “that they’re being supported” in Washington, and he suggested that morale was lagging in some departments because of a lack of federal leadership. Mr. Trump will also be trying to affirm his role as commander in chief. In the Fox interview, Mr. Trump described a raid in Yemen that left an American commando and a number of civilians dead as something that generals “wanted to do” and that was planned before he took office, drawing charges that he was deflecting responsibility for a mission he approved. Mr. Trump was asked to respond to William Owens, father of Chief Petty Officer William Owens, 36, the Navy SEAL member who was killed in the Jan. 29 raid. Mr. Owens told The Miami Herald that he refused to meet with the president when his son’s body was returned home, and asked why the new administration had rushed into a “stupid mission. ” “Well, this was a mission that was started before I got here,” Mr. Trump said. “This was something that was, you know, just, they wanted to do. They came to see me, they explained what they wanted to do, the generals. ” Moments later, he reiterated that “this was something that they were looking at for a long time doing. ” His statement drew sharp responses from critics who said he was defying a long tradition of commanders shouldering responsibility for what happens under them. “He’s the opposite of a `buck stops here’ president,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “Trump has a predilection for always blaming somebody else for what goes wrong. ” Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger who served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration, wrote on Twitter that in the Trump worldview, “Trump is responsible for all the victories, his team for all the defeats. ” Though he spoke of the Yemen mission not as his own, but as a project of “the generals,” Mr. Trump boasted, “My generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. ” In fact, the military command consists almost entirely of people who were in their posts before he took office. Muslims. Immigrants. A recent detainee. Officially, the Democratic rebuttal to Mr. Trump’s speech will come from Steven L. Beshear, the former governor of Kentucky, who will defend the Affordable Care Act. But inside the House chamber where Mr. Trump will speak, Democrats plan to assemble a cadre of human symbols, bringing as guests several people imperiled by the president’s policies. Eschewing boycotts of the speech — a feature of Mr. Trump’s inaugural address — members of Congress have used their invitations as another form of protest. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is bringing an Iraqi refugee who settled in the state in 2010 and is now an American citizen. Representative Nydia M. Velázquez of New York invited Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who worked as a translator for American forces in Iraq and was detained last month at Kennedy International Airport under the Trump administration’s travel ban. Other guests include undocumented immigrants who were protected from deportation under Mr. Obama, an Iranian graduate student and the founder of the Syrian Community Network. | 1 |
Norbert Schemansky, one of the world’s greatest weight lifters and the first to win medals in four Olympic Games, all while scraping to make a living in a hometown, Dearborn, Mich. that more than 60 years ago greeted his achievements with a shrug, died on Tuesday at his home there. He was 92. The Funeral Home in Dearborn confirmed his death. Schemansky competed across four decades, winning competitions, breaking records and, with his heaves, leaving spectators in awe. A bear of a man with a mild countenance, he could be instantly picked out of a bevy of musclemen in tights by his signature eyeglasses, as if Superman had shown up still wearing Clark Kent’s. But there was no disguising his prowess. “Norbert Schemansky is the greatest and strongest athlete I have ever seen,” his Cold War rival and fellow Olympian Yuri Vlasov of Ukraine was quoted as saying. Schemansky himself said, “One time I figured it out, and I’d lifted enough weight to lift the Queen Mary. ” At just under six feet tall and weighing 265 pounds or so, Schemansky had thighs, wrists like and, by all accounts, steel in his sinews since childhood. The Detroit Free Press called him “born strong. ” At 11 years old he had gotten a job at a Detroit market unloading bags of potatoes. He began his Olympic run in 1948 in London, where he won the silver medal in the super heavyweight class. In 1952, in Helsinki, he won the gold in the class. He missed the 1956 Games, in Melbourne, Australia, while recovering from two back operations to repair damaged disks. But the injuries did not deter him. He returned to the Olympics in 1960, in Rome, to win the bronze as a superheavyweight, and then in 1964, in Tokyo, to bring home the bronze again. In between, he was winning world and national championships and breaking records. In 1964 he became the first man ever to lift a total of 1, 200 pounds: 400 with the press (no longer used in competition) 355 with the snatch and 445 with the clean and jerk. He later exceeded that total, lifting 415, 363 ¾ and 445 (totaling 1, 223 ¾ pounds). An international poll in 1954 ranked him as the fifth greatest athlete in the world. “What Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis are to boxing, what John Grimek and Arnold Schwarzenegger mean to bodybuilding, and what Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky represent in hockey, Norbert Schemansky is to Olympic weight lifting,” Richard Bak wrote in his 2007 biography of Schemansky, “Mr. Weightlifting. ” Yet for all his success, Schemansky was consigned to stardom in a sport that drew little notice in the United States. Even his hometown, Dearborn, seemed indifferent, particularly before and after the 1952 Games. “I was working at Briggs Manufacturing, and I asked for time off,” Schemansky told The Detroit News in 2002, “and one of the guys from downstairs said: ‘Give him all the time off he wants. Fire him. ’” Schemansky quit, went to Helsinki and won the gold medal. When he returned home, a gold medal in his bag, no one was there to greet him. Only an airport porter recognized him. “The bus porter said, ‘Nice going, Semansky,’” he recalled. “He mispronounced my name, but he knew who I was. ” Schemansky took a bus home alone. It was not an unfamiliar experience. As he told Strength Health magazine in 1973, “The worst part of competing was coming home. ” Norbert Schemansky was born in Detroit on May 30, 1924, and grew up there, one of four brothers. He started lifting at 15 with an older brother, a national junior champion, and training in a converted garage. In high school he was a . In World War II he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. While competing across the country and abroad, he took mostly menial jobs — one was cleaning latrines — despite a reported I. Q. of 132. Sometimes he was out of a job or took unpaid leave just so he could compete. His straitened circumstances dismayed the sportswriter Mark Kram, who in a sympathetic 1966 profile in Sports Illustrated expressed incredulity that Schemansky had not earned more than $3, 000 in any of the previous eight years, a time when he and his wife, Bernice, were rearing four children and scratching to make payments on their house. “How can it be,” Kram wrote, “that a man who has won respect for himself and prestige for his country clings to the shadowy periphery of life, is a nonperson without status or function and one whose wife for most of the last 20 years has, in effect, supported his participation for the U. S. with an $ job?” Schemansky said he had to work because there were no endorsements in his day and no money for athletes. “Not a penny,” he said in 2002, adding, “If I was competing now, I’d be a millionaire. ” The Soviet news agency Tass was quick to recognize Schemansky’s plight as a useful propaganda tool when he and Vlasov met in front of 8, 000 fans in Budapest in 1962 in what was billed as the “heavyweight match of the century. ” After Schemansky beat Vlasov in the press and the snatch but lost the match on total points (his ankle collapsed on the final lift) Tass made ideological hay, declaring that “the story of Schemansky” illustrated “the attitude toward man in a capitalistic world. ” Schemansky retired from competition in 1972 after 26 years of lifting and became a civil engineer for the city of Dearborn, which named a park after him in 1996. He was elected to the National Weightlifting Hall of Fame, the National Sports Hall of Fame and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame. His wife died in 1996. He is survived by three daughters, Paula Sperka, Pamela Petro and Laura Rowe a son, Larry 10 grandchildren and 16 . Schemansky could be ambivalent about the fame and fortune that never accrued to him in any great measure. “Norb himself is an anomaly, a man of contradiction,” Strength Health magazine observed in 1973. “He appears to disdain recognition, yet he feels he should have it for what he has done. ” years later, his attitude remained the same. “I always thought something good would come out of it,” he said of his career, in an interview with The Detroit Free Press, “but nothing ever did. I thought it would help me get a better job. When I worked for Stroh’s Brewery, I asked for a salesman’s job. They said, ‘We’re not hiring athletes.’ Then, a couple of months later, I find out they hired a football player. You give up so much. Yeah, sometimes I wonder why I did it. ” | 1 |
BUFFALO — Immigration enforcement agents were supposed to be targeting the restaurant owner. But Antonio Ramos Salazar, a cook, was the one with guns pointed at his head. One morning last month the officers burst through the back door at La Divina, a Mexican market and taco counter in suburban Buffalo, capping a investigation into the labor practices of the restaurant’s owner, Sergio Mucino. According to the authorities, Mr. Mucino, 42, a legal permanent resident from Mexico City, along with two associates, had been harboring undocumented workers in homes around Buffalo, transporting them to jobs at his restaurants and paying them off the books. Mr. Mucino was arrested at his home on Oct. 18. But two dozen of his workers were swept up in simultaneous raids that morning at all four of his restaurants. It amounted to one of the largest immigration workplace sweeps in recent years. In the days after the presidential election, immigrant rights advocates and supporters of immigration restriction alike wondered whether these raids were a preview of the stricter enforcement policies that Donald J. Trump promised during his campaign. The sweeps hark back to the workplace actions of President George W. Bush’s administration, and deviated significantly from the Department of Homeland Security’s longstanding enforcement strategy of avoiding roundups of unauthorized workers and instead targeting abusive employers. During the raids, the authorities discovered that nine workers had the country after having been deported, which is a federal crime. Three more, including Mr. Salazar, were charged with immigration violations — which are administrative offenses only — and were ordered deported. The remaining 10 workers were released. “The targets of the investigation were the employers,” a homeland security spokesman, Khaalid Walls, said. “After investigating the case, we alleged that many of the employees were either subject to criminal charges or immigration violations, and we charged accordingly. ” Camille Mackler, the legal director of the New York Immigration Coalition, which oversees immigrant advocacy groups, said, “There’s always collateral damage in a criminal investigation, but the workers in this case are victims. ” Now, Ms. Mackler added, workers and advocates fear that this could be the blueprint for future raids under Mr. Trump — “and that would be on the small side. ” Mr. Trump pledged that in his first year in office he would deport unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, putting their number at two million, while increasing enforcement operations to deal with an undocumented population of more than 11 million people in the United States. “I don’t see Mr. Trump as the kind of individual who is going to make such a large promise and neglect to keep it,” said Tom Bauerle, a Buffalo native and conservative talk show host on WBEN, who voted for Mr. Trump. “I expect the law to be enforced. ” Mr. Bauerle said that after the raids the radio station received numerous comments from listeners cheering the actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “At the same time,” he added, “they are disappointed because apparently these places made awesome tacos. ” The authorities said the raids were set in motion more than two years ago, thanks, in part, to a tip from a former employee who was fired. According to the workers and their lawyers, Mr. Mucino paid weekly salaries for days that worked out to be below the minimum hourly wage of $9. Two workers interviewed said salaries started at $450 a week for a dishwasher and increased at different positions in the kitchen. The federal complaint stated that each restaurant grossed $50, 000 per week, which was not reported for state or federal taxes. The authorities said Mr. Mucino operated some of the business on the books, endorsing payroll checks to 28 employees. “Building and supporting a business through the intentional use of people not lawfully authorized to work here is a model that H. S. I. will not tolerate,” said Kevin Sibley, the acting special agent in charge of the Homeland Security Investigations office in Buffalo. He added that such practices undermine competition and “often come at the peril of the workers. ” But the United States attorney’s office for the Western District of New York did not charge Mr. Mucino or his associates with human trafficking, nor have tax evasion or labor violation charges been filed. Nicole Hallett, a University at Buffalo law professor who is representing three workers in their immigration cases, called the government’s actions counterintuitive. “If you are concerned about the exploitation of workers, you should not be prosecuting or deporting worker victims, because that discourages workers from coming forward in situations where they are being exploited,” Professor Hallett said. In interviews, four workers said they were not mistreated at the restaurants. They noted that the pay was better than that at agricultural or factory jobs they held previously. Mr. Salazar, the head cook at La Divina, is now wearing an electronic ankle monitor as he awaits deportation proceedings, though he is charged only with a civil offense. “If this is just from being here to work,” Mr. Salazar said, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter, “what would happen if I actually committed a crime?” He said he had earned a law degree in Mexico, but was unable to find work there to support his family of three. Sergio Roblero, 19, said he had paid a recruiter in Mexico $4, 480 for a guest worker’s visa and travel expenses to pick blueberries in Georgia. He was told he would be making $10. 59 an hour he made only $3, he said. Mr. Roblero was unable to leave the farm unless he paid $1, 000 to get his passport back. To recoup his losses, he moved four months ago to Buffalo, where a friend from Mexico was working for Mr. Mucino’s restaurants. “I’m afraid that other people are going to go through what I did,” Mr. Roblero said. “I know that the economy in Mexico is always going to be bad and people are always going to come to this country. ” According to statistics from 2014 released this month by the Pew Research Center, nearly eight million undocumented people in the United States were part of the work force or seeking employment. In New York State, undocumented immigrants represented 6 percent of the labor force. While some of his workers are still detained, Mr. Mucino was released on $85, 000 bail and reopened La Divina, though his other restaurants, which are full service, remain closed. Mr. Mucino parked a black Mercedes sport utility vehicle behind the store last week and spoke of his employees. “All of them are very nice people and they’re hard workers,” he said. “I feel very bad for everything that happened. ” He declined to comment further on the charges. According to the authorities, an incident in August accelerated the investigation. Fourteen men went to play basketball after their shifts around 10 p. m. at a suburban Buffalo playground. The local police answered a call about the group and asked for identification. When some of the men could produce only Mexican identification cards, the police called the United States Border Patrol. By 1:30 a. m. 10 people were detained and five were arrested, charged with having illegally the country. Later, a manager, Manguin Sanchez, a United States citizen, went to collect the men’s cash, which had been seized by immigration officers, and told the authorities it was their pay. According to the federal complaint, he also said restaurant workers lived in properties he owned. It was confirmation for investigators. In addition to Mr. Sanchez, 22, and Mr. Mucino, the authorities arrested another manager, Jose 37. The men provided two houses and nine apartments for their employees’ housing. Leticia and Saul — Jose ’s brother — live in one house, along with four children, all of whom are United States citizens. Ms. who had started working with her husband at La Divina only two days before the raids, said the family moved in 2015 from Los Angeles to Buffalo to be closer to relatives. Her daughter, Magali, 17, is the best student in the family, she said, and had saved more than $9, 000 in cash for her college fund. It was confiscated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during a raid of the house. “It’s been like a nightmare for the whole family,” Ms. said in Spanish, through an interpreter. The workers have received support from local churches, community organizations and a national workers’ rights group, Movimiento Cosecha, which organized several protests in Buffalo. Some Buffalo residents have put aside questions of immigration policy and the exploitation of immigrant labor in favor of their taste buds. Since opening in 2015, La Divina has drawn rave reviews and long lines for its authentic, overstuffed $2. 50 tacos. Gaetano Augello, 60, acknowledged that he felt uncomfortable hearing that workers might have been taken advantage of. “Of course, who wants to subsidize that? That’s not a story,” he said. But he had returned for the tacos. And now that Mr. Mucino has hired replacement cooks to make the recipes? “I don’t know if they’re quite as good,” Mr. Augello said. “They’re good, don’t get me wrong. ” | 1 |
Donald Trump at a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, August 19, 2015 (Michael Vadon/licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0) | 0 |
The solution to our debt crisis is for “We the People” to take our Republic back from the special interests by educating voters to enforce the Constitution, not by adding a Balanced Budget Amendment via an Article V convention.
“Our country is run by a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media.” — Eighty-one percent of Americans agreed with this statement in a 1996 survey.
Back in 1996, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia published the results of their survey of the American public based on 2,000 face-to-face, in-depth interviews. They titled their survey “The State of Disunion — 1996.”
Their finding that 81 percent of Americans believe “Our country is run by a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media” was recently reaffirmed by a January 2016 Gallup poll that revealed that 84 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “powerful special interests [have] too much control over what the government does.” According to the Gallup poll, 51 percent believe that this is a “major problem,” while 33 percent believe that this is a “crisis” situation.
This widespread belief that “Our country is run by a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media” has also been validated by the presidential election campaign of 2016. Rarely have we seen so clearly the political power plays of this “close network,” which includes of course the establishment elites of both parties, as during the 2016 election cycle.
You might wonder what all this talk of special interests’ control over our government has to do with our debt crisis. The connection is that for the last four decades there has been an organized movement to get Congress to call an Article V convention for the purpose of proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA), ostensibly to avert a national debt crisis, such as national bankruptcy or some other type of “economic meltdown.” The proponents of this BBA constitutional convention tell us that the government is out of control, as shown by our steady diet of $500 billion or higher federal deficits and the resulting skyrocketing national debt, currently around $20 trillion. According to these proponents, the solution is to add a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution via an Article V convention.
However, the federal government is not out of control. It is under the control of a “close network” of powerful special interests, aka establishment elites, whose carefully nurtured voting blocs benefit from ever-larger, unconstitutional federal programs. The problem is not just the huge annual federal deficits and the towering national debt they contribute to, it is the bloated and tyrannical federal government that has been created and powered by congressional approval of myriad special interest-sponsored unconstitutional programs.
Establishment Elites Plot to Rewrite the Constitution
Throughout its 30-year history, this magazine has led the way in exposing the powerful establishment elites who run this country. These elites are found in such leading special-interest groupings as Big Business, Big Labor, Big News Media, the education establishment, foundations, internationalist foreign policy organizations, big political donors, and the major political parties. An excellent example of this magazine’s exposés is “Council on Foreign Relations,” an article that was originally published in the August 3, 2009 issue. That article described the amazing degree of influence over our government exercised by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the preeminent internationalist foreign policy special-interest group, as follows: Chief among these groups is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most visible manifestation of what some have called the American establishment. Members of the council have dominated the administrations of every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level. It does not matter whether the president is a Democrat or Republican.
Although the CFR has only about 5,000 members, a very large number of them are leaders of other leading special-interest groups, serve as public officials, and hold leading management and editorial positions in the media. This is true to such an extent that the CFR membership alone could be thought of as “a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media” that run our country.
An earlier article in this magazine, “ Bicentennial Plot ” (February 10, 1986 issue), exposed the plans of a powerful establishment special-interest group, the Committee on the Constitutional System (CCS), which was leading the charge to “formalize radical changes that have already been taking place by rewriting the Constitution.” As you would expect, two out of the three CCS co-chairs were members of the CFR, and 15 of the 41 members of the CCS board of directors were also CFR members.
Since that special-interest establishment’s attempt to rewrite the Constitution in the 1980s fizzled out, there hasn’t been another such transparent attempt by the establishment to replace the Constitution. However, we shouldn’t neglect to point out that since the 1970s the leading organization promoting the calling of an Article V convention for the purpose of proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment has been the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an establishment special-interest group that boasts of having nearly one-fourth of our nation’s state legislators, as well as nearly 300 corporations (including many multinational corporations) and private foundations, as members. ALEC is on record on its website as officially supporting congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), two signature causes of the establishment elites. For more information on this, see our 2014 article “ The Not-so-smart ALEC .”
Although the establishment’s fingerprints are otherwise hard to find on today’s leading initiatives to bring about an Article V convention, there is a somewhat stealthy bipartisan movement to bring about such a convention, as revealed in “Working Together to Rewrite the Constitution” in our June 9, 2014 issue.
Republics and Democracies
To better understand the connection between increasing numbers of unconstitutional programs and an increasingly tyrannical federal government, consider the distinction between republics and democracies.
On September 17, 1961, Constitution Day, Robert Welch (who had founded The John Birch Society less than three years earlier) gave a speech entitled “ Republics and Democracies ” to a patriotic Chicago-based organization, “We the People.” This speech went on to influence millions of Americans to understand that our nation is a republic, not a democracy. It is still available at TheNewAmerican.com.
In his speech, Robert Welch demonstrated that the United States is a constitutional republic characterized by the “rule of law,” not a democracy characterized by the “rule of men.” And he quoted approvingly from James Madison in The Federalist , No. 10, regarding the nature of a democracy: Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
One’s first reaction to Madison’s assertion that democracies are “short in their lives” might be to say, “Madison is wrong because our nation is a democracy and it has lasted for over 200 years.” However, our nation is a republic, not a democracy. That’s why it has lasted so long. The problem is that the more our nation is transformed into a democracy, the shorter its life will be.
And our nation is being transformed into a democracy by the ongoing passage of unconstitutional programs by Congress. After a century or more of congressional seizures of powers not granted to it by the Constitution (as discussed below), we’ve long since reached the point where almost the only consideration taken into account by congressmen voting for a bill is whether a majority of their constituents will approve. Very few congressmen vote for a bill based on whether it is constitutional. As Representative “Pete” Stark (D-Calif.) famously opined at a town hall meeting in 2010, “The federal government … can do most anything in this country.”
We live in an era of “the tyranny of the majority,” which is the basic critique of democracies. In a pure democracy, everything is decided by a simple majority vote of the people or their representatives. There are no constitutional restraints, such as the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution or a Bill of Rights.
If Congress and the rest of the federal government continue on the path of bowing primarily to majority opinion, usually artfully crafted by the special-interest elites, and not obeying any constitutional limitations on their power, then we will lose all remaining constitutional bulwarks against tyranny, and finally, lose all security for our God-given rights.
Robert Welch ended his “Republics and Democracies” speech by stating, “This is a Republic, not a Democracy. Let’s keep it that way!” We need to take this slogan to heart and reject the ongoing transformation of our constitutional Republic into a democracy.
Therefore, the solution to our nation’s twin problems of too much national debt and too powerful a federal government is to defeat the special interests’ control over our government by educating voters sufficiently to get a majority of constitutionalists elected to Congress. This constitutionalist majority would eliminate or gradually phase out all unconstitutional programs, thereby balancing the budget, reducing taxes, securing our rights, and restoring our constitutional Republic and the rule of law, not of men.
So in terms of the above overview of the national debt/tyrannical government crisis and solution, our main objection to bringing about a Balanced Budget Amendment Article V convention at this time in our nation’s history is that the “close network of special interests, public officials, and the media” that runs our country would dominate such a convention process and would most likely end up revising the Constitution in their favor.
History of the National Debt/Tyrannical Government Crisis
Now let’s take a look at the history of our national debt/tyrannical government crisis to see how long we’ve had it, how big it is, and what caused it.
First of all, take a look at the chart in Figure 1a (right), which shows our national debt from 1792-2020 as measured in dollars, uncorrected for inflation and the size of our economy. This chart gives the false impression that we never had a significant national debt in our nation’s history until somewhere around 1940, and that sometime in the 1980s the national debt began to increase exponentially and shows no signs of slowing down. This false impression is due to not correcting the chart for inflation and the size of our economy. This is not to say that we don’t have a public debt problem. We emphatically do. It’s just that the history of our national debt has been more nuanced than what is displayed in Fig. 1a.
Meanwhile, the Balanced Budget Amendment Article V convention movement got rolling in the 1970s. Proponents of such a convention made the argument to state legislators in the 1970s, as they have ever since, that large annual federal deficits and the rapidly growing national debt were leading to economic and fiscal disaster. They argued that the solution was to add a BBA to the Constitution. But since Article V of the Constitution provides only two ways to propose amendments, either by a vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by a state-initiated constitutional convention, and since Congress had still not approved a proposed BBA, then we just had to get 34 states to apply to Congress to call an Article V convention in order to get a BBA proposed and ratified.
It turns out that the dire predictions of economic and fiscal crisis have not come true — yet. However, the catastrophic situation depicted in Fig. 1a does reflect a truly dangerous fiscal situation as revealed in a more accurate way in Fig. 1b. In this chart the level of national debt is measured in terms of percent of real GDP, which provides an automatic correction for inflation and the size of our economy. Just as in Figure 1a, the graph in Fig. 1b shows a dangerous buildup in national debt. In contrast to Fig. 1a though, Fig. 1b provides some valuable information about the history of our nation’s national debt. Figure 1b shows that we’ve had a buildup in national debt many times since 1792. Until the 1980s, these increases in national debt have always been associated with wars, such as the War for Independence, the War of 1812, the Civil War, WWI, and WWII. After each of these wars, we’ve paid most of the debt off.
But since 1980, we’ve had a rapid increase in the national debt without being involved in a full-scale war. Since the increases in our national debt are basically due to our annual federal budget deficits, let’s examine what’s been going on with federal spending and deficits as revealed in Figures 1c and 1d. In these two figures, spending and deficits are measured as a percent of real GDP, again to correct for inflation and the size of our economy. We see a familiar pattern in both 1c and 1d. There are the peaks of spending and deficits corresponding to the major wars we’ve fought.
However, there’s also something very interesting that is revealed in the pattern of federal spending. We see a rapid increase in federal spending beginning in the 1930s and continuing into the 1980s. We know from American political history that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and that he inaugurated many new government programs, not authorized by the Constitution and known collectively as the “New Deal.” Once FDR and Congress had opened the floodgates for large-scale unconstitutional spending, there was no turning back.
Unconstitutional programs begat more and more unconstitutional agencies, departments, and programs, and this process has continued right up to today. We’ll verify the unconstitutionality of the vast majority of federal spending below when we look at the specific spending categories for fiscal year 2015.
One very striking statistic from Fig. 1c is that during President Obama’s first term, annual federal spending set a new, post-WWII record of nearly 25 percent of GDP.
Now look at Fig. 1d. In the 1930s, the increased federal spending led to immediate increases in federal deficits. Next, the massive deficits of the WWII years masked any deficits that were caused by increases in non-war spending. But within a few years after WWII, a pattern of seemingly modest deficits developed. Then, in the 1970s, these deficits began to increase toward five percent of GDP and remained at or near the five-percent level until the late 1990s when federal deficits were eliminated for a few years in the wake of the Republican Revolution of 1994. Under George W. Bush the deficits returned, but it was during the Obama years that some of the deficits set a new post-WWII record of nearly 10 percent of GDP.
So, what’s the point of all of this analysis of spending, deficits, and debt? It is that Congress was authorized with specific enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution; however, in the 1930s Congress began a lavish spree of unconstitutional spending that increased rapidly for many decades and continues to increase to this day.
The Unconstitutionality of Most Federal Spending
Now take a look at Figure 2 (below). This pie chart shows all federal spending for fiscal year 2015, which amounted to $3.8 trillion (about 20 percent of GDP). Let’s see if our characterization of the rapid increase in federal spending since the 1930s as unconstitutional holds up.
If you’ll compare the 12 spending categories listed for the various pie pieces in Fig. 2 with the powers granted to Congress in Article I, Section 8, you’ll find that over 70 percent of current federal spending is unconstitutional. About the only categories of spending that appear to be constitutional are “Military,” “Veterans’ Benefits,” and “Interest on Debt.” Sure there are some constitutional programs buried within the various categories, but the vast majority of spending within the unconstitutional categories is still unconstitutional.
Even a very brief review of some of the various categories of federal spending in Fig. 2 reveals the seeds of the destruction of our freedoms by a tyrannical federal government present in these categories.
For example, the “International Affairs” category includes our unconstitutional foreign aid program and the dues for our unconstitutional United Nations membership. These expenditures are being used to help build a global government, which would destroy our nation’s independence and our personal rights and freedoms.
The “Education” spending is used by the federal government to exert its unconstitutional control over all levels of education with the goal of producing compliant citizens who will vote to support the “close network of special interests, public officials, and the media” that runs our country. Think Common Core.
The “Food & Agriculture” spending hides the surprisingly large unconstitutional “food stamp” program, which in 2014 cost $74.1 billion and was used by 46.5 million Americans. This program develops and maintains the loyalty of millions of voters to the special-interest elites on a daily basis.
Then there’s the huge “mandatory spending” categories of “Social Security, Unemployment & Labor,” and “Medicare & Health,” which constituted fully 60 percent of federal spending in 2015. Here is where we find the spending for the big three entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Various economists have estimated that the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs have unfunded liabilities of between $100 and $200 trillion. This is equal to between five and 10 times the size of our annual GDP. In short, the promises to pay specific levels of future benefits for these unconstitutional entitlement programs are simply promises that our government can’t keep.
Also hidden inside the spending shown in the Fig. 2 pie chart is about $500 billion in unconstitutional federal aid to states each year for health, education, etc., which amounts to about 30 percent on average of each state’s annual budget. This unconstitutional federal aid is passed through by the states to its citizens and thereby makes the states complicit in the special interests’ rampant unconstitutional federal spending. This level of federal subsidization of state budgets severely compromises state sovereignty.
Furthermore, consider that the 10th Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution … are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” When Congress illegally seizes the power to “do most anything in this country,” then that leaves virtually no powers reserved to the states to exercise.
The point of this brief review of the unconstitutionality of over 70 percent of federal spending in 2015 is to confirm that the rapid increase in federal spending that occurred between the mid-1930s and 1980, and that has continued, albeit at a slower pace, right up to today, can be characterized as mostly unconstitutional spending.
BBA Article V Convention Movement
In 1957, Indiana became the first state to apply to Congress to call an Article V convention for the purpose of proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment. Although a sprinkling of states applied to Congress for such a BBA “constitutional convention” in the 1960s and early 1970s, the movement didn’t really take off until sometime in the mid-1970s, when the American Legislative Exchange Council began promoting a “Balanced Federal Budget Petition,” which later became known as a “Balanced Budget Amendment” petition. (See our 2015 article “ The New BBA Con-Con Threat ” for more BBA Article V convention history.)
Nowadays most proponents of such a convention deny that it can be properly called a “constitutional convention” — because such a reference warns Americans of the potential danger of such a gathering. However, The John Birch Society and many other organizations and activists continue to correctly refer to an Article V convention as a constitutional convention (often abbreviated as Con-Con). The 1979 fifth edition of the widely used Black’s Law Dictionary even explicitly refers to an Article V Convention as an example of a constitutional convention.
By 1983, 32 of the required 34 states had applied to Congress to call a BBA Article V convention. This was the high-water mark of the BBA constitutional convention movement; it has not been surpassed up to the present day. The next state to apply for such a convention was Florida in 2010.
By the mid-1980s members of The John Birch Society and other organizations, such as Eagle Forum, were working with state legislators to oppose the approval of any new Article V convention applications and to rescind (cancel) existing applications. From 1988 to 2010, 17 states, including Florida, rescinded their previous BBA Article V convention applications.
Current Status of the BBA Article V Convention Movement
Although the numerous Article V convention application rescissions during the years 1988 to 2010 reduced the number of states that still had “live” (unrescinded) applications for a BBA Article V convention down to 17, the momentum shifted again in 2010. From 2010 to 2015, eight states that had formerly rescinded their applications reapplied for a BBA Article V convention. Then, Ohio and Michigan made their initial BBA convention applications in 2013 and 2014 respectively, yielding a new total of 27 states with “live” applications as of September 2015, just seven short of the required 34 states.
Then, in 2016 two more states, Oklahoma and West Virginia, applied for a BBA Article V convention to be called; however, Delaware rescinded its existing “live” application for a BBA Article V convention. So, the BBA convention proponents gained a net of one state this year for a total of 28. That leaves them six short of the required 34 states for forcing Congress to call a convention.
Now look at the “BBA Article V Convention Status November 2016” map (right) and see what your state’s status is. The John Birch Society is recommending that those readers living in a green state (no “live” BBA Article V convention application) work with others and your state legislators to stop the approval of any BBA Article V convention application in your legislature.
If your state is orange, your state already has an existing “live” BBA Article V convention application. The John Birch Society is recommending that you work with others and your state legislators to get a resolution introduced and approved to rescind all existing Article V convention calls, especially of the BBA variety. Remember that for every additional state that rescinds its BBA convention call, the BBA convention movement is one state further away from its goal of 34. For further information about how to rescind Article V convention applications, see our article “ Save the Constitution by Rescinding Article V Convention Applications .”
See the sidebar “Why a BBA Article V Convention Is Not a Wise Idea” at the end of this article for a summary of the reasons for opposing a BBA Article V convention.
This Is a Republic, Not a Democracy!
The point is that our problem with the federal government is not just due to deficit spending, and the federal government is not simply out of control. Our problem with the federal government is that Congress has seized (usurped) powers not granted to it by the Constitution, and special interests have taken control of the federal government by taking advantage of these usurped powers to reward their carefully cultivated constituencies.
Our Republic is being converted into a democracy by the establishment’s deliberate flouting of the Constitution, along with its cultivation of voting blocs that are electing congressmen who are moving our nation toward a “tyranny of the majority.” Even though our nation was founded on the principle in the Declaration of Independence that “governments are instituted among men” to “secure” our God-given rights, a “tyranny of the majority” would eventually strip our nation of all our rights.
Therefore, the solution to our twin problems of too high a national debt and too powerful a federal government is not to add a BBA to the Constitution, but rather to support grassroots efforts by independent, private organizations to create a constitutionally informed electorate that would nominate and elect a majority of constitutionalists to Congress and state legislatures. We the People are the last resort for enforcing the Constitution and thereby securing our rights. We must not enable the powerful special-interest establishment to revise our Constitution in their favor via an Article V convention process at this time in our history.
The Constitution must be preserved as a rallying point for freedom-loving Americans. This is a republic, not a democracy. Let’s keep it that way! * * *
Sidebar: Why a BBA Article V Convention Is Not a Wise Idea
• The national debt is not the real problem. The real problem is how “a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media” control the federal government based on their ability to build voting blocs that benefit from the unconstitutional federal programs that they initiate. The fiscally dangerous size of the national debt is a measure of just how effective the special interests are in getting their deficit-spending programs funded. The solution to the debt crisis is to create a constitutionally informed electorate and pay the national debt off by phasing out unconstitutional spending.
• A runaway convention could rewrite the Constitution. An Article V convention has the inherent power to extensively revise or completely rewrite the Constitution based on the precedent of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and on the right of the people to alter or abolish their form of government (including the ratification procedure) as stated in the Declaration of Independence.
• An Article V Convention would play into the hands of the special interests. The “close network of special interests, public officials, and the media” that control our nation would lead an Article V convention process to revise the Constitution to favor the special interests, and would also massively influence the ratification process to favor the special interests.
• Virtually all BBA proposals include loopholes, such as national emergency exceptions and supermajority exceptions, that would enable Congress to continue approving deficit spending, even if a BBA were to be added to the Constitution.
• A BBA would legitimize unconstitutional spending by shifting the focus away from whether a certain bill is unconstitutional and toward whether the bill would fit within a balanced budget. The BBA Article V convention movement has never been about restoring the spending limitations contained in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
• A BBA would further transform our Republic into a democracy by making the main criterion for approving a proposed bill the degree of popular support that bill has for including it in a balanced budget, as opposed to its constitutionality. A constitutional republic is characterized by the rule of law, while a democracy is characterized by the rule of men and leads to a tyranny of the majority.
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Conflict emerged between protest groups demonstrating on International Women’s Day in downtown Santa Cruz, California on Wednesday, as a “Brown Squad” focused on racial issues faced off against a “less diverse” group of protesters. [The local Santa Cruz Sentinel described an “intense conflict” between the two protest groups, which it described as follows: The protest’s two distinct groups clearly had different agendas. The first included roughly 75 younger protesters, mostly women of color, who marched down from UC Santa Cruz. This group’s messaging was focused on racism, white privilege, patriarchal oppression, as well as transgender and queer issues. The second group consisted of about 150 women and a few men dressed mostly in red who had been brought together by the Santa Cruz General Strike Organizing Committee. Older and less diverse, this group focused on issues primary to the larger International Women’s Day Strike — reserving most of its anger for the administration of President Donald Trump. Protest splintered into 2 groups. One blocking traffic. Still no SCPD. #scsrt pic. twitter. — Ryan Masters (@ryanmasters831) March 8, 2017, The “Brown Squad” was the more radical of the two, according to the Sentinel. It blocked traffic downtown, leading to a tense standoff with a pickup truck driver that was captured on YouTube: At one point, a member of the “Brown Squad” delivered a speech to the “less diverse” group, exhorting it to address its own internal privilege, according to the Sentinel: ““ means getting off your high horse and realizing that other people are suffering a lot more than you … To join those people over there you have to address the darkness within you. ” Footage, apparently of the two groups together, shows some demonstrators wearing masks, a protester carrying a Palestinian flag, and a speech railing against capitalism. According to the Sentinel, the groups later splintered. Protests were also held in other cities across the country, though they did not match the scale of protests on the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Photo: file, Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
Ahrar Mrimin with Mohammed Mrimin at the head Brigade. The army of mujahids.
Dozens of civilians were injured as a result of chaotic bombardments from the side of Brigades of Free Syrian Army, which collaborate with Jabhad al Nusra and Ahrar al Sham. According to the last statistics the death toll among civilians as a result of indiscriminate bombardment of suburbs has reached 85 people by 06.04.16. 620 people were wounded, most of them were severely injured . Chemical weapons were used during the bombardment. The odor was smelt and puffs of yellow smoke were seen. 40 000 people live in this region now. 30 000 people more were resettled from other districts of Aleppo.
The situation is complicated due to acute shortage of medical supplies. People perish because it is impossible to provide them with proper medical assistance. Shamiran Rasho, a representative of «Red Crescent» in the region of Sheikh Maqsood, stated: ” We are unable to save the lives of many people because of the catastrophic lack of medicinal products”. Mrs. Shamiran Rasho pointed out, that the region was still being gunned from the side of terrorist armed gangs. “We appealed to the international community to help people of Syria. But we got neither medical nor humanitarian assistance from the international organizations, which consider themselves the friends of people of Syria”. The region has been in siege since the 22 of September 2015. International community turns a blind eye to a human tragedy in the region of Sheikh Maqsood, which is close to a humanitarian catastrophe.
This article is based on the facts and reports, given by mass media and organizations, which address the issue of human rights to life.
21.02.2016.
Contract fighters of Jabhad al Nusra and Ahrar al Sham bombed out the environs of Sheikh Maqsood in Aleppo. As a result 6 people perished, among them 3 children from one family, 19 people were wounded.
As a consequence of the bombardment 6 people perished, 4 of them were the members of one family: mother and 3 children. A rocket hit their house. According to the acquired information their names were: Isa Mohammed ( 11 y.o), kadija Mohammed Sultan, Ahmet Mohammad (14 y.o), Nazla Mohammed calif 30 (y. o), the body of the 6 th person was impossible to identify.
There is a list of 19 wounded people:
Leman Mohammad, 35 years old – wounded in the belly with a frag.
Mohammed Ali Mohammad, 8 years old – as a result of explosion got a fragmentation wound of the whole body.
Majid Ali Mohammad, 5 years old – fragmentation wound
Mezha Mohammad hlefa, 35 years old – wounded in the belly and back
Bervan horo, 89 years old – wounded in the hand
Mohammad Ramadan, 38 years old – wounded in the throat
Makbula Bozan, 38 years old – wounded in the shoulder
Amud Jafad, 38 years old – wounded in the head
Abdalla Mohammad Abdalla, 30 years old – wounded in the head
Arf Abdo, 54 years old – as a result of explosion got a fragmentation wound of the head and of the whole body.
Abdalla Amori, 61 years old – wounded in the leg
Abdahman, 15 years old – wounded in the leg
Mohammad Piro, 26 years old – wounded in the back
Hussein Piro, 50 years old –wounded in the backbone.
25.02.2016.
2 people perished: Bushla Mustafa, 16 years old, Abdalla Fatn, 43 years old.
15 people were wounded as a result of bombardment the region of Sheih Maqsood by heavy artillery, subartillery and homemade gas rockets. The identity of 10 people was established.
Mohammad Ali Sheih, 27 years old – wounded in the head, was shot by the sharpshooter.
Mustafa halil, 8 years old – wounded in the head
Jmaa Zlha, 66 years old – wounded in the head
Gafran Otil, 39 years old – a fragmentation wound of the head and the hand.
Idris Mustafa, 29 years old – wounded in the leg
Ziad Sheh Ali – wounded in the eye
Mohammad Sheh, 23 years old – wounded in the head
Sidra Mustafa – a fragmentation wound of the body
Ahmad Mussa – a fragmentation wound of the body
27.02.2016.
Armed groups, which stationed themselves in the region of Kastello and Jandul were gunning the region of Sheih Maqsood from 4 o. clock in the morning till 5 o, clock in the evening. As a result 4 people were badly wounded. Bandit groups, which participated in the bombardment were: 1.Islamist group Ahrara al Sham. 2. Nur al Din al Zanky Brigade . 3. Sultan Murad Brigade. 4. Branch of the 16-th group of Haled Hayany. 5. Jabhad al Nusra. 6. Fastakm Kama Amart Association . 7. Front of Al Shamiya. 8. Squadron of Caucasus with Salahaddin al Chichany at the head. 9. Sultan Fatih Brigade. 10. Sultan Murad Brigade.
28. 02.2016.
One child perished and 4 people were badly wounded as a result of yet another bombardment of the region of Sheih Maqsood from the side of armed groups, which station themselves in the region of Kastello. At 3.15 p.m the same militant groups attacked the commanding points of YPG and YPJ, situated in the region of Ashrafie. Besides, at 4. 15. this region was cannonaded. As a result, 8 civilians were wounded.
02.03.2016.
Early in the morning Syrian armed opposition groups, connected with the headquarter of operations of Aleppo, began brisk fire of Sheih Maqsood. These armed opposition groups stationed themselves in the regions of Jandol, Kastello, Afrie and on the place, where a bus factory was located. As a result of this bombardment 3 people perished and 46 were wounded.
06.03.2016.
12 civilians were wounded as a result of bombardment of the suburbs of Sheikh Maqsood by Jabhad al Nusra and Ahrar al Sham, which stationed themselves in the region of Bani Zed . Gas bombs were used during these bombardments. According to the information of news agency Havar, the rockets fell on the houses. It caused the destructions of buildings and took the life of 12 people.
07.03.2016
16 civilians and 4 people from militia army have perished .
YPG made a public statement, where they pointed out that contract fighters of Jabhad al Nusra, Ahrar al Sham, Sultan Murad Brigade and other forces, connected with them, using heavy artillery, homemade gas bombs had launched a spate of strikes on the regions of Sheikh Maqsood in the night. «As a result, 16 civilians perished, 4 persons from the army of the population protection and dozens of civilians were wounded. The aim of this attack was to occupy the region of Sheikh Maqsood. But we stood against the attack and defeated their plans. But we did not find out what loses they suffered. On this day the gangs of mercenaries tried a shot of attack from the side of the regions of Maspakh, Kastello, region of Sekan Shababi. But they did not succeed again. 8 mercenaries were killed».
08.03. 2016.
The armed opposition groups delivered yet another rocket attack on the region of Sheikh Maqsood. As a result 3 civilians, among whom was one child, got hurt: Shahod hadji Mohammad, 70 years old, Mahmud Murad, 14 years old, Abdul Kadir Atto, 27 years old.
Armed opposition groups launched a blow on the region of Sheikh Maqsood, using chemical weapon.
An official representative of YPG Redor Halil reported that at 3 p.m . the Syrian opposition groups had conducted bombing strikes on the region. It is likely that chemical weapons were used. The groups, that participated in it are: Ahrar al Sham, Jabha al Shamia, Sultan Murad Brigade , Sultan Fatih Brigade, Fastakm Kama Amart Association, Nur ad Din al Zanky Brigade, the 13 th Brigade, the 1 st Regiment, Brigade 116, Brigade of Adu Amar.
09.03.2016.
At 4 p.m. the armed groups, connected with the National Coalition, violated the cessation of hostilities and conducted an attack on the region of Sheikh Maqsood, using heavy artillery.
15.03.2016.
On the 15 th of March the same opposition groups violated the cessation of hostilities and launched a rocket attack on the outskirts of Sheikh Maqsood, using Grad MLRS. It led to numerous destructions. A lot of civilians were wounded.
19.03.2016.
On the 19th of March the armed groups, connected with the National Coalition, violated the cessation of hostilities and conducted bombing strikes on Sheikh Maqsood and its suburbs, using homemade gas bombs and heavy artillery. These attacks were launched from the regions which are under their control: Maspah halab, Ashrafiya, Sekan Shebabi, and the region of Jandol. The groups, that participated in it were: Sultan Murad Brigade , Sultan Fatih Brigade, Mujahaddin Brigade, Fastakm Kama Amart Association, Nuraddin al Zanky Brigade. As a result of bombardment 4 people perished, 7 civilians were wounded.
21.03.2016.
The armed groups, connected with the National Coalition violated the cessation of hostilities and using the guns with gas balloons, missile launcher Grad , took the region under fire. A lot of civilians found themselves under the ruins of buildings.
25.03.2016.
On this day the region of Sheikh Maqsood underwent intensive attack from the side of armed groups. Fire was launched from the regions of Sekan Shababi, Sekan Shkef and Ashrafiya. It happened at 2 p.m. The forces which took the credit for this bombardment were the following: Sultan Murad Brigade , Ahrar al Sham, the 16 th Brigade, Jash al Mujahaddin, Fastakm Kama Amart Association, Nuraddin al Zanky Brigade. As a result of bombardment 4 people perished, 7 civilians were wounded. As a result of this attack Saadu Mohammad Saadu perished and 6 people were wounded.
27. 03.2016.
On this day at 4 p.m. the forces, connected with Syrian opposition, set a goal to capture Sheikh Maqsood and the points, controlled by YPG. They conducted an attack on these territories. The forces which took the credit for it were: Sultan Murad Brigade , Ahrar al Sham, the 16 th Brigade, Fatah Brigade, Fastakm Kama Amart Association, Nuraddin Zanky Brigade. As a result of these actions a serious damage to the region was inflicted.
05.04.2016.
18 people perished and 67 were wounded as a result of attack on Sheikh Maqsood on this day.
Day by day the death toll rises as a result of the attack of coalition forces on civilians. Women, children and a pregnant woman are among the victims. 67 people were critically injured. The names of victims are: Ahmed al Hassan, 12 years old, Sharif Ahmed, 40 years old, Baraa al hadi, 15 years old, Hadi al Haider, 25 years old, Manar Husein, 25 years old, Zakariya, 20 years old, Kadija Shehu, 15 years old.
The names of the wounded people are: Saria Asu, 48 years old, Nureddin Saado, 15 years old, Azdihar Saado, 7 years old, Menar Saado, 9 years old, Zachariah Galib, 35 years old, Menarmuso Hussein, 25 years old, Vakfe Kabo, 20 years old, Ahmed Abdul Rahman 50 years old, Mohammed Abbas 85 years old, Huda Albiosh 26 years old, Rezgar Nury 6 years old, Ferashin Nury 2 years old, Jumah Zlha Zlha 47 years old, Asna Zlha 17 years old, Ahmed Zlha 45 years old, Isra Zlha 7 years old, Kadija Shehu 10 years old, Ahmed Mohammed 46 years old, Nury al Ibragim 49 years old, Hamza Mohammad 13 years old, Agit Agit 37 years old, Aisha Muhammeda 24 years old, Nauros Sleman 4 years old, Nariman Mahmud 27 years old, eba al Mery 6 years old, Merua Musa 5 years old.
07.04.2016.
7 people perished, 20 were wounded as a result of bombardment.
08.04.2016.
Within 24 hours the region of Sheikh Maqsood was subjected to the chemical attack 3 times. Terrorist groups carried out an attack on the region using chemical weapon. 6 people with severe poisoning and symptoms of asphyxia were brought to the hospital of «Red Crescent». Aziz Amo Jmo, who got hurt as a result of this attack, said: «I was at home when gas attack began. When I went out, I felt giddiness and queasy. I began to gasp. Eccentric fragrance was smelt in the air. I moistened a kerchief and put it to the nose to breathe». According to the words of the locals, they saw the clouds of yellow smoke. The medical director of the hospital of «Red Crescent» Valat Mahmo told «Havar» agency: «After the complete examination of the injured people we found out that they got severe poisoning». Valat Mahmo addressed all the medical and social communities with an appeal to provide medical and humanitarian assistance to the people, who got hurt as a result of bombardment of the region of Sheikh Maqsood, because they «suffer a shortage of medical preparations to deliver medical care». Besides, Valat Mahmo emphasized that within 24 hours the region of Sheikh Maqsood had been subjected to the chemical attack with toxical gases 3 times. 6 people got hurt as a result of it. In the video message one of the members of terrorist group Jash al Islam told that they had used chemical weapons against the civilians. He added that their aim was to dehouse Sheikh Maqsood. In the main headquarters of terrorist organizations it was confirmed that it had been done without the knowledge of the executive staff and that person would be ensured accountability for it
09.04.2016.
A few people more, who got hurt as a result of chemical attack, were hospitalized. All of them had the similar symptoms of dizziness and queasiness. The names of these people are: 1. Mslm Mslm, 55 years old. He felt trouble breathing, when the rocket with poison gas fell near his house. 2. Gulistan Abdo, 4 years old. According to the words of her mother, she felt bad after the rocket with poison gas had fallen near their house. Sometime after that she began to lose hair. 3. Hasan Husein, 40 days old, was hospitalized because of the trouble breathing.
Since the 16 th of February up to now the military operations have not finished. During this period 85 people died, 620 people were wounded. On the 24 th of March the region of Sheikh Maqsood was subject to chemical attack. On the 7 th – 8 th April the terrorist groups dropped chemical bombs on the region of Sheikh Maqsood.
10.04.2016.
As a result of bombardment 2 people perished, 8 people were wounded. The names of the died people are: Halil Osman, 60 years old, Farah Ibragim, 13 years old. The names of wounded people are: Tofik Hasan, 37 years old, Mahmad Sino, 62 years old, Bashar Hadji Ahmad, 16 years old.
In conclusion we appeal to the world public, to the Human Rights Committee, to the countries which contribute to the cessation of hostilities in Syria. It is necessary to terminate the chaos which is in the region of Sheikh Maqsood now, to destroy the blockade in which people live. For our part we respect the principles and norms of international law, toe the line of agreements approved in Geneva in 1949 and the protocols, approved in 1977. We act according to the decrees, connected with the resolution of crisis in Syria, 2245 and 2268. The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 | 0 |
A dramatic confrontation between an American Airlines employee and a passenger erupted during boarding before a flight from San Francisco to Dallas, including the employee taunting a passenger by saying, “Hit me! ”[According to initial reports, the employee allegedly struck a mother carrying a baby with her stroller by accident, narrowly missing the baby. The woman was left in tears, and according to multiple witnesses was not apologized to. The video posted to social media does not include this event, instead showing another passenger’s reaction, which was to leave his seat while pointing his finger and saying, “You do that to me, and I will knock you flat!” Watch the video here: Tense moments btwn passengers and crew member on an American Airlines plane. At 10p, more from DFW on what happened. @wfaachannel8 pic. twitter. — Bradley Blackburn (@BLBlackburn) April 22, 2017, Multiple other videos show the aftermath of the incident. @AmericanAir flt attendant just violently took stroller from woman w baby. Hitting her. AA 591. TERRIBLE. pic. twitter. — ⚡️urain (@surain) April 21, 2017, American Airlines immediately released a statement on the incident, in sharp contrast to United Airlines’ handling of their recent violent removal of a customer from a flight. In the statement, American states that the mother and her family have been booked on another flight with upgraded status, and the employee has been removed from duty. Here is the text of their statement in full: 10:30 p. m. CT, We have seen the video and have already started an investigation to obtain the facts. What we see on this video does not reflect our values or how we care for our customers. We are deeply sorry for the pain we have caused this passenger and her family and to any other customers affected by the incident. We are making sure all of her family’s needs are being met while she is in our care. After electing to take another flight, we are taking special care of her and her family and upgrading them to first class for the remainder of their international trip. The actions of our team member captured here do not appear to reflect patience or empathy, two values necessary for customer care. In short, we are disappointed by these actions. The American team member has been removed from duty while we immediately investigate this incident. | 1 |
The letter from James Comey about the Hillary Clinton email scandal has motivated Democrats, as the Clinton campaign says they raised $11.3 million online in the last 72 hours.
Lisa Lerer of the AP reported: Clinton campaign says they've raised $11.3M online in last 72 hrs – the most $s since Clinton became nominee at the convention
— Lisa Lerer (@llerer) November 1, 2016
The Comey letter was supposed to boost Trump and depress Democratic turnout, but the opposite appears to be happening. James Comey’s interference in the presidential election has motivated Clinton supporters to work harder, give more money, and get to the polls, which in not what Republicans wanted at all.
Democrats have seen through Comey’s letter and the Republican spin. The October surprise has failed. Instead, it has made Hillary Clinton even stronger while giving her campaign more resources to use to close out the presidential election.
As a political tactic, the Comey letter is harming Republicans.
Republicans have thrown everything that they can think of at Hillary Clinton, and nothing has stopped her. Hillary Clinton and her supporters continue to grow stronger, while Donald Trump is marching back into reality television star C-list celebrity obscurity. | 0 |
YPSILANTI, Mich. — President Trump came to the heart of the auto industry on Wednesday with a manifesto for American manufacturing: to remove the shackles of regulation and restore an age of industrial glory. Granting the automakers their top wish, Mr. Trump halted an initiative by the Obama administration to impose stringent standards by 2025 — rules meant to cut carbon emissions and meet international commitments to address climate change. Instead, Mr. Trump vowed to keep cutting regulations as a means to accelerate economic growth and add new jobs. “The assault on the American auto industry is over,” he declared. The move to reopen the government’s review of the standards will allow automakers to argue for less stringent — and less costly — mileage standards than the target of 54. 5 miles per gallon set in 2012 by President Barack Obama. But the Trump administration is expecting things from the automakers in return for its stance: new American jobs, and less investment in foreign operations. And while Mr. Trump vowed to improve business conditions at home, he pledged again to stop the flow of automotive investment and jobs to Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he termed “a total disaster. ” “We want to be the car capital of the world again,” the president said. “And we will be. ” The announcement on pollution standards was delivered before hundreds of auto executives and workers in a former assembly plant near Detroit. It drew sharp criticism from environmental groups contending that laxer regulations would increase global warming and hurt consumers. But Mr. Trump had little to say about climate change or fuel prices on Wednesday, preferring to focus on his evolving economic doctrine, which he termed “the American model” for stimulating growth and business expansion. “Under this system, we will reduce burdens on our companies and on our businesses,” Mr. Trump said. “But, in exchange, companies must hire and grow in America. ” His policies will get their initial test with an auto industry that was was brought to its knees by the recession eight years ago and required an $80 billion taxpayer bailout, including the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler. But now the industry is coming off two straight years of record sales in the United States, and automakers are flush with profits. By acceding to the automakers’ plea for regulatory relief, Mr. Trump is challenging them to funnel more resources into their American manufacturing operations. One auto industry analyst said the decision to reopen negotiations appears to have been brokered during meetings between the president and the chief executives of the three big American automakers — G. M. Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler — shortly after he took office. “We believe an ‘art of the deal’ may have been struck trading jobs for regulatory relief,” the analyst, Brian Johnson of Barclays, wrote in a letter to investors on Wednesday. Detroit auto executives have been about their with the White House. All three companies have, however, already made promises to add or retain thousands of American jobs in response to Mr. Trump’s previous criticisms of their investments in Mexico. And just hours before Mr. Trump’s speech on Wednesday, G. M. said it would create 220 additional jobs in a Michigan transmission plant and retain 680 workers who were facing layoffs at another factory. Without mentioning the president’s decision on fuel standards, G. M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, said the new and preserved jobs underscored the “overall positive outlook for the auto industry and the U. S. economy. ” Mr. Trump called G. M.’s move “just the beginning” of a new era of job growth in the industry. “That’s peanuts,” he said. “We’re going to have a lot more. They’re going to be building new plants, expanding their plants. ” But automakers may be to meet Mr. Trump’s expectations. The financial collapse of the industry during the recession is still a fresh memory, and companies have streamlined their manufacturing operations to eliminate costly excess capacity. Adding new plants in a market at its peak could upset the industry’s steady recovery and jeopardize the big profits earned in recent years on larger vehicles like pickups and sport utility vehicles. Automakers are also spending heavily on new technology for autonomous vehicles, yet they are not near the point of building plants to produce models. And despite the blooming partnership between the industry and the Trump administration, there are lingering worries among automakers about the potential for a border tax on imports from Mexico and elsewhere. A tax on imported models could raise prices on several vehicles in high demand by American consumers, including pickup trucks made in Mexico by G. M. and Fiat Chrysler. But Mr. Trump has an unlikely ally in Detroit for a tax on Mexican imports: the United Automobile Workers union, which supports his plan to renegotiate Nafta. The union’s president, Dennis Williams, has praised Mr. Trump for his position on Mexican trade. “We’ve been hollering about this for 20 years and he is the first president who has brought this up,” Mr. Williams said last month in a meeting with reporters. He was less supportive of Mr. Trump’s move to cut back on rules, noting that consumers benefit directly from improved mileage on new cars and trucks. Despite reopening the review of the fuel standards, Mr. Trump notably did not initiate any action to revoke the waivers of states, in particular California, to set their own emissions rules. That leaves California with the ability, for now, to impose stricter standards than whatever is ultimately decided by federal regulators. The rules, aimed at cutting carbon dioxide, were a pillar of President Obama’s climate change legacy. They would have required automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54. 5 miles per gallon by 2025, forcing automakers to speed development of highly vehicles, including hybrid and electric cars. In the final days of the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency affirmed the standards, despite the automakers’ appeals for further review. The review of the fuel rules will now stretch into 2018, and environmental groups are preparing for a fierce debate on the need for strict standards to combat climate change. “The future of the U. S. auto industry is at stake, and Mr. Trump is being shortsighted,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign. Mr. Becker and other environmental activists argue that the auto companies have the technology necessary to meet the 2025 standards set by the Obama administration. Moreover, they contend that any increase in sticker prices from equipment would be more than offset by savings consumers get at the gas pump. | 1 |
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Leading Republican presidential hopeful suggests Israeli-Palestinian peace accord may be impossible: ‘Sometimes agreements can’t be made’After being asked by a voter at a Charleston, South Carolina, town hall event hosted by MSNBC about what steps he would take to broker an accommodation between the sides in the conflict, the GOP contender vowed to give it “one hell of a shot” and called it “probably the toughest agreement of any kind to make.”But when pressed by host Joe Scarborough over whether he ascribed fault to either Israelis or Palestinians over the failure to reach a lasting accord, Trump declined to take sides.
“You know, I don’t want to get into it, because … If I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’m saying to you and the other side now says, ‘We don’t want Trump involved,'” Trump said.
“Let me be sort of a neutral guy,” he continued. “A lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don’t want to say whose fault is it. I don’t think it helps.”Trump also expressed skepticism over the possibility of achieving a two-state solution, given the conditions of the conflict and the need for any agreement to be sustainable over time.
“It’s possible it’s not makeable, because don’t forget it has to last — it’s wonderful to make it and it doesn’t work, but it has to last,” he said. “To make lasting peace there? Probably the toughest deal of all, but I’m going to give it a shot.”
Though he was not asked directly what he considers the most substantial obstacles standing in the way of a peace agreement, he suggested that growing hostility between the two peoples was contributing to the current stalemate, and what he considers the root of the conflict.
“A lot of people say an agreement can’t be made, which is okay. I mean, sometimes agreements can’t be made. Not good, but, you know, you have both sides really, but one side in particular, growing up and learning that these are the worst people,” he said. “I was with a very prominent Israeli the other day. He says it’s impossible, because the other side has been trained from the time they’re children to hate Jewish people.”In the past, Trump has questioned Israel’s commitment to peace, while at the same time suggesting the Jewish state does not have a negotiating partner in the Palestinians. He has also called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a good friend.”
At a presidential candidates forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition in December 2015, the real estate magnate said, “I don’t know that Israel has the commitment to make it, and I don’t know that the other side has the commitment to make it.”
He made the same point in an interview with AP earlier that day: “A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal — whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things,” he said. “They may not be, and I understand that, and I’m okay with that. But then you’re just not going to have a deal.”
Trump’s comments Wednesday came hours after a dramatic upset in polls saw Trump fall behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for the first time in 31 consecutive polls, coming in at 26% of registered Republican voters nationally, two points behind Cruz at 28%. | 0 |
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Vladimir Lenin, the first dictator of the Soviet Union, said “the motion picture” was the most important art form for spreading communism to other countries. And his successor, the murderous dictator Joseph Stalin, is reported to have predicted he could convert the whole world to communism if he was given control of the American movie industry.
In 1935, the cultural commissioner of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), V.J. Jerome, planted a branch of the party in Hollywood, and went to work to use the industry to advance the cause. The Soviet-backed communists recruited actors, directors, and writers to the cause, and eventually did battle with the studio owners in labor strikes.
But now, Chinese communists have surpassed their Russian comrades, and they aren’t bothering with recruiting “lowly” actors, directors, and writers to advance Chinese communism; they are looking to buy theater chains and movie studios.
In fact, they purchased AMC Entertainment Holdings back in 2012, gaining control over hundreds of cinemas in 30 U.S. states, and at least five other nations. It is the world’s largest operator of I-MAX and 3D screens.
Now, Chinese company Wanda Group, which took over AMC, wants to obtain at least one American studio, and invest in several others.
Much of the American media have referred to Wanda as a “private company,” run by multibillionaire Wang Jianlin (shown). But most media outlets neglect to mention Wang is a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, and the company is actually owned by the Chinese communist government. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “Dalian Wanda Group Corporation Ltd. Operates as a subsidiary of China National United Oil Corporation, Ltd.” Known as “China Oil,” it is in turn owned and controlled directly by the communist regime through two other state-owned companies — the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and Sinochem Corporation.
Wang is regarded as China’s wealthiest man. While rarely watching movies himself, he has strong interest in the American motion picture industry. He made a $3.5 billion deal for distribution with Legendary Entertainment, located in Burbank, California; is poised to obtain Dick Clark Productions in a $1 billion acquisition; and is presently building the world’s largest film studio in China at a price tag of $8.2 billion.
But he wants an American movie studio, expressing special interest in obtaining a majority ownership of Paramount. Until he can wrest control of one studio, he has established an investment fund to buy shares in all six major Hollywood studios.
“I want to acquire one of the big six, but whether we can is a different story — it’s uncertain,” Wang admits. “We will continue to work on a potential acquisition. But it won’t hurt to start by doing what we can. Participating via investment seems like a wise choice for the time being.”
Wang was recently honored at a Hollywood banquet at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Studio executives from Sony, Lionsgate, Universal, and Warner Brothers all attended, along with movie stars such as Harrison Ford.
The move by Wang and the Chinese government to gain such clout in the industry has caused concern in Congress. Sixteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives wrote a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office in September, asking for them to scrutinize Chinese purchases of American entertainment companies as a national security concern. The letter mentioned Chinese efforts to “censor topics and exert propaganda controls on American media”
Because of the sheer size of the Chinese movie market, among other reasons, the industry has already shown extreme caution not to offend the communist giant. For example, when the 1980s movie Red Dawn was re-made, the original script called for the invaders to be Chinese communists rather than Russian communists attempting to take over America. After the film had already been made, MGM became concerned enough to make the invaders North Koreans .
And that was a year before Wanda took over AMC.
Stanley Rosen, a political science professor at USC, contends that Hollywood “is already altering their films to make them China-friendly — or at least China-neutral — to gain market access there.” He argues that Wanda doesn’t need to buy studios to change things all that much.
Wang recently addressed some of the concerns about his company’s investments in the movie industry. He blames the criticism to the current presidential election campaign, and said he did not believe it represents the “mainstream” of America. “With the general election as the backdrop, voices against China, or Chinese enterprises, will certainly attract attention.”
When asked for his views on Donald Trump, Wang allowed that Trump had been somewhat successful as a businessman, but that he was just not in the same league with America’s “real mega-rich,” citing Bill Gates as an example. He is withholding judgment of Trump as a politician until after the election.
Wang was born in 1954 to parents who were in the Red Army of Mao Tse-tung. His formal schooling came to an abrupt halt when Mao ended China’s education system in 1966. At that point, Mao gave the Chinese two choices, “We could go to the rural areas and participate in farming or become a soldier.” Because of his parents’ past service in the People’s Liberation Army, he chose a military life.
He recalled a 745-mile march during a period of time when the temperatures were below zero. “I remember once when we had to march for three days and three nights nonstop. A lot of people just slept while marching.” The troops formed three rows so that a soldier could grab the backpack of the soldier in front of him. That way, only the leader kept his eyes open as the rest trudged along behind him.
“I saw one person in the next row fall off a cliff from walking with his eyes closed.”
After 16 years in the PLA, he was assigned a provincial government post. Then, in 1988, he became the manager of a government-owned real estate company that was deeply in debt. Wang turned the company around, and the company was re-named Wanda in the early '90s. Today, Wanda Group employees 130,000.
Wang is a tough task-master. Employees who violate the company’s strict dress code are fined, and sometimes fired. All employees, even the top executives, are required to punch in and punch out.
Over the years, as the Chinese government-run industries have become wealthier by selling cheap goods made with what is essentially slave labor, they have bought up natural resources around the world, especially in Africa and Latin America. Now, the regime is moving to purchase Western businesses, including computers and technology, banks, agriculture, and automobiles.
But the propaganda opportunities in the motion picture industry far surpass any such possibilities to be advanced by growing wheat or making cars. For many people, once they have seen something on the silver screen, or heard something in a movie theater, it becomes “reality” for them. Writing in the communist newspaper The Daily Worker in 1925, Will Muezenberg explained the importance of the movie industry to advancing the goal of the communist world. Muezenberg, an agent of the Comintern (created to spread communist ideology and promote Soviet interests worldwide), said, “One of the most pressing tasks confronting the Communist Party in the field of propaganda is the conquest of this extremely important propaganda unit [the movies], until now the monopoly of the ruling class. We must wrest it from them and turn it against them.”
And that is what is involved in the Chinese moving into Hollywood. Photo: AP Images Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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Today’s Fake News freakout began with a buzzing swarm of headlines about “mass resignations” by the “entire senior level of management officials” at the State Department resigning in some stunning act of protest against President Trump. [Before long, we learned we were talking about four people, and they did not resign, they were fired. “The State Department’s Entire Senior Management Team Just Resigned,” gasped the Washington Post, prompting a ripple of secondary headlines across mediaspace. Some of those headlines were a bit more cautious, such as the Jerusalem Post reporting that the State Department team resigned “in a possibly coordinated walkout. ” As it turns out, that “walkout” was coordinated by the Trump administration: Breaking: Four top @StateDept Mgmt officials all fired by Trump admin, part of effort to ”clean house” — officials tell @eliselabottcnn, — Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 26, 2017, From CNN’s full story on the matter: All four, career officers serving in positions appointed by the President, submitted letters of resignation per tradition at the beginning of a new administration. The letters from the White House said that their resignations were accepted and they were thanked for their service. The White House usually asks career officials in such positions to stay on for a few months until their successors are confirmed. “Any implication that that these four people quit is wrong,” one senior State Department official said. “These people are loyal to the secretary, the President and to the State Department. There is just not any attempt here to dis the President. People are not quitting and running away in disgust. This is the White House cleaning house. ” “These positions are political appointments, and require the President to nominate and the Senate to confirm them in these roles. They are not career appointments but of limited term,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner. “Of the officers whose resignations were accepted, some will continue in the Foreign Service in other positions, and others will retire by choice or because they have exceeded the time limits of their grade in service. ” The “entire senior management” team suffering this “mass” obliteration consists of Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond, Ambassador Gentry O. Smith of the Office of Foreign Missions, and most notably Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, who tried to drag the FBI into Hillary Clinton’s . Kennedy has also been accused of playing a role in the Benghazi disaster, although the State Department’s internal review “downplayed” his role in the “ that led to the inadequate security posture in Benghazi,” as the Washington Examiner recalls. The Examiner also notes his “you can’t fire me, I quit” retirement was announced yesterday, so treating it like big news today is somewhat disingenuous. The Trump campaign said that Kennedy had to go, and called (in vain, of course) on Hillary Clinton to speak out against him, as well. This is not some shocking walkout by a defiant Resistance speaking truth to power — it is President Trump fulfilling a campaign promise on his fourth day in office. Also, while most news reports described the four outgoing officials as holding their offices under both Republican and Democrat administrations, to promote the impression they were nonpartisan fixtures of the bureaucracy who just couldn’t handle the arrival of President Trump, that is really only true of Kennedy, and he was only in position for two years before the Obama administration began. Joyce Barr was appointed in 2011, while Michele Bond and Gentry Smith were appointed in 2015. The Hill reports that these four joined “a number of other officials who have departed since President Trump took office last week,” but goes on to cite only two names: Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr, who retired, and Bureau of Overseas Building Operations Lydia Muniz. CNN notes that Starr only came out of retirement in 2012, and planned all along to retire at the end of the Obama administration, even if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. The American Foreign Service Association also shot down the narrative about mass resignations: While this appears to be a large turnover in a short period of time, a change of administration always brings personnel changes, and there is nothing unusual about rotations or retirements in the Foreign Service. Indeed, both are essential to the development of a steady stream of experienced leaders ready to assume critical roles at State. “Given the talent available in our diplomatic corps, we expect that the new Secretary will have no trouble finding the right people at State to fill out his senior leadership team,” the AFSA added, referring to Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, who still awaits a final confirmation vote. The New York Daily News falsely implied Tillerson’s visit to the State Department on Wednesday actually prompted the “ ” that didn’t happen, adding another prime clipping to the day’s scrapbook of Fake News. All of these folks are entitled to their opinions, just like anyone else, and if they are profoundly displeased by the election of Donald Trump, they are free to say so. The American people are equally entitled to wonder if the State Department should have so many partisan officials, and to look back on the long record of scandals and in the Obama State Department as justification for a vigorous . | 1 |
Last week, the first tenants moved into the city’s first micro apartment development on East 27th Street. I did, too, for one night. Tucked into a New York City Housing Authority site, on a spot between First and Second Avenues that was once a parking lot, and flanked by linden and honeylocust trees and a small plaza lined with park benches, the building, with 55 apartments between 260 and 360 square feet, is an elegant design by nArchitects, and built by Monadnock Development and the Lower East Side People’s Mutual Housing Association. It’s also adorable, a compressed vision of the city in both ethos and mien. Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang, nArchitects’ founding principals, imagined it as four slender stepped towers, like a mini skyline. On that hot evening, the benches outside were full of kibitzing men of a certain age the playground across Mount Carmel Place, the street that bisects the site, had largely emptied out but for a few stragglers. Knots of pedestrians wafted by. The ghost of Jane Jacobs hovered. Carmel Place, formerly known as My Micro NY, was the winner of the small home competition sponsored by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 2013. For the last three years, its flourishes and features — the modular units prefabricated in a factory in the old Brooklyn Navy Yard and stacked like Legos on site its capacious common areas and windowed hallways the humane and lovely elements of the apartments, like windows and nearly ceilings — have been on display, at first in renderings, and finally, in a model apartment that was tricked out last winter. For housing advocates, the architectural community and urban policy makers, the building is a trial balloon for a medley of themes: the changing demographic of a city with inadequate housing (according to the NYU Furman Center, a third of the city’s households are single people) a culture eager to make a smaller environmental footprint by paring down belongings and sharing resources and what has become a unicorn in this city, affordable housing. Carmel Place is no affordable housing utopia, but it’s a start. While the lion’s share — 32 — of the units are market rate, with monthly rents ranging from $2, 446 to $3, 195, eight have been set aside for formerly homeless veterans, and 14 units are designated affordable, with monthly rents from $914 to $1, 873, and for which 60, 000 people applied in a lottery. One apartment has been set aside for the superintendent. Fifty percent of the building is already leased. It’s a nice place for a sleepover. The unit I stayed in rents for $2, 670 a month, furnished, which includes convertible and objects from Resource Furniture. That company’s bed combination called Penelope (my destiny?) made in Italy by Clei, is the linchpin of the space: a bed, surrounded by deep cabinets, that unfolds over a diminutive sofa. I spent a good practicing opening and closing that bed, which is heavier and trickier than anything Bernadette Castro ever tackled, but much, much more comfortable, because it has a mattress and a firm base. (The two photographers who had accompanied me on my mission declined to help, perhaps taking their journalistic ethics too seriously.) The aesthetic vibe of the apartment is hipster Scandinavian, a state that had been achieved by Jacqueline Schmidt, the director of design at Ollie, a company that has embellished Carmel Place with housewares, furniture and services, from dry cleaning to “unique community engagement opportunities” — in other words, mixers, day trips and other “curated events” geared to millennials (urban renters, in Ollie’s parlance). There were knobbly succulents in small ceramic biomorphic planters with leather straps hung on a wall (succulents are good pets for living, since they don’t need much attention, as Ms. Schmidt pointed out) black and white prints of endangered animals and voluminous canvas baskets set here and there, to hide the sofa pillows and other detritus when you unpack your bed for the night. There was also a white table, also from Resource Furniture, that extends (with leaves) to seat 10. The leaves live in the large closet. The kitchen is, proportionally, massive. With a counter, its total zone, if you count the opposite wall, is 84 square feet, more than a quarter of the apartment’s entire volume. There are a stove top, a very large microwave and a toaster oven, but no conventional oven, which concerned Ginia, one of five colleagues I invited to dinner and to the apartment. “If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making,” she said later, “how do you live that life with a stove?” Feh, countered Julia, another of my colleagues. Very few people living alone use their whole stove for cooking or fill their refrigerators, she said. “Many of them use their ovens to store shoes or sweaters. ” In any event, I ordered in, pizzas and fennel salads from Motorino on East 12th Street. Vivian brought flowers, in case someone was moved to Instagram. I hankered for candles, and flicked off the overhead lights. The apartment comes with recessed ceiling and undercabinet lights on dimmers, along with a nifty task light you tap on and off, and a standing lamp with a bare bulb, chosen by Ms. Schmidt. Still, there was no way to read comfortably in bed. Ms. Schmidt said she had been bothered by that deficiency, too, so she’s ordered LED lights you’ll be able to clip to the side of the cabinets on either side of the bed. We could have sat eight 10 would have been pushing it. As it was, there wasn’t room to open the fridge or push back the chairs — these were solid Italian folding chairs with a slim profile that fit in the closet you get four with your furnished apartment. We didn’t really notice, being well exercised by office gossip and shared work trauma. My guests were delighted by the Penelope contraption, and plopped down on the bed to test its mettle. They enthused over the spare décor and shiny surfaces. Easy to hose down, opined Alexandra and Julia. “It is the working mother’s dreamscape!” wrote Ginia a few days later. “Micro apartments take me away — square feet! But where do you put the books?” The best part of the evening, to my mind, was being alone again, after whisking away the pizza boxes and the bottles, shrinking the table back to its slim desk size, and unfolding my namesake bed. I killed the lights, slid open the window and raised the opaque shade, so I could see a linden tree from my nest. As I drifted off to sleep, I imagined a life swept clean of my grubby, needy possessions and instead envisioned a new, improved one that was sparely accessorized by Ms. Schmidt’s resilient and independent succulents, neutral art prints and soft baskets. So lightly encumbered, I would spring easily from my tasteful and tidy micro unit into the cultural soup of the city. Which is the point, of course. I thought, too, of the canon of the studio apartment — from the dreary housing the heroines of Anita Brookner and Barbara Pym novels to Laurie Colwin’s cozy nest in the West Village, where she hunkered down happily, alone with an eggplant and a chipped Meissen dish and Quentin Crisp’s gothic and lordly squalor on East Third Street. And I worried. Perhaps this apartment is too good, too soft, for the demographic it purports to address. How will they mature in a environment? It irritated me that a would soon be lolling in my bed, or in the lounge chairs on the roof deck, after having fired up the commercial grill there, and after a long day of networking in some shared work space, or returning home from a day’s surfing in the Rockaways, tucking his surfboard into the space Mr. Bunge and Ms. Hoang designed for it. Carmel Place’s rent includes not just internet and but a weekly tidying service and a monthly deep clean, along with dog walking, dry cleaning pickup and any number of customized errands through an app called Hello Alfred, all organized by Ollie. Ms. Schmidt said her company is about to announce more building alliances that will allow Carmel Place residents to avail themselves of more and more thermal pools, yoga studios and barbecue pits all over town. “You will meet with your home manager to say what you want for your home experience,” Ms. Schmidt said. “Maybe you want your slippers by the door, or your towels folded a certain way. ” As it happens, it’s not just the tenants who will be coddled. Ollie has donated its services to the veterans, and offered them at cost to those in the affordable units. It was her intent, Ms. Schmidt said, to think aspirationally about micro living. (She and her husband, David Friedlander, sold all their belongings a few years ago and moved with their two young sons from a foot loft to a light and lean apartment Ms. Schmidt gutted and redesigned with sliding panels instead of doors, convertible beds and a few choice pieces of furniture.) The single state itself is also now aspirational, with boosters like Sasha Cagen, the author behind the quirkyalone blog and book Rebecca Traister, a writer at large at New York Magazine and the author of “All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation” and Eric Klinenberg, a professor of sociology and the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. A decade ago, Mr. Klinenberg set out to write a book tentatively called “Alone in America” that would chronicle the rise of single adults in the United States — according to a Pew study published in 2011, only 51 percent of adults 18 and older are married (compared with 72 percent in 1960) — and explore themes of isolation and loneliness. What he found instead was that for the overwhelming majority of single people, living alone meant being social. His 2012 book, “Going Solo,” examined the ways contemporary urban singletons, as he called them, were finding community and generally having a blast. “People live alone together in neighborhoods that are full of people just like them,” he said recently. “You can name those neighborhoods, in cities like Chicago or San Francisco or New York,” he added, “because those are the places you visit to have the best time. It’s where the bars and restaurants and galleries are. It’s where you want to be. ” In his book, Mr. Klinenberg traces the history of single living in bohemian enclaves like Greenwich Village, where at the turn of the 20th century, you could live alone without stigma. The male pioneers were followed by single women, who had been liberated by work and evolving social norms some were buoyed by the ideals of “the free and independent republic of Washington Square,” as Marcel Duchamp and friends famously proclaimed from the arch. Developers were already building bachelor apartments there. “New York has long been a leader in social innovation,” Mr. Klinenberg said. “The trend of living alone happened here before anywhere else. ” My first ’s apartment in New York City was a studio on Christopher Street, in a prewar tenement building with a hallway that smelled of cat and scorched garlic. There was a kitchen of sorts in a cubby space with a tiny Royal Rose stove, a sink and a mini fridge — but I never cooked there. I was no Laurie Colwin (I don’t recall owning a pot) and anyway, the Korean market on Bleecker Street was my cafeteria. It was 1984 on weekends, the young men who came downtown to showboat kept me awake until 5 a. m. but I didn’t care. When I wasn’t cursing them, I loved watching the performance. The kitchen and bathroom windows looked out onto a grimy air shaft, and right into my neighbors’ apartments, so at night I did a lot of ducking, being too slack to install a shade or even tack up a sheet. If you closed the bathroom door, you’d be stuck until a PATH train rumbled past and shook it free. (My first night in the apartment, I spent two hours trapped in there, having closed the door firmly to clean the black and white herringbone tile floor.) Mostly, my tiny apartment was a launching pad, and I was thrilled to be living alone. | 1 |
A new, confidential federal report shows that the initial segment of California’s partially high speed rail (HSR) project will come in massively over budget and far behind schedule, the Los Angeles Times reports. [The Times obtained the Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis report, which shows projected costs for just the first Central Valley section of the “bullet train” will soar to 150 percent — $3. 6 billion more, over a previous estimate. It’s the “bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter” that could now cost between $9. 5 and $10 billion dollars. This section of the project won’t even yet serve the promised dream of a San Francisco to Los Angeles line. Not only are costs projected to soar, but the segment that was supposed to be complete this year has been projected in the federal report to lag seven years behind schedule with a new projected completion set for 2024. The Federal Railroad Administration provided California with $3. 5 billion between two federal grants for the project. President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus granted funds to the project however, if the state fails to meet a September 30 deadline that requires paperwork to be submitted by June 20, the rail authority could lose up to $220 million of those funds. The federal report that the Times exposed included a host of reasons for the delays, among them, “ management problems: significant delays in environmental planning, lags in processing invoices for federal grants and continuing failures to acquire needed property. ” The federal report further found that billing invoices took an unacceptable three months to process, and that environmental reviews have been far too slow and getting worse. The rail authority has pushed back on many of the report findings according to the Times report. Rep. Jeff Denham, who serves as Chairman of the House Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee, released the following statement regarding the new report: Despite past issues with funding this boondoggle, we were repeatedly assured in an August field hearing that construction costs were under control. They continue to reaffirm my belief that this is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. I will continue to fight against any further federal funding of this project. They can expect an audit and oversight hearing in the near future. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy ( ) also released a statement: This report makes one thing clear: California rail must be stopped immediately. There have been repeated concerns that this project was a designed failure since day one, and what’s worse, this report underscores a pattern of falsehoods that has misled taxpayers on what this project might actually cost and how much more taxpayers might be on the hook for. The California Rail Authority was briefed about this estimate in December, yet decided to keep this report under wraps from California taxpayers and the public. My colleagues and I have been from the start. The train was sold on rosy predictions not grounded in reality, has disrupted the lives and communities of Californians, and remains a publicity project that we cannot afford. This needs to end now. I urge Governor Brown and his Administration to recognize that the only solution left is to pull the plug on this boondoggle. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana | 1 |
Video: UK security agencies unlawfully collected data for 17 years, court rules By admin legal eagle
Big deal. Anyone going to jail like if it was a private citizen committing the crime ? No? then shut up. News to your inbox
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A boy who was “clinically decapitated” in a recent car accident in Idaho survived after a rescuer resisted the urge to pick up and cradle the screaming child and instead held his head in place for a most likely saving his life, his mother and the rescuer said. The story of the boy, Killian Gonzalez, who endured one of the worst traumatic injuries that can affect small children in car crashes but escaped with his life through the actions of a good Samaritan, unfolded on State Highway 51, a road slicked by a hailstorm at the time. Killian’s mother, Brandy Gonzalez, said she was driving home to Nevada after attending a party in Idaho to celebrate the boy’s birthday when her car skidded and went into a lane of oncoming traffic, colliding with another vehicle. Pinned in the wreckage and with broken bones, she tried to turn to reach her son, who was strapped into a car seat in the back. “I was like: I have to get to my baby. I looked back and he is just hunched over. He is not crying he is not awake. ” “I kept talking to him and trying to get him to wake up,” she said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. Then a sound from the boy: a whimper, and the word “Momma. ” Killian’s skull was separated from his spine, and he also had a ruptured spleen and broken ribs and arms, a local television station, KBOI, reported from the hospital. Ms. Gonzalez suffered broken arms and legs. The other driver been pinned but was O. K. she said. The accident happened in Owyhee County, which is in the southwestern corner of Idaho on the border with Nevada, at 3:14 p. m. on May 22, Chief Deputy Lynn Bowman, of the county Sheriff’s Department, said in a telephone interview. Leah Woodward and her husband, Joel Woodward, an officer with the Police Department in Nampa, Idaho, were driving home with their two children from a camping trip when they crested a hill and came upon the accident. Ms. Woodward said she saw a man in the driver’s seat of one vehicle, bloody and disoriented. In the other vehicle, she saw Ms. Gonzalez, her arm clearly shattered, unable to unlock her car doors to help the Woodwards reach her. In the back, Killian was not moving, but he was screaming. “As a mom, that just goes right to your heart,” Ms. Woodward said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “My immediate instinct was: ‘You have to help that little guy.’ ” To reach Killian, her husband broke a window of the Gonzalez vehicle, then squeezed through, cutting himself on the glass. He then told his wife to hold the child upright, keeping his head steady, until help came. “My first instinct would have been to cradle the little guy, but clearly that would have been the wrong choice,” Ms. Woodward said. The boy’s broken arm was backward, so they draped it against his side and covered him with a blanket. Ms. Woodward said a pinkish substance was splattered on the seat, the boy and her. Later, her sister, a nurse, told her that might have been spinal fluid. “I had my hands kind of, like, thumbs by his ears and hands wrapped behind his neck holding it still,” she said. “He didn’t fight, he was not moving every now and then he would come to. ” As she held his head for about 30 minutes, she said, she talked to the boy. Asking Ms. Gonzalez details about her son, Ms. Woodward tried to keep his attention, chatting to him about his strawberry birthday cake and toy dinosaur, trying to fight the boy’s impulse to drift off. His eyes rolled around in his head, or flashed in fear, she recalled. At one point, she said, he spoke: “I don’t hurt anymore. I am all done. ” When emergency medics arrived, she continued holding his head as they worked around her, finally fixing him with a collar and getting him into an ambulance. “I am just glad I did not know his injuries at the time,” she said. Killian, his mother and the other driver were flown by air ambulance to hospitals, Chief Deputy Bowman said. Leslie Dorn, Killian’s grandmother, stayed with the boy in the hospital while Ms. Gonzalez underwent treatment for her injuries. She said doctors told her four of the six ligaments connecting the boy’s skull and spine were stretched by an inch from the impact, but then sprang back to leave Killian about of an inch taller than he was before the accident. Officials from the hospital, St. Luke’s Boise, where Killian was treated, declined to comment. A page for the boy said that he had “a fracture at the base of his skull where the brain stem connects to the spinal cord. ” Clinical, or internal, decapitation is a colloquial term for an injury known to surgeons as dislocation. It happens when the ligaments, muscles and joints that connect the base of the skull to the top of the spine are damaged. “So the term ‘decapitation’ in the true sense of cutting someone’s head off is a bit extreme,” said Dr. Nicholas Theodore, the director of spinal surgery at the Barrow Neurological Institute, who has operated on more than 60 patients with the injury. He has used titanium rods, wires or screws to reattach the base of the skull to the spine. Dr. Theodore said the injury was almost always associated with accidents in which the head is pulled away from the spine, and it occurs more often with children than adults because their neck musculature is still undeveloped and weak. “Especially younger patients, the head is like a bowling ball on a stick,” he said. “Their head sort of bobbles. ” Dr. Theodore, who treated a boy with the injury in 2010, did not comment on Killian’s case but said: “You don’t ever want to move an injury patient unless a car is on fire. Immobilizing a child is exactly what you want to do. ” On Tuesday, Killian, who had been discharged from the hospital over the weekend, was walking unassisted at home, fitted with a hard collar to support his head and neck, Ms. Gonzalez said. “He can take a few steps, but his equilibrium is still off,” she said. He does not talk about the accident. | 1 |
War on cash goes into full effect – Citibank stops accepting cash at multiple branches Governments loathe cash transactions because they’re private and hard to tax By Jack Burns - Thursday, November 17, 2016 1:36 PM EST
In 2015, as a guest on Ron Paul’s Liberty Report, Economics Professor Joseph Salerno warned of a coming war on cash. Apparently, now, that time has come. Governments loathe cash transactions because they’re private and hard to tax. As a result, some countries are taking drastic measures to reclaim their bank notes. Salerno said, “The French premier last year (2014) drew a parallel between the war on terror and the war on cash,” and warned the world’s economic elite are now “using the war on terror as a cover to get at cash.” The Mises Institute professor and VP predicted to Paul, “I think this could come in the next couple of years. If they have to bail out the financial system again…they’ll block the cash in the banks to prevent it from escaping and destabilizing these fractional reserve banks,” Salerno said.
At the time of the interview, 2015, Salerno said the war on cash has already begun in the U.S. and pointed to Citibank’s new policy which disallows patrons to use cash to pay their mortgages and credit cards with cash. He also pointed to Louisiana’s new law forcing “second hand dealers defined as Goodwill Stores, Flea Markets, Garage Sales, to report any cash transactions in which they were receiving or paying cash, and they had to report them on a daily basis to the local police authorities.” He said, “they (secondhand stores) had to get the sellers’ names and license plate number and a number of other of private details.”
“This is only a first step,” even though it was only on a state level. “It would be awful if it was on a federal level,” Salerno declared.
While it hasn’t happened yet on a federal level in the United States, cash reclamation is occurring today in India. But before we get to what’s taking place in India, we must first examine the reasons frequently given by government to resort to controlling the public’s access to cash. Salerno stated the government offers phony reasons why it must control cash. It’s to prohibit terrorists, tax evaders, money launderers, and profiteering by drug cartels. If one hears the government making such claims, get ready, a cash grab is about to happen.
Salerno pointed to Greece’s implementing a “cash point charge” for withdrawing Euros from their bank accounts, allowing government to charge citizens for withdrawing their own funds. He says mainstream economists have been promoting the war on cash for some time in order to prop up fledgling banks.
“I assure you other governments are watching this experiment (in Greece),” he said. Salerno also stated the real war on cash seeks to “force the public to make payments to the financial system” in order to “enable governments to expand their ability to spy on and keep track of their citizens’ most private financial dealings in order to milk their citizens out of every last dollar of tax payments that they claim are due.” He stated another reason to destabilize cash is to “prop up the unstable fractional reserve banking system which is in a state of collapse all over the world.”
Keep in mind, Salerno made his comments a year ago.
Fast forward to 2016, and the world is now witnessing the first major bank to announce it will no longer accept cash deposits or deal in cash. Citibank Australia’s head of retail bank Janine Copelin offered an explanation saying, “We have seen a steady decline in the demand for cash services in our branches — in fact, less than 4% of Citi customers have used this service in the last 12 months.” The company stated it will no longer handle currency as a result.
“This move to cashless branches reflects Citi’s commitment to digital banking and we are investing in the channels our customers prefer to use…While the number of customers visiting our branches to access cash handling services has fallen, the branch network remains an important component of how we serve our high-net-worth customers,” said Copelin.
Maybe no one’s eyebrows are raising after Citibank made its declaration because some advanced societies have quite naturally moved away from hard cash transactions, preferring the ease of pay by phone, debit cards, or credit card purchases. After all, someone in the United States could very easily live without cash. Many do already.
According to the Guardian , Sweden leads the world when it comes to not using cash. “Cards are now the main form of payment: according to Visa, Swedes use them more than three times as often as the average European, making an average of 207 payments per card in 2015.” But in some parts of the world, cash is still king.
Just this week, India made a major move to control its citizens’ access to their cash by banning the 500 and 1000 rupee notes. According to the LA Times , “An exasperating cash crunch has gripped India in the week since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the unprecedented step of withdrawing the country’s large currency notes from circulation. Modi surprised the nation by announcing an instant ban on the 500-rupee and 1,000-rupee notes, worth about $7.50 and $15, respectively, and which account for 86% of the cash in the market.”
And just as Salerno predicted governments would do, the Indian government claimed the move was meant to serve as a ”sweeping move against corruption that would force Indians who hold large amounts of undeclared wealth to deposit the money at banks and make their assets official.” In other words, just as Salerno declared, rich Indians, whose private business dealings were done in cash, will now be forced to deposit their banned bank notes — or risk losing all of their wealth.
The value of the currency, if deposited, will then be able to be tracked by the Indian government, a move Salerno stated would lead to higher taxes on its wealthy citizens, and greater returns for the banking system. And the Indian government has already admitted that’s precisely what they’re trying to do.
Also, as Paul and Salerno predicted, the move has had devastating effects on the poor, many of whom have now reverted to bartering for their needs, according to the Times. The financial decision “stunned hundreds of millions of poor and working-class Indians who live an almost entirely cash-based existence, paying in bills for everything from rent to groceries to cellphone credit.” And they never saw it coming.
“The plan was shrouded in such secrecy that even India’s financial institutions were ill prepared, creating long, sometimes unruly lines outside banks, ATMs and chronically understaffed post offices that are authorized to exchange the now-worthless notes and dispense new ones,” writes the Times.
Exacerbating the financial crisis is the fact the government issued a smaller-sized currency which no longer works with current ATMs, forcing many customers not to be able to make any purchases at all, and thereby creating a loss of revenue for businesses hit hard by fewer customers, and chaos for everyone else. The best way to describe the upheaval in India is by imagining all Americans attempting to pay all of their purchases with one dollar bills.
In India, according to the Times, two-thirds of all transactions are done in cash, an economy the government has labeled “black money.” Modi’s administration aims to tax that money. “Much of the wealth that India has accumulated since economic reforms began in the 1990s has never been taxed or accounted for, parked instead in real estate, gold, foreign investments and, in some cases, bundles of cash sitting at home. It is those stacks of bills that Modi, who took office 2½ years ago on promises to curb corruption, aimed to bring into the open. Supporters of the prime minister’s plan said those holding cash stockpiles would have to deposit them at banks, where huge amounts would draw the scrutiny of tax authorities, or allow their value to evaporate.”
Sounding, as some would say, like Donald Trump, Modi said over the weekend, “I promise you I will give you the India of your dreams.” But right now, India is living a nightmare.
India’s decision to reclaim its currency has some questioning whether the United States would attempt to follow suit and reclaim its own currency.
For free thinkers everywhere, it may be time to take those 100 dollar bills and swap them out for one dollar denominations, or even begin to purchase gold and silver as many preppers have done already. If the proverbial shit hits the fan, taking notice of what’s happening in the world may prove to be a wise decision. With Australia’s Citibank declaration it will no longer deal in cash, with Sweden’s cashless society as a model of the future, and with India’s reclamation of bank notes, it’s anyone’s guess what the American economic crisis may look like. But it probably won’t involve cash. | 0 |
LONDON — In a surprise upset, a candidate of the centrist and Liberal Democrats defeated a prominent supporter of British withdrawal from the European Union in a parliamentary on Thursday. The victory, by Sarah Olney, delivered a badly needed lift to the Liberal Democrats, who were in danger of becoming extinct after disastrous losses in last year’s national elections, and it highlighted some of the deep divisions in Britain over its looming departure from the European Union, commonly referred to as Brexit. In the election in the Richmond Park and North Kingston constituency in southwest London, Ms. Olney had 20, 510 votes, to 18, 638 for Zac Goldsmith, according to results announced early Friday. Mr. Goldsmith won the same seat for the governing Conservative Party only last year, and by more than 23, 000 votes. He resigned from Parliament in protest over government plans to expand Heathrow Airport — a project that is unpopular locally. In the latest contest, Mr. Goldsmith stood as an independent but was not opposed by the Tories, who did not field a candidate. Ms. Olney, who also opposed the expansion of Heathrow, campaigned on the issue of Europe, in an affluent constituency where a large majority voted in the June 23 Brexit referendum to remain in the bloc. That move appeared to have paid dividends, helping Ms. Olney achieve one of the most striking triumphs of recent years. “Today we have said ‘no’,” Ms. Olney said in her victory speech after the result was declared, “We will defend the Britain we love we will stand up for the open, tolerant, united, Britain we believe in. ” “The people of Richmond Park and North Kingston have sent a shock wave through this Conservative Brexit government, and our message is clear: We do not want a hard Brexit,” she added, making a reference to the clean break with the European Union desired by some supporters of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Ms. Olney’s campaign probably benefited from several days of headlines suggesting that the government of Prime Minister Theresa May has so far failed to develop a coherent Brexit strategy. Other factors may have contributed, too. Though known locally as an assiduous member of Parliament, Mr. Goldsmith attracted criticism during his campaign for mayor of London earlier this year when he accused his Labour Party rival, Sadiq Khan, of having given tacit support to extremists in the past. That tactic apparently backfired Mr. Khan won the election and became London’s first Muslim mayor. Nevertheless, Europe seems to have been a key factor in Richmond Park and North Kingston, following the Brexit referendum in which Britons voted by 52 percent to 48 percent to quit the bloc. Not only was Mr. Goldsmith a supporter of Brexit, but his father, the financier Sir James Goldsmith, was a prominent critic of the European Union in the 1990s. Zac Goldsmith’s defeat gives only a snapshot of current opinion, however, and took place in one of the most parts of country. So far there is little evidence that Brexit supporters are changing their minds in significant numbers. Still, this win will encourage the Liberal Democrats who before last year’s electoral rout had spent several years as junior partners in a coalition government led by the Conservative prime minister, David Cameron. Mr. Cameron resigned after the Brexit vote, then gave up his parliamentary seat in Witney. In the contest to succeed him in October, the Conservatives held Witney, but with a majority reduced by more than 20, 000 votes. The Liberal Democrats finishing second. The Labour Party, the main opposition party, campaigned to remain in the European Union, but its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is a lifelong critic of the bloc. class voters, who have often supported Labour, voted for Brexit. That has allowed the Liberal Democrats to present themselves as the voice of the 48 percent who wished to remain in union. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — For seven years, few issues have animated conservative voters as much as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But with President Barack Obama out of office, the debate over “Obamacare” is becoming less about “Obama” and more about “care” — greatly complicating the issue for Republican lawmakers. Polling indicates that more Republicans want to make fixes to the law rather than do away with it. President Trump, who remains popular on the right, has mused about a replacement plan that is even more expansive than the original. The conservative news media are focused more on Mr. Trump’s skirmishes with Democrats and reporters, among others, than on policy issues like health care. And the congressional debate, as well as the paid advertisements on both sides, is centered on the substance of the law rather than its namesake, draining some of its toxicity on the right. As liberals overwhelm congressional town meetings and deluge the Capitol phone system with pleas to protect the health law, there is no similar clamor for dismantling it, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment. From deeply conservative districts in the South and the West to the more moderate parts of the Northeast, Republicans in Congress say there is significantly less intensity among opponents of the law than when Mr. Obama was in office. “I hear more concerns than before about ‘You’re going to repeal it, and we’re all going to lose insurance’ because they don’t think we’re going to replace it,” said Representative Mike Simpson, a Republican who represents a conservative district in Idaho. Since Mr. Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, about 20 million Americans have gained insurance because of it. And millions more who had health conditions have been able to obtain coverage under the law. At the same time, many Americans have seen their premiums rise or their choices of insurance carriers dwindle. But it was not until now, with the Republicans taking control of the federal government, that the debate fully shifted from the theoretical to the tangible. It was easy for conservatives to rally against a law identified with a president they despised when he was capable of vetoing any repeal. Now that he is gone and the law’s benefits appear to be on the chopping block, the people who stand to lose the most are the most vocal. “I’ve heard from constituents who have been harmed by the Affordable Care Act over the course of its being in existence,” said Representative Leonard Lance, Republican of New Jersey, whose affluent district Mr. Trump narrowly lost last year. “More recently, because of our discussions on repairing it, I’ve heard from those who do not wish to have the act amended. More recently, that is the preponderance of those who have contacted me. ” It is a longstanding rule of politics that rallying opposition to a proposal is usually easier than galvanizing support. And never is this more the case than when a widely distributed benefit is at risk of being taken away. “I was here in 2009 and 2010, and we’re not getting the calls like that,” said Representative Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican who is on one of the committees tasked with rewriting the law. “I think people are going to hold us accountable for making sure we not only repeal, but we have a law in place that creates a better opportunity for people. ” The demands from constituents in districts like Mr. Guthrie’s are plainly shifting. In a nationwide CBS News poll last month, 53 percent of Republicans said they wanted to change the law to make it work better while 41 percent said they wanted to abolish it. Overhauling the law, however, is far more politically complicated than simply scrapping it. Congressional Republican leaders were met with a backlash from their own ranks after it emerged that they were considering financing a new law by ending the longstanding practice of letting employers exclude from taxation the health benefits they offer. “Our voters do expect action, but as you make changes you become vulnerable to attack,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma said. “This is fraught with difficulties, no doubt about it. ” Adding to the anxiety is Mr. Trump, who is a wild card on the health law. His health secretary, Tom Price, signaled to House Republicans at a private meeting on Thursday that the administration would let Congress draft a replacement bill, Mr. Cole said. But the president has said multiple times that he is uneasy about depriving anybody of health insurance, and he may bridle if Democrats attack any Republican plan that may lead to that. As Democrats note, Mr. Trump owes his victory in part to voters who have benefited from the law. “A lot of economically vulnerable Republican voters have come to rely on government’s involvement in making sure they have affordable health care,”said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster. And with Mr. Trump and Republican lawmakers facing less pressure from the right than the left, conservative groups worry that the party will not ultimately have the stomach to repeal the law, which Republicans have been running against since 2010. “Voters gave Republicans the charge to repeal and replace Obamacare, and the continued delays and discussions about repairing Obamacare need to stop,” David McIntosh, the head of the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group, said last week. | 1 |
2000 Years Old Mummy's Face Reconstruction Reveals a Beauty # 10
Mummies are not always ugly and scary.
Meritamun, as she has been named, was an ancient Egyptian woman whose 2000 years-old mummified body had been kept for over a century in a basement until researchers of University of Melbourne decided to proceed to a face reconstruction fearing of decaying.
The process of face reconstruction, based on 3D scanning of the skull and population data of that time, revealed an ancient Egyptian beauty. Tags | 0 |
PARIS (AP) — Centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has launched a political offensive against leader Marine Le Pen, saying her platform is based on the “hatred for others” in contrast to his desire to “calm” the country. [advertisement | 1 |
An armed murder suspect allegedly opened fire, shooting three Laredo, Texas, police officers and injuring a fourth. The suspect is reported to be dead. [Police were searching for Antonio Gerado Rodriguez in connection to the shooting death of his girlfriend, according to a report by KSAT ABC12 in San Antonio. The shootout between the suspect and the police happened at a Stripes convenience store. Police reports identified the murder victim as Reyna Gonzalez Zamora, 50. Laredo Police Department Investigator Joe Baeza told Breitbart Texas the suspect was spotted by three officers involved in the search. Rodriguez opened fire on the officers with a hundgun. The officers returned fire. Additional responding officers engaged the suspect and continued shooting until the suspect went down. Baeza confirmed three officers were shot and a fourth officer received an injury from flying glass during the shooting. An unnamed source within the department with knowledge of the situation told Breitbart Texas that one officer had been shot in the face. That officer has been airlifted by helicopter to San Antonio where the officer will undergo surgery. Baez said that officer is in serious condition. The other three officers received threatening wounds — one to the shoulder, one in the leg, and one in the hand the unnamed source stated. Emergency personnel transported Rodriguez to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. “We ask the community for prayers for the officer and their families,” Detective Baeza told reporters. Earlier in the day, Laredo police officers issued an “armed and dangerous” alert for the suspect. The officers later found him at the convenience store and shooting soon broke out. Earlier on Friday, officers were dispatched to a house to conduct a welfare check on a woman. When they arrived, they found the woman had been shot. She sustained a single gunshot wound to the upper torso. She died at the scene from her wound, the Laredo Morning Times reported. The original shooting took place at about 11:15 a. m. Friday. Editor’s Note This developing story has been updated with new information about the officers injured in the shooting. 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 |
Thu, 20 Oct 2016 20:46 UTC © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/GSFC This composite image depicts Jupiter's cloud formations as seen through the eyes of Juno's microwave radiometer (MWR) instrument as compared to the top layer, a Cassini imaging science subsystem image of the planet. The MWR can see a couple of hundred miles into Jupiter's atmosphere with the instrument's largest antenna. The belts and bands visible on the surface are also visible in modified form in each layer below. Jupiter's stripes are more than skin deep, according to observations by NASA's Juno probe, which has revealed many new surprises about the Jovian giant. Juno arrived at the Jupiter system in July. On Aug. 27, the probe made a close flyby of the planet, during which, the science team was supposed to calibrate Juno's instruments and get familiar with the intense environment around Jupiter, according to Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton. But the encounter proved more fruitful than expected. Jupiter's bold, colorful stripes are clouds, and optical light can't penetrate them to see what's underneath. However, Juno is carrying microwave instruments that can each probe those clouds to different depths; together, these instruments can effectively peel back the clouds like layers of an onion. An artist's impression based on the microwave data reveals a striking feature: Some of the stripes are visible deep into the cloud layers. "The structure of the zones and belts still exists deep down," Bolton said during a news conference at the 2016 meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. "So whatever's making those colors, whatever's making those stripes, is still existing pretty far down into Jupiter. That came as a surprise to many of the scientists. We didn't know if this was [just] skin-deep." The new images penetrate to depths of about 200 to 250 miles (350 to 400 kilometers) below the surface cloud layer, Bolton said. He noted that the bands seen on the cloud tops are not identical to the bands seen in the subsequent layers, although there is clearly a strong similarity. "They're evolving. They're not staying the same," Bolton said. The finding "hints [at] the deep dynamics and the chemistry of Jupiter's atmosphere. And this is the first time we've seen any giant planet atmosphere underneath its layers. So we're learning about atmospheric dynamics at a very basic level." Another breathtaking result came from the JunoCam , a visible-light camera that is being used for public outreach. The instrument took a snapshot of Jupiter's terminator line, or the place where night turns to day. As is the case with viewing the moon's terminator line, the change in light casts shadows, allowing viewers to see many features in three dimensions (like being able to see the depth of craters on the moon). In the Juno photo, scientists spotted a cyclone rising above the main atmospheric layer. The storm appears to be about 52 miles (85 km) tall and about 4,300 miles (7,000 km) wide, which is more than half the width of the Earth. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Alex Mai The sunlit part of Jupiter was created by a citizen scientist (Alex Mai) using data from Juno's JunoCam instrument. JunoCam's raw images are available at www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam for the public to peruse and process into image products. The first flyby also demonstrated that scientists have a lot to learn about what's happening inside Jupiter, the researchers said. The Juno team discovered that very close to the planet, Jupiter's magnetic field, its auroras and its gravitational field (that is, the characteristics of the planet's gravity at different points in space) all provided surprises. The auroras on Jupiter, which were first spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope, are not unlike the northern and southern lights that flash in the polar skies on Earth. But the data collected by Juno on Aug. 27 has thrown into question the models scientists had for Jupiter's auroras. "Nothing about the aurora that we measured on Aug. 27 was as expected," Bolton said during a talk at the meeting. The probe flew over the auroras with multiple instruments turned on, but "the things we expected to see weren't there, and things we didn't expect were there. "We're sort of sorting it out," Bolton said. "We've certainly got a mission of discovery [with regard to] the aurora and understanding that complex system." In addition, measurements of the planet's magnetic field matched planetary models fairly well as Juno sped toward Jupiter. But in the last few minutes before the probe reached its closest point of approach to the planet, the data drastically diverged from the predictions, showing that the magnetic field was much stronger than expected, Bolton said. That implies that the internal magnetic field is "much more complex than people thought" he said. But, of course, Bolton noted, no probe has ever come this close to Jupiter before, and the purpose of the Juno mission is to gather data that will put models like those to the test. More surprises came from preliminary measurements of Jupiter's gravitational field (that is, the strength and direction of the planet's gravity at different points in space). Bolton said the Juno team members who made initial models of the planet's internal gravity field "are already having to redo the field model" based on those early measurements. "The internal gravity field also holds a lot of guarded secrets that are going to help us understand Jupiter," he said. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM An infrared image of the southern aurora of Jupiter, captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on Aug. 27, 2016. More science to come Juno's orbit around Jupiter isn't circular. Instead, the probe makes a loop that takes it right up next to the planet — to within 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of the cloud tops — and then far out into space, before looping back in for another close pass. Jupiter is surrounded by a donut-shaped ring of very intense radiation that could easily destroy most electronic equipment. Juno, with its unique orbit, does a thread-the-needle maneuver, slipping between the planet and the radiation ring. Right now, Juno makes one orbit every 53 days. Juno was scheduled to fire its engines on Oct. 19 and reduce its orbit to every 14 days. Because of a problem with the engine valves, the Juno team has delayed that engine firing until the issue can be diagnosed. Juno is still able to complete its science mission if it stays in the 53-day orbit, Bolton said. | 0 |
First-World Problems. Poor Anna Kendrick…
In 2015, Kendrick showed her support for Hillary in such an eloquent way. She tweeted , “Madonna kissed Drake, Hilary’s running for president, but HBO STILL hasn’t shown this dude’s dick (with a picture of an actor) ?? #FeministPriority ”
From Daly Mail : Her nomination for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for 2009’s Up In The Air catapulted her to stardom. But Anna Kendrick revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Wednesday that at the time she was completely broke.
‘It was this weird combination of like all these great things are happening but at the same time nothing has changed,’ the actress, 31, said.
‘My stylist told me I had to wear the perfect shoes for an outfit, and because the movie isn’t out yet, she said, nobody really knows who you are. The shoe places don’t want to loan you the shoes so can you buy a pair of Louboutins? ‘ Kendrick explained. ‘And I’m like, I’m so poor….’ she said.
The horror didn’t stop there either.
She recalled how she was sent by the film distribution company to New York to promote the film that also starred George Clooney and Vera Farmiga, and they put her up in a very nice hotel.
‘At one point I was like, if we do another trip to New York can you put me up in a less nice hotel room and then I could keep some of the cash ,’ she recounted. ‘And they were like, ‘no this is not how this works!”
Kendrick was on Ellen to promote her new book Scrappy Little Nobody and also to promote her new film Trolls.
In the animated feature, she worked with Justin Timberlake who also provided one of the character voices. The two also sang together including recording a version of True Colors for the soundtrack.
‘It was a career highlight for me watching him do his thing,’ she gushed of the former NSync’er.
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Donald Trump’s first foreign tour as President of the United States began in Saudi Arabia. [The purpose of the trip is to promote ties between the United States and the Arab world, as Trump seeks support in ramping up the war against the Islamic State. Great to be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Looking forward to the afternoon and evening ahead. #POTUSAbroad pic. twitter. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2017, During the visit, Trump met with an array of Arab leaders, gave a speech on the threat of Islamic extremism and secured over $450 million in investment for military weapons. Trump also participated in the opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, which aims to promote moderation and counter the spread of extremism across the Arab world. Another success from the trip was Ivanka Trump’s promotion of the World Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs Fund, to which Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pledged a total of $100 million in funding. Trump participates in a traditional Arabian sword dance. (AP Vucci) Getty — In a speech in front of dozens of Muslim leaders, Trump challenged the Arab and Muslim world to foster peace by “honestly confronting the problem of Islamic extremism, and the Islamists, and Islamic terror of all kinds. ” (AP Vucci) During the inauguration of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, Trump touched a brightly lit globe with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Egypt’s president Abdel Fatah . You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
Share on Facebook Detox your body of heavy metals with this effective cilantro recipe. Cilantro is delicious, healthy, and easy to grow! It is also an incredibly effective detoxifier of heavy metals and other toxic contaminants. It can even extract mercury from your body's organs! Heavy metals have been linked to serious health problems including cancer, heart disease, brain deterioration, emotional problems, kidney disease, lung disease, and weak bones. Cilantro contains many minerals like potassium, calcium, manganese, iron, and even magnesium. It also contains high amounts of vitamin A and vitamin K. It is even a proven antiseptic, anti-fungal, and anti-inflammatory. It can help to reduce infection and inflammation as it works through your system. Cilantro Recipe: 1/2 cup of of chopped fresh organic cilantro 1/2 cup of organic apple juice 1/2 cup of water 1 teaspoon of wheatgrass powder (or any other green powder) Mix ingredients in a blender until smooth. Using cilantro essential oil can help enable the body to flush out any heavy metals that might be disturbing your health. The toxins will exit your body via urine and you will feel an increase in energy and health. I always drink water with a drop of cilantro oil to hasten elimination. Related: | 0 |
Store US Government Acknowledges That al-Qaeda Is Not A Priority In Syria One might ask, then: if al-Qaeda in Syria is not a priority for the war on terror, what is? Darius Shahtahmasebi | Anti Media - October 26, 2016 Comments
Last week, the U.S. State Department acknowledged that al-Qaeda-linked terror group Jabhat al-Nusra is not a “priority” for the United States’ efforts in Syria.
One might ask, then: if al-Qaeda in Syria is not a priority for the war on terror, what is?
State Department spokesman John Kirby provided some useful insight into this dilemma, stating:
“The only thing that stands between where we are now and a permanent and enduring ceasefire in Syria is Bashar al-Assad and his supporters . We recognize Al-Nusra as a spoiler, we have concerns about co-mingling, I’ve talked about this ad nauseam.”
Largely missing from the American narrative of the Syrian conflict is that al-Nusra is shelling residential areas in Aleppo, where the government holds control of the majority of Aleppo’s citizens. In other parts of the world, these al-Qaeda-linked extremists are seen as the enemy, whereas in Syria, Western media will often refer to them as mere “rebel” groups.
The United States first officially used the term “war on terror” on September 20, 2011, to refer to the military campaigns that followed the attacks of September 11. The stated aim at the time was to defeat Islamic-linked terrorist organizations and dismantle regimes the U.S. government accused of supporting terrorism.
In 2013, Obama stated :
“ We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘Global War on Terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”
The fact that a terror group — one linked to the organization that allegedly launched an act of war against the United States on American soil — is not a priority of the United States State Department should tell you something about how farcical and ineffective the war on terror actually is.
This change in rhetoric, which is ultimately designed to push ulterior economic agendas in the Middle East, is an insult to the thousands of soldiers who sacrificed their lives under the false pretense that they were going to protect their families from al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 0 |
Edward Albee never expected or even wanted you to like his plays. “Like” is too pale and friendly a word for the emotions he hoped to elicit. Rage and bewilderment, fear and loathing and that grand old Aristotelian couple, pity and terror: These were all welcome and entirely appropriate responses to have in the theater of Mr. Albee, one of the genuinely great dramatists of the last century, who died on Friday at 88. If you left one of his plays feeling good about yourself, then it would seem that Mr. Albee hadn’t done his job. But the real problem probably would have been that you hadn’t been paying attention. “You don’t listen,” as a character in one of his plays kept saying to anyone who would — sorry, wouldn’t — listen. The challenge within that accusation rang through everything he wrote. That play, “Listening,” was the first work by Mr. Albee that I wrote about as a critic for The New York Times. First staged in 1977, it had been revived in New York in the fall of 1993 by the invaluable Signature Theater Company, created by James Houghton (who died in August) which was devoting a season to Mr. Albee’s more obscure work. By that time, New York critics and audiences had mostly turned their backs on Mr. Albee. It had been a decade since he had had new work produced in the city. And the feeling was that he belonged to an earlier, artier generation that took its provocative intellectual postures far too seriously. Sure, the consensus seemed to go, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ,” the marital boxing match of a play that had been made into a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, was great. But, be honest now, did anyone really understand such arcane plays as “Tiny Alice” and “The Lady From Dubuque,” with all their cryptic, cosmic talk? Being just another New York sheep, I had probably absorbed that perspective without even thinking about it. But as I left “Listening,” and its companion piece “Counting the Ways,” in 1993, I realized that my mind was still churning, in excitement and agitation and a bit of annoyance, in ways it seldom did at the end of any show. I wrote in The Times that I was certainly glad to be able to listen to Mr. Albee again. He in turn wrote me a crisp and courteous letter, saying it was refreshing to be treated fairly again. As it turned out, New York was more than willing to embrace Mr. Albee again. (O. K. maybe not embrace, since that implies huggability writing about Mr. Albee, the most exacting of semanticists, makes you question every word you use.) That same autumn of 1993 saw, in addition to the Signature season, the New York premiere (Off Broadway, at the Vineyard Theater) of Mr. Albee’s “Three Tall Women,” a portrait of the three ages of a rich and selfish suburbanite who was clearly modeled on the playwright’s adoptive mother. It became the play of the season for people who no doubt included fashionable, captious, Americans rather like its title character. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. And so began one of the greatest second acts in any dramatist’s career. Soon, Mr. Albee would be back on Broadway again, first with an exquisite revival of his “A Delicate Balance” in 1996. Plays that had seemed annoying and obscure a couple of decades earlier, including “Tiny Alice” and “The Lady From Dubuque,” were reincarnated to illuminating effect. One of his new works, “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” which opened on Broadway in 2002, put to rest any notions that Mr. Albee might have started playing nice with his audiences. The titular animal was the love (and lust) object of the play’s anguished married hero, first portrayed by Bill Pullman. You can listen to Mr. Albee — in the “Last Words” interview I conducted with him some years ago — contentedly cataloging the different points in the production at which theatergoers walked out. He didn’t even mention the bit of dialogue that made me think, “No, surely he did not say that” — a description of a man dandling an infant on his lap and realizing to his distress that he had acquired an erection. In 2002, Mr. Albee was evidently still quite capable of making even jaded critics, who had done their time with the naked fornicators of fringe theater, squirm. But it is never just the shocking detail that unsettles with Mr. Albee. What’s most disturbing, always, is his insistence that our most primitive instincts keep asserting themselves in even the most civilized settings, like a Minotaur at a cocktail party, and usually they wrestle us to the ground. “Violence! Violence!” chants the mousy Honey, with a cheerleader’s delight, in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” And nasty eruptions of the impulse to hurt, and its frequent conflation with the sex drive, were always a part of the with Mr. Albee. So was death, with and without a capital D, most pointedly in “All Over” and “The Lady From Dubuque,” but its shadow looms large in everything Mr. Albee wrote. That unsentimental insistence on our mortality may have been the biggest turnoff to New York theatergoers of the century. Mr. Albee repeatedly dared to ask what most of us retire to the closets of our minds for as long as possible: the fact of our inevitable ends, and what it means for our tenuous . I should say that few dramatists of the 20th and 21st centuries matched Mr. Albee as a spinner of filigree dialogue. It can hold its own with that of Wilde, Shaw, Coward and Stoppard. Mr. Albee loved words and wordplay — sometimes to the point of giddiness. But he also made it clear that he fully grasped the inadequacy of language as a means of staving off — never mind defining — the darkness that waited to claim his characters. Performing his work required, to borrow a title of his, a delicate balance. (“If I am sharp, it is because I am neither less nor more than human,” says Agnes in that play.) And one of the joys of my job as a theater critic has been watching performers, actresses in particular, discover that balance, with an appropriate mix of glee and bitterness, bravura and uncertainty. Kathleen Turner, Rosemary Harris, Uta Hagen, Marian Seldes and Elaine Stritch all created performances in Albee works. I met Mr. Albee several times, socially and professionally. The first time, he pointed out that, like so many people, I had mispronounced his name. (“It’s Ben, not . ”) Generally, he was gentlemanly, polite, reserved and attentive, in a way I associate with a era. There was power in his gaze, though, an assessing twinkle that you suspected might easily be fanned into a flame that could scorch. Once I saw him, for an interview, the day after I had attended a new play of his at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N. J. I told Mr. Albee that my nephew, whom I had taken to the show, had greatly enjoyed the production. “Good,” said Mr. Albee, who then paused and added, “I hope he didn’t enjoy it too much. ” | 1 |
Newly confirmed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told Tea Party activist and conservative commentator Dr. Gina Loudon in an interview conducted on the main stage at CPAC Saturday that the country needs to get back to the rule of law. [Pruitt predicted: “I really believe that at the end of eight years [of the Trump administration] we’re going to have better air quality, we’re going to have better water quality because we’ve invested in a partnership,” The partnership between the states and the federal government, Pruitt said, is one “that exists legally, that exists constitutionally. ” Pruitt also focused on two of the themes that he addressed last month during his confirmation hearings: (1) The actions of the Environmental Protection Agency must be guided by the rule of law. (2) The goals of environmental quality and energy production are not incompatible. “I think when we have a mutually exclusive kind of approach — that if you’re you’re when you’re you’re — what that means is that we’ve been used to serve political ends,” Pruitt told Loudon. “We as a nation are better than that,” he added. “Because we do both. We grow jobs we also take care of our air, our water we also take care of our children,” the former Oklahoma Attorney General added. “How can the people here at CPAC help you take that message to their peers, their work environments, their schools as they go back out into the real world?” Loudon asked. “Another key term is trust. There’s distrust right now that exists between the states and Washington, D. C. as it relates to the environment,” Pruitt responded. “We need to do what we can to restore trust. I’m going to be spending time in West Virginia and Ohio with the state governors and the executive branches of government there,” Pruitt promised. “I’m going to send a message. Let’s join to do what’s important for the environment,” he concluded. | 1 |
CHICAGO — When the Chicago Cubs pitcher Travis Wood unexpectedly hit a home run Saturday night in Game 2 of his team’s National League division series against San Francisco, the baseball found a happy nesting spot in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. The Cubs fan who snared it even returned it to Wood after the game rather than keep it as a memento. But at Wrigley, not all home runs are received equally. A longstanding protocol there dictates that when a visiting player hits one out, any upstanding Cubs fan who catches the ball is obliged to launch it back onto the field. Even the people who position themselves beyond the outfield walls at Wrigley and attempt to snag home runs hit onto Sheffield and Waveland Avenues sometimes follow this code. It is a symbolic act, turning the baseball into a bitter pill that is better spit out than swallowed. “It’s awesome. It’s part of the history of the Cubs,” said Anthony Prerost, who had caught what, until Saturday night, was the most significant home run of Wood’s career, a grand slam against the Chicago White Sox in 2013. “We’re not going to accept opposing teams or opposing players. So why should we accept their home runs? We might as well reject them, too. ” Not everyone, however, is so enthusiastic about this practice. “It’s stupid,” said Jeff Gorski, who caught Miguel Montero’s homer last month that put an exclamation point on the Cubs’ National League Central title. “Catching a home run is a experience. Why should you have to throw it back just because it wasn’t somebody on the Cubs who hit it?” The tradition, which dates back nearly five decades, has spread over the years to other ballparks, including Yankee Stadium. Last year, a fan there threw back a home run ball hit by Toronto’s Jose Bautista and struck Yankees left fielder Brett Gardner in the back of the head, leaving him with a welt. When Bautista hit another home run last week at Texas in Game 1 of an American League division series, a Rangers fan reached the infield with his defiant throw. At places like Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium, anyone who does not throw back an opposing home run can expect to hear adamant chants of “Throw. It. Back. ” Sitting in the bleachers before the series began on Friday night, Colleen Solomon, a schoolteacher, frowned when her friend Jennifer Dompke said she would gladly chuck a Giants home run back onto the field. “It’s hard not to fall victim to the mob mentality,” said Solomon, who equated fans’ chants to throw a ball back with the bullying behavior she points out to her students. “There’s a deindividualization when you’re in a crowd. I wouldn’t walk up to a Giants player and boo, but when I’m surrounded by thousands of people, I’m more likely to do it. ” Solomon was spared any angst because the Giants, in losing the first two games of the series, did not manage to hit any balls into the bleachers. But that was not a surprise. They hit only 130 home runs this season, the third fewest in baseball. But if the Cubs enjoy as prosperous a postseason as their fans are pining for, and they move on to the National League Championship Series and then — dare we say it? — the World Series, sluggers like the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Corey Seager or the Blue Jays’ Edwin Encarnacion might end up launching a drive into the Wrigley bleachers. Which, in turn, will give some Cubs fan the chance to throw the ball back. The tradition, like so much else in the Cubs history, apparently traces its roots back to 1969, the year the Cubs collapsed in the last part of the season, blowing a lead over the Mets. That season at Wrigley, Hank Aaron hit his 521st career home run, tying him with Ted Williams. The ball was caught by Ron Grousl, a bartender who was a denizen of the bleachers. Grousl said he offered the ball to Aaron after the game as the slugger was making his way to the Braves’ bus, but Aaron refused, apparently angry that fans in right field had dumped beer on him when he ventured near the wall. The next season, when Aaron hit a home run at Wrigley Field and Grousl caught it, he said he was still so upset with Aaron’s rejection (and maybe everything else that happened in 1969) that he threw the ball back onto the field. “I just thought: ‘Get this out of here. I don’t want it,’” Grousl, 70, said in a telephone interview. “I just threw it back. ” Asked if, after all these years, he regretted throwing back a home run hit by one of baseball’s greatest players, Grousl said: “No. I went to every game. I caught a lot of home run balls. You were just mad about the whole thing in ’69. ” Slowly, Grousl’s act caught on. Some Wrigley fans needed prodding to throw the balls back, so an empty beer cup would be passed around to collect a bribe many people would put in a dollar or two. “We’d get about $25, and the guy would give up the ball then we’d throw it back,” Grousl said. On other occasions, the Cubs relievers — who were stationed in the bullpen down the line — would provide an autographed ball to trade for the one headed back to the field. “It might take an inning,” Grousl said. But it was not until the 1980s, when the bleachers became a preferred place to watch a game at Wrigley, that throwing back home runs became a staple of the park’s culture. And with Cubs games being broadcast nationally on the superstation WGN, the ritual gained broad exposure. When Shawon Dunston became the starting shortstop for the Cubs in 1985, he was baffled the first time a home run ball was thrown back on the field and rolled toward him. “I wanted to fire it back, and then somebody said, ‘No, it’s a tradition,’” said Dunston, who is now a coach with the Giants and was known for having one of the strongest arms in baseball. “I didn’t like the ball going over the fence, so when the fans threw it back, they went crazy. I kind of liked it. ” Over the years, the regulars in the bleachers have forged a personal bond with the players. Gary Matthews, nicknamed Sarge, was the left fielder when the Cubs ended a playoff drought in 1984. He bought Army caps for the fans in left field. When the Cubs clinched a playoff berth in 2003, right fielder Sammy Sosa broke off the clubhouse celebration and returned to the warning track to spray champagne on those still rejoicing in the bleachers. And after the Cubs clinched the division this season, the team’s president, Theo Epstein, put on a fake mustache and sunglasses and sat in the bleachers, too. Bob Dernier, the Cubs’ center fielder in 1984, recalled joining Matthews during pitching changes for conversations with fans in the bleachers. “This is as intimate as a ballpark can be,” he said. “It’s a unique relationship you have with the fans out there. ” Just ask David Rudstein, a law school professor who has been attending games since he was he was 7. When Alfonso Soriano played left field for the Cubs, he would toss Rudstein several balls a game. After Soriano was traded in 2013, Rudstein struck up a friendship with Soriano’s friend Hector Rondon, a reliever. Rudstein said that when he was waiting in line to enter the ballpark, a Range Rover with tinted windows came to a stop on Waveland Avenue. The window rolled down: It was Rondon, pausing to say hello. Rudstein has thrown balls back — he said he once caught two within three innings, hit by the Houston Astros’ Craig Biggio and Craig Shipley — but he, like many of the bleacher regulars, is sophisticated. They bring a dummy ball, perhaps one they caught during batting practice, and then slyly throw that one back if they catch a visitor’s home run. “I don’t like it all,” Rudstein said of the tradition before momentarily interrupting an interview to — what else? — catch a homer. “When you catch a game ball, I don’t think throwing it back says anything at all. A home run ball is a home run ball. ” After tucking away two home runs in a duffel bag for future use as dummy balls, Walter Scott, 54, an airline pilot, said: “Sometimes you see a real rotten one go back. But as long as one goes back, everybody’s happy. You’re just appeasing the crowd. ” There is a certain etiquette that comes with sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley. Attempting the wave is a grave offense. Offering a baseball to a child might be repaid with a beer by a parent. “Bleacher currency,” said Gorski, 35, who sells jewelry. “It’s good karma. ” And some elements of the social contract in the bleachers are . “Once, a random fan bought me a hot dog,” said Solomon, the schoolteacher, who was touched by the gesture. “Then I put ketchup on it, and he took it away. ” The expectations for visitors’ home runs are more straightforward. A weak throw, one that does not reach the field from the bleachers — while rare — is a sure way to generate boos at Wrigley. Timing is important, too. Ideally, the throw should be seen by the hitter — that means launching it from right field as he rounds first base and from left field as he rounds second. And do not wait until the offending player has returned to the field after the inning, as one fan did during the 2008 playoffs. He was ejected for throwing Manny Ramirez’s home run ball back at Ramirez when he returned to left field. There is one way, however, to cut through discomfort with social mores and longstanding tribal rituals. It is in the hands of the Cubs pitchers, who for many years were not as proficient as they are now at a singular task: keeping baseballs out of the bleachers. | 1 |
During the June 7 Brady Center Bear Awards — where celebrities applaud other celebrities for their gun control support — actress Kristen Stewart warned that it is time to dispel the idea that playing with toy guns is cool. [The awards ceremony honored Chelsea Handler, who refers to gun ownership as a “hobby” rather than a right, and were attended by January Jones, Tom Arnold, and The Voice champion Alisan Porter. Will Ferrell also attended and served as “auctioneer” for the evening. According to People, Stewart’s attendance was highlighted by Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Gross said Stewart had approached him with an idea about a new way to push gun control and that he was “impressed” by her proposal. He said, “She came to us because she has something she wants to do with this issue. She eagerly shared her idea and without hesitation and is showing up tonight. She is committed to actually doing something, not just lending her name. ” While no specifics were given about Stewart’s gun control idea, People reports that it will revolve around taking “classic American depictions of our fascination with guns” and adding a new message. Stewart spoke about using images to change the way Americans perceive what is considered to be “comforting. ” And talked about how we need to work to keep children from playing with toy guns because it convinces them that real guns can offer protection when they grow up: One of them involved the shattering of the idea that it’s cool to play with toy guns and little kids grow up thinking that’s going to protect and empower them. We kind of take that idea and go, ‘Actually this is something else that could happen,’ and that needs to be considered by people who might not think about that kind of thing. Stewart’s filmography includes American Ultra, a film about an unorthodox government agent who has to fight for his life after being targeted for death. Stewart’s character uses firearms to help the agent defend himself. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
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Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) ignited a political firestorm Thursday night after he randomly brought up his Democratic rival’s heritage after she touted her military experience during a debate.
Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who is of mixed Thai and American descent, cited her military service as well as her family’s when making the case against rushing into war.
“I’m a daughter of the American Revolution. I’ve bled for this nation. But I still want to be there in the Senate when the drums of war sound,“ she said. ”Because people are quick to sound the drums of war and I want to be there to say, ‘This is what it costs, this is what you’re asking us to do’. Let’s make sure the American people understand what we are engaging in.”
When given a chance to respond, Kirk remarked, “I had forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.” Illinois Senator Mark Kirk Made A Racist Remark About His Opponent’s Heritage https://t.co/MmS5HnGEG7 pic.twitter.com/Q1bFnqviAG
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 28, 2016
No one, including the debate moderator, quite knew how to react. After a brief awkward silence, the moderator moved the discussion forward. Critics immediately branded the comment as “racist” and distasteful.
Duckworth lost both of her legs while serving as a pilot in the Army during the Iraq war. Her father also served in the U.S.army and her family’s military service goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War, BuzzFeed reported . US Representative Tammy Duckworth of Illinois arrives to address delegates on the fourth and final day of the Democratic National Convention at Wells Fargo Center on July 28, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Image Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Duckworth responded on Twitter with an indisputable message. My mom is an immigrant and my dad and his family have served this nation in uniform since the Revolution #ILSEN pic.twitter.com/ehEBHswFMs — Tammy Duckworth (@TammyforIL) October 28, 2016
Kirk’s campaign later issued a statement addressing the controversy:
“Senator Kirk has consistently called Rep. Duckworth a war hero and honors her family’s service to this country. But that’s not what this debate was about. Rep. Duckworth lied about her legal troubles, was unable to defend her failures at the VA and then falsely attacked Senator Kirk over his record on supporting gay rights.”
But at that point, the damage was already done. | 0 |
THE DELETER OF THE FREE WORLD Hillary's 33,000 emails might not be 'missing' after all Files backed up on multiple platforms never subpoened by FBI Published: 7 mins ago
(New York Post) For months now, we’ve been told that Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails were permanently erased and destroyed beyond recovery. But newly released FBI notes strongly suggest they still exist in several locations — and they could be recovered, if only someone would impanel a grand jury and seize them.
In a May interview with FBI agents, an executive with the Denver contractor that maintained Clinton’s private server revealed that an underling didn’t bleach-clean all her subpoenaed emails, just ones he stored in a data file he used to transfer the emails from the server to Clinton’s aides, who in turn sorted them for delivery to Congress.
The Platte River Networks executive, whose name was redacted from the interview report, said PRN tech Paul Combetta “created a ‘vehicle’ to transfer email files from the live mailboxes of [Clinton Executive Services Corp.] email accounts [and] then later used BleachBit software to shred the ‘vehicle,’ but the email content still existed in the live email accounts.” | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump has vowed a hiring surge of 10, 000 immigration and customs officers to accelerate the deportation of unauthorized immigrants. But the aggressive pace he has laid out risks adding to the ranks of rogue agents who have been charged with abusing immigrants. Over the past decade, dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and contract guards responsible for the detention and removal of undocumented immigrants have been arrested and charged with beating people, smuggling drugs into detention centers, having sex with detainees and accepting bribes to delay or stop deportations, agency documents and court records show. One agent took pictures of himself having sex with a minor in a foreign country after dropping off deportees. In another case, an ICE lawyer pretending to be an immigration judge took bribes to remove official documents from the files of people awaiting deportation. These officials make up a small fraction of the work force at the agency, now comprising almost 20, 000 people, but former Homeland Security officials and human rights workers say that even a few bad officers can be a problem because they hold such power over a vulnerable population. John Roth, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, told a Senate committee in February that the agency would “face a number of challenges” in executing Mr. Trump’s executive orders because it had “inadequate systems to track and process applicants. ” Mr. Roth said his office was conducting an audit of previous hiring surges to help the agency avoid practices that may have led to corruption and misconduct by staff members. Human rights activists expressed similar worries about a hiring wave. “Given the things that have been documented in the past — beatings, sexual assaults and other abuses — it doesn’t seem like they have much oversight of the people they have now. And they want to add more?” said Justin Mazzola, deputy director of research for Amnesty International in New York. Mr. Mazzola’s concern is borne out in a number of cases in which ICE employees have been accused or convicted of abuse. In Philadelphia, Justin Ford pleaded guilty to stealing money from undocumented immigrants being processed for removal. In New Jersey, Arnaldo Echevarria was convicted on charges of extracting bribes from people facing deportation. And in Detroit, Clifton Divers was arrested after the authorities said he had provided false information to federal immigration authorities in order to delay the deportation of several immigrants facing removal. Mr. Ford and Mr. Echevarria were deportation officers who supervised unauthorized immigrants. Mr. Divers is a special agent with ICE Homeland Security Investigations who prosecutors say took $5, 000 from an immigration attorney to put off several deportations by claiming that the immigrants had information about crimes. John F. Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary, has directed the agency to “take all appropriate action to expeditiously hire 10, 000 agents and officers,” as sought by Mr. Trump in his executive order. Mr. Kelly said the agency would maintain a rigorous hiring process and add personnel to ensure that it would not be compromised. “I will not skimp on the training and the standards,” he told a congressional panel last month. According to immigration and customs officials, agents and deportation officers undergo security checks and full background investigations, and then every five or 10 years, depending on the sensitivity of the position. Still, some former Homeland Security officials said they worried that in an effort to accelerate hiring, the agency would be tempted to lower its standards. Leaked documents outlining plans to beef up a sister agency, the Border Patrol, first reported in Foreign Policy magazine, show that Customs and Border Protection officials are considering waiving polygraph tests for some applicants and applying less stringent background checks to speed the hiring of 5, 000 agents. ICE does not administer lie detector test to applicants. In 2016, the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility sought permission to use polygraph examinations for law enforcement applicants similar to those used by the Border Patrol and Secret Service, but the proposal stalled. James Tomsheck, a former assistant commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said that while polygraph tests were not foolproof, they could help weed out applicants susceptible to corruption. “What needs to be implemented are protocols for keeping bad people from getting in in the first place,” he said. “Background checks alone are insufficient at vetting people. ” Background checks failed to find problems with Mr. Ford, who authorities said was facing financial problems when he stole from the vulnerable immigrants he transported to detention facilities in New Jersey. He was arrested in March 2015 by a Philadelphia Police Department SWAT team as he dropped off an undercover agent at a detention facility. Mr. Ford, who told the authorities that he had taken only a few hundred dollars from detainees “a couple of times,” pleaded guilty in June 2015. Mr. Echevarria, who was indicted last year, accepted $75, 000 in bribes in exchange for employment authorization documents for several immigrants in the country illegally, the authorities said. Prosecutors said he also had demanded sex in at least one instance. From 2012 to 2014, they said, Mr. Echevarria made false statements to immigration authorities about the status of the undocumented immigrants under his supervision. Mr. Divers, who is awaiting trial, was arrested in October. According to court records, between 2009 and 2015 he took thousands of dollars from Charles T. Busse, an immigration attorney, to help with deportation cases.’ ”In one instance, Mr. Divers was accused of sending an email to officials at Homeland Security that falsely said one of Mr. Busse’s clients was assisting in a criminal investigation. As a result of Mr. Divers’s email, the client was not deported, court records show.” ’In another case, Mr. Divers arranged for a deportation deferral for another client of Mr. Busse, a Mexican man, after providing false information to ICE officials, according to court documents. “Some of these guys don’t have any respect for the people they are rounding up or deporting,” said an ICE deportation officer, who requested anonymity because he fears losing his job for speaking out publicly. “I’ve heard agents refer to all Somalis as ‘pirates’ and other ethnic slurs. Others are just hostile to aliens being here breaking the law. It’s not our job to judge. ” | 1 |
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Senator Bernie Sanders defiantly vowed again on Sunday to take his campaign to the Democratic National Convention this summer, even as Hillary Clinton edged closer to clinching the party’s presidential nomination and the final primary contests drew near. Two days before Tuesday’s primaries in California and five other states, Mr. Sanders repeated his pledge not to concede even if Mrs. Clinton acquires enough delegates to reach 2, 383, the threshold for securing the nomination. A win in California is critical to Mr. Sanders’s plan to stay in the race through the convention and would give him a significant lift. But with her victory in the Puerto Rico primary on Sunday, Mrs. Clinton is only 28 delegates short of the threshold and will most likely declare victory on Tuesday. Mr. Sanders, however, insists that the convention will be contested because he is still lobbying superdelegates — party officials and state leaders who cast their final votes at the convention — to withdraw support from Mrs. Clinton and back him instead. He plans to make the case that he is a stronger candidate against Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. A number of polls, he said, show he can beat Mr. Trump by larger margins than Mrs. Clinton can. On Sunday, Mr. Sanders opened a new line of attack against Mrs. Clinton, criticizing donations made by foreign governments while she was secretary of state to the Clinton Foundation, the organization founded by former President Bill Clinton. When Mr. Sanders, who greeted fans in West Hollywood, was asked by reporters if he remained committed to pushing for a contested convention, he said he “absolutely” was. A convention is typically seen as contested when a candidate cannot reach the necessary delegate count using both pledged delegates and superdelegates. In 2008, Mrs. Clinton conceded to Barack Obama shortly after the final primary and before the convention. But Mr. Sanders is promising to break with tradition and extend his fight further than initially expected. Mr. Sanders reiterated his stance on Sunday at a restaurant filled with disco lights as he urged supporters to back him. “We need a real change in this country,” Mr. Sanders said to a cheering crowd at the restaurant, Hamburger Mary’s, in West Hollywood, “and we need a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent. ” During a news conference on Saturday in Los Angeles, Mr. Sanders said it would be wrong for Mrs. Clinton to claim victory on Tuesday based on her total delegate count. News media outlets should not call the race, he said, unless she reaches the threshold with only pledged delegates. “It is extremely unlikely that Secretary Clinton will have the requisite number of pledged delegates to claim victory on Tuesday night,” Mr. Sanders said. “Now, I have heard reports that Secretary Clinton has said it’s all going to be over on Tuesday night. I have reports that the media, after the New Jersey results come in, are going to declare that it is all over. That simply is not accurate. ” Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. Sanders in both pledged and total delegates. In a sign of his campaign’s urgency to win in California, Mr. Sanders criticized the Clinton Foundation during an interview on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union. ” “If you ask me about the Clinton Foundation, do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of state and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments, governments which are dictatorships?” Mr. Sanders said. “You don’t have a lot of civil liberties or democratic rights in Saudi Arabia,” he told the interviewer, Jake Tapper. “You don’t have a lot of respect there for opposition points of view for gay rights, for women’s rights. Yes, do I have a problem with that? Yes, I do. ” Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton spent Sunday campaigning in California, where polls indicated a tight race. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Clinton visited black churches, appealing to a demographic that had given her important support in past nominating contests. In Oakland, Mrs. Clinton spoke at Greater St. Paul Church. Tailoring her remarks to her audience, she recalled working briefly in Oakland in the 1970s, and she praised the Golden State Warriors, who were set to host Game 2 of the N. B. A. finals. Mrs. Clinton also talked about issues like gentrification and gun violence and told congregants how difficult it was to be president. “I wish it was only about making speeches,” Mrs. Clinton said. “You know, just get up there and promise the moon and make all of these rhetorical flourishes. That’d be a lot easier than what the job is. ” Mr. Clinton visited First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Los Angeles, where he took aim at Mr. Trump and addressed criticism that he and his wife were part of the “political establishment. ” “This is not an establishment campaign,” he said. “This is an inclusion campaign. ” Mr. Sanders spent much of his day walking around greeting voters in several places, including the Santa Monica Pier, where dozens of fans hugged and snapped photos with him. Some shouted, “That’s our next president!” But there were signs of opposition from Clinton supporters. One woman shouted, “Get out of the race!” As Mr. Sanders shook hands, he quickly moved past Jenny Swiatowy, 33, who sat next to a fruit arrangement with a sticker showing her support for Mrs. Clinton. “In the beginning, I thought it was great for him to come out as a new candidate with a new voice and to start bringing out the young new voters,” said Ms. Swiatowy, who works at a record label. “But it’s time to concede and unite the party. ” Mr. Sanders, though, was not bowing to the pressure. “See you in Philly,” he told one smiling supporter. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily blocked a court order that had allowed a transgender boy to use the boys’ bathroom in a Virginia high school. The vote was 5 to 3, with Justice Stephen G. Breyer joining the court’s more conservative members “as a courtesy. ” He said that this would preserve the status quo until the court decided whether to hear the case. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. The court’s order has no effect on any other case. The move came amid a national debate over transgender rights. A North Carolina law that requires transgender people to use bathrooms in government buildings that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificates has drawn protests, boycotts and lawsuits. A directive from the Obama administration threatening schools with the loss of federal money for discrimination based on gender identity has been challenged in court by more than 20 states. The case in the Supreme Court concerns Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as a male and will soon start his senior year at Gloucester High School in southeastern Virginia. For a time, school administrators allowed Mr. Grimm to use the boys’ bathroom, but the local school board adopted a policy that required students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms for their “corresponding biological genders. ” The board added that “students with gender identity issues” would be allowed to use private bathrooms. Mr. Grimm sued, and a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. ruled the policy unlawful. A trial judge then ordered school officials to let Mr. Grimm use the boys’ bathroom. The school board has said that it will file a petition in late August asking the Supreme Court to hear its appeal. In the meantime, the board submitted an emergency application that asked the justices to let school officials continue to bar Mr. Grimm from the boys’ bathroom. The alternative, the board’s lawyers said, was harm to “the basic expectations of bodily privacy” and “severe disruption to the school in the upcoming school year. ” The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mr. Grimm, responded that the trial court’s order did not amount to the kind of irreparable harm that warrants a stay from the Supreme Court, as it concerned a single student in a single high school which has taken steps to increase privacy in restrooms for all students. The legal question in the case, Gloucester County School Board v. G. G. No. 16A52, is whether the Obama administration was entitled to interpret a regulation under Title IX, a 1972 law that bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in schools that receive federal money, to ban discrimination based on gender identity. The regulation, adopted in 1975, allowed schools to provide “separate toilet, locker rooms and shower facilities on the basis of sex. ” Last year, the federal Department of Education weighed in on the Gloucester School Board’s policy, saying schools “generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity. ” In May, the department issued a more general directive that said schools may lose federal money if they discriminate against transgender students. The Fourth Circuit said the 1975 regulation was ambiguous and that the department’s interpretation of it was entitled to “controlling weight. ” Under a 1997 Supreme Court decision, Auer v. Robbins, agencies’ interpretations of their own regulations are generally entitled to deference. The Auer decision has been the subject of much criticism, and several justices have urged the Supreme Court to revisit the ruling. In a dissent in May, Justice Clarence Thomas said it was “on its last gasp. ” | 1 |
Evergreen State College Professor Bret Weinstein claimed that it may be unsafe for him to return to campus in his second interview with Tucker Carlson, which aired on Monday night.[ Professor Bret Weinstein made a second appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program on Monday evening to speak on the status of the chaos that erupted after he gently pushed back against Evergreen State College’s “Day of Absence” event, which encouraged white community members to leave campus for a day. Carlson began the interview by claiming that Weinstein has relocated his family for their safety. Weinstein claimed that he has not returned to campus because the administration has yet to acknowledge the danger that their handling of the protests has put Weinstein and his family in. He also suggested that returning to campus may not be safe at this moment. Weinstein claimed that he has received tremendous support from the public outside of the college, but lamented the fact that only one of his colleagues had publicly condemned the witch hunt. “Not leaving meant that you were not an ally,” Weinstein said, referencing the backlash he received to his refusal to participate in the “Day of Absence. ” “On a college campus, people should be equally free to be on campus, irrespective of their skin color,” Weinstein added. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” MoveOn. org Senior Advisor and National Spokeperson Karine argued that “if you are not white, male, straight,” you “fear” a Trump presidency. said, “I think the thing to understand is that, if you are not white, male, straight, you are — you fear a — Donald Trump’s presidency because there is no place for you in a Donald Trump’s presidency. ” She added, “He ran the most campaign that we have ever seen. He talked about Mexicans, calling them rapists and criminals. He talked about Muslim ban, and it is fearful for all of us. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett, | 1 |
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Since the Republican Party’s founding, not one of its nominees has won the White House without carrying Ohio, a most diverse and perennially state. But as Republicans head to Cleveland to nominate Donald J. Trump in two weeks, a convention city chosen with Battleground Ohio much in mind, a vortex of headwinds are rising against Mr. Trump in the state. The barely concealed disdain of Gov. John R. Kasich, a former rival who has not endorsed the presumptive nominee, echoes through the state’s Republican leadership, whose full engagement in the fall campaign will be needed to turn out voters. Images of disunity in Cleveland, where delegates are gathering July in the shadow of local polls showing a majority of Republicans prefer a different nominee, could make it harder for the party to attract activists for the fall campaign. Mr. Trump ignored Ohio for six weeks after clinching the nomination, until a visit last week to coal country, where he spoke to an audience of largely white voters, including some Democrats. It was the group he has performed best with in primaries and polls. But in describing a trade deal during the same visit as a “rape of our country,” his oratory and protectionist policies are turning off other voters, including suburban women and business interests, in a state whose economy depends on global exports. “If you look at the primary and extrapolate, Trump could get of the white working class,” said John C. Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron. That would improve on Mitt Romney’s share of these voters in Ohio in 2012, when the state slipped from his grasp by only 103, 000 votes. “The flip side is Trump’s appeal to white men very well may cost him other kinds of Republican voters,” Mr. Green said. Public polling of Ohio, which has been scant, shows Hillary Clinton with an average lead of about three percentage points. Mrs. Clinton and her supporters are already spending heavily in the state on ads to define Mr. Trump negatively, and last week Mrs. Clinton visited Cincinnati with Senator Elizabeth Warren, who electrified the crowd by mocking Mr. Trump for running a campaign no deeper than the slogans on his “goofy” hats. A recent Quinnipiac Poll of Ohio, showing the race deadlocked, indicated women were moving toward Mrs. Clinton while Mr. Trump’s strength among men was unchanged. Bob Seszko, a school bus mechanic from rural Bellaire, Ohio, said he voted for Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary but planned to vote for Mr. Trump in November. In the 1980s, he had made good money at a steel plant in the Ohio River Valley — until it closed. “Overseas was selling it cheaper than we could make it, so I lost my job,” he said. “I think Trump’s more sincere than Hillary is. She’s riding on the coattails of her husband. ” Mr. Trump’s appeal to such voters is likely to be strong, especially in the industrial region around Youngstown and Akron. That he has kept the race tight even after weeks of negative news — about his visit to Scotland, his firing of his campaign manager and his congratulating himself after the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla. — is a testament to the strength of Mr. Trump’s appeal with his base, as well as the polarization of the electorate. To counter the threat, Mrs. Clinton and her supporters began a barrage of television ads in Ohio and other swing states in May, and for the Fourth of July weekend, they planned a $13 million blitz mostly in Ohio and Florida. Mr. Trump, who is skeptical of TV ads and short on campaign cash, has not bought any general election ads in the state. The first ad supporting him from an outside group, the National Rifle Association, featuring a survivor of the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, was just rolled out. “I’ve gotten to the point where I feel so much of this is on the Trump campaign,” said Matt Borges, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. He said Mr. Trump recently called him after reading that Mrs. Clinton was far ahead in hiring field staff members in Ohio. In March, Mr. Borges and other Republican leaders in the state bluntly warned that if Mr. Trump were the nominee, he could not carry their perennially state. “We want to distance ourselves from the kind of rhetoric that Donald Trump is using to divide Americans,” Mr. Borges said at the time. “If Donald Trump is unfortunately our choice and our nominee, it could imperil not only the race for the White House but many other candidates . ” The state’s Republican leaders, who supported their native son Mr. Kasich before his withdrawal from the race, no longer openly scorn Mr. Trump. But they pick their words carefully, withholding full support. “A great many people in Ohio are watching Mr. Trump closely to see if over the weeks and months he will emerge as an individual of presidential stature,” said Brad Sinnott, chairman of the Republican Central Committee of Franklin County, which includes Columbus, the capital. “There is some work to be done. ” Mr. Trump, who has signaled a strategy of outsourcing organizing to the national party, hired a state director only late last month. The Republican National Committee, which promised last year to hire more than 200 field staff members in the state, has about 50 now, and has yet to open its first Ohio office. The Clinton campaign, which declined to say how many staff members it has in Ohio, is also coordinating with state and national Democrats, who collectively have more than 100 people in the field, said Kirstin Alvanitakis, a state party spokeswoman. The Clinton campaign plans to open offices across the state in the coming weeks. Mr. Trump’s appeal helped drive record turnout in the primary in March. “I told him we had a million new Republicans,” Mr. Borges recalled of a conversation he had with Mr. Trump. “He asked, ‘Is that because of me? ’” “I told him yes,” he said. What he did not say is that many Republican primary voters came out to vote against Mr. Trump, who received nearly 36 percent of the vote in the contest, which Mr. Kasich won. “You don’t have a movement without Trump,” Mr. Borges said. | 1 |
RIO DE JANEIRO — Proud and beautiful as this seaside city is, glorious as the feats of athleticism and sportsmanship were these past two weeks, these Games underline that the Olympic model is fractured. As we depart, Rio de Janeiro is left with stadiums for which it has little use and swimming pools far removed from the working class who could dearly use them. Tens of thousands of residents were displaced, a golf course sits atop a former nature preserve, and the towers of the athletes’ village will have a second life as luxury housing. Rio’s state government turns its pockets inside out looking for money to pay salaries and to keep hospitals open. The army withdraws, and fears rise that crime will spiral. The International Olympic Committee has taken steps toward reform. But what it demands of nations is basically unchanged: Build us expensive monuments with a shelf life of two weeks. The I. O. C. has no hammer to bring down when cities fail to deliver on environmental promises. There is a more sustainable and less ruinous path, and I will get to that. First, I should wrestle with the challenge tossed down by my colleague Roger Cohen. He is an incisive, humane observer, and he argued that critics have the Rio Olympics all wrong. His perspective should be reckoned with, even as I disagreed with nearly every word. “I am tired, very tired,” Cohen wrote last week, “of reading negative stories about these Brazilian Olympics — the anger in the slums, the violence that continues (including the armed robbery of four American swimmers) the enduring gulf between rich and poor, the occasional organizational hassles, the Russian doping and the Brazilian mosquito, money that could supposedly have been spent better. ” He argued that the developed world harbors an antipathy for grand sporting events held in the developing world. I would turn his formulation on its head. The greatest honor we can pay to a nation is to take its maladies seriously. Brazil overthrew a dictatorship and remains a gloriously messy democracy. Yet police and paramilitary violence and human rights violations accompany its grand sporting events. Brazilian officials, desperate to tamp down the vicious drug gangs before the Olympics, let the army and the police ratchet up violence, to the point that last year the police committed of the homicides in Rio. Such problems are not unique to Rio de Janeiro. “A major sporting event,” Amnesty International wrote of Rio, “tends to increase the human rights violations that already occur in a host city. ” Corruption scarred these Games, as contractors and politicians sluiced hundreds of millions of dollars into their coffers. Brave journalists here exposed this, and Brazilian prosecutors, to their credit, investigated the metastasizing scandals. Earlier this year, the scion of the nation’s largest construction companies, Odebrecht, an investor in the athletes’ housing, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for his role in another political scandal. We would do well to stanch any North American impulse toward . The United States walked this twisted path, too. Our Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics were a bacchanalia of bribes, doping and corruption. My colleague Cohen claimed to detect another double standard he could recall no reporters poking around impoverished corners of London during its Summer Olympics. If that is so, that is our failure. London remains one of the globe’s more grossly unequal cities, and terrific activism was afoot during those Olympics. I recall walking through London’s East End before those Games and talking with the imams, bakers, construction workers, students and pastors who were the backbone of East London Communities Organization. They successfully pressured the London organizers to pay living wages to all who worked inside the Olympic perimeter. “They said they had obligations to their contractors,” Lina Jamoul, an organizer told me at the time. “We said: ‘What you have is a bureaucracy. That isn’t our problem. ’” Activists in London also applied concerted pressure to get the Olympic corporation to create 2, 000 units of affordable housing after the Games. The Rio Olympics offer nods toward a sustainable future. The handball courts, an example of nomadic architecture, will be dismantled and used to build schools. The media center will become dorms, and sections of the Olympic center could become a public park. There was, however, no movement to ensure livable wages for workers. And not a single flat in the towers where the athletes were housed will be reserved for and poor Cariocas. The developers obtained the public land for free. A recessionary housing market does threaten their profit margin, which is a pity. More to the point, the loudest protests about these Olympics came not from Berkeley or Oxford but from within Rio de Janeiro. Labor unions, teachers and activists on either side of the coastal mountains that divide this city joined in marches. Their anger, coupled with a wounded economy, might account for the thousands of empty seats seen here these past two weeks. “We liked the talk of the Olympics at first,” noted Carla Maria Avesani, who runs a respected nutrition institute at Rio de Janeiro’s state university, which has suffered grievous cuts in pay and services. “Then Brazilians awoke from this dream. It became a nightmare. ” So what’s the solution? We could place the Games in Los Angeles, London or Paris, or seek a permanent home in Athens, which has historical and emotional resonance. “I very much understand the I. O. C. ’s desire to be more equitable in delivering the Olympics to the developing world,” said Allen Hershkowitz, the founder of Green Sports International, who is an environmental consultant to pro sports leagues and the Olympics. “But the Sochi and Rio Olympics indicate that there are such huge environmental, transportation, water and questions. ” To retreat to the cities of the Northern Hemisphere, however, strikes me — and Hershkowitz — as a defeat. What if the I. O. C. instead had awarded Rio de Janeiro three cycles of Olympics: 2016, 2020 and 2024? City officials would have time to learn and grow, to ride out a bad recession and market Rio as a true Olympic city. Activists might have forced the Olympics to truly integrate into the lifeblood of the city, incorporating favelas no less than the beach community of Barra. They might have demanded that the athletes’ towers become housing. They might demand living wages and true apprenticeship programs. Sewage treatment plants could come on line over the course of a decade. (I opposed the efforts of the former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to bring the Olympics to New York, the cacophonous echo chamber that is my native city. But I admired his equitable proposal to put Olympic swimming pools and kayak routes in city parks.) Olympic officials would also possess a stick: If city leaders did not offer measurable progress, the I. O. C. could withdraw the next two rounds of Games. Such a plan offers much for prospective Winter Olympics sites as well. Argentine or Chilean developers in the Andes — or Russians in Sochi, for that matter — would have time to build out and environmentally sensitive winter sports resorts over 12 years, cushioned by the security of Olympic branding. (Tennis’s biggest events, from Wimbledon to the United States, French and Australian Opens, build out their businesses in this fashion year after year. The United States Tennis Association recently added renewable energy and recycling at Flushing Meadows.) “You can’t just do this for a event it’s got to be a planning,” Hershkowitz said. “Otherwise, you’re left with empty stadiums and a wrecked environment. ” In the end, the Olympics must change. Travel to Athens or Sochi and you will find a shattered vase of a model. Fewer and fewer cities desire that. In the past few years, residents of host cities revolted, and Oslo and Boston, among other cities, canceled bids to host the Games. I’m no dour Puritan I love great athletics. My heart leapt as I watched Usain Bolt fly down the track and Simone Biles spin and flip as if exempt from the laws of gravity. To stand in the legendary Maracanã stadium for the gold medal men’s soccer game and listen as Brazilians transformed it into a joyous asylum was a wonder. Cariocas were gracious, from Copacabana baristas to an impoverished Marie Auxiliadora, who invited me into her home in Favela do Mandela to listen to her upset with these Games. One day, perhaps even next time, we can deliver a sustainable Olympics worthy of them. | 1 |
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Despite the fact that voting is the cornerstone of our democracy, only 60 percent of eligible voters turn out in a presidential election. But this year we may see that number spike, because groups of incredible volunteers are doing everything they can to get out the vote: They’re hitting the road and oiling up the sidewalks to help voters slide uncontrollably to their polling places.
Democracy FTW!
You might not know their names, but these hardworking men and women are out there in the trenches from Maine to California, slathering thick, black oil on the ground so every American can skid down the road, windmilling their arms wildly to try and stay upright, and careen straight through the doors of a voting booth. Republican or Democrat, these patriotic volunteers want every American to have access to a frictionless slick of oil that leads right to a polling place.
Yes! These incredible volunteers are absolutely killing it!
Rather than letting our election be decided by a select few, people from across the nation are volunteering their time to make sidewalks well-lubricated and slippery for as many voters as possible. As of this morning, footpaths have been oiled in all 50 states, giving people who would not otherwise have the time or desire to vote the opportunity to lose their balance and slide forward at alarming speeds with their arms flailing and legs kicking, until they crash face-first into a registered polling location.
We might live in a democracy, but we wouldn’t have a truly representative election without the help of a select few everyday heroes. So when the polling stations close and every last slippery, oil-covered voter has put their ballot in the box and slid back out the door, remember those brave volunteers, because we couldn’t do it without them. | 0 |
Zero Hedge October 27, 2016
We have written frequently in recent weeks about a feud that erupted between Chelsea Clinton and Doug Band back in 2011 after Chelsea raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest between Band’s firm, Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the State Department(see here , here, here and here ).
The feud ultimately resulted in Band being forced to draft a memo spelling out, in vivid detail, the many entangled relationships between himself, Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. Fortunately, today’s Wikileaks dump included that memo which reveals, for the first time, the precise financial flows between the Clinton Foundation, Band’s firm Teneo Consulting, and the Clinton family’s private business endeavors.
The memo starts with a brief background on Teneo, which was created in June 2011, shortly after Declan Kelly resigned from his position as “United States Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland,” a position to which he was appointed by Secretary Clinton.
In June 2009, DK Consulting was founded by Declan Kelley. Mr. Kelly served as COO of FTI Consulting until June 2009, when he stepped down and established DK Consulting. At that time, he also became the United States Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland . Pursuant to the terms of his exit agreement with FTI and consistent with the ethics agreement of his uncompensated special government employee appointment at the State Department, Mr. Kelly retained and continued to provide services to three paying clients (Coke, Dow, and UBS) and one pro bono client (Allstate) . In late 2009, Declan retained me as a consultant to DK Consulting to help support the needs of these clients. In May 2011, Mr. Kelly resigned his Envoy position at the State Department. In June 2011, Mr. Kelly and I founded Teneo Strategies ; simultaneously, Mr. Kelly closed DK Consulting and shifted its clients to Teneo.
Throughout the past almost 11 years since President Clinton left office, I have sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo, to support and to raise funds for the Foundation . This memorandum strives to set forth how I have endeavored to support the Clinton Foundation and President Clinton personally.
In a subsequent section of the memo entitled “Leveraging Teneo For The Foundation,” Band spells all of the donations he solicited from Teneo “clients” for the Clinton Foundation. In all, there are roughly $14mm of donations listed with the largest contributors being Coca-Cola, Barclays, The Rockefeller Foundation and Laureate International Universities.
The donations from Dow Chemical are particularly notable for several reasons. First, because of other emails revealed by WikiLeaks and other FOIA requests, we now know that Dow Chemical CEO, Andrew Liveris, was granted special access to then Secretary Clinton back in July 2009 at the same time he was embroiled in ongoing litigation with another Clinton Foundation donor, Kuwait, over a failed joint-venture that would have netted Dow $9BN in cash . As Band notes in his memo, 1 month after being granted special access to Secretary Clinton, Liveris invited President Clinton and Band out for a day of golf. Moreover, shortly after his meeting with Secretary Clinton and golf outing with President Clinton, Liveris decided to donate $500,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative …very convenient timing for all involved.
In August of 2009, Mr. Kelly invited Mr. Liveris to play golf with President Clinton and me. Mr. Kelly subsequently asked Dow to become a CGI sponsor at the $500,000 level, which they did , as well as making a $150,000 donation to the Foundation for President Clinton to attend a Dow dinner in Davos.
The story gets even more bizarre when Band reveals in the following footnote that Liveris provided the Dow Chemical plane to fly President Clinton and his staff from New York to California and then California to North Korea for their golf outing . We would assume this is a simple typo by Band and/or he’s just geographically challenged…if not, this certainly raises a whole other set of questions for Bill.
Mr. Liveris provided the Dow plane to fly President Clinton and his staff to and from California for our trip to, and from, North Korea . As a private trip, the Foundation had to pay the costs of airfare; Mr. Liveris’ in kind contribution saved the Foundation in excess of $100,000 .
According to the Dialy Caller , Dow Chemical paid Teneo $2.8 million in 2011 and $16 million in 2012 for a variety of “consultancy services”. Of course, Bill Clinton was an honorary chairman of Teneo and, as such, was set to be paid $3.5 million for that position even though he ultimately only kept $100,000 because of the scandals that erupted around the firm, including their advisory relationship with MF Global.
Finally, Band also offers the following commentary on the “$50 million in for-profit activity” he was able to secure for Bill Clinton (as of November 2011) as well as the “$66 million in future contracts, should he choose to continue with those engagements.”
Independent of our fundraising and decision-making activities on behalf of the Foundation, we have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities – including speeches, books, and advisory service engagements . In that context, we have in effect served as agents, lawyers, managers and implementers to secure speaking, business and advisory service deals. In support of the President’s for-profit activity, we also have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like. Neither Justin nor I are separately compensated for these activities (e.g., we do not receive a fee for, or percentage of, the more than $50 million in for-profit activity we have personally helped to secure for President Clinton to date or the $66 million in future contracts, should he choose to continue with those engagements). With respect to business deals for his advisory services, Justin and I found, developed and brought to President Clinton multiple arrangements for him to accept or reject. Of his current 4 arrangements, we secured all of them; and, we have helped manage and maintain all of his for-profit business relationships. Since 2001, President Clinton’s business arrangements have yielded more than $30 million for him personally, with $66 million to be paid out over the next nine years should he choose to continue with the current engagements.
A big part of those “for-profit” activities was a $3.5mm annual payment from Laureate…
…and millions in speaking fees arranged by Band.
Confused? Here is a simpler recap from the NYT’s Nick Confessore: This Doug Band memo, in the latest Podesta dump, is the Rosetta stone of the Teneo-Clinton Foundation complex. https://t.co/a1g3nSoGPM
— Nick Halloween (@nickconfessore) October 26, 2016 Band's argument: I am not get fully compensated for all of the stuff I do for Clintonworld, so you should let me do Teneo. Everyone wins.
— Nick Halloween (@nickconfessore) October 26, 2016 Now, you could argue: So what? If Band gets his clients to pop over money to a charity, why is that bad?
— Nick Halloween (@nickconfessore) October 26, 2016 But consider that Band was selling his clients on idea that giving to foundation was, in essence, a way to bolster their influence.
— Nick Halloween (@nickconfessore) October 26, 2016 Clinton & Band built a platform for executives to bolster their companies' images, bathe in BC's praise, and do some good, while…
— Nick Halloween (@nickconfessore) October 26, 2016 …Teneo extracted earnings for Band and, depending on what you see in these e-mails, Clinton himself. Teneo paid Clinton until late '11.
— Nick Halloween (@nickconfessore) October 26, 2016 I guess you can wave it all off as a nothingburger. But Chelsea Clinton and some of Clinton's other aides were clearly freaking out.
— Nick Halloween (@nickconfessore) October 26, 2016 Generally, the emails show Clinton's *own closest aides* troubled or horrified by things that her surrogates have spent years waving off.
— Nick Halloween (@nickconfessore) October 26, 2016
With that, we look forward to Donna Brazile’s explanation of how this is all just an attempt to “criminalize behavior that is normal.” This article was posted: Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 6:05 am Share this article | 0 |
KABUL, Afghanistan — The attorney general of Afghanistan has ordered the arrest of nine bodyguards over accusations of rape and torture made by a political rival, and the vice president himself remains under investigation, officials said on Tuesday. The arrest warrants, confirmed by the attorney general’s office, came after Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the more senior of Afghanistan’s two vice presidents, and his bodyguards refused to show up for questioning about the allegations, despite repeatedly being summoned by prosecutors. The case is testing the government’s resolve to deliver justice in the face of a potentially dangerous showdown between a powerful former warlord and the shaky coalition administration of which he is a part. Ahmad Ishchi, a elder from General Dostum’s own Uzbek ethnic group, has accused the vice president of abducting him from a sports stadium in November, personally and repeatedly beating him, and ordering his men to sexually assault him with an assault rifle during five days of captivity in the northern province of Jowzjan. Attorney General Mohammad Farid Hamidi declined to discuss the case in detail on Tuesday but said that his prosecutors were focused on enforcing the law with precision. “We are following the law in this case hair by hair,” Mr. Hamidi said. President Ashraf Ghani has said that he takes the allegations against General Dostum seriously and that the case will be handled fairly within the judicial system to show that no one is above the law. Mr. Ghani has told Western diplomats that he is tired of officials breaking the law with impunity, and he characterized the Dostum case as a challenge to his government. But many have said that Mr. Ghani shares the blame for bringing General Dostum onto his ticket in the first place, despite grave concerns about the former warlord’s human rights record. Spokesmen and aides to General Dostum could not be reached for comment about the warrants on Tuesday, but in recent weeks, they have rejected the summons against him as unconstitutional. Bashir Ahmad Tayanj, a spokesman for General Dostum, said last month that the allegations were baseless and that the vice president had constitutional immunity from prosecution as part of the president’s elected ticket. In recent weeks, however, senior government officials say General Dostum’s aides have been in contact with the attorney general’s office, where they have been clearly told that the vice president has no choice but to cooperate. The general’s aides have asked for time, two senior officials said. Mr. Ishchi welcomed the news of the warrants and insisted that the bodyguards be arrested immediately. But he said justice would only be served once General Dostum’s fate had been made clear. “Dostum committed an obvious crime, and when the crime is evident, the government can arrest the criminal even if he is a very person,” he said. General Dostum is part of a generation of Afghan warlords who stand accused of human rights violations, mostly during the country’s civil war in the 1990s. But until now, most of those figures have seemed immune to the consequences, remaining in positions of power. Before issuing the summons for General Dostum, the attorney general sought the support of Mr. Ghani and the national security council, which includes all the security ministries. A detailed plan of action was discussed at a meeting of the council, at which all the agencies pledged support for the prosecutors. General Dostum’s supporters have insisted that Mr. Ishchi was not abducted but, rather, arrested by security forces on charges of aiding the Taliban in Jowzjan Province. “Force, injury, and mistreatment — we cannot deny that, because in the past these accusations have been there against Afghan forces, that they mistreat suspects during arrest and interrogation,” Mr. Tayanj said in the interview last month. But he denied the accusation of sexual assault. Both sides have also made emotional appeals to the public on the nightly news. On one news program, Mr. Tayanj presented a medical document that he said was from a government forensics examination he said it disproved Mr. Ishchi’s assertions of sexual assault but did not go into detail, simply brandishing the paper. A day later, Mr. Tayanj allowed two New York Times reporters to examine the document. It stated that there had been a wound next to Mr. Ishchi’s rectum but that it had been treated, making it difficult to determine what had caused it. Two other medical reports seen by The Times also attest to the presence of a significant wound. One was written by doctors at the United States military air base in Bagram, the other by doctors at the Wazir Akbar Khan hospital, in Kabul. When the reporters pressed Mr. Tayanj about the wound, he said it was not evidence of sexual assault. “If someone hits someone with a rifle, no matter where they hit, is that sexual assault? Sexual assault has its own specific meaning,” Mr. Tayanj said. “They have made it seem as if he was an girl who was taken and done something wrong to. ” Aides to General Dostum have called for traditional mediation by tribal elders to resolve the issue, flatly rejecting the judicial process. He is also said to have sent a delegation of elders to negotiate with Mr. Ishchi. Baktash Ishchi, one of Mr. Ishchi’s sons, said that they insisted on following the legal process and would not engage in traditional mediation. “This is not an issue for traditional mediation — it is not like he took our camel, so we accept a horse in return,” he said. “There is a crime that has taken place. ” | 1 |
EU NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Brussels on October 26, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has downplayed suggestions that EU military buildup might undermine the Western alliance as the bid to establish an independent European army appears to gain momentum.
"I strongly believe it is absolutely possible to strengthen European defense without duplicating efforts by NATO," Stoltenberg said on Thursday, adding, “EU leaders have (also) conveyed that this is not about the EU doing collective defense, the EU building structures that would compete with NATO."
Stoltenberg made the remarks following a meeting between European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and NATO defense ministers in Brussels.
Mogherini, one of the strongest supporters of a joint European defense force, has drawn up a global strategy for the bloc, which says the 27-nation bloc should seek "strategic autonomy" to face multiple security threats, ranging from conventional to hybrid warfare, from the Ukraine crisis to Syria, from poverty in Africa to massive refugee flows.
The proposal has sparked concerns that the bloc is seeking a more independent role.
Mogherini on Thursday said the bloc does have civilian and military operations, such as in Africa or in the Mediterranean, and needs to improve command and control centers to run them.
She, however, attempted to downplay concerns that the formation of an EU force could lead to the duplication of NATO functions, saying, "But this can be done ... without any kind of overlapping or duplication with NATO." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (R) chairs a NATO defense ministers' meeting, flanked by EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini (2nd L), and NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller (2nd R), at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on October 27, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
In July, an EU strategy document said that the bloc should look to create greater military autonomy from NATO. It stated the EU could no longer rely on the alliance regarding various security issues and must instead develop an ability to “act autonomously if and when necessary.”
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was the first to call for the establishment of an EU army in March 2015.
"A joint EU army would show the world that there would never again be a war between EU countries,” he said.
His suggestion, however, received a cool response from NATO. Loading ... | 0 |
Carmela Tyrell November 1, 2016 Moving Your Computer Off Grid
More than a few preppers feel that as long as they can provide food, shelter, water, and basic medical needs for themselves and their families, nothing more is required. Other preppers may feel that self defense, power generation, education, and machine repair are skills that will be required in the post crisis world.
Sadly, many preppers and also off-gridders tend to ignore or underestimate the need to have a computer that can be used to help make it easier to survive.
In all likelihood, these are also the people most likely to have serious problems in the post crisis world because they do not have a computer available to help meet a range of goals.
Computers and Prepping Can Get Along
A computer cannot hunt a deer for you, boil water, or make a pair of shoes, obviously. On the other hand, any computer with a connection to the internet can help you find out how to do these things and much more. When you find good information, it is also very easy to store those files on your computer so that you can read them and work with them whenever you want.
And if you are in a situation where internet access is still available, you can use your computer to contact friends and loved ones as well as people that might be able to help you get through a crisis. Then you can certainly relate to the quandary of many preppers that are finding out it is becoming impossible to make or obtain raw materials that would be needed in a major crisis scenario.
On the other side of the equation, many of the items you need for basic prepping can still be purchased online. All you really need is a prepaid debit card and an internet connection so that you can find websites where you can place your orders. Not only will you be able to get the supplies you need, you will also have a much wider selection of other goods to choose from.
Regardless of whether you are interested in the best quality gun cleaning kits, need a certain type of fishing reel, or need good quality vintage hand tools, you can find them all online. In fact, even if you are disabled, you may be able to find customized materials and tools that have been modified to meet your needs.
Most people don’t realize just how important it is to network with preppers from diverse geographic regions and make plans for bugging out that include those friends and connections. Consider what would happen if an earthquake or hurricane strikes your area.
If you only have friends and family in a local, or small area, chances are everyone will be affected. If you have friends in other states that might be able to offer temporary shelter or help you make a new start, then you will be well ahead of the game.
In these times and beyond, both money and barter systems are vital for exchanging needed goods and services. A computer is very important for expanding your trade and marketing options. It is also very important for securing alternative currencies that may play a vital role in remaining solvent in the face of currency collapse.
Most people would be truly amazed at how easy it is for the average consumer to secure foreign currencies, keep a good supply of them, and even use them as down and dirty form of currency trading or flipping.
The Tough Choice on the Best Device(s)
Obsolete devices may still be very useful because certain older technologies are easier to work with and may be safer than newer devices that are routinely overclocked or are based on unstable hardware platforms.
If you are interested in newer devices, here are some categories, brands, and models that you can start off with for each category of device:
Desktops
If you are primarily interested in a conventional desktop computer, my own experience leads me to believe the best option is to build the computer yourself so that you know exactly what parts are being used and how best to optimize the BIOS (this is where you can determine how fast the computer will run, whether or not the system can boot from a USB drive, and other aspects of basic operation) settings.
Since modern computer chips tend to run hot, it is very important to provide plenty of ventilation and cooling options inside the case. If your CPU and motherboard kit come with sub-par heat conducting gel, do not hesitate to find the best on the market. It is also very useful to add extra fans and other cooling devices right inside the case.
Always remember, the cooler you can keep the chips during operation, the lower your chances of erratic freeze-ups or even ruining the chips.
Insofar as other vital parts such as hard drives, CD/DVD drives, and video cards, it truly depends on your personal tastes.
You will need a dedicated video card to gain access to these specialized chips that will reduce wear on the CPU and enhance computer performance at the same time. Be sure to study gamer forums and video editing forums to find out which video cards work best with specific CPU and motherboard combinations. A bad fit between these parts can truly be a disaster.
Memory cards (RAM) are yet another tricky, yet vital area of the computer that you will need to think about. This is also one area where only the best will do. It is better to go with the fastest cards that the motherboard will take, and also from the best rated vendor.
Laptops
Unlike desktop computers, you will have far less control over what parts are found inside the case. Before purchasing a laptop, be sure to find out the model number of the CPU and motherboard. From there, you will need to look up the chipsets to find out what the optimal clock speeds are.
I have seen more than one laptop burn up at around the 1 year mark because a sub-part mother board with a slower timing chip was paired with a faster CPU. Since most buyers do not ask about the motherboard model, there was no way for them to find out that they basically had an overclocked system that was going to fail very quickly.
Overall, I can safely say that I don’t recommend spending 3 – 4 times as much money on a laptop when I can choose a much cheaper tablet and optimize it with less intensive apps. The only advantage a laptop might have over an off grid tablet is that it is easier to customize the programs.
Tablets
An unlocked tablet will give you just about everything you need for basic document access and communicating with others. You can also choose apps that will enable you to create your own apps and carry out other more complex tasks.
Tablets also have the advantage of taking far less power than a desktop or laptop computer. They can easily be recharged on a portable solar pack, and it is also fairly easy to bypass the battery.
Insofar as brand names, I tend to favor Lenovo, but have also found Alldaymall tablets to work well. The Alldaymall tablets are also a good bit cheaper, so you can purchase more of them and put them in your bug out bag as well as other locations.
Smart Phones
When it comes to a comfortable viewing experience combined with relatively low power usage, larger tablets will work much better than smart phones. That being said, in a “something is better than nothing” or a vital tool for your EDC, few things can rival a good quality unlocked smart phone.
While I recommend a 10” tablet for bug out gear, a 5” smart phone is truly more than enough for EDC. Not only a phone this size fit easily into a purse or backpack, it is even easier to power than a larger tablet.
They also work well for reading a range of documents and will give you a good sized window for viewing videos. You can also hook up a folding keyboard and be able to carry out a number of tasks that would be difficult using the screen keyboard.
The Challenge on Providing a Steady Source of Power
Today, the vast majority of computers have sub par power supplies that make them more susceptible than ever to fluctuations in power coming into the system.
As our electric grid continues to crumble, rolling blackouts, brownouts, and line voltage fluctuations caused by excess usage during peak hours will shorten the life cycle of many computers. If you are generating your own power, it is just as important to make sure you know how to keep the current going into your computer as steady as possible.
There are some things you can do now, as well as consider when building a power system that will help you get the most out of every computer that you own. CLICK HERE to subscribe to Survivopedia’s newsletter and get the free report on how to take your computer off grid.
Understanding the Impact of Utilization
No discussion about preparing your computer hardware for off gridding would be complete without at least touching on the resource cost involved in each program that you run on the system. For example, if you have a simple word processor program with no fancy graphics, it will take up far less processor and memory resources than one that has funny critters dancing around all over the place.
Apps that automatically play videos or programs that automatically play music also shorten the hardware life of your computer. Therefore, when it comes to choosing the best computer for your off grid or prepping needs, it is always important to study benchmark tests and hardware longevity tests under certain loads.
Once again, you will find some of the best and most accurate information in the gaming forums.
Important Parts to Keep On hand
For each device in your EDC, bug out bag, or other location, there are some important parts that can help double or even triple the useful lifespan of your computer. Even if you lose some functionality, the main parts should still work for 2 – 3 decades on desktop units, and up to 10 years on laptops, tablets, and smart phones. Start off by buying all of your devices brand new and with the maximum warranty available. If something breaks down during the warranty period, let the manufacturer or repair center take care of the problem. Buy at least 3 to 5 non-functioning devices that are compatible with the make and model of each device. Usually, you can pick these units up for around 10 to 20% of the cost of a brand new device. You can choose different manufacturers as long as the parts are fully interchangeable with your device. You will use these devices to learn how to make repairs, and also for spare parts if something breaks down on your main device. Since RAM chips take the most abuse on any computer system, keep a few spare ones on hand. Have at least one extra power supply for desktop units. Unlike other parts of the system, you should never open up the case on the power supply unless you have a good bit of experience working with electronic devices. Never forget that the capacitors inside these power supplies may not be fully discharged, and that touching them or a live circuit can cause death or severe injury. Keep at least 2 USB hubs handy that also have the capacity to power any device you hook up to them. When connecting devices to the USB ports on your computer, try to never at least one pair of ports.
What Happens When the Battery Dies?
If you have been thinking about using a smart phone or tablet as a place to store important survival information, you may hesitate because you know that the battery can easily be ruined by over charging , or that it will wear out sooner rather than later.
While some devices will continue to work while the battery is “charging”, others will not. If you have a device that will not work while charging, you will need to remove the battery and apply current directly to the device.
In this scenario, you must know how to keep the voltage and amperage as stable as possible before they reach the device. You can make your own controllers for this purpose then hook them up to solar panels or anything else that you will be using as a power source.
Just remember that you power controller may also need to go safely from AC to DC current as well as match the voltage and amperage needs of the device. If you aren’t sure how much power to provide for laptops, tablets, or smart phones, just go by what the battery is rated for. Video first seen on PrepareForTheUnexpected .
Basic Toolkit
It will not be of much use to have plenty of parts on hand, and then no way to install them or make good use of them. Here are the most essential tools you will need for building computers or making repairs: chip extractors for chips that are installed in sockets high heat conducting gel precision and larger size screwdriver kit magnifying glass low wattage solder iron, solder, and flux suitable for computer parts desoldering bulb | 0 |
Posting nude pictures of servicemen and women without consent is now a crime in the U. S. Marine Corps and Navy following a nude photo sharing scandal. [“An interim revision to Navy regulations prohibits Navy and Marine Corps personnel from posting intimate photos ‘if the person making the distribution or broadcast does so without legal justification or excuse,’” reported the Navy Times on Wednesday. “The statute details three conditions that will be considered a violation of Navy regulations, including if images are broadcast or transmitted: ‘with the intent to realize personal gain with the intent to humiliate, harm, harass, intimidate, threaten, or coerce the depicted person or with reckless disregard as to whether the depicted person would be humiliated, harmed, intimidated, threatened, or coerced,’ the regs read. ” The new rules, which were reportedly signed off by Acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley, are also set to begin immediately. “It is characterized as interim until the next edition of Navy regulations is printed,” the Navy Times explained, adding that those who ignore the new regulations could be charged with “failure to obey a lawful order. ” “The addition of Article 1168 ‘Nonconsensual distribution or broadcasting of an image’ to Navy Regulations serves to underscore leadership’s commitment to eliminating degrading behaviors that erode trust and weaken the Navy and Marine Corps Team,” said Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler in a statement. “It provides commanders another tool to maintain good order and discipline by holding Sailors and Marines accountable for inappropriate conduct in the nonconsensual sharing of intimate imagery. “This article adds the potential charge of Article 92 ‘Failure to obey [an] order or regulation’ to the possible charges that can be used against an alleged perpetrator,” he continued. “Each case of alleged misconduct will be evaluated on its own facts and circumstances. ” In March, it was reported that both the NCIS and the Pentagon had launched an investigation into the scandal, which saw the distribution of “explicit photos of current and former female Marines and other service members” through a Facebook group. “A private Facebook group called ‘Marines United’ contained a link to a Google Drive folder, where the photos were being stored,” reported CNN last month. “Members on the site solicited others to submit photos of women without their knowledge. The cloud storage folder has been removed at the request of the military. ” “It was not clear to the Defense Department how many current and former Marines may be involved in potential wrongdoing,” they continued. “A former Marine originally brought the matter to the attention of the Marine Corps last month. ” Since the beginning of the scandal, the private images have spread across different parts of the internet and were even reportedly found up for sale on the dark web earlier this month. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
On Tuesday night, President-elect Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest upsets in political history, defying all odds and abundant mockery to become the next leader of the free world. | 0 |
School named for Munich-massacre mastermind Terrorist glorified at 3 other campuses in Gaza Published: 19 mins ago
(Tower) The Palestinian Authority is naming a school after the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported Tuesday.
A school in the West Bank city of Tulkarem has been named “the Martyr Salah Khalaf School” in memory of the leader of the Black September terrorist group. Khalaf, who was also known as Abu Iyad, planned the attack on the Israeli Olympic compound during the 1972 Munich Olympics, which led to the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. Khalaf also had a role in the 1973 takeover of the American embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, which ended in the killing of two American diplomats. | 0 |
Obamacare will go into a death spiral on May 22 if the Trump administration chooses not to continue fighting in court to preserve subsidies that were ruled illegal last year. On May 12, 2016, U. S. District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer ruled House v. Burwell that the Obama Administration’s payment of subsidies without congressional approval was a violation of the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause. The Obama odministration appealed the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia District, where it was renamed House v. Price to reflect the current Secretary of Health and Human Services. Monday, May 22 is the last day for the Trump administration to give notice to the Appellate Court if it wants to continue the appeal. If Trump drops the appeal and ends the illegal subsidies, Obamacare Silver Plan healthcare premiums will jump by 19 percent. But the national average for Obamacare Silver Plan patient deductibles would also more than quadruple from $709, to $3, 064, according to the amicus brief filed by America’s largest hospital groups. The Congress was happy to pass Obamacare’s radical expansion of social justice entitlements, but had little interest in appropriating a $7 billion subsidy for healthcare insurance companies that saw their stock price triple under Obamacare. President Obama then directed the IRS to make “Section 142 Offset Program” payments to insurers from the collection of penalties, fees and legal judgments against taxpayers. Congressman Ron Paul ( ) warned in 2010 that the IRS would hire up to 16, 500 new agents to increase audits to generate more penalties and fees to subsidize Obamacare. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare are expected to release their “Proposed Health Insurance Rate Increases for the 2018 Coverage Year” on June 1. Obamacare premiums have increased by double digits each year since 2015, and 73 insurers announced last year that they were withdrawing from the program. As a result, many rural areas of the U. S. now only have one provider that can charge any rate it chooses. According to the authoritative ACASignups. net blog, that closely follows state healthcare premium increase requests by insurers in each state, Virginia is looking at a 42. 6 percent increase Maryland a 22. 6 percent increase Oregon a 17 percent increase and Connecticut a 13. 9 percent increase. Covered California, the Golden State’s Obamacare exchange, has been mum on what type of premium increase its participating insurers will ask for. But the San Francisco Business Journal reported that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine estimated that Covered California healthcare premiums for 2018 would rise between 28 and 49 percent, not including the 19 percent added cost if the Trump administration drops the illegal appeal. The hospital groups’ argument to the Appeals Court is that without the court allowing illegal subsidies, Obamacare will go into a “death spiral. ” | 1 |
During a radio interview, Linda Tripp, once the chief cooperating witness to the Independent Counsel probing whether Bill Clinton committed impeachable offenses, said that she deeply regrets not leaking details about various Clinton scandals to Matt Drudge of DrudgeReport. com. [She explained that leaking to Drudge may have resulted in a different outcome for the impeachment investigation, which was led by Counsel Kenneth Starr, possibly leading to Clinton’s removal from office. She was speaking on this reporter’s Sunday night talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia. Tripp stated: “As a cooperating witness, and at that point I was the chief cooperating witness, I didn’t even question abiding by their requirements. That I speak to no one. That I was solely and one hundred percent their witness. Since I believed they had the intention of unearthing all of the scandal and all of the corruption that I had witnessed I was eager and willing to do so. ” She explained that leaking to Drudge may have changed the course of the impeachment probe: What I regret now in retrospect was allowing the entire media during that time and the Clinton machine in concert to define not only me but the Independent Counsel and everyone else as being the bad guys. I should have been leaking to Drudge on a daily basis. He was the only one at that point trying to get out the truth. The only entity trying to get out the truth. The rest of the media, their aim at that point was to cover the story, yes. But to find a way to make Bill Clinton the victim. And to do that they needed to essentially vilify me and anyone, including the Independent Counsel, that would dare go after him. So yeah, I regret not going to Drudge. I think the whole story would have had a different outcome had I done that. Tripp explained that she fully cooperated with the Independent Counsel, serving at once point as the chief cooperating witness, because she believed the investigation would expand its probe into other alleged Clinton misdeeds beyond the issue of whether the president lied under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Instead, the impeachment investigation zeroed in on the Lewinsky issue only — on one account of perjury and another on obstruction of justice. Clinton was impeached in the House but the Senate did not reach the majority vote required for impeachment. Tripp’s front row seat during her White House days afforded her access to some inside stories on the scandals known as Travelgate, Filegate and Whitewater, and she says she personally witnessed the handling of documents from Vince Foster’s office the morning after the Deputy White House Counsel was found dead in an apparent suicide. During the Clinton administration, Tripp first served as support staff to the Immediate Office of the President, where she sat just outside Bill Clinton’s Oval Office. After three months, Tripp was asked to work for the White House Counsel’s office as executive assistant to White House Counsel Bernie Nussbaum, who played a lead role in defending the Clintons for their infamous alleged misdeeds. Tripp’s office was located adjacent to Hillary Clinton’s. In an interview with this reporter last October, Dave Schippers, who served as the Chief Investigative Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s probe into whether Clinton committed impeachable offenses, also revealed that he wanted the focus to expand beyond the Lewinsky issue. Schippers alleged that outside forces put the brakes on the expansion of the probe: When we started our investigation, Henry Hyde said, “How wide do you want to go?” And I said, “Get us an open investigation. We have so many things that we want to investigate. ” And we got an open investigation where we were permitted to investigate as far as whatever came up in the impeachment inquiry. Immediately after the 1998 election, the leadership in the House put the brakes on. We had a meeting and Henry Hyde said the House has told us that we’ve got Monica Lewinsky and we can go no further. We are not permitted to do any additional investigation. And I said, “My God, we’ve got at least three murders and other things that we are going into. ” And he says, “I’m sorry we can’t do it. ” Schippers described the room at the Ford House Office Building where the evidence was housed during the impeachment probe as having armed guards outside. He said those who were permitted to enter were not allowed to bring anything in or out. He said he was one of the few people who actually reviewed all of the evidence in the impeachment case. He added that only 65 House members accepted an invitation to review the evidence in the room and that all senators declined before they voted against impeaching Clinton. Asked about the specifics of the evidence, Schippers said he was barred from answering the question. However, he replied, “Let me say this. Congressmen saw that evidence. And 64 voted to impeach. Take your own conclusion. ” Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. | 1 |
Brigham Young University announced on Wednesday that it would spare students who report sexual assaults from facing punishment for violations of its honor code, such as drinking or extramarital sex, that may have happened near or at the time of the assault. The university called the handling of sexual assault reporting “a complicated and evolving issue” and said in a report released on Wednesday that offering amnesty from potential sanctions would help encourage students to report crimes. “We do not have all the answers to this problem, which is a nationwide issue affecting all colleges and universities,” the university’s president, Kevin J. Worthen, said in an email to students and faculty and staff members. “But this report provides an excellent framework on which to build. ” The report, researched and drafted by a advisory council starting in May, came after news accounts that the university in Provo, Utah, had investigated students for possible honor code violations after they reported being sexually assaulted. Some experts in law and gender issues on college campuses called that approach troubling. The cases set off a torrent of online criticism as well as a protest on campus in April. The code, known as the Church Educational System Honor Code, is the cornerstone of the university’s philosophy, directing students and faculty and staff members toward “moral virtues encompassed in the gospel of Jesus Christ,” and emphasizing chastity, honesty and virtue. It requires modest dress on campus, discourages consensual sex outside marriage and, among other things, prohibits drinking, drug use, intimacy and indecency, as well as sexual misconduct. The recommendations about amnesty will need to be reviewed and approved by three separate advisory councils, but the proposal will be in effect in the meantime, Julie Valentine, an assistant professor in the College of Nursing and a member of the group that worked on the report, said in an interview on Wednesday. As for whether the amnesty might encourage false reports of sexual assault to cover for possible code violations, Professor Valentine said the group had few concerns about that possibility. She said the overriding mission was to do whatever possible to encourage victims to report, adding that a 2008 study in Utah found that only 12 percent of victims come forward. | 1 |
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It is literally impossible for the world community to get a clear understanding of, and truth about, the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This statement is based upon The Feature article in Columbia Journalism Review (“CJR”) d/d October 25, 2016 entitled: “Sinking a Bold Foray Into Watchdog Journalism in Japan” by Martin Fackler.
The scandalous subject matter of the article is frightening to its core. Essentially, it paints a picture of upending and abolishing a 3-year attempt by one of Japan’s oldest and most liberal/intellectual newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun (circ. 6.6 mln) in its effort of “watchdog journalism” of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the end, the newspaper’s special watchdog division suffered un-preannounced abrupt closure.
The CJR article, whether intentionally or not, is an indictment of right wing political control of media throughout the world. The story is, moreover, extraordinarily scary and of deepest concern because no sources can be counted on for accurate, truthful reporting of an incident as powerful and deadly dangerous as the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima. Lest anybody in class forgets, three nuclear reactors at Fukushima Diiachi Nuclear Power Plant experienced 100% meltdown, aka The China Syndrome over five years ago.
The molten cores of those reactors melted down to a stage called corium, which is a lumpy hunk of irradiating radionuclides so deadly that robotic cameras are zapped! The radioactivity is powerful, deadly and possessed of frightening longevity, 100s of years. Again for those who missed class, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has no idea where those masses of sizzling hot radioactive goo are today. Did they burrow into the ground? Nobody knows, but it is known that those blobs of radioactivity are extraordinarily dangerous, as in deathly, erratically spewing radioactivity “who knows where”?
Fukushima is a national/worldwide emergency that is the worst kept secret ever because everybody knows it is happening; it is current; it is alive; it is deadly; it has killed (as explained in several prior articles) and will kill many more as well as maim countless people over many decades (a description of radiation’s gruesomeness follows later on in this article).
Yet, the Abe administration is talking to Olympic officials about conducting Olympic events, like baseball, in Fukushima for Tokyo 2020. Are they nuts, going off the deep end, gone mad, out of control? After all, TEPCO readily admits (1) the Fukushima cleanup will take decades to complete, if ever completed, and (2) nobody knows the whereabouts of the worlds most deadly radioactive blobs of sizzling hot masses of death and destruction, begging the question: Why is there a Chernobyl Exclusion Zone of 1,000 square miles after one nuclear meltdown 30 years ago, but yet Fukushima, with three meltdowns, each more severe than Chernobyl, is already being repopulated? It doesn’t compute!
The short answer is the Abe administration claims the radioactivity is being cleaned up. A much longer answer eschews the Abe administration by explaining the near impossibility of cleaning up radioactivity throughout the countryside. There are, after all, independent organizations with boots on the ground in Fukushima (documented in prior articles) that tell the truth, having measured dangerous levels of radiation throughout the region where clean up crews supposedly cleaned up.
The Columbia Journalism Review article, intentionally or not, paints a picture of “journalism by government decree” in Japan, which gainsays any kind of real journalism. It’s faux journalism, kinda like reading The Daily Disneyworld Journal & Times.
Based upon the CJR article: “The hastiness of the Asahi’s retreat raised fresh doubts about whether such watchdog journalism— an inherently risky enterprise that seeks to expose and debunk, and challenge the powerful—is even possible in Japan’s big national media, which are deeply tied to the nation’s political establishment.”
Japan’s journalists belong to “press clubs,” which are exclusively restricted to the big boys (and girls) from major media outlets, where stories are hand-fed according to government officialdom, period. It is the news, period! No questions asked, and this is how Asahi got into trouble. They set up a unit of 30-journalists to tell the truth about Fukushima and along the way won awards for journalism, until it suddenly, abruptly stopped. A big mystery ensues….
According to the CJR article, “The Investigative Reporting Section [Asahi] proved an instant success, winning Japan’s top journalism award two years in a row for its exposure of official cover-ups and shoddy decontamination work around the nuclear plant.”
Furthermore, according to the CJR article: “The abrupt about-face by the Asahi, a 137-year-old newspaper with 2,400 journalists that has been postwar Japan’s liberal media flagship, was an early victory for the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which had sought to silence critical voices as it moved to roll back Japan’s postwar pacifism, and restart its nuclear industry.”
And, furthermore, the truth be told: “In Japanese journalism, scoops usually just mean learning from the ministry officials today what they intend to do tomorrow,’ says Makoto Watanabe, a former reporter in the section who quit the Asahi in March because he felt blocked from doing investigative reporting. ‘We came up with different scoops that were unwelcome in the Prime Minister’s Office.”
It comes as no surprise that Reporters Without Borders lowered Japan’s rating from 11th in 2010 (but one has to wonder how they ever got that high) to 72nd in this years annual ranking of global press freedoms, released on April 20, 2016.
Koichi Nakano, a professor of politics at Sophia University in Tokyo, says: “Emasculating the Asahi allowed Abe to impose a grim new conformity on the media world.”
When considering the awards Asahi won during its short foray into investigative journalism, like Japan’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for reporting about a gag-order on scientists after the Fukushima disaster and the government’s failure to release information about radiation to evacuating residents, now that Asahi has been forced to put a lid on “investigative journalism” and it must toe the line in “press clubs,” any and all information about the dangers or status of Fukushima are ipso facto suspect!
The world is dead silent on credible information about the world’s biggest disaster! (Which causes one to stop and think… really a lot.)
The evidence is abundantly clear that there is no trustworthy source of information about the world’s biggest nuclear disaster, and likely one of the biggest dangers to the planet in human history. However, time will tell as radiation exposure takes years to show up in the human body. It’s a silent killer but cumulates over time. Fukushima radiation goes on and on, but nobody knows what to do. To say the situation is scandalous is such a gross understatement that it is difficult to take it as seriously as it really should be taken. But, it is scandalous, not just in Japan but for the entire planet.
After all, consider this, 30 years after the fact, horribly deformed Chernobyl Children are found in over 300 asylums in the Belarus backwoods deep in the countryside. Equally as bad but maybe more odious, as of today, Chernobyl radiation (since 1986) is already affecting 2nd generation kids.
According to USA Today, Chernobyl’s Legacy: Kids With Bodies Ravaged by Disaster, April 17, 2016: “There are 2,397,863 people registered with Ukraine’s health ministry to receive ongoing Chernobyl-related health care. Of these, 453,391 are children — none born at the time of the accident. Their parents were children in 1986. These children have a range of illnesses: respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, eye diseases, blood diseases, cancer, congenital malformations, genetic abnormalities, trauma.”
It’s taken 30 years for the world, via an article in USA Today, to begin to understand how devastating, over decades, not over a few years, radiation exposure is to people. It is a silent killer that cumulates in the body over time and passes from generation to generation to generation, endless destruction that cannot be stopped! | 0 |
Tue, 25 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC © Guido Amrein Switzerland/Shutterstock Melanesian children of Papua New Guinea Hints of an unidentified, extinct human species have been found in the DNA of modern Melanesians - those living in a region of the South Pacific, northeast of Australia. According to new genetic modelling, the species is unlikely to be Neanderthal or Denisovan - two ancient species that are represented in the fossil record - but could represent a third, unknown human relative that has so far eluded archaeologists. "We're missing a population, or we're misunderstanding something about the relationships," Ryan Bohlender, a statistical geneticist from the University of Texas, told Tina Hesman Saey at Science News. Bohlender and his team have been investigating the percentages of extinct hominid DNA that modern humans still carry today, and say they've found discrepancies in previous analyses that suggest our mingling with Neanderthals and Denisovans isn't the whole story. It's thought that between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, our early ancestors migrated out of Africa, and first made contact with other hominid species living on the Eurasian landmass. This contact left a mark on our species that can still be found today, with Europeans and Asians carrying distinct genetic variants of Neanderthal DNA in their own genomes. And that's not all they've given us. Earlier this year, researchers investigated certain genetic variants that people of European descent inherited from Neanderthals , and found that they're associated with several health problems, including a slightly increased risk of depression, heart attack, and a number of skin disorders. And a separate study published earlier this month found evidence that modern genital warts - otherwise known as the human papillomavirus (HPV) - were sexually transmitted to Homo sapiens after our ancestors slept with Neanderthals and Denisovans once they left Africa. While our relationship with Neanderthals has been widely researched, how we interacted with the Denisovans - the distant cousins of Neanderthals - is less clear. The problem is that Neanderthals are well represented in the fossil record, with many remains having been uncovered across Europe and Asia, but all we have of the Denisovans is a lone finger bone and a couple of teeth that were found in a Siberian cave in 2008 . Using a new computer model to figure out the amount of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA carried by modern humans, Bohlender and his colleague found that Europeans and Chinese people carry a similar amount of Neanderthal DNA: about 2.8 percent. That result is pretty similar to previous studies have estimated that Europeans and Asians carry, on average, between 1.5 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA. But when they got to Denisovan DNA, things were a bit more complicated, particularly when it came to modern populations living in Melanesia - a region of the South Pacific that includes Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, West Papua, and the Maluku Islands. As Hesman Saey explains for Science News: "Europeans have no hint of Denisovan ancestry, and people in China have a tiny amount - 0.1 percent, according to Bohlender's calculations. But 2.74 percent of the DNA in people in Papua New Guinea comes from Neanderthals. And Bohlender estimates the amount of Denisovan DNA in Melanesians is about 1.11 percent, not the 3 to 6 percent estimated by other researchers. While investigating the Denisovan discrepancy, Bohlender and colleagues came to the conclusion that a third group of hominids may have bred with the ancestors of Melanesians." "Human history is a lot more complicated than we thought it was," he told her. This find is supported by a separate study by researchers from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, who analysed DNA from 83 Aboriginal Australians and 25 locals from the Papua New Guinea highlands. As we reported last month, this was the most comprehensive genetic study of Indigenous Australians to date, and it indicated that they are the oldest continuous civilisation on Earth, dating back more than 50,000 years ago. But the results revealed something else - DNA that was very similar to that of the Denisovans, but distinct enough for the researchers to suggest that it could have come from a third, unidentified hominid . "Who this group is we don't know," lead researcher Eske Willerslev told Hesman Saey. Until we have more concrete evidence of this hypothesised third human species (some fossils would be nice), we can't prove this , and we should point out that Bohlender's estimates have yet to be formally peer-reviewed , so they might shift with further scrutiny. And it could be that our identification of Denisovan DNA is more ambiguous than we think, given that our only source is a finger bone and a couple of teeth. But the evidence is mounting that our interactions with ancient humans were far more complex than we'd assumed, which shouldn't be much of a surprise, when you think about it. Just because we don't see them in the fossil record doesn't mean they didn't exist - preserving the remains of something for tens of thousands of years isn't easy, and then someone has to be in the right place at the right time to dig them up. Hopefully, the more we investigate the genetic make-up of our most ancient societies, the more hints we'll get of the rich and complicated history our species shared with those that didn't make it to modern times. The results of Bohlender's analysis were presented last week at the 2016 American Society of Human Genetics meeting in Canada. | 0 |
This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics. com, Migrants board ‘La Bestia’ (The Beast) in southern Mexico to travel to the US border. (AP, 2014) According to a new report by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières — MSF) an estimated 500, 000 migrants cross the border from Central America into Mexico each year. Many of these migrants are fleeing violence in what MSF calls the Northern Triangle of Central America (NCTA) consisting of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. However, their countries of origin are not limited to those in Central America. In just a few days in September of last year, there was a surge of almost 5, 000 Haitian, African and Asian migrants entering by Mexico’s southern border. None of these migrants requested permission to stay in Mexico, as they all wanted to reach the United States. The huge sudden surge of migrants overwhelmed officials at US border crossings in California. Most migrants enter Mexico in the hope of continuing through Mexico to the United States. The MSF says that as they travel through Mexico, they are often victimized by kidnapping, extortion, rape, assault, torture and murder by criminal organizations, often with the tacit approval of Mexican authorities. 68. 3 percent of migrants and refugees surveyed by MSF reported having been victims of violence on the transit route to the United States. In 2014, under pressure from the United States, Mexico instituted increasingly harsh measures in the form of Plan Frontera Sur, a Mexican crackdown on border security funded in part by the U. S. This change in Mexico’s policy has substantially increased the likelihood that the refugees will face violence, since the crackdown forces refugees to depend on human traffickers and travel on underground routes operated with impunity by organized crime. In February, during the first month of Donald Trump’s administration, Mexican officials met with US military officials to try to find common ground on immigration and other issues. The relationship between the United States and Mexico has become strained after president Trump vowed to build a wall between the two countries to keep out illegal immigrants, drug dealers and criminals and make Mexico pay for it. Details of the meeting were not released. To resolve the humanitarian crisis, MSF calls on governments across the region — mainly El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Canada, and the US — to ensure better alternatives to detention and deportation to countries of origin where they’ll be once again subject to violence. These countries should increase their formal resettlement and family reunification quotas. Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières — MSF) and Reuters ( ) and AP ( ) and iPolitics (Canada) Related Articles, Mexicans are seeking asylum in Canada at a rate four times greater than in 2016. The first three months of 2017 already saw more cases recorded than in the entire year 2016. One reason for the surge is president Trump’s travel ban, announced in January, which raised concern in refugees that they might be prevented from entering the United States. Instead of trying to cross the border into the US, they get on a plane that takes them to the airport in Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada. The second reason is that Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau invited them in. In 2016, Trudeau eliminated a visa requirement, imposed in 2008, for Mexicans traveling to Canada. The visa requirement sharply reduced the number of migrants, until it was lifted. In addition, Trudeau decided to react to Trump’s travel ban by tweeting the following on January 28: To those fleeing persecution, terror war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength[1] #WelcomeToCanada, Trudeau’s tweet was followed by a picture of him greeting a refugee family. The two tweets garnered over a million likes and retweets. The Canadian government has threatened to reinstate the visa requirement, and has told the Mexican government that it will do so if asylum claims continue to increase. Canadian Broadcasting ( ) and Daily Caller ( ) and Canadian Broadcasting ( ) KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Northern Triangle of Central America, NCTA, Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, Doctors without Borders, Plan Frontera Sur, Canada, Justin Trudeau Permanent web link to this article Receive daily World View columns by | 1 |
Taking Care of Your Eye Health the Natural Way Ad 728×90 – HBS Account – 2149237058061490 http://blogs.naturalnews.com/taking-care-eye-health-natural-way/
By Jade Rich
Posted Monday, October 31, 2016 at 12:09pm EDT
Keywords: best foods for eye health , beta-carotene , Cataracts , eye health , foods that contain antioxidants , Free Radicals , lutein , macular degeneration , maintaining healthy eyes , meso-zeaxanthin , natural vision training , naturally occurring antioxidants , ocular migraines , optic nerve damage , protect your eyes , vitamin C , Vitamin E , zeaxanthin
When most people think about their eye health , the first thing that comes to mind is whether or not they need to wear glasses. Although your vision is a major part of your overall eye health, there are actually many more things that you need to be concerned about. For example, there are a staggering 56 common disorders that can plague your eyes. These issues range from cataracts to ocular migraines. Fortunately, there are many natural methods you can utilize to help keep your eyes healthy.
Nutrients Your Eyes Need
There are three nutrients that are known to be critical for maintaining healthy eyes: Lutein, zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin. Each of these nutrients serves as an antioxidant that helps protect your eyes from the damaging effects of free radicals. As Natural News has pointed out before, free radicals are the main basis of all injuries, illnesses and deaths.
Antioxidants are the only way to fight free radicals, so it’s a good thing that these three nutrients are found naturally in the human eye. But what happens when something interrupts this process? Sadly, you can end up with a long list of eye health problems that may even lead to blindness.
Instead of merely sitting back and allowing this to happen, you can be proactive and start taking supplements. The good news is that lutein and zeaxanthin supplements are easy to find. Research has discovered that most of these supplements also contain meso-zeaxanthin, although this isn’t usually disclosed on the label. In fact, it sounds likely that this recently discovered eye nutrient is a natural byproduct of lutein and zeaxanthin.
Of course, this doesn’t absolve the supplement companies of their duty to report whether or not meso-zeaxanthin is present in their products. However, their negligence also doesn’t reduce the natural reliance that your eyes have on all three of these nutrients. In addition to stocking up on these supplements, it is also wise to increase your intake of other naturally occurring antioxidants, including Vitamin E, Vitamin C and beta carotene.
Food Sources
There are many foods that contain antioxidants . Carrots are perhaps the most well-known resource for eye health because they are so rich in beta carotene. It would be a mistake to think of carrots as the prime resource, though. You can also turn to oranges, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and dark berries for a mixture of necessary vitamins. These are some of the best foods for eye health. Even better, you can derive lutein and zeaxanthin directly from food sources such as eggs, pistachios, corn, peppers and kale. With enough of these food items in your diet, you can avoid the cost of supplements while still keeping your eyes extremely healthy.
Additional Eye Health Tips
If you are a smoker who is also concerned about eye health, now is a good time to carefully consider quitting. Unfortunately, people who smoke have an increased risk of developing macular degeneration, optic nerve damage and cataracts. If you begin abstaining from tobacco products now, though, your odds of ending up with one of these eye health complications will begin to decline.
Other easy steps you can take to protect your eyes include always wearing sunglasses during sunny days and steering clear of computer screens as much as possible. If you use a computer for work, take a 20 second vision break every 20 minutes.
Ultimately, combining the proper nutrients with easy tips such as wearing sunglasses will help keep your eyes healthy throughout your life. If you’re currently dealing with issues such as light sensitivity and vision loss, you may also be able to naturally regain control of your eye health by using natural vision training and other eye exercises. This is definitely a better option than undergoing a surgery that has an extensive list of serious risks and usually leaves patients still needing eyeglasses. As usual, the natural way is better!
About the author:
Jade Rich is an LPN and Director at an Inpatient Rehabilitation Center. As a mother of three children, she is always looking for natural ways to keep her kid’s eyes healthy. She knows from experience that another way to do this is by scheduling them for routine eye exams. This helps with early detection and prevention. It’s best to schedule this during the back-to-school season. During the visit, their pediatrician examines their eye alignment and gives a test for visual acuity.
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RIO DE JANEIRO — Late in 1983, months before they announced a boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics, sports officials of the Soviet Union sent detailed instructions to the head of the nation’s track and field team. Oral steroid tablets were not enough, they said, to ensure dominance at the Games. The team should also inject its top athletes with three other kinds of anabolic steroids. Providing precise measurements and timetables for the doping regimens, the officials said they had a sufficient supply of the banned substances on hand at the Research Institute of Physical Culture and Sports in Moscow, a division of the government’s sports committee. The potent drugs were critical to keeping up with the competition, they wrote in the instructions. The document — obtained by The New York Times from a former chief medical doctor for Soviet track and field — was signed by Dr. Sergei Portugalov, a Soviet sports doctor who went on to capitalize on a growing interest in new methods of doping. Now, more than 30 years later, Dr. Portugalov is a central figure in Russia’s current doping scandal. Last fall, the World Agency named him as a key broker of drugs in Russia, someone who in recent years injected athletes personally and made a business of covering up drug violations in exchange for money. Revelations of the recent schemes, which antidoping authorities said dated back at least a decade, compelled the international governing body for track and field to bar Russia’s team from the Rio Games, the most severe doping penalty in Olympic history. At the track and field events here this week, no one will represent Russia, a nation that is usually a fixture on the medals podium. The 1983 document and the account of Dr. Grigory Vorobiev, the former chief medical doctor, who spent more than three decades with the Soviet track team, provide new evidence of how far back Russia’s doping stretches. At 86 years old, Dr. Vorobiev still stands more than six feet tall. Before finishing medical school in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, he played for the Soviet Development Basketball Team in the 1950s, choosing not to pursue a professional athletic career because he thought it unstable. He was coached, he noted proudly, by the man who later led the Soviet Union to an upset victory over the United States at the 1972 Olympics. His career in Russian sports medicine lasted through the 1990s. In deteriorating health, Dr. Vorobiev left Moscow five years ago for Chicago, where his son and grandchildren live. Over two days of interviews there, in an complex with newspapers lying around the lobby, Dr. Vorobiev wore a blue Soviet tracksuit with “CCCP” on the back as he recounted his career. He spoke at the encouragement of his son, who had accompanied him to the hospital in recent weeks and said he wanted his father’s life documented in light of the recent doping revelations. Dr. Vorobiev, speaking Russian that was translated by his son, recalled some details more vividly than others, relying on journals, documents and photographs of athletes in motion to trigger memories dating to 1959, when he was hired as one of the Soviet Union’s first sports doctors. He specialized in improving coordination, strength and flexibility among elite athletes, with expertise in foot injuries. With little emotion, he described a system in which winning at any cost without getting caught was paramount. He projected loyalty to his country while plainly wrestling with contradictions: As a member of the medical commission of track and field’s global governing body, he policed doping at international competitions while knowing that many of Russia’s top athletes were using banned substances. Russia’s sports ministry and sports science institute did not respond to telephone and email requests for comment. Dr. Vorobiev said he was not sure whether the doping scheme detailed in the 1983 document was carried out. Regardless, the communication captures the mentality of the nation’s sports committee, which he said intensified over time as athletes became preoccupied with drugs. By the 1970s, he said, most of the several hundred athletes with whom he worked were asking about drugs, particularly after traveling to international competitions. When athletes sought advice in individual consultations, he said, he told them to take “as low a dose as possible,” cautioning them to watch for cramps or changes in voice as signs that they had overdone it. Most of all, he stressed that drugs were not a substitute for rigorous training. Not everyone chose to use illicit substances, he said, defending Soviet sports as not uniformly tainted. He was unable to estimate how many athletes had used drugs, adding that some who had shown drastic physical changes had denied doping during private consultations with him. But low doses of oral steroids were common among top track athletes, Dr. Vorobiev said, asserting that if he had dissuaded them from taking drugs, he would have been blamed for poor results and summarily fired. East Germany, later found to have run an aggressive doping program, was a particular motivator after the 1976 Olympics, in which the country won nearly as many gold medals as the Soviet Union. The antidoping movement was in its infancy at that time the World Agency, the regulator of drugs in sport, was not created until more than 20 years later. Still, sports officials were conscious of the need to combat drugs at major competitions. Anabolic steroids had been banned by the International Olympic Committee, and testing for them debuted at the 1976 Games, making the regimen that Soviet officials proposed for Los Angeles unambiguously prohibited. Dr. Vorobiev said he had consistently opposed steroid injections — typically administered with a shot in the thigh or buttocks. He considered that method too concentrated and too dangerous, he said. The 1983 letter — addressed to Dr. Vorobiev’s boss, the head of Soviet track and field — cited competition as a main motivation for adding injections to the “special pharmacological profiles” already developed for national athletes following a meeting of the country’s sports committee on Nov. 24, 1983. (The letter was translated independently from the original Russian by The New York Times.) The three additional drugs were Retabolil, Stromba and forms of the steroids nandrolone decanoate and stanozolol. The officials had enough Retabolil in their possession, they said. “A range of data,” the letter said, “proves that the main opponents of Soviet athletes will use the aforementioned injection form of anabolic steroids at the upcoming Olympic Games. ” The letter — signed and archived by Dr. Portugalov, and bearing the signature of a colleague at the Institute for Physical Culture, Roshen D. Seyfulla — said that top athletes with chances of winning medals were prime candidates for injections. It suggested paying particular attention to those who had performed well while taking oral steroids. Three to five vials of 50 milligrams each should be injected into those athletes, the officials instructed, with the final doses administered 145 to 157 days before the Olympics. Drawn into the plot, according to the document, was the Soviet antidoping lab, which the officials — mindful of Olympic — had recruited to determine how long the steroids in question would linger in the system. “There is only one basic reason to reject the injection form — the lack of definite data about how much time it takes to clear the body,” the letter said. “We will have the official recommendation and conclusion no later than Dec. 15, 1983,” it continued, suggesting that national sports officials and antidoping authorities were colluding to cover up doping. Such collusion happened in Russia as recently as last year, antidoping investigators said in a report last month, detailing how the national lab helped formulate special drug cocktails for Russian athletes and covered up drug violations on orders from the country’s sports ministry. In May 1984, about five months after the document outlining a doping plan was circulated, the Soviet Union withdrew from the Los Angeles Games, citing the “ actions of the U. S. authorities and organizers of the Games” in a statement. “Chauvinistic sentiments and an hysteria are being whipped up in the country,” it said. But the fixation on beating the competition by using banned substances did not end, Dr. Vorobiev said. He described an atmosphere in which winning was supremely important, in which drugs displaced training as the primary method of preparation, and in which Dr. Portugalov’s profile continued to rise. For decades, Dr. Portugalov was a figure outside Russia. Inside the country, however, he was a “fairly authoritative and very knowledgeable” figure who was not shy about advertising access to the best substances, according to Dr. Vorobiev. Dr. Vorobiev said that his own philosophy on developing elite athletes was not aligned with that of Dr. Portugalov’s, and that he preserved the document over several decades because he considered it proof of how Dr. Portugalov was masterminding the Soviet program. Dr. Portugalov came to global prominence in 2014 when two Russian identified him as a linchpin distributor in Russia’s doping scheme. Yuliya Stepanova and Vitaly Stepanov, a married couple — she a runner and he a former employee of Russia’s antidoping agency — told the German public broadcaster ARD that Dr. Portugalov had provided Ms. Stepanova with drugs and outlined a tiered payment system whereby he received a percentage of winnings, depending on whether an athlete won gold, silver or bronze medals. “He bragged to Yuliya that over the past few decades, he had made so many Olympic champions,” Mr. Stepanov said in an interview this summer, describing Dr. Portugalov as “arrogant” and more interested in turning a profit than seeing athletes succeed. An investigation commissioned by the World Agency confirmed Ms. Stepanova’s account and concluded that Dr. Portugalov’s enterprise stretched much wider. In the wake of a damning report published by the antidoping agency last fall, Dr. Portugalov was suspended from Russian track and field and from his post at Russia’s sports research institute. Dr. Portugalov could not be reached directly by The New York Times. Neither the track organization nor the government institute responded to emailed requests for information about his employment status or ways to reach him. His name is no longer listed on the website of either organization. A spokesman for WADA said the Russian ministry of sport had told the agency that Dr. Portugalov no longer worked for the government. Investigations into his work, meanwhile, are continuing last month, the global governing body for swimming appointed a lawyer to look into claims that Dr. Portugalov provided drugs to Russian swimmers. Richard W. Pound, the former president of the antidoping agency who led last year’s investigation into doping in track and field, called the 1983 document an unsurprising indication of the long history of Russia’s doping program. “It shows the foundation on which a lot of this has been built,” he said. “The system we encountered is not new. It’s a continuation of the Soviet days. ” Russia has responded to the charges of systematic, doping with a mix of defiance and contrition. President Vladimir V. Putin has criticized scrutiny of the country as being politically motivated, but he has also suspended implicated officials and announced broad efforts to change Russian attitudes toward doping in sport. “It’s a problem of culture and education,” Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, said in an interview this summer, noting that he had told Mr. Putin in 2009 that doping was a “black spot” on the country. “Our aim is to have a healthy nation,” Mr. Mutko said. “We’re moving away from the old Soviet legacy. ” Dr. Vorobiev’s career with the national team ended after he was blamed for an athlete’s drug violation in the . The violation in question, he said, involved the drug Phenotropil, which was used by Russian astronauts and military members to combat fatigue. He is characteristically pragmatic about the terms on which his tenure ended. “That’s life,” he said, expressing a steady loyalty to the ministry while criticizing people like Dr. Portugalov who, he said, corrupted sports and shifted focus away from skillful coaching. “Am I happy now that the problems have surfaced 20 years later?” he said, referring to his 1996 departure. “It was inevitable. ” Well into his retirement, Dr. Vorobiev remains intensely interested in discussing physical preparations for competition, asking a reporter for her exercise routine. “Do you agree that training is more important than steroids?” he said after four hours of discussing doping, during which he often pounded his fist and foot for emphasis. Dr. Vorobiev is blind in one eye and has weak vision in the other. He rarely turns on the television, which sits atop a small piece of furniture that holds athletic socks. He did, however, plan to watch the track and field events in Rio this week, and he neither condemned nor condoned the recent doping scandals that had precipitated the ban on Russia’s team. He expressed a statesmanlike support of “the Olympic movement” and of decisions about who could compete. “Obviously, it would be better with Russia,” he said, shrugging in his Soviet team uniform. “I hope this will be a lesson to train harder, and maybe there will be less steroids as a result. ” | 1 |
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Gunmen have killed more than 140 civilians near Ethiopia’s western border with South Sudan, an Ethiopian official said on Saturday. The attackers came from South Sudan and killed civilians, including women and children, said Getachew Reda, the communications minister. “The Ethiopian defense force is currently chasing after the perpetrators,” Mr. Reda said, adding that the attackers did not have links to South Sudan’s government or its rebel fighters. “Our defense forces have so far killed 60 members of the attackers,” he said. Mr. Reda added that Ethiopian forces might cross into South Sudan to pursue the gunmen. The attack took place on Friday in Jakawa, in the Gambela region of Ethiopia, and the attackers were members of South Sudan’s Murle tribe, Mr. Reda said. A number of children were abducted and taken into South Sudan, he said. The Gambela region hosts thousands of refugees who fled South Sudan after war broke out there in December 2013. It is also home to armed Ethiopian and South Sudanese groups that attack government installations and soldiers. In the 1980s, the Ethiopian government forcibly resettled hundreds of thousands of people, and the negative effects of those relocations are still felt in many Ethiopian communities, most notably in the Gambela region. In 2004, attackers killed 196 people in the western Gambela region in an outbreak of communal violence. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump embarked on one of the rituals of the American presidency on Thursday, meeting in New York with the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, as he continued his fitful adjustment to the protocols of diplomacy. “I am convinced Mr. Trump is a leader in whom I can have great confidence,” Mr. Abe said after the meeting at Trump Tower. He described the encounter as “really cordial. ” The visit with Mr. Abe came after 32 congratulatory phone calls from foreign leaders in the nine days since Mr. Trump won the election. None seem to have adhered to established diplomatic practice, in which the State Department choreographs the sequence of the calls and provides policy guidance and translating services. On Thursday night, the State Department said it was finally in contact with Mr. Trump’s emissaries. But until now, they had not requested any briefings, nor had the ’s calls — including with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and other adversaries of the United States — been routed through the State Department, as is customary, according to a department official. Mr. Trump’s aides did not respond to questions about whether the had used his own interpreter in the meeting with Mr. Abe and calls with other leaders, or whether he had relied on interpreters provided by them. “The order that the calls are done in seems like a silly protocol issue. But it’s one that people really think about,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former top aide to the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice. “They are taking messages away from that, whether you think it’s important or not. ” Mr. Abe’s visit — Mr. Trump’s first with a foreign leader since the election — came on a day when the was steeped in foreign policy. He met with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to discuss “events and issues around the world,” ranging from Russia and China to Iran and the European Union, according to the transition team. He met with Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, who told reporters afterward that “Israel has no doubt that Trump is a true friend of Israel. ” Mr. Dermer said he looked forward to working with “all of the members of the Trump administration, including Stephen K. Bannon,” Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, who has been accused of promoting through his news media operation, Breitbart News. He met Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and the top officer at the military’s Cyber Command, which gave him his first exposure to the government’s surveillance abilities. And he met with Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff who has been a longtime informal adviser to Hillary Clinton and a mentor to Gen. David H. Petraeus, as well as a prime architect of the Iraq troop surge in the George W. Bush administration. “I was impressed, frankly, for a couple of reasons,” General Keane said in a telephone interview. “One, by how personable he is, and two, by his intellectual curiosity about national security events. Most presidential candidates don’t have an knowledge of national security issues. But he asked excellent questions. ” General Keane declined to discuss the advice he had given Mr. Trump. But he said the new president’s greatest challenge would be to maintain America’s leadership in a world in which radical Islamic militancy was threatening to metastasize into a “global jihadist movement,” and hostile powers like Russia, China and Iran were seeking regional dominance. During the campaign, Mr. Trump called into question the network of security alliances that the United States had maintained since World War II, saying the country’s partners in Europe and Asia were not paying their fair share for the American umbrella of protection. Few allies were as rattled by Mr. Trump’s campaign statements as Japan. At one point, he suggested that Japan and South Korea consider acquiring nuclear weapons to protect themselves. In the days leading to Thursday’s meeting, officials from the Japanese Foreign and Trade Ministries were urging Mr. Abe to take a tough line with Mr. Trump on the value of the Partnership — a huge trade deal that Mr. Trump opposes — and the countries’ defense alliance, which Mr. Trump has said Japan must contribute more money toward, according to Michael J. Green, a former official in the Bush administration with close ties to Japan. But Mr. Abe appeared to reject that advice, preferring to focus on cultivating a personal relationship with Mr. Trump. Some Japan experts speculated that Mr. Abe was concerned about getting off on the right foot with Mr. Trump because when the Japanese leader traveled to New York in September for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, he met with Mrs. Clinton, who was then the favorite in the presidential race, but not Mr. Trump. “The Japanese prime minister has done very well with strongmen like Modi and Putin,” said Mr. Green, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and the Russian president. “The question the Japanese side still cannot understand is what a Trump administration will actually do on Asia,” Mr. Green added. Dispelling such confusion is one reason for the choreographed nature of the first calls made to leaders. In 2008, Mr. Obama’s transition team had a plan for the . On the morning of Election Day, Ms. Rice, who later became Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, described the plan in an email to two of his other advisers. “In anticipation of the many calls from foreign leaders, we have prepared a list of priority calls to return and the briefing memos,” Ms. Rice wrote at 9:13 a. m. “Our view is that he should return the calls through the State Dpt. Ops Center, which is comparatively apolitical and professional, has translation capabilities and can assist as desired with . ” The Ops Center serves as a giant switchboard for the government, providing interpreters as needed to ensure that American officials are confident their words are being translated accurately. Using government switchboards can also help prevent hoaxes. During the 2008 campaign, two French comedians pretending to be the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, pranked Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee, two days before the election. That call got through despite the fact that advisers to Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee, had a policy of never letting Mr. McCain take a call from a purported foreign leader without first checking out the telephone number with the State Department, according to a person familiar with that campaign’s operations. In Mr. Trump’s case, it has been . Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia reached out to Mr. Trump early in the week after getting his phone number from Greg Norman, a professional golfer, apparently becoming the second world leader to congratulate him after President Abdel Fattah of Egypt. Mr. Turnbull beat Theresa May, the British prime minister. In the case of Mr. Trump’s brief conversation with the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, it was conducted in English, though the said to Mr. Renzi, “Ciao. ” | 1 |
VIDEOS Toxic chemicals found in children’s Halloween makeup – study A new study finds the scariest part of the holiday may not be the costumes, but makeup for kids By RT - October 27, 2016
“Halloween is supposed to make your skin crawl, but not like this. A new study finds the scariest part of the holiday may not be the costumes, but makeup for kids. Out of 48 makeup palettes, almost half contained toxic heavy metals.
Nearly 20 percent of makeup palettes contain lead and cadmium, according to the newly published study by the Breast Cancer Fund. The study found that some products contained as many as four metals, including arsenic and chromium. Indiana housing complex to be razed after toxic lead levels detected https://t.co/qZy4gfTmnC pic.twitter.com/5bGsRti1Im
— RT America (@RT_America) August 31, 2016
Nine of the palettes were found to contain lead, a chemical that is unsafe at any level, for children particularly. Parents may have purchased and applied these products to their children unwittingly, as the makeup doesn’t have to list ingredients on their labels.
The BCF may have been among the first to test the palettes, as the FDA does not regulate this particular product.
“ The FDA that regulates makeup does not have the power to require pre-market testing ,” Jen Coleman with the Oregon Environmental Council told KGW.
The cosmetic safety law enacted 75 years ago does not require testing even for products marketed to children. While the FDA cannot do anything about the problem, they have issued guidelines to avoiding “ a rash, swollen eyelids, or other reaction ” this Halloween.
The guidelines make no mention of potential heavy metal poisoning, but they do offer advice like “ Follow all directions carefully ,” and “ Don’t decorate your face with things that aren’t intended for your skin. ”
What’s a parent to do in the meantime? Other than use all-natural makeup, the best option is to avoid dark pigments. The BCF study found a correlation between the darkness of the color and the lead content. The darker the color, the more lead it was found to contain. | 0 |
Homeless man looking a bit down today for some reason 27-10-16 A HOMELESS man who is usually upbeat seems a bit down today and no one’s quite sure why. Bill McKay, 56, usually sings Born in the USA while greeting passers-by but locals claim he doesn’t quite seem his usual jolly self. Local Barista, Julian Cook said, “He’s usually so full of life. Dancing about the place, proposing to every girl who walks past him and then laughing when they walk off. But today he’s just sat there looking bloody depressed. “I wonder why he’s in such a mood? “ Usually I’d give him a cup of coffee and a bit of cake for being so entertaining but if he’s going to just sit there looking like he wants to cry then he can sod off.” When asked why he was so down, McKay simply shook his head, muttered something about the government and then looked off down the street with a heavy sigh. Cook added: “See. What’s funny about that?”
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DJIBOUTI — The 10:24 a. m. train out of Djibouti’s capital drew some of the biggest names in the Horn of Africa last month. Serenaded by a chorus of tribal singers, the crush of African leaders, European diplomats and pop icons climbed the stairs of the newly built train station and merrily jostled their way into the pristine, carriages making their inaugural run. “It is indeed a historic moment, a pride for our nations and peoples,” said Hailemariam Desalegn, the prime minister of Ethiopia, shortly before the train — the first electric transnational railway in Africa — headed toward Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. “This line will change the social and economic landscape of our two countries. ” But perhaps the biggest star of the day was China, which designed the system, supplied the trains and imported hundreds of engineers for the six years it took to plan and build the line. And the $4 billion cost? Chinese banks provided nearly all the financing. Having constructed one of the world’s most extensive and modern rail networks at home, China is taking its prodigious resources and expertise global. subway cars will soon appear in Chicago and Boston, Beijing is building a $5 billion rail line in Indonesia, and the Chinese government recently christened new rail freight service between London and Beijing. Another ambitious system in the works, the Railway Network, would link China to Laos, Thailand and Singapore. But few places are being reshaped by China’s overseas juggernaut like Africa, a continent that has seen relatively little new railroad construction in a century. Despite years of steady economic growth, Africa remains hobbled by an infrastructure deficit, according to the Africa Development Bank, with only half of its roads paved and nearly 600 million people lacking access to electricity. Chinese companies, many of them and grappling with an economic slowdown at home, have stepped unto the breach, earning about $50 billion a year on new ports, highways and airports across the continent, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Many of the projects are part of Beijing’s new Silk Road initiative, a $1 trillion effort intended to deepen ties between China and its trading partners in the developing world. Much of that spending has been directed at rail projects that planners hope will transform the way Africans travel and do business with one another, and the rest of the world. and projects include a system in the Ethiopian capital a $13 billion rail link between the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and the port city of Mombasa that will open later this year and an ambitious rail modernization project in Nigeria that includes an urban transit system for Lagos. “For the longest time, railroads across Africa were limping along and in decline, but with the Chinese, that’s definitely changing,” said Andrew Grantham, the news editor at Railway Gazette International, a trade publication. China’s enthusiasm for constructing railroads, schools and stadiums in Africa stands in marked contrast to the role of the United States, which has largely shied away from financing infrastructure on the continent. One of the few exceptions, Power Africa, a $9. 7 billion initiative announced by President Barack Obama in 2013, has fallen far short of its goal of providing electricity to 20 million households within five years. When it comes to trade, China surpassed the United States in 2009 to become Africa’s biggest trading partner. It remains unclear how that calculus might change under the Trump administration. President Trump has questioned the benefits of free trade agreements, and a questionnaire from his transition team that was sent to the State Department last month expressed skepticism for foreign aid and development efforts in Africa. That worries some African officials and longtime experts, who fear the loss of American influence and largess — and the good will that is often produced by desperately needed infrastructure projects. Amadou Sy, director of the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, said the United States was also missing opportunities to cultivate loyal customers. “If you’re looking for new markets, Africa is the place to be,” he said. “But right now, the U. S. is not leveraging Africa’s huge potential. By contrast, the Chinese are there, and they are willing to take risks. ” China is placing more than $14 billion worth of bets here in Djibouti, a geopolitically strategic speck of a country beset by soaring poverty and unemployment. The projects include three ports, two airports and a pipeline that will bring water from Ethiopia, its landlocked neighbor and a regional economic power that depends on Djibouti’s ports for 90 percent of its foreign trade. Also on the drawing board are a series of power plants that would ease summertime electricity failures and help fuel a new manufacturing zone that officials hope will turn Djibouti into a Hong entrepôt and international shipping hub. Aboubaker Omar Hadi, chairman of the Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority, said he hoped the new railway linking his country to the Ethiopian capital would be just the first leg of a route, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. “The train is already a ” he said, noting that it will cut to 12 hours what until now had been a grueling or trip by truck. Mr. Hadi praised the Chinese for going all in after Western banks declined to help finance the nation’s glaring infrastructure needs. “We approached the U. S. and they didn’t have the vision,” he said. “They are not thinking ahead 30 years. They only have a vision of Africa from the past, as a continent of war and famine. The Chinese have vision. ” Not everyone is comfortable with China’s vision. Some worry about the leverage China wields and what happens when countries fall behind on loan payments. For Djibouti, the debt is especially daunting, amounting to 60 percent of its gross domestic product. But Ilyas Moussa Dawaleh, the country’s finance minister, dismissed such concerns, saying Djibouti’s heady 6. 7 percent growth rate would allow it to meet its loan payments. “If we don’t take this risk now and develop our infrastructure, we will remain stuck in poverty,” he said. “Come back in a few years, and you will find that Djibouti has become the logistics hub of the continent. ” Others worry about the Djiboutian government’s lack of transparency, its authoritarian impulses and a vexing legacy of official corruption. Mohamed Daoud Chehem, a leader of Djibouti’s embattled opposition and a former presidential candidate, said the lack of information about the terms of China’s loans raised questions about potential malfeasance. “We’re talking about billions of dollars and complete opacity,” he said. “Have there been kickbacks to government officials? There is no way to know. ” Others wonder what will happen to the system after the Chinese leave. European imperialists in Africa built a skein of lines, most of which fell into disrepair in the decades after their colonies achieved independence. Jamie Monson, the author of “Africa’s Freedom Railway,” a book documenting the legacy of the train linking Tanzania and Zambia, said maintenance could be more challenging than initial construction. Built during the Cold War and hailed as a symbol of friendship, the train, the Tazara Railway, has struggled to maintain regular service, prompting talk of a Chinese takeover. “Without proper maintenance comes problems, which can have a huge impact on a regional economy and local people’s livelihoods,” she said. For now, however, much of nation is euphoric over the completion of Djibouti’s first modern railway, which follows the path of a creaky line, completed in 1917, that met its demise several years ago after generations of neglect. Although workers from China did much of the technical and engineering work, thousands of Djiboutian and Ethiopian laborers were hired to lay tracks and dig tunnels, helping to head off some of the local resentment that has dogged other Chinese projects in Africa. The system will be operated by Chinese conductors for five years and then turned over to local citizens, many of them trained in China. After a boisterous opening day ceremony in the broiling sun, only the attendees were allowed to board the train, which filled with applause and song as it glided out of the station. Daha Ahmed Osman, 34, a tech specialist who works for the Djiboutian government, displayed a wide grin as he watched the arid, harshly beautiful landscape spill across the train’s picture windows. He predicted that the new train would transform Djibouti and Ethiopia, and eventually all of Africa. “For this, we have the Chinese to thank, because they shared with us their money and their technology,” he said. “More than anything we thank them for showing confidence in us. ” | 1 |
Can we shoot this delusional fuck to Mars! ? | 0 |
Tesla Motors came under renewed questioning about the safety of its Autopilot technology after news emerged on Wednesday of a fatal crash in China that may have occurred while the automated system was operating. The crash took place on Jan. 20 and killed Gao Yaning, 23, when the Tesla Model S he was driving slammed into a road sweeper on a highway near Handan, a city about 300 miles south of Beijing, according to a report broadcast on Wednesday by the Chinese government news channel CCTV. The report includes video looking through the windshield as the car travels in the left lane at highway speed just before ramming into a parked or orange truck. The video, apparently shot by a camera mounted on the rearview mirror, recorded no images, sounds or jolts that would suggest the driver or the car hit the brakes before impact. At that point, the video ends. “When it was approaching the road sweeper, the car didn’t put on the brake or avoid it,” a police officer said in the CCTV report. “Instead, it crashed right into it. ” In an emailed statement, Tesla said on Wednesday that it had not been able to determine whether Autopilot was active at the time of the Handan accident. The company declined to say when it learned of the fatality in China, or whether it had reported the crash to United States safety officials, who are investigating a fatal accident in Florida on May 7 in which Autopilot was engaged. So far, that Florida accident is the only confirmed death involving a Tesla with Autopilot turned on. In that accident, there was no sign that the driver or Autopilot had applied the brakes before the car collided at high speed with a that had turned in front of it. Although Tesla learned of the Florida accident a few weeks after it happened, it did not publicly disclose it until late June, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it was investigating the crash. News of the Chinese crash will renew questions about when the company should disclose information about accidents in cars equipped with Autopilot and what information should be shared. “Because of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers, and we therefore have no way of knowing whether or not Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash,” a Tesla spokeswoman, Alexis Georgeson, said in the company’s statement. “We have tried repeatedly to work with our customer to investigate the cause of the crash, but he has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so,” she said of the car’s owner, Mr. Gao’s father. She said Tesla was saddened to learn of the death of Mr. Gao. “We take any incident with our vehicles very seriously and immediately reached out to our customer when we learned of the crash,” she said. Tesla and Autopilot have been under scrutiny since the disclosure of the May fatality. That crash killed Joshua Brown, 40, whose 2015 Model S was traveling 74 miles per hour when it collided with a that had turned left and was crossing a highway near Williston, Fla. Autopilot’s radar and cameras failed to recognize the white truck against a bright sky. News of the China crash comes just three days after Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, outlined changes planned for Autopilot that he said would have prevented Mr. Brown’s accident and that he contended would make the Model S one of the safest cars on the road. The changes include refinements in Autopilot’s radar that improve its ability to spot and identify obstacles down the road and additional warnings to force drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road while the system is active. Tesla has said Autopilot is not meant to take over completely for a human driver. When Autopilot is turned on, drivers are given audio and text warnings to remain alert and engaged while using it. In August, Reuters reported that Tesla removed a Chinese term for “ ” from its China website after a driver in Beijing had a nonfatal crash while Autopilot was engaged. That driver later complained that the carmaker had oversold Autopilot’s capability. The video of the January accident indicates the type of unexpected problem that can crop up at highway speeds. Critics of Autopilot say a driver can be lulled into complacency, leaving too little time to take back control of the vehicle. Mr. Gao was traveling in the left lane of a highway with another car ahead of him. When the car ahead moved into the center lane, it revealed the orange truck, which was straddling the road’s left shoulder. Mr. Gao’s car never slowed before plowing into the truck. Police investigators concluded that Mr. Gao was responsible for the accident, CCTV reported. But in July his family sued the dealer who had sold the Tesla. The driver’s father, Gao Jubin, told CCTV he thought his son had been relying on Autopilot to drive the car and so was not watching the road when the crash took place. The lawsuit was filed “to let the public know that technology has some defects,” the family’s lawyer said in the report. “We are hoping Tesla, when marketing its products, will be more cautious. Don’t just use as a selling point for young people. ” | 1 |
Donald Trump Is The Candidate For Americans, Not Special Interests Donald Trump Is The Candidate For Americans, Not Special Interests Luke Stranahan
Luke Stranahan is an engineer by trade and an armed patriot by inclination. He writes for Return of Kings as a leisure pursuit and an attempt to do his part to help reverse the slide into moral decrepitude of modern society. Follow him on Twitter. November 2, 2016 Politics
Next Tuesday is the American election, and, for better or for worse, we’ll pick the next President at that time (assuming we don’t get mired in voter fraud and recounts), and we’ll either brace for government mandated SJW enemas or bask in a temporary setback of those evil people. But, today, I want to talk on Trump once to match an article from last week, and I intend to focus on how he is the American candidate, as opposed to the special interest groups’ one.
I had a conversation last week with some people who acted as SJWs, but were later presented by a mutual friend as libertarian. The discussion immediately went nasty, with my opposition painting Trump (and anyone who supported him) as a racist and a bigot. Upon trying to determine why two of the left’s ubiquitous labels were applied to me this time, I learned that their perspective was, unless you were universally for all special interest groups, you were a bigot or a racist. False Dichotomy And The American Nightmare
The problem, I found out, was that these people have distilled the political spectrum down into a black or white situation. Either you want all refugees here from the Middle East, all the Hispanics from any country south of the border to come here freely and citizenship for those already here, and that any black people shot by police are just misunderstood and were turning their lives around, or you’re a racist. There’s simply no middle ground.
They don’t understand that Trump is not a special interest candidate, by which I mean that he is not going to put any minority group ahead of the rest of us at our expense, but he is not racist towards minorities, or sexist towards women.
It is possible to be against illegal immigration, but treat Americans of Hispanic ancestry as valued citizens whom you will represent. It is possible to be against feminism, Affirmative Action, and the persecution of men for the profit of women, yet still value American women as Americans themselves. It is possible to note that some black people cause a disproportionate amount of crime, yet note that some police are racist, and see that there are bad and good cops AND bad and good black people.
The American Dream is that all men are created equal, and that’s men as in humanity, not just males. It is not that all men are equal, and there’s a big difference to note here. You have the same opportunities as everyone else when you are born with the exception of disability, and I do not know anyone, myself included, that is against governmental aid for the disabled.
What we have, instead, is the American Nightmare, where the left uses government and taxes for the most inane of causes, trying to fix any disadvantaged group’s lot, real or imagined, so that things will be better. They take from the producers, and give to the non-producers so that, according to their idealistic vision, they will suddenly become productive members of society (or become addicted to the welfare tit and vote Democrat for the rest of their lives.) The Good Of The Country Over That Of The Individual
Long gone are responsible Democrats like Kennedy who told us to ask what you can do for your country. Every recent Democratic President, from Carter to Obama, and most of the Democrat Congressmen, view the working middle class of the country as simply a group to exploit for their pet special interest groups. Trump is the first candidate in a long time who isn’t for the blacks, or the gays, or the Muslims, or the feminists, or whatever, and that matters a lot.
The reason why not being for a special interest group (which is ALL that Hillary is for, with her youth vote, black vote, women’s vote, gay vote, etc.) is so important is that these groups, even put together, do not matter when it comes down to the good of the country. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good, hardworking black people, just like there’s the same for women, and for gays, and for young people, but these hardworking folks from all these groups aren’t going to be part of the BLM, or La Raza, or Lamda, because they’re too busy being productive Americans. Activism is for unemployed people.
What’s going to happen if we don’t placate BLM and just ignore them? They riot a bit more and some get arrested? What if we told them that people that commit crimes to protest being treated like they commit a lot of crimes is ass-backwards thinking and counter-productive to their goals? They’d quit rioting.
What would happen if we shut the Mexican border down to illegal immigration, but made a straightforward, but strict, path to citizenship for Hispanics that wanted to be citizens? What if we said, this is America, we appreciate your culture and encourage to preserve it and your language in your children, but the national language IS English, and all business and schooling will be done in it, and in it only, and it’s your choice to not learn it, but the difficulties that will arise from that choice are all on you? They’d be Americans, proud of their heritage and their legal immigration and citizenship as well.
What would happen if we told gay people that it’s cool if they have civil unions under the law, and have the same rights as everyone else, but it’s not cool trying to pick a fight with a Christian bakery to make the government hall monitor come drive them out of business just because their belief in their God and that you’re sinning makes you uneasy and worried that they might actually be right?
What if we told them it’s ok to do whatever you want with another consenting adult, but you don’t have to try to make five-year-olds decide if they’re gay or straight when they shouldn’t be wondering about that till puberty hits? They’d be normal Americans who just happen to like sex with the same gender, and they’d quit pushing their agenda and being obnoxious and in the rest of our faces.
What would happen if we talked to Muslims and said that there is a huge, deafening, silence when it comes to the subject of Islamic Terrorism from them that makes it hard to trust any of them? What if we told them that we needed their help to bring the religion out of its tacit acceptance and support of terrorism, and part of that help means supporting us vetting Muslims coming here more strictly until they are no longer statistically more likely to be terrorists than people of other religions and ethnicities? They’d go along with that and maybe realize we’re fixing a problem, not hating a people.
What would happen if we told women that feminism has all but killed modern marriage due to universal punishment of divorced men and that no punishment for false-rape accusers both makes men not trust women and insults any real rape survivor? What would happen if we told them that giving them jobs for their genitalia over their skills is destroying industries by lowering the only standard that matters, that of merit; that of excellence?
What if we told them that gender ratios and quotas may fix the macro view of sexism, but make the man passed over for the position solely because you were female pissed as all hell towards women and, when you do that to the majority of men, you’ll be just as successful, and just as hated by men as men were and were hated by you in years past? They’d realize that it’s not a competition, it’s a cooperation, and maybe skill should be valued over sex.
What would happen if we stopped all these divisive issues that really don’t do anything other than tear us apart and work on a better economy, on rights for all, on border security? What would happen if we simply looked at each other as Americans, and put us, all of us, first? What would happen if we ripped out the crap in the Federal government that overtaxes people, or deploys armed forces against our own countrymen? What would happen if we made the Supreme Court Constitutional again, and made term limits a reality for Congress? Maybe we could get a government for, by, and of the people again. Maybe America can indeed by great again like the man says. Conclusion
I’m not in a special interest group. No President, outside of George W. Bush right after the September 11th attacks, that I can recall since my childhood, has been for me as an American. I’ve always been someone to be taxed, to be disarmed, to be hated, to be blamed. It’s not racism or bigotry to want us all to be treated as equals and not be penalized for real and imagined wrongs that occurred in the past before I was born, or more recently yet with which I had nothing to do.
I’m not part of the problem. I’m an American; the people who say I am part of the problem are the problem. Their candidate, mired in scandal, corruption, and treason, is Hillary Clinton. Mine, with a message of hope for the country, not just some groups in it, is Donald Trump. | 0 |
10 Comments on "What Does Washington ‘Plan B’ in Syria Really Mean?" Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text</b> results in bold text <i>italic text</i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. vot tak 4 hours 7 minutes ago
If there is some hesitancy in the israeli-american-eu terrorist ops in Syria, something which I’ve not seen evidence for, I think this may be due to the zionazis being unsure they will be able to force a clinton regime on their american colony. If Trumps wins, they run the risk of exposure if he decides to not go along with israel’s war against Syria.
Western Countries Use Militants to Achieve Own Goals in Syria – Assad’s Aide
“The United States and its western partners are using militants to achieve their goals in Syria and stand behind the collapse of the initiatives on peace settlement, Syrian presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said Saturday.” 1 | 0 |
Haiti — The loss in this coastal town is all but entire. Dead animals float in tidal pools. heaps mark where homes once stood. Trees, stripped of leaves, branches and tops, impale the earth like ragged posts. But the loss here runs deeper. The local hospital has registered 13 deaths since Hurricane Matthew flung winds and a wall of water at but many more have died without so much as an official word. Emilien Clerveaux died trying to save his daughter, his head split open by flying debris. Elouse Maître’s aunt and four cousins were swept out to sea when the water claimed her beachfront shack. Destine Rosevald’s two children, 6 and 4, died in his arms as he tried to rush them to safety. “When I think about them, I cry,” Mr. Rosevald said as he stood in a neighbor’s yard on Saturday, water filling his eyes. “She was just in elementary school. My son, he was going to start kindergarten this year. ” As access and information to areas of Haiti increase after the hurricane, the news only gets worse. The death toll has climbed to nearly 900 people, while an outbreak of cholera in three southern towns has killed 13 people and infected 62 others, health officials said. For now, though, there is no way to know the precise toll of the storm. There are still 500, 000 people stranded in the south alone, officials said, because of extensive damage to an already feeble infrastructure. More than 170 people have been reported dead in Les Anglais, which for now is accessible only by helicopter. Just as the impoverished island nation, bereft of resources and capacity, struggled to prepare for the storm, the recovery has been hampered by the same shortcomings. And communications have been scattered. Although news outlets are reporting nearly 900 dead, the government has for two days insisted on a figure less than half of that. That gap is partly the result of how the deaths are reported. The government is counting only those it can verify, a formal process that cannot be completed until access to areas cut off by the storm is restored. But in towns like many have already buried their dead or stopped searching for loved ones carried away in the storm surge. “Honestly, we don’t even know how many died,” said Sanite Moïse, seated with a group of women washing clothes in a shallow flood pool. Small children bathed in the murky water. Mrs. Moïse said her father had died a few days earlier, drowned in the floods that engulfed his home near the beach. When she went to look for him, there was nothing left — just an embankment and debris. The house, she said, was gone. “God gives and God takes,” she said with a shrug. “Mankind, for all the evil he does, could never do something like this. ” The devastation in was hard to overestimate. Hardly a home was left untouched, and many were reduced to splinters and rocks. Fields fallowed by salt water baked in the afternoon heat, while palm trees the width of telephone poles were snapped in half. Periodically, the stench of death wafted through the tropical air, filling nostrils with a choking, rotten smell. The areas of farther west are the worst hit, with entire stretches of the waterfront washed away. Residents spoke about homes that used to line the picturesque beaches along with restaurants and shops. Standing by the side of the road, Mr. Rosevald barely registered the activity around him. As men brushed debris from the road and collected wood to reconstruct homes, he leaned against a rusted Mack truck, looking lost. He could not bear to be near his home, he said. When the storm hit, Mr. Rosevald tried to remain with his children and mother. But by late Monday, as the wind and rain belted his home, finally tearing off his roof, he decided to flee. He rushed to the front door but heard a crash in the living room and went running back. He found his son, Kendy, and his mother buried in the wreckage. He pulled them out and clutched his unconscious son at his waist, determined to get them out of the house. He lifted his daughter, Naomie, onto his shoulders and ran outside, his mother close behind. Almost immediately, a stick whirred through the air and struck the little girl in the ribs. Frightened by the force of the impact, he looked down at her but kept moving until they reached a neighbor’s house. By the next morning, both children were dead. His daughter, he said, was a playful and talkative girl in second grade. She loved math and jumping rope with friends. His son, he said, was a chatterbox and was excited to start kindergarten this year. Mr. Rosevald paused and apologized for not recalling everything clearly. “They tell me my daughter died a few hours later, at 6 a. m.,” he said. The force of the blow caused extensive internal bleeding, he said. “My son, they said, was dead the entire time I was carrying him,” he stuttered. The boy was dead the instant the wall fell on him. On Saturday, residents cleaned up wooden debris that littered the town, working with machetes and axes and stacking trees and branches felled in the storm. Fisherman repaired their nets on the beach. The water was postcard Caribbean. At the local hospital, the injured turned up by the dozens. An old man was carried from the bed of a truck into the waiting room, unconscious, as nurses and doctors trained in Cuba attended to him. A young girl issued bloodcurdling screams as nurses cleaned cuts running up her leg. A young man beside her gingerly touched deep gashes on the back of his neck. “I knew this place before,” Orthela Genima, a doctor who has worked in the hospital for several years, said of the town. “Now I can’t even recognize it. ” Among those who had lost loved ones, many struggled to recognize even themselves. “It’s like we are slowly dying,” said Micheline Clerveaux, 18, whose father, Emilien, died Tuesday afternoon. “We have nothing to live for. ” The family was gathered near where its house had been, an area reduced to a mound of stones and an odd assortment of furniture, a dismantled speaker and a wooden box spring. Mr. Clerveaux was buried in the family grave beside the home, a concrete slab sitting above ground, painted a dull blue. He had been searching for Micheline when the storm raged on Tuesday morning. The family had fled the home moments earlier, seeking refuge in an open field to the west. The parents split up, and Micheline and her sister, Francise, went with their father. The other four children went with their mother, Marie Rose Jacob. But when they met in the field and lay flat on the ground to avoid the flying objects, Micheline was missing. A strong gust had knocked her off course, placing her closer to a neighbor’s house. “He told me he was going to look for her,” Mrs. Jacob said. After an hour, the children and their mother left the field and, by good fortune, found shelter in the same home where Micheline was taking cover. But Mr. Clerveaux was not there. They waited until the worst of the storm had passed and went searching for him. Hours passed. Eventually, a few hundred yards away, they found him leaning against a tree, talking to himself. They hoisted him and looked for injuries. There was a huge wound on the back of his head. At home, lying in bed, he told his wife that he was going to die. A few hours later, he did. Mr. Clerveaux was a subsistence farmer, growing corn, potatoes and beans to feed his family. Those crops are now gone, unlikely to grow again in the salt water marsh that his land has been turned into. The family’s livestock — a cow and three sheep — are also lost. Neighbors pitched in to bury Mr. Clerveaux, and they are housing and feeding his wife and children. They say they will continue for however long it takes the family to rebuild. “If we survive, they will survive,” said Nazaire, 56, the neighbor with whom the family took shelter during the storm. “If we have only one loaf of bread to eat, we will share it with them. ” | 1 |
President Trump on Thursday announced his new nominee for labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, during a news conference at the White House. Following is a transcript of that event, as prepared by the Federal News Service. For more coverage, read our live analysis. TRUMP: Thank you very much. I just wanted to begin by mentioning that the nominee for secretary of the Department of Labor will be Mr. Alex Acosta. He has a law degree from Harvard Law School, was a great student former clerk for Justice Samuel Alito. And he has had a tremendous career. He’s a member and has been a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and has been through Senate confirmation three times, confirmed did very, very well. And so Alex, I’ve wished him the best. We just spoke. And he’s going to be — I think he’ll be a tremendous secretary of labor. And also as you probably heard just a little while ago, Mick Mulvaney, former congressman, has just been approved weeks late, I have to say that, weeks, weeks late, Office of Management and Budget. And he will be I think a fantastic addition. Paul Singer just left. As you know, Paul was very much involved with the or as they say, “never Trump. ” And Paul just left and he’s given us his total support. And it’s all about unification. We’re unifying the party and hopefully we’re going to be able to unify the country. It’s very important to me. I’ve been talking about that for a long time. It’s very, very important to me. So I want to thank Paul Singer for being here and for coming up to the office. He was a very strong opponent, and now he’s a very strong ally. And I appreciate that. I think I’ll say a few words, and then we’ll take some questions. And I had this time. We’ve been negotiating a lot of different transactions to save money on contracts that were terrible, including airplane contracts that were out of control and late and terrible just absolutely catastrophic in terms of what was happening. And we’ve done some really good work. We’re very proud of that. And then right after that, you prepare yourselves, we’ll do some questions, unless you have enough questions. That’s always a possibility. I’m here today to update the American people on the incredible progress that has been made in the last four weeks since my inauguration. We have made incredible progress. I don’t think there’s ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we’ve done. A new Rasmussen poll, in fact — because the people get it — much of the media doesn’t get it. They actually get it, but they don’t write it. Let’s put it that way. But a new Rasmussen poll just came out just a very short while ago, and it has our approval rating at 55 percent and going up. The stock market has hit record numbers, as you know. And there has been a tremendous surge of optimism in the business world, which is — to me means something much different than it used to. It used to mean, “Oh, that’s good. ” Now it means, “That’s good for jobs. ” Very different. Plants and factories are already starting to move back into the United States, and big league — Ford, General Motors, so many of them. I’m making this presentation directly to the American people, with the media present, which is an honor to have you. This morning, because many of our nation’s reporters and folks will not tell you the truth, and will not treat the wonderful people of our country with the respect that they deserve. And I hope going forward we can be a little bit — a little bit different, and maybe get along a little bit better, if that’s possible. Maybe it’s not, and that’s OK, too. TRUMP: Unfortunately, much of the media in Washington, D. C. along with New York, Los Angeles in particular, speaks not for the people, but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system. The press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk to find out what’s going on, because the press honestly is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control. I ran for president to present the citizens of our country. I am here to change the broken system so it serves their families and their communities well. I am talking — and really talking on this very entrenched power structure, and what we’re doing is we’re talking about the power structure we’re talking about its entrenchment. As a result, the media is going through what they have to go through too often times distort — not all the time — and some of the media is fantastic, I have to say — they’re honest and fantastic. But much of it is not a — the distortion — and we’ll talk about it, you’ll be able to ask me questions about it. But we’re not going to let it happen, because I’m here again, to take my message straight to the people. As you know, our administration inherited many problems across government and across the economy. To be honest, I inherited a mess. It’s a mess. At home and abroad, a mess. Jobs are pouring out of the country you see what’s going on with all of the companies leaving our country, going to Mexico and other places, low pay, low wages, mass instability overseas, no matter where you look. The Middle East is a disaster. North Korea — we’ll take care of it folks we’re going to take care of it all. I just want to let you know, I inherited a mess. Beginning on day one, our administration went to work to tackle these challenges. On foreign affairs, we’ve already begun enormously productive talks with many foreign leaders, much of it you’ve covered, to move forward towards stability, security and peace in the most troubled regions of the world, which there are many. We have had great conversations with the United Kingdom, and meetings. Israel, Mexico, Japan, China and Canada, really, really productive conversations. I would say far more productive than you would understand. We’ve even developed a new council with Canada to promote women’s business leaders and entrepreneurs. It’s very important to me, very important to my daughter Ivanka. I have directed our defense community headed by our great general, now Secretary Mattis. He’s over there now working very hard to submit a plan for the defeat of ISIS, a group that celebrates the murder and torture of innocent people in large sections of the world. It used to be a small group, now it’s in large sections of the world. They’ve spread like cancer. ISIS has spread like cancer — another mess I inherited. And we have imposed new sanctions on the nation of Iran, whose totally taken advantage of our previous administration, and they’re the world’s top sponsor of terrorism, and we’re not going to stop until that problem is properly solved. And it’s not properly solved now, it’s one of the worst agreements I’ve ever seen drawn by anybody. I’ve ordered plan to begin building for the massive rebuilding of the United States military. Had great support from the Senate, I’ve had great from Congress, generally. We’ve pursued this rebuilding in the hopes that we will never have to use this military, and I will tell you that is my — I would be so happy if we never had to use it. But our country will never have had a military like the military we’re about to build and rebuild. We have the greatest people on earth in our military, but they don’t have the right equipment and their equipment is old. I used it I talked about it at every stop. Depleted, it’s depleted — it won’t be depleted for long. And I think one of the reason I’m standing here instead of other people is that frankly, I talked about we have to have a strong military. We have to have a strong law enforcement also. So we do not go abroad in the search of war, we really are searching for peace, but its peace through strength. At home, we have begun the monumental task of returning the government back to the people on a scale not seen in many, many years. In each of these actions, I’m keeping my promises to the American people. These are campaign promises. Some people are so surprised that we’re having strong borders. Well, that’s what I’ve been talking about for a year and a half, strong borders. They’re so surprised, oh, he having strong borders, well that’s what I’ve been talking about to the press and to everybody else. One promise after another after years of politicians lying to you to get elected. They lied to the American people in order to get elected. Some of the things I’m doing probably aren’t popular but they’re necessary for security and for other reasons. And then coming to Washington and pursuing their own interests which is more important to many politicians. I’m here following through on what I pledged to do. That’s all I’m doing. I put it out before the American people, got 306 Electoral College votes. I wasn’t supposed to get 222. They said there’s no way to get 222, 230’s impossible. 270 which you need, that was laughable. We got 306 because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before so that’s the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan. In other words, the media’s trying to attack our administration because they know we are following through on pledges that we made and they’re not happy about it for whatever reason. And — but a lot of people are happy about it. In fact, I’ll be in Melbourne, Florida five o’clock on Saturday and I heard — just heard that the crowds are massive that want to be there. I turn on the T. V. open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos. Chaos. Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a machine, despite the fact that I can’t get my cabinet approved. And they’re outstanding people like Senator Dan Coats who’s there, one of the most respected men of the Senate. He can’t get approved. How do you not approve him? He’s been a colleague — highly respected. Brilliant guy, great guy, everybody knows it. We’re waiting for approval. So we have a wonderful group of people that’s working very hard, that’s being very much misrepresented about and we can’t let that happen. So, if the Democrats who have — all you have to do is look at where they are right now. The only thing they can do is delay because they screwed things up royally, believe me. Let me list to you some of the things that we’ve done in just a short period of time. I just got here. And I got here with no cabinet. Again, each of these actions is a promise I made to the American people. I’ll go over just some of them and we have a lot happening next week and in the weeks — in the weeks coming. We’ve withdrawn from the disaster known as Trans Pacific Partnership. We’re going to make trade deals but we’re going to have one on one deals, bilateral. We’re going to have one on one deals. We’ve directed the elimination of regulations that undermine manufacturing and call for expedited approval of the permits needed for America and American infrastructure and that means plant, equipment, roads, bridges, factories. People take 10, 15, 20 years to get disapproved for a factory. They go in for a permit, it’s many, many years. And then at the end of the process — they spend 10s of millions of dollars on nonsense and at the end of the process, they get rejected. Now, they may be rejected with me but it’s going to be a quick rejection. Not going to take years. But mostly it’s going to be an acceptance. We want plants built and we want factories built and we want the jobs. We don’t want the jobs going to other countries. We’ve imposed a hiring freeze on nonessential federal workers. We’ve imposed a temporary moratorium on new federal regulations. We’ve issued a new rule that says for each one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated. Makes sense. Nobody’s ever seen regulations like we have. You go to other countries and you look at indexes (ph) they have and you say “let me see your regulations” and they’re fraction, just a tiny fraction of what we have. And I want regulations because I want safety, I want environmental — all environmental situations to be taken properly care of. It’s very important to me. But you don’t need four or five or six regulations to take care of the same thing. We’ve stood up for the men and women of law enforcement, directing federal agencies to ensure they are protected from crimes of violence. We’ve directed the creation of a task force for reducing violent crime in America, including the horrendous situation — take a look at Chicago and others, taking place right now in our inner cities. Horrible. We’ve ordered the Department of Homeland Security and Justice to coordinate on a plan to destroy criminal cartels coming into the United States with drugs. We’re becoming a drug infested nation. Drugs are becoming cheaper than candy bars. We are not going to let it happen any longer. We’ve undertaken the most substantial border security measures in a generation to keep our nation and our tax dollars safe. And are now in the process of beginning to build a promised wall on the southern border, met with general — now Secretary Kelly yesterday and we’re starting that process. And the wall is going to be a great wall and it’s going to be a wall negotiated by me. The price is going to come down just like it has on everything else I’ve negotiated for the government. And we are going to have a wall that works, not gonna have a wall like they have now which is either nonexistent or a joke. We’ve ordered a crackdown on sanctuary cities that refuse to comply with federal law and that harbor criminal aliens, and we have ordered an end to the policy of catch and release on the border. No more release. No matter who you are, release. We have begun a nationwide effort to remove criminal aliens, gang members, drug dealers and others who pose a threat to public safety. We are saving American lives every single day. The court system has not made it easy for us. And are even creating a new office in Homeland Security dedicated to the forgotten American victims of illegal immigrant violence, which there are many. We have taken decisive action to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country. No parts are necessary and constitutional actions were blocked by judges, in my opinion, incorrect, and unsafe ruling. Our administration is working night and day to keep you safe, including reporters safe. And is vigorously defending this lawful order. I will not back down from defending our country. I got elected on defense of our country. I keep my campaign promises, and our citizens will be very happy when they see the result. They already are, I can tell you that. Extreme vetting will be put in place and it already is in place in many places. In fact, we had to go quicker than we thought because of the bad decision we received from a circuit that has been overturned at a record number. I have heard 80 percent, I find that hard to believe, that is just a number I heard, that they are overturned 80 percent of the time. I think that circuit is — that circuit is in chaos and that circuit is frankly in turmoil. But we are appealing that, and we are going further. We’re issuing a new executive action next week that will comprehensively protect our country. So we’ll be going along the one path and hopefully winning that, at the same time we will be issuing a new and very comprehensive order to protect our people. That will be done sometime next week, toward the beginning or middle at the latest part. We have also taken steps to begin construction of the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipelines. Thousands and thousands of jobs, and put new buy American measures in place to require American steel for American pipelines. In other words, they build a pipeline in this country, and we use the powers of government to make that pipeline happen, we want them to use American steel. And they are willing to do that, but nobody ever asked before I came along. Even this order was drawn and they didn’t say that. TRUMP: And I’m reading the order, I’m saying, why aren’t we using American steel? And they said, that’s a good idea, we put it in. To drain the swamp of corruption in Washington, D. C. I’ve started by imposing a lobbying ban on White House officials and a lifetime ban on lobbying for a foreign government. We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare. Obamacare is a disaster, folks. It is’s disaster. I know you can say, oh, Obamacare. I mean, they fill up our alleys with people that you wonder how they get there, but they are not the Republican people our that representatives are representing. So we’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare, and are deep in the midst of negotiations on a very historic tax reform to bring our jobs back, to bring our jobs back to this country. Big league. It’s already happening. But big league. I’ve also worked to install a cabinet over the delays and obstruction of Senate Democrats. You’ve seen what they’ve done over the last long number of years. That will be one of the great cabinets ever assembled in American history. You look at Rex Tillerson. He’s out there negotiating right now. General Mattis I mentioned before, General Kelly. We have great, great people. Mick is with us now. We have great people. Among their responsibilities will be ending the bleeding of jobs from our country and negotiating fair trade deals for our citizens. Now look, fair trade. Not free, fair. If a country is taking advantage of us, not going to let that happen anymore. Every country takes advantage of us almost. I may be able to find a couple that don’t. But for the most part, that would be a very tough job for me to do. Jobs have already started to surge. Since my election, Ford announced it will abandon its plans to build a new factory in Mexico, and will instead invest $700 million in Michigan, creating many, many jobs. Fiat Chrysler announced it will invest $1 billion in Ohio and Michigan, creating 2, 000 new American jobs. They were with me a week ago. You know you were here. General Motors likewise committed to invest billions of dollars in its American manufacturing operation, keeping many jobs here that were going to leave. And if I didn’t get elected, believe me, they would have left. And these jobs and these things that I’m announcing would never have come here. Intel just announced that it will move ahead with a new plant in Arizona that probably was never going to move ahead with. And that will result in at least 10, 000 American jobs. Walmart announced it will create 10, 000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives. There will be many, many more, many more, these are a few that we’re naming. Other countries have been taking advantage of us for decades — decades, and decades, and decades, folks. And we’re not going to let that happen anymore. Not going to let it happen. And one more thing, I have kept my promise to the American people by nominating a justice of the United States Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, who is from my list of 20, and who will be a true defender of our laws and our Constitution, highly respected, should get the votes from the Democrats. You may not see that. But he’ll get there one way or the other. But he should get there the way, and he should get those votes. This last month has represented an unprecedented degree of action on behalf of the great citizens of our country. Again, I say it. There has never been a presidency that’s done so much in such a short period of time. And we have not even started the big work yet. That starts early next week. Some very big things are going to be announced next week. So we are just getting started. We will be giving a speech, as I said, in Melbourne, Florida, at 5:00 p. m. I hope to see you there. And with that, I just say, God bless America, and let’s take some questions. Mara (ph) Mara (ph) go ahead. You were cut off pretty violently at our last news conference. QUESTION: ( ) TRUMP: Mike Flynn is a fine person, and I asked for his resignation. He respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Pence, who is with us today. And I was not happy with the way that information was given. He didn’t have to do that, because what he did wasn’t wrong — what he did in terms of the information he saw. What was wrong was the way that other people, including yourselves in this room, were given that information, because that was classified information that was given illegally. That’s the real problem. And, you know, you can talk all you want about Russia, which was all a, you know, fake news, fabricated deal, to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats and the press plays right into it. In fact, I saw a couple of the people that were supposedly involved with all of this — that they know nothing about it they weren’t in Russia they never made a phone call to Russia they never received a phone call. It’s all fake news. It’s all fake news. The nice thing is, I see it starting to turn, where people are now looking at the illegal — I think it’s very important — the illegal, giving out classified information. It was — and let me just tell you, it was given out like so much. I’ll give you an example. I called, as you know, Mexico. It was a very, very confidential, classified call. But I called Mexico. And in calling Mexico, I figured, oh, well that’s — I spoke to the president of Mexico I had a good call. All of a sudden, it’s out there for the world to see. It’s supposed to be secret. It’s supposed to be either confidential or classified, in that case. Same thing with Australia. All of a sudden, people are finding out exactly what took place. The same thing happened with respect to General Flynn. Everybody saw this. And I’m saying — the first thing I thought of when I heard about it is: How does the press get this information that’s classified? How do they do it? You know why? Because it’s an illegal process and the press should be ashamed of themselves. But more importantly, the people that gave out the information to the press should be ashamed of themselves, really ashamed. Yes, go ahead. QUESTION: ( ) TRUMP: Because when I looked at the information, I said, “I don’t think he did anything wrong if anything, he did something right. ” He was coming into office. He looked at the information. He said, “Huh, that’s fine. ” That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to — he didn’t just call Russia. He called and spoke to both ways, I think there were countries. He’s doing the job. You know, he was doing his job. The thing is, he didn’t tell our vice president properly, and then he said he didn’t remember. So either way, it wasn’t very satisfactory to me. And I have somebody that I think will be outstanding for the position. And that also helps, I think, in the making of my decision. But he didn’t tell the vice president of the United States the facts. And then he didn’t remember. And that just wasn’t acceptable to me. Yes? QUESTION: (inaudible) clarification here. During your campaign, did anyone from your team (inaudible) Russian government or Russian intelligence? And if so, what was the nature of those conversations (inaudible)? TRUMP: The failing New York Times wrote a big, long story yesterday. And it was very much discredited, as you know. It was — it’s a joke. And the people mentioned in the story, I notice they were on television today saying they never even spoke to Russia. They weren’t even a part, really — I mean, they were such a minor part. They — I hadn’t spoken to them. I think the one person — I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him. I don’t think I’ve ever met him. And he actually said he was a very member of I think a committee for a short period of time. I don’t think I ever met him. Now, it’s possible that I walked into a room and he was sitting there, but I don’t think I ever met him. I didn’t talk to him ever. And he thought it was a joke. The other person said he never spoke to Russia never received a call. Look at his phone records, et cetera, et cetera. And the other person, people knew that he represented various countries, but I don’t think he represented Russia, but knew that he represented various countries. That’s what he does. I mean, people know that. That’s Mr. Manafort, who’s — by the way, who’s by the way a respected man. He’s a respected man. But I think he represented the Ukraine or Ukraine government or somebody, but everybody — people knew that. Everybody knew that. So, these people — and he said that he has absolutely nothing to do and never has with Russia. And he said that very forcefully. I saw his statement. He said it very forcefully. Most of the papers don’t print it because that’s not good for their stories. TRUMP: So the three people that they talked about all totally deny it. And I can tell you, speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia. President Putin called me up very nicely to congratulate me on the win of the election. He then, called me up extremely nicely to congratulate me on the inauguration, which was terrific. But so did many other leaders, almost all other leaders from almost all of the country. So that’s the extent. Russia is fake news. Russia — this is fake news put out by the media. The real news is the fact that people, probably from the Obama administration because they’re there, because we have our new people going in place, right now. As you know, Mike Pompeo has — has now taken control of the CIA, James Comey at FBI, Dan Coats is waiting to be approved, I mean he is a senator and a highly respected one and he’s still waiting to be approved. But our new people are going in. And just while you’re at it, because you mentioned this, Wall Street Journal did a story today that was almost as disgraceful as the failing New York Time’s story, yesterday. And it talked about — these are (ph) front page. So director of national intelligence just put out, acting a statement, any suggestion that the United States intelligence community, this was just given to us, is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true. So they took this front page story out of The Wall Street Journal top and they just wrote the story that its not true. And I’ll tell you something, I’ll be honest, because I sort of enjoy this back and forth that I guess I have all my life but I’ve never seen more dishonest media than frankly, the political media. I thought the financial media was much better, much more honest. But I will say that, I never get phone calls from the media. How did they write a story like that in The Wall Street Journal without asking me or how did they write a story in The New York Times, put it on front page? That was like the story they wrote about the women and me, front page, big massive story. And it was nasty and then they called, they said we never said that, we like Mr. Trump. They called up my office, we like Mr. Trump, we never said that. And it was totally — they totally misrepresented those very wonderful women, I have to tell you, totally misrepresented. I said give us the retraction. They never gave us a retraction and frankly, I then went on to other things. OK, go ahead. QUESTION: ( ) said today that you have big intellectual margins (inaudible) 300 or more (ph) or 350 (ph) electoral (ph) votes. President Obama about 365 ( ). (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Yeah. QUESTION: Obama ( ) 426 on ( ). So why should Americans. .. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: . ..I’m skipping that information, I don’t know, I was just given (ph) we had a very, very big margin. QUESTION: ( ) why should Americans trust you ( ) the information ( )? TRUMP: Well, I don’t know, I was given that information. I was given — I actually, I’ve seen that information around. But it was a very substantial victory, do you agree with that? OK thank you, that’s. .. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Go ahead Sir, yes? QUESTION: Can you tell us in determining that Lieutenant General Flynn did — whether there was no wrongdoing in your mind, what evidence was weighed? Did you ask for transcripts of these telephone intercepts with Russian officials, particularly the Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who he was communicating with? What — what evidence did you weigh to determine that there was no wrongdoing? Further to that, Sir, you said on a couple of locations this morning, you are going to aggressively pursue the source of these leaks. TRUMP: We are. QUESTION: Can we ask what you’re going to do and also, we’ve heard about a — a review of the intelligence community headed up by Steven Feinberg, what can you tell us about that? TRUMP: Well, first of all about that, we now have Dan Coats, hopefully soon, Mike Pompeo and James Comey and they’re in position so I hope that we’ll be able to straighten that out without using anybody else. The gentleman you mentioned is a very talented man, very successful man and he’s offered his services and you know, it’s something we may take advantage of. But I don’t think we’re need that at all because of the fact that you know, I think that we are gonna be able to straighten it out very easily on its own. As far as the general’s concerned, when I first heard about it, I said huh, that doesn’t sound wrong. My counsel came, Don McGahn, White House Counsel, and he told me and I asked him, he can speak very well for himself. He said he doesn’t think anything is wrong, you know, really didn’t think. It was really, what happened after that but he didn’t think anything was done wrong. I didn’t either because I waited a period of time and I started to think about it, I said “well I don’t see” — to me, he was doing the job. The information was provided by — who I don’t know, Sally Yates. And I was a little surprised because I said “doesn’t sound like he did anything wrong there. ” But he did something wrong with respect to the vice president and I thought that was not acceptable. As far as — as far as the actual making the call, fact I’ve watched various programs and I’ve read various articles where he was just doing his job. That was very normal. You know, first everybody got excited because they thought he did something wrong. After they thought about it, it turned out he was just doing his job. So — and I do. And by the way, with all of that being said, I do think he’s a fine man. QUESTION: Sir, if I could, on the leaks — on the leaks, sir. .. TRUMP: . ..Go ahead. Finish off then I’ll get you. QUESTION: I’m sorry. What will you do on the leaks? You’ve said twice today. .. TRUMP: . ..Yes, we’re looking at them very — very, very serious. I’ve gone to all of the folks in charge of the various agencies and we’re — I’ve actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks. Those are criminal leaks. They’re put out by people either in agencies — I think you’ll see it stopping because now we have our people in. You know, again, we don’t have our people in because we can’t get them approved by the Senate. We just had Jeff Sessions approved. Injustice, as an example (ph). So, we are looking into that very seriously. It’s a criminal act. You know what I say, when I — when I was called out on Mexico, I was shocked because all this equipment, all this incredible phone equipment — when I was called out on Mexico, I was — honestly, I was really, really surprised. But I said “you know, it doesn’t make sense. That won’t happen” but that wasn’t that important a call, it was fine, I could show it to the world and he could show it to the world, the president who’s a very fine man, by the way. Same thing with Australia. I said “that’s terrible that it was leaked” but it wasn’t that important. But then I said to myself “what happens when I’m dealing with the problem of North Korea?” What happens when I’m dealing with the problems in the Middle East? Are you folks going to be reporting all of that very, very confidential information, very important, very — you know, I mean at the highest level? Are you going to be reporting about that too? So, I don’t want classified information getting out to the public and in a way that was almost a test. So I’m dealing with Mexico, I’m dealing with Argentina, we were dealing on this case with Mike Flynn. All this information gets put into the “Washington Post” and gets put into the “New York Times” and I’m saying “what’s going to happen when I’m dealing on the Middle East? What’s going to happen when I’m dealing with really, really important subjects like North Korea? We got to stop it. That’s why it’s a criminal penalty. QUESTION: I just want to get you to clarify this very important point. Can you say definitively that nobody on your campaign had any contacts with the Russians during the campaign? And on the leaks, is it fake news or are these real leaks? TRUMP: Well the leaks are real. You’re the one that wrote about them and reported them, I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake. So one thing that I felt it was very important to do — and I hope we can correct it. Because there’s nobody I have more respect for — well, maybe a little bit but the reporters, good reporters. It’s very important to me and especially in this position. It’s very important. I don’t mind bad stories. I can handle a bad story better than anybody as long as it’s true and, you know, over a course of time, I’ll make mistakes and you’ll write badly and I’m OK with that. But I’m not OK when it is fake. I mean, I watch CNN, it’s so much anger and hatred and just the hatred. I don’t watch it any more because it’s very good — he’s saying no. It’s OK, Jim (ph). It’s OK, Jim (ph) you’ll have your chance. But I watch others too. You’re not the only one so don’t feel badly. But I think it should be straight. I think it should be — I think it would be frankly more interesting. I know how good everybody’s ratings are right now but I think that actually — I think that’d actually be better. People — I mean, you have a lower approval rate than Congress. I think that’s right. I don’t know, Peter (ph) is that one right? Because you know I think they have lower — I heard lower than Congress. But honestly, the public would appreciate it, I’d appreciate it — again, I don’t mind bad stories when it’s true but we have an administration where the Democrats are making it very difficult. TRUMP: I think we’re setting a record or close to a record in the time of approval of a cabinet. I mean, the numbers are crazy. When I’m looking, some of them had them approved immediately. I’m going forever and I still have a lot of people that we’re waiting for. And that’s all they’re doing, is delaying. And you look at Schumer and the mess that he’s got over there and they have nothing going. The only thing they can do is delay. And, you know, I think that they’d be better served by, you know, approving and making sure that they’re happy and everybody’s good. And sometimes — I mean, I know President Obama lost three or four, and you lose them on the way, and that’s OK. That’s fine. But I think it would — I think they would be much better served, John, if they just went through the process quickly. This is pure delay tactics. And they say it, and everybody understands it. Yeah, go ahead, Jimmy. QUESTION: ( ) TRUMP: Well, I had nothing to do with it. I have nothing to do with Russia. I told you, I have no deals there, I have no anything. Now, when WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information. They’re giving stuff — what was said at an office about Hillary cheating on the debates. Which, by the way, nobody mentions. Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates. Can you imagine — seriously — can you imagine if I received the questions? It would be the electric chair. OK, he should be put in the electric — you would even call for the reinstitution of the death penalty, OK. Maybe not you John. Yes? We’ll do you next Jim, I do you next( ph). QUESTION: ( ) clarify — TRUMP: Yes, yes, sure QUESTION: Did you direct Mike Flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador — TRUMP: No, I didn’t. QUESTION: — prior to your — TRUMP: No, I didn’t. QUESTION: — inauguration. TRUMP: No, I didn’t. QUESTION: And then fired him — TRUMP: Excuse me. QUESTION: ( ) TRUMP: No, I fired him because of what he said to Mike Pence. Very simple. Mike was doing his job. He was calling countries and his counterparts. So, it certainly would have been OK with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn’t doing it. I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed him because that’s his job. And it came out that way — and in all fairness, I watched Dr. Charles Krauthammer the other night say he was doing his job and I agreed with him. And since then, I’ve watched many other people say that. No, I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed him if he didn’t do it. OK? Jim? QUESTION: Thank you very much, and just for the record, we don’t hate you. I don’t hate you. TRUMP: OK. QUESTION: So, pass that along — TRUMP: Ask — ask Jeff Zucker how he got his job. OK? QUESTION: If I may follow up on some of the questions that have taken place so far here, sir — TRUMP: Well, that’s — well, you know, we do have other people. You do have other people and your ratings aren’t as good as some of the other people that are waiting. QUESTION: It’s pretty good right now, actually. TRUMP: OK, go ahead, John. QUESTION: If I may ask, sir, you said earlier that WikiLeaks was revealing information about the Hillary Clinton campaign during the election cycle. You welcomed that. At one time — TRUMP: I was OK with it. QUESTION: — you said — you said that you loved WikiLeaks. At another campaign press conference you called on the Russians to find the missing 30, 000 . I’m wondering, sir, if you — TRUMP: Well, she was actually missing 33 and then that got extended with a pile after that. QUESTION: Then( ph) your( ph) numbers( ph) were off too. TRUMP: No — no, but I did say 30. But it was actually higher than that. QUESTION: If — if I may ask you, sir, it — it sounds as though you do not have much credibility here when it comes to leaking if that is something that you encouraged during( ph) the campaign — TRUMP: OK, fair question. Ready? QUESTION: Well, if I may ask you that — TRUMP: No — no, but let me do one at a time. QUESTION: If I may as a follow up? TRUMP: Do you mind? QUESTION: Yes, sir. TRUMP: All right. So, in one case, you’re talking about highly classified information. In the other case, you’re talking about John Podesta saying bad things about the boss. I will say this, if John Podesta said that about me and he was working for me, I would have fired him so fast your head would have spun. He said terrible things about her. But it wasn’t classified information. But in one case, you’re talking about classified — regardless, if you look at the RNC, we had a very strong — at my suggestion — and I give Reince great credit for this — at my suggestion, because I know something about this world, I said I want a very strong defensive mechanism. I don’t want to be hacked. And we did that. And you have seen that they tried to hack us and they failed. The DNC did not do that. And if they did it, they could not have been hacked. But they were hacked and terrible things came in. And, you know, the only thing that I do think is unfair is some of the things were so — they were — when I heard some of those things I picked up the papers the next morning and said, oh, this is going to be front page, it wasn’t even in the papers. Again, if I had that happen to me, it would be the biggest story in the history of publishing or the head of newspapers. I would have been headline in every newspaper. I mean, think of it. They gave her the questions to a debate and she — and she should have reported herself. Why did Hillary Clinton announce that, “I’m sorry, but I have been given the questions to a debate or a town hall, and I feel that it’s inappropriate, and I want to turn in CNN for not doing a good job. ” QUESTION: And if I may follow up on that, just something that Jonathan Karl (ph) was asking you about. You said that the leaks are real, but the news is fake. I guess I don’t understand. It seems that there’s a disconnect there. If the information coming from those leaks is real, then how can the stories be fake? TRUMP: The reporting is fake. Look, look. .. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: You know what it is? Here’s the thing. The public isn’t — you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don’t know if it’s true or false because they’re not involved. I’m involved. I’ve been involved with this stuff all my life. But I’m involved. So I know when you’re telling the truth or when you’re not. I just see many, many untruthful things. And I’ll tell you what else I see. I see tone. You know the word “tone. ” The tone is such hatred. I’m really not a bad person, by the way. No, but the tone is such — I do get good ratings, you have to admit that — the tone is such hatred. I watched this morning a couple of the networks. And I have to say, Fox Friends in the morning, they’re very honorable people. They’re very — not because they’re good, because they hit me also when I do something wrong. But they have the most honest morning show. That’s all I can say. It’s the most honest. But the tone, Jim. If you look — the hatred. The, I mean, sometimes — sometimes somebody gets. .. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Well, you look at your show that goes on at 10 o’clock in the evening. You just take a look at that show. That is a constant hit. The panel is almost always exclusive . The good news is he doesn’t have good ratings. But the panel is almost exclusive . And the hatred and venom coming from his mouth the hatred coming from other people on your network. Now, I will say this. I watch it. I see it. I’m amazed by it. And I just think you’d be a lot better off, I honestly do. The public gets it, you know. Look, when I go to rallies, they turn around, they start screaming at CNN. They want to throw their placards at CNN. You know. I — I think you would do much better by being different. But you just take a look. Take a look at some of your shows in the morning and the evening. If a guest comes out and says something positive about me, it’s — it’s brutal. Now, they’ll take this news conference — I’m actually having a very good time, OK? But they’ll take this news conference — don’t forget, that’s the way I won. Remember, I used to give you a news conference every time I made a speech, which was like every day. OK? (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: No, that’s how I won. I won with news conferences and probably speeches. I certainly didn’t win by people listening to you people. That’s for sure. But I’m having a good time. Tomorrow, they will say, “Donald Trump rants and raves at the press. ” I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you. You know, you’re dishonest people. But — but I’m not ranting and raving. I love this. I’m having a good time doing it. But tomorrow, the headlines are going to be, “Donald Trump rants and raves. ” I’m not ranting and raving. Go ahead. QUESTION: If I may, just one more followup. .. TRUMP: Should I let him have a little bit more? What do you think, Peter? Peter, should I have — let him have a little bit more? Sit down. Sit down. We’ll. .. (CROSSTALK) QUESTION: Just because of the attack of fake news and attacking our network, I just want to ask you, sir. .. TRUMP: I’m changing it from fake news, though. QUESTION: Doesn’t that under. .. TRUMP: Very fake news. QUESTION: . .. I know, but aren’t you. .. (LAUGHTER) TRUMP: Go ahead. QUESTION: Real news, Mr. President, real news. TRUMP: And you’re not related to our new. .. QUESTION: I am not related, sir. No. I do like the sound of Secretary Acosta, I must say. TRUMP: I looked — you know, I looked at that name. I said, wait a minute, is there any relation there? Alex Acosta. QUESTION: I’m sure you checked that out, sir. TRUMP: OK. Now I checked it — I said — they said, “No, sir. ” I said, “Do me a favor, go back and check the family tree. ” QUESTION: But aren’t you — aren’t you concerned, sir, that you are undermining the people’s faith in the First Amendment, freedom of the press, the press in this country, when you call stories you don’t like “fake news”? Why not just say it’s a story I don’t like. TRUMP: I do that. QUESTION: When you call it “fake news,” you’re undermining confidence in our news media (inaudible) important. TRUMP: No, no. I do that. Here’s the thing. OK. I understand what you’re — and you’re right about that, except this. See, I know when I should get good and when I should get bad. And sometimes I’ll say, “Wow, that’s going to be a great story. ” And I’ll get killed. I know what’s good and bad. I’d be a pretty good reporter, not as good as you. But I know what’s good. I know what’s bad. And when they change it and make it really bad, something that should be positive — sometimes something that should be very positive, they’ll make OK. They’ll even make it negative. So I understand it. So, because I’m there. I know what was said. I know who’s saying it. I’m there. So it’s very important to me. Look, I want to see an honest press. When I started off today by saying that it’s so important to the public to get an honest press. The press — the public doesn’t believe you people anymore. Now, maybe I had something to do with that. I don’t know. But they don’t believe you. If you were straight and really told it like it is, as Howard Cosell used to say, right? Of course, he had some questions also. But if you were straight, I would be your biggest booster. I would be your biggest fan in the world, including bad stories about me. But if you go — as an example, you’re CNN, I mean it’s story after story after story is bad. I won. I won. And the other thing, chaos because zero chaos. We are running — this is a machine and Reince happens to be doing a good job but half of his job is putting out lies by the press (ph). You know, I said to him yesterday this whole Russia scam that you guys are building so that you don’t talk about the real subject which is illegal leaks, but I watched him yesterday working so hard to try and get that story proper. And I’m saying “here’s my chief of staff,” a really good guy, did a phenomenal job at RNC. I mean, he won the election, right? We won the presidency. We got some senators, we got some — all over the country, you take a look, he’s done a great job. And I said to myself, you know — and I said to somebody that was in the room, I said “you take a look at Reince, he’s working so hard just putting out fires that are fake fires. ” I mean, they’re fake. They’re not true. And isn’t that a shame because he’d rather be working on healthcare, he’d rather be working on tax reform, Jim (ph). I mean that. I would be your biggest fan in the world if you treated me right. I sort of understand there’s a certain bias maybe by Jeff (ph) or somebody, you know — you know, whatever reason. But — and I understand that. But you’ve got to be at least a little bit fair and that’s why the public sees it. They see it. They see it’s not fair. You take a look at some of your shows and you see the bias and the hatred. And the public is smart, they understand it. Go ahead. QUESTION: (inaudible) . ..for those who believe that there is something to it, is there anything that you have learned over the last few weeks that you might be able to reveal that might ease their concerns that this isn’t fake news? And second. .. TRUMP: . ..I think they don’t believe it. I don’t think the public — that’s why the Rasmussen poll just has me through the roof. I don’t think they believe it. Well, I guess one of the reasons I’m here today is to tell you the whole Russian thing, that’s a ruse. That’s a ruse. And by the way, it would be great if we could get along with Russia, just so you understand that. Now tomorrow, you’ll say “Donald Trump wants to get along with Russia, this is terrible. ” It’s not terrible. It’s good. We had Hillary Clinton try and do a reset. We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons like lots of things are done with uranium including some bad things. Nobody talks about that. I didn’t do anything for Russia. I’ve done nothing for Russia. Hillary Clinton gave them 20 percent of our uranium. Hillary Clinton did a reset, remember? With the stupid plastic button that made us all look like a bunch of jerks. Here, take a look. He looked at her like, what the hell is she doing with that cheap plastic button? Hillary Clinton — that was the reset, remember it said reset? Now if I do that, oh, I’m a bad guy. If we could get along with Russia, that’s a positive thing. We have a very talented man, Rex Tillerson, who’s going to be meeting with them shortly and I told him. I said “I know politically it’s probably not good for me. ” The greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles off shore right out of the water. Everyone in this country’s going to say “oh, it’s so great. ” That’s not great. That’s not great. I would love to be able to get along with Russia. Now, you’ve had a lot of presidents that haven’t taken that tack. Look where we are now. Look where we are now. So, if I can — now, I love to negotiate things, I do it really well, and all that stuff. But — but it’s possible I won’t be able to get along with Putin. Maybe it is. But I want to just tell you, the false reporting by the media, by you people, the false, horrible, fake reporting makes it much harder to make a deal with Russia. And probably Putin said “you know. ” He’s sitting behind his desk and he’s saying “you know, I see what’s going on in the United States, I follow it closely. It’s going to be impossible for President Trump to ever get along with Russia because of all the pressure he’s got with this fake story. ” OK? And that’s a shame because if we could get along with Russia — and by the way, China and Japan and everyone. If we could get along, it would be a positive thing, not a negative thing. QUESTION: Is tax reform on the line (ph)? QUESTION: Mr. President? Mr. President? Mr. President, since you. .. TRUMP: Tax reform is going to happen fairly quickly. We’re doing Obamacare. We’re in final stages. We should be submitting the initial plan in March, early March, I would say. And we have to, as you know, statutorily and for reasons of budget, we have to go first. It’s not like, frankly, the tax would be easier, in my opinion, but for statutory reasons and for budgetary reasons, we have to submit the healthcare sooner. So we’ll be submitting healthcare sometime in early March, March. And after that, we’re going to come up, and we’re doing very well on tax reform. Yes? QUESTION: Mr. President, you mentioned Russia. Let’s talk about some serious issues that have come up in the last week that you have had to deal with as president of the United States. TRUMP: OK. QUESTION: You mentioned the vessel — the spy vessel off the coast of the United States. TRUMP: Not good. QUESTION: There was a ballistic missile test that many interpret as a violation of an agreement between the two countries and a Russian plane buzzed a U. S. destroyer. TRUMP: Not good. QUESTION: I listened to you during the campaign . .. TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me. When did it happen? It happened when, if you were Putin right now, you would say, “Hey, we’re back to the old games with the United States there’s no way Trump can ever do a deal with us. ” Because the — you have to understand. If I was just brutal on Russia right now, just brutal, people would say, you would say, “Oh, isn’t that wonderful. ” But I know you well enough. Then you would say, “Oh, he was too tough he shouldn’t have done that. ” Look, all of the. .. (CROSSTALK) QUESTION: I’m just trying to find out your orientation to those. .. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Wait a minute. Wait, wait. Excuse me just one second. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: All of those things that you mentioned are very recent, because probably Putin assumes that he’s not going to be able to make a deal with me because it’s politically not popular for me to make a deal. So Hillary Clinton tries a reset. It failed. They all tried. But I’m different than those people. Go ahead. QUESTION: How are you interpreting those moves? And what do you intend to do about them? Have you given Rex Tillerson any advice or counsel on how to deal? TRUMP: I have. I have. And I’m so beautifully represented. I’m so honored that the Senate approved him. He’s going to be fantastic. Yes, I think that I’ve already. .. QUESTION: Is Putin testing you, do you believe, sir? TRUMP: No, I don’t think so. I think Putin probably assumes that he can’t make a deal with me anymore because politically it would be unpopular for a politician to make a deal. I can’t believe I’m saying I’m a politician, but I guess that’s what I am now. Because, look, it would be much easier for me to be tough on Russia, but then we’re not going to make a deal. Now, I don’t know that we’re going to make a deal. I don’t know. We might. We might not. But it would be much easier for me to be so tough — the tougher I am on Russia, the better. But you know what? I want to do the right thing for the American people. And to be honest, secondarily, I want to do the right thing for the world. If Russia and the United States actually got together and got along — and don’t forget, we’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are they. There’s no upside. We’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are they. I have been briefed. And I can tell you one thing about a briefing that we’re allowed to say because anybody that ever read the most basic book can say it, nuclear holocaust would be like no other. They’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are we. If we have a good relationship with Russia, believe me, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. QUESTION: So when you say they’re not good, do you mean that they are. .. TRUMP: Who did I say is not good? QUESTION: No, I read off the three things that have recently happened. Each one of them you said they’re not good. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: No, it’s not good, but they happened. QUESTION: But do they damage the relationship? Do they undermine. .. TRUMP: They all happened recently. No. .. (CROSSTALK) QUESTION: . .. this country’s ability to work with Russia? TRUMP: They all happened recently. And I understand what they’re doing because they’re doing the same thing. Now, again, maybe I’m not going to be able to do a deal with Russia, but at least I will have tried. And if I don’t, does anybody really think that Hillary Clinton would be tougher on Russia than Donald Trump? Does anybody in this room really believe that? OK? But I tell you one thing, she tried to make a deal. She had the reset. She gave all that valuable uranium away. She did other things. You know, they say I’m close to Russia. Hillary Clinton gave away 20 percent of the uranium in the United States. She’s close to Russia. QUESTION: Can we. .. TRUMP: I gave — you know what I gave to Russia? You know what I gave? Nothing. QUESTION: Can we conclude there will be no response to these particular provocations? TRUMP: I’m not going to tell you anything about what response I do. I don’t talk about military response. I don’t say I’m going into Mosul in four months. “We are going to attack Mosul in four months. ” Then three months later, “We are going to attack Mosul in one month. ” “Next week, we are going to attack Mosul. ” In the meantime, Mosul is very, very difficult. Do you know why? Because I don’t talk about military, and I don’t talk about certain other things, you’re going to be surprised to hear that. And by the way, my whole campaign, I’d say that. So I don’t have to tell you. I don’t want to be one of these guys that say, “Yes, here’s what we’re going to do. ” I don’t have to do that. I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do in North Korea. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Wait a minute. I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do in North Korea. And I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do with Iran. You know why? Because they shouldn’t know. And eventually, you guys are going to get tired of asking that question. TRUMP: So when you ask me what am I going to do with a ship, the Russian ship as an example, I’m not going to tell you. But hopefully, I won’t have to do anything, but I’m not going to tell you. OK. QUESTION: Could I just ask you — thank you very much, Mr. President. The trouble. .. TRUMP: Where are you from? QUESTION: BBC. TRUMP: Here’s another beauty. QUESTION: That’s a good line. Impartial, free and fair. TRUMP: Yeah. Sure. QUESTION: Mr. President. .. TRUMP: Just like CNN right? QUESTION: On the travel ban — we could banter back and forth. On the travel ban would you accept that that was a good example of the smooth running of government. .. TRUMP: Yeah, I do. I do. Let me tell you about this government. .. QUESTION: Were there any mistakes. .. TRUMP: Wait. Wait. I know who you are. Just wait. Let me tell you about the travel ban. We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision. We had a court that’s been overturned. Again, may be wrong. But I think it’s 80 percent of the time, a lot. We had a bad decision. We’re going to keep going with that decision. We’re going to put in a new executive order next week some time. But we had a bad decision. That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports. You had some people that were put out there, brought by very nice busses, and they were put out at various locations. Despite that the only problem that we had is we had a bad court. We had a court that gave us what I consider to be, with great respect, a very bad decision. Very bad for the safety and security of our country. The rollout was perfect. Now, what I wanted to do was do the exact same executive order, but said one thing. I said this to my people. Give them a period of time. But Gen. Kelly, now Sec. Kelly, said if you do that, all these people will come in and (inaudible) the bad ones. You do agree there are bad people out there, right? That not everybody that’s like you. You have some bad people out there. Kelly said you can’t do that. And he was right. As soon as he said it I said wow, never thought of it. I said how about one week? He said no good. You got to do it immediately because if you do it immediately they don’t have time to come in. Now nobody ever reports that. But that’s why we did it quickly. Now, if I would’ve done it a month, everything would’ve been perfect. The problem is we would’ve wasted a lot of time, and maybe a lot of lives because a lot of bad people would’ve come into our country. Now in the meantime, we’re vetting very, very strongly. Very, very strongly. But we need help. And we need help by getting that executive order passed. QUESTION: Just a brief . But if it’s so urgent, why not introduce. .. TRUMP: Yes? Go ahead. QUESTION: Thank you. I was just hoping that we could get a yes or no answer on one of these questions involving Russia. Can you say whether you are aware that anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with Russia during the course of the election? TRUMP: Well I told you, Gen. Flynn obviously was dealing. So that’s one person. But he was dealing, as he should have been. QUESTION: During the election? TRUMP: No. Nobody that I know of. Nobody. .. QUESTION: So you’re not aware of any contact during the course.. TRUMP: Look, look, look. .. QUESTION: . .. of the election? TRUMP: How many times do I have to answer this question? QUESTION: Can you just say yes or no? TRUMP: Russia is a ruse. I know you have to get up and ask a question. It’s so important. Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia. Not that I wouldn’t. I just have nobody to speak to. I spoke to Putin twice. He called me on the election. I told you this. And he called me on the inauguration, a few days ago. We had a very good talk, especially the second one, lasted for a pretty long period of time. I’m sure you probably get it because it was classified. So I’m sure everybody in this room perhaps has it. But we had a very, very good talk. I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge no person that I deal with does. Now, Manafort has totally denied it. He denied it. Now people knew that he was a consultant over in that part of the world for a while, but not for Russia. I think he represented Ukraine or people having to do with Ukraine, or people that — whoever. But people knew that. Everybody knew that. QUESTION: But in his capacity as your campaign manager, was he in touch with Russian officials during the election? TRUMP: You know what? He said no. I could only tell you what he — now he was replaced long before the election. You know that, right? He was replaced long before the election. When all of this stuff started coming out, it came out during the election. But Paul Manafort, who’s a good man also by the way, Paul Manfort was replaced long before the election took place. He was only there for a short period of time. QUESTION: Mr. President. .. TRUMP: How much longer should we stay here, folks? QUESTION: Mr. President. .. TRUMP: Five more minutes. Is that OK? Five? QUESTION: Mr. President, on national. .. TRUMP: Wait. Let’s see. Who’s — I want to find a friendly reporter. QUESTION: Mr. ... TRUMP: Are you a friendly reporter? Watch how friendly he is. Wait. Wait. Watch how friendly he is. Go ahead. QUESTION: ( ). .. TRUMP: Go ahead. QUESTION: So first of all, my name is (Inaudible) from (Inaudible) Magazine. I (inaudible). I haven’t seen anybody in my community, including yourself or any of the — anyone on your staff of being ( ). Because ( ). However, what we’ve already heard about and what we ( ) is ( ) so you’re general forecast (ph) like 48 ( ). There are people who are everything (ph) happens through their packs (ph) is one of the ( ). .. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP:. ..he said he was gonna ask a very simple, easy question. And it’s not, its not, not — not a simple question, not a fair question. OK sit down, I understand the rest of your question. So here’s the story, folks. Number one, I am the least Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person. In fact, we did very well relative to other people running as a Republican — quiet, quiet, quiet. See, he lied about — he was gonna get up and ask a very straight, simple question, so you know, welcome to the world of the media. But let me just tell you something, that I hate the charge, I find it repulsive. I hate even the question because people that know me and you heard the prime minister, you heard Ben Netanyahu (ph) yesterday, did you hear him, Bibi? He said, I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time and then he said, forget it. So you should take that instead of having to get up and ask a very insulting question like that. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. QUESTION: Thank you, I’m Lisa (ph) from the. .. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: See, it just shows you about the press, but that’s the way the press is. QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Lisa Dejardown (ph) from the PBS News Hour. On national security and immigration, can you give us more details on the executive order you plan for next week? Even its broad outlines? TRUMP: Yeah. QUESTION: Will it be focused on specific. .. TRUMP: It’s a very fair question. QUESTION: . ..countries? And in addition, on the DACA program for immigration. TRUMP: Right. QUESTION: What is your plan, do you plan to continue that program or to end it? TRUMP: We’re gonna show great heart, DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I will tell you. To me, it’s one of the most difficult subjects I have because you have these incredible kids. In many cases, not in all cases. And some of the cases, having DACA and they’re gang members and they’re drug dealers, too. But you have some absolutely, incredible kids, I would say mostly. They were brought here in such a way — it’s a very — it’s a very, very tough subject. We’re gonna deal with DACA with heart. I have to deal with a lot of politicians, don’t forget and I have to convince them that what I’m saying is — is right. And I appreciate your understanding on that. But the DACA situation is a very, very — it’s a very difficult thing for me because you know, I love these kids, I love kids, I have kids and grandkids. And I find it very, very hard doing what the law says exactly to do and you know, the law is rough. I’m not talking about new laws, I’m talking the existing law, is very rough, it’s very, very rough. As far as the new order, the new order is going to be very much tailored to the what I consider to be a very bad decision. But we can tailor the order to that decision and get just about everything, in some ways, more. But we’re tailoring it now to the decision, we have some of the best lawyers in the country working on it. And the new executive order, is being tailored to the decision we got down from the court. OK? QUESTION: Mr. President. .. (CROSSTALK) QUESTION: . ..reopening of the White House Visitors Office? TRUMP: Yes. QUESTION: And she does a lot of great work for the country as well (ph). Can you talk a little bit about what’s first for (ph) Melania Trump does for the country and (inaudible) so opening White House Visitors Office, what does that mean. .. TRUMP: Now, that’s what I call a nice question. That is very — who are you with? QUESTION: ( ) TRUMP: Good, I’m gonna start watching, all right? Thank you very much. Melania’s terrific, she was here last night, we had dinner with Senator Rubio and his wife who is by the way, lovely. And we had a really good discussion about Cuba because we have very similar views on Cuba. And Cuba was very good to me in the Florida election, as you know the Cuban Americans. And I think that Melania’s gonna be outstanding, that’s right, she just opened up the visitors center, in other words, touring of the White House. She, like others that she’s working with, feel very, very strongly about women’s issue, women’s difficulties. Very, very strongly, she’s a very, very strong advocate. I think she’s a great representative for this country. And a funny thing happens, because she gets — she gets so unfairly — Melania, the things they say. I’ve known her for a long time, she was a very successful person, she was a very successful model. She did really well. She would go home at night and didn’t even want to go out with people. She was a very private person. She was always the highest quality that you’ll ever find. And the things they say — I’ve known her for a long time — the things they say are so unfair. And actually, she’s been apologized to, as you know, by various media because they said things that were lies. I’ll just tell you this. I think she’s going to be a fantastic first lady. She’s going to be a tremendous representative of women and of the people. And helping her and working her will be Ivanka, who is a fabulous person and a fabulous, fabulous woman. And they’re not doing this for money. They’re not doing this for pay, they’re doing this because they feel it both of them. And Melania goes back and forth and after Barron finishes school — because it’s hard to take a child out of school with a few months left — she and Barron will be moving over to the White House. OK, thank you, that’s a very nice question. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Go ahead. QUESTION: Mr. Trump? TRUMP: Yes, oh, this is going to be a bad question, but that’s OK. QUESTION: It doesn’t( ph) have( ph) to be a bad question. TRUMP: Good, because I enjoy watching you on television. Go ahead. QUESTION: Well, thank you so much. Mr. President, I need to find out from you, you said something as it relates to inner cities. That was one of your platforms during your campaign. Now you’re — TRUMP: Fix the inner cities. QUESTION: — president. Fixing the inner cities. TRUMP: Yep. QUESTION: What will be that fix and your urban agenda as well as your HBCU Executive Order that’s coming out this afternoon? See, it wasn’t bad, was it? TRUMP: That was very professional and very good. QUESTION: I’m very professional. TRUMP: We’ll be announcing the order in a little while and I’d rather let the order speak for itself. But it could be something that I think that will be very good for everybody concerned. But we’ll talk to you about that after we do the announcement. As far as the inner cities, as you know, I was very strong on the inner cities during the campaign. I think it’s probably what got me a much higher percentage of the African American vote than a lot of people thought I was going to get. We did, you know, much higher than people thought I was going to get. And I was honored by that, including the Hispanic vote, which was also much higher. And by the way, if I might add, including the women’s vote, which was much higher than people thought I was going to get. So, we are going to be working very hard on the inner cities, having to do with education, having to do with crime. We’re going to try and fix as quickly as possible — you know, it takes a long time. It’s taken more a hundred years and more for some of these places to evolve and they evolved, many of them, very badly. But we’re going to be working very hard on health and healthcare, very, very hard on education, and also we’re going to be working in a stringent way, in a very good way, on crime. You go to some of these inner city places and it’s so sad when you look at the crime. You have people — and I’ve seen this, and I’ve sort of witnessed it — in fact, in two cases I have actually witnessed it. They lock themselves into apartments, petrified to even leave, in the middle of the day. They’re living in hell. We can’t let that happen. So, we’re going to be very, very strong. That’s a great question and — and it’s a — it’s a very difficult situation because it’s been many, many years. It’s been festering for many, many years. But we have places in this country that we have to fix. We have to help African American people that, for the most part, are stuck there. Hispanic American people. We have Hispanic American people that are in the inner cities and their living in hell. I mean, you look at the numbers in Chicago. There are two Chicagos, as you know. There’s one Chicago that’s incredible, luxurious and all — and safe. There’s another Chicago that’s worse than almost any of the places in the Middle East that we talk, and that you talk about, every night on the newscasts. So, we’re going to do a lot of work on the inner cities. I have great people lined up to help with the inner cities. OK? QUESTION: Well, when you say the inner cities, are you going — are you going to include the CBC, Mr. President, in your conversations with your — your urban agenda, your inner city agenda, as well as — TRUMP: Am I going to include who? QUESTION: Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional — TRUMP: Well, I would. I tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? QUESTION: — Hispanic Caucus — TRUMP: Do you want to set up the meeting? QUESTION: No — no — no. I’m not — TRUMP: Are they friends of yours? QUESTION: I’m just a reporter. TRUMP: Well, then( ph) set up the meeting. QUESTION: I know some of them, but I’m sure they’re watching right now. TRUMP: Let’s go set up a meeting. I would love to meet with the Black Caucus. I think it’s great, the Congressional Black Caucus. I think it’s great. I actually thought I had a meeting with Congressman Cummings and he was all excited. And then he said, well, I can’t move, it might be bad for me politically. I can’t have that meeting. I was all set to have the meeting. You know, we called him and called him. And he was all set. I spoke to him on the phone, very nice guy. QUESTION: I hear he wanted that meeting with you as well. TRUMP: He wanted it, but we called, called, called and can’t make a meeting with him. Every day I walk and say I would like to meet with him because I do want to solve the problem. But he probably was told by Schumer or somebody like that, some other lightweight. He was probably told — he was probably told “don’t meet with Trump. It’s bad politics. ” And that’s part of the problem in this country. OK, one more. QUESTION: (inaudible) TRUMP: No, no, one question. Two we can’t handle. This room can’t handle two. Go ahead, give me the better of your two. QUESTION: (inaudible) . ..not about your personality or your beliefs, talking about (inaudible) some of it by supporters in your name. What do you. .. TRUMP: . ..And some of it — can I be honest with you? And this has to do with racism and horrible things that are put up. Some of it written by our opponents. You do know that. Do you understand that? You don’t think anybody would do a thing like that. Some of the signs you’ll see are not put up by the people that love or like Donald Trump, they’re put up by the other side and you think it’s like playing it straight? No. But you have some of those signs and some of that anger is caused by the other side. They’ll do signs and they’ll do drawings that are inappropriate. It won’t be my people. It will be the people on the other side to anger people like you. OK. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Go ahead, go ahead. QUESTION: You’re the president now. What are you going to do about it? TRUMP: Who is that? Where is that? QUESTION: What are you going to do about — what are you going to do about (inaudible). TRUMP: Oh, I’m working on it. I’m working on it very — no, no, look. Hey, just so you understand, we had a totally divided country for eight years and long before that. In all fairness to President Obama, long before President Obama we have had a very divided — I didn’t come along and divide this country. This country was seriously divided before I got here. We’re going to work on it very hard. One of the questions I was asked, I thought it was a very good question was about the inner cities. I mean, that’s part of it. But we’re going to work on education, we’re going to work on — you know, we’re going to stop — we’re going to try and stop the crime. We have great law enforcement officials, we’re going to try and stop crime. We’re not going to try and stop, we’re going to stop crime. But it’s very important to me — but this isn’t Donald Trump that divided a nation. We went eight years with President Obama and we went many years before President Obama. We lived in a divided nation. And I am going to try — I will do everything within my power to fix that. I want to thank everybody very much. It’s a great honor to be with you. Thank you. Thank you very much, thanks. END | 1 |
London couple who ‘don't need a car’ want a lift 14-11-16 A COUPLE from London who insist they do not need a car have asked for a lift. Tom Logan and his girlfriend Eleanor Shaw live in East London and rely on trains and Ubers to get around, believing that cars are wasteful. However they really need a lift to a wedding near Portsmouth on Saturday. Shaw said: “Living in London gives you a different perspective on transport. It makes you realise that having your own car is simply unnecessary, not to mention terrible for the environment. “That said, we could really do with being picked up from Portsmouth station around midday on Saturday.” Logan added: “Owning a car is a British obsession we just don’t buy into. We’re so well served for transport links where we live, we really have no need for a car – except for every time we leave London. “In the provinces, we have to rely on the kindness of family, friends and sometimes even strangers to give us lifts, much like children being taken to after-school activities. “We don’t give people petrol money though, preferring to operate a vague barter system.”
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Home › MEDIA | POLITICS › CLINTON CAMPAIGN COOPERATED WITH POLITICO ON ‘DEMYSTIFYING’ HUMA ABEDIN CLINTON CAMPAIGN COOPERATED WITH POLITICO ON ‘DEMYSTIFYING’ HUMA ABEDIN 0 SHARES
[11/1/16] Asked to provide a quotation for a Politico profile of Huma Abedin in July 2015, Clinton Campaign manager John Podesta wanted to use the phrase “wicked smart” instead of “bright,” and he emphasized Abedin’s “strategic sense.”
Podesta also agreed with a campaign staffer’s suggestion to describe Abedin as “an integral part of the team.”
The Wikileaks email exchange , dated July 2, 2015 and released on Tuesday, begins with Clinton’s press secretary Nicholas Merrill telling Milia Fisher, Podesta’s aide, that “Politico has been working on a profile on Huma that we are being what I’d call partially cooperative with.”
Merrill said after consulting with Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri and Huma herself, the campaign decided to have the reporter sit down with Huma “off the record.”
“We think there is some value in demystifying her a bit in general, and Politico isn’t a bad place to do it,” Merrill wrote to Fisher.
Merrill asked Fisher to see if Podesta “would be willing to weigh in, which I think would be good in the spirit of showing team unity.”
“The piece will be about Huma’s evolution from body person to senior staffer, so if he’s up for it, maybe John could say something about her being a multi-faceted team player,” Merrill wrote. Then he offered a suggested quotation:
“Like: I was there at the White House when Huma was a young intern, and now she’s an integral part of the team. She’s as multi-faceted as she is bright, and when you combine that with her humility, you couldn’t ask for a better colleague.”
Merrill tells Fisher, “Feel free to tweak that, put it in John’s voice, or blow it up.”
Fisher forwarded Merrill’s email to Podesta, asking him if he’d be willing to provide a quote. “Comms (communications) thinks it might lend an air of community to the piece,” she wrote to Podesta.
Podesta’s reply: “Change bright to ‘wicked smart’ and after humilty add ‘and strategic sense.'”
The complete email exchange, as provided by WikiLeaks, can be seen here :
The July 2, 2015 Politico profile of Abedin described her as “Clinton’s longest-serving aide.” It said that “like a mother monitoring her child on the playground, she never let Clinton drift out of her line of sight, ever vigilant and poised to act.” Post navigation | 0 |
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